In the book Wade Watts powers his Oasis console and a small heater using a battery that he recharges in a van by pedaling a stationary bike. This seems quite far fetched. The console itself appears to be a thin client with only enough CPU Aand GPU power to render the Oasis and a little extra to contribute to the server for distributed computing if needed. The power needs of such a device are likely to be quite low so i figure a regular smartphone size battery (20 to 25 watts) would be fine. However, the heater is the problem. The smallest electric heater i have ever seen is still 200 watts. A normal human can produce ~100 watts of power per hour according to this site. If the Oasis console uses ~5 watts per hour this would leave him with 95 watts with which to run his heater. That would allow him to run his heater for ~28 minutes per hour and only if he spent the entire previous hour pedaling to recharge the battery.

  • Veraticus ( Veraticus@lib.lgbt ) 
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    3 years ago

    This is a valid complaint.

    I do think it’s funny that the apparent impossibility of the rest of the tech is okay to you (a complete sensory-replacement virtual reality hosting the most complicated game ever created with something close to true AI)… but the heater is just too much to swallow.