The History of VR

Virtual reality has a long and tumultuous past filled with as many deaths as it has attempts at revival. However, the recent surge in production and society’s fascination could finally be the industry’s salvation. Let us take a look at history to see how VR got here.

In 1955, Morton Heilig devised the Sensorama, which by 1962 was a working prototype. It was the first 4D film-viewer in which a person would put their head and have all their senses stimulated. It could display wide-angle stereoscopic 3D images and create stereo sound, vibrations and even blow wind and context-specific aromas towards your head. This technology, however, was stylistically a booth and not a head-mounted display (or HMD) system.

It was not until 1968 when the first HMD was created by Ivan Sunderland, which he named the “Ultimate Display”. Also referred to as The Sword of Damocles due to its room-filling proportions, it successfully immersed the wearer in a virtual world, albeit primitive and wireframe. However, it was heavy and thus needed to be connected to a mechanical arm attached to the roof of the lab.

From the 60s throughout the 80s, there was a steady amount of development in the field which is mainly credited to military-type experiments such as vehicle simulators. Fast forward to the 1995 release of Nintendo’s VirtualBoy: An expensive, uncomfortable, black and red colour-screen doomsday for the consumer VR industry. This terrible 3D gaming experience was enough to bury VR from the world for almost a decade.

When all hope seemed lost, Oculus VR launched a Kickstarter campaign for their take on a high-tech and lightweight VR headset in 2012. It amassed a large following and was eventually bought by Facebook in 2014 and released early 2016. This inspired the consumer VR resurrection we see today.

Author: Ryan Manoim

References:

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