History of Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality refers to a computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional environment that allows individuals to engage with and explore the simulated surroundings in a manner that closely imitates reality as it is perceived through their senses. The utilization of Virtual Reality technology is diverse and spans various industries, including entertainment and business. The Virtual Reality environment can be experienced using a specialized device such as a headset or helmet. As per the definitions provided by renowned authors Sherman and Craig, “Virtual” signifies a state of essence or effect, while “Reality” denotes the quality of being real.

History of Virtual Reality

Throughout history, various ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Jews, Romans, and Greeks have employed magical illusions as a means of entertainment and control over the masses. In the Middle Ages, magicians would create faint ghost and demon illusions using techniques such as smoking and concave mirrors to deceive unsuspecting apprentices and larger audiences. Despite changes in implementation over the centuries, the primary objectives of producing illusions to represent that which is not physically present and capturing our imaginations have remained unchanged.

In the 1800s

• To convey the idea that the current version of stereoscopic 3D TVs has a static image, it is referred to as a stereoscope. Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the stereoscope in 1832, even before the advent of photography. This device involved the use of mirrors placed at a 45° angle to project images into the viewer’s eyes from both the left and right sides.
• To create a more accessible version of the stereoscope, David Brewster, who had previously invented the kaleidoscope, utilized lenses to develop a smaller handheld version of the device. By 1856, Brewster estimated that more than half a million of these stereoscopes had been sold.
• During the first 3D wave in 1860, the stereoscope was available in different forms, including hand-operated cardboard versions with moving images. David Brewster’s stereoscope design, which was similar to the View-Master of the 20th century and the Google Cardboard of today, used lenses to make a handheld stereoscope that was later sold in large numbers. In the case of modern phone-based virtual reality systems like Google Cardboard, a mobile phone is used to display images instead of physical images.
• The film L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat 1895-96 featured a virtual train that appeared to come towards the audience through the screen. While reports of screaming and running away remain unverified and possibly exaggerated, there was undoubtedly a great deal of excitement, hype, and trepidation surrounding this new artistic medium, reminiscent of the current state of virtual reality technology.

In the 1900s

• In the 1900s, VR-related innovation progressed beyond the presentation of visual images and included the emergence of new interaction concepts that are considered novel even by today’s VR standards. One such innovation was the head-worn gun pointing and firing device patented by Albert Pratt in 1916, which did not require hand tracking to operate, as the interface consisted of a tube that the user blew through.
• Edwin Link invented the first mechanical flight simulator in the 1930s, a device that mimicked the movements and feelings of flying in a cockpit-like structure. The Army Air Corps purchased six of these systems in 1935 and by the end of World War II, more than 10,000 had been sold by Link.
• Over time, training systems developed into advanced flight simulators with motion platforms and computer-generated imagery, and Link Simulation & Training, a division of L-3 Communications, was established. The Link Foundation Advanced Simulation and Training Fellowship Program, which began in 1991, has supported numerous graduate students in enhancing VR systems, focusing on areas such as computer graphics, latency, spatialized audio, avatars, and haptics.
• Morton Heilig was a pioneer in the development of virtual reality technology, and in the 1950s he designed both a head-mounted display and a world-fixed display. According to the patent for the head-mounted display, it featured lenses that allowed for a 140-degree horizontal and vertical field of view, as well as stereoscopic earphones and air discharge nozzles that could provide sensations such as breezes of varying temperatures and scents.
• The Sensorama, created by Morton Heilig, was a world-fixed display designed for immersive film experiences. It offered stereoscopic color views with a wide field of view, stereo sounds, seat tilting, vibrations, smell, and wind. In 1961, Philco Corporation engineers built the first functional tracked HMD with head tracking, allowing the user to see from a different location as they moved their head. This groundbreaking invention was the world’s first functioning telepresence system.
• A patent for the first glove input device was awarded to IBM in 1962. The device was intended as a more comfortable alternative to keyboard entry and featured a sensor for each finger capable of recognizing multiple finger positions. By wearing a glove on each hand, users could input 1,048,575 possible combinations with four possible positions for each finger. In the 1990s, glove input devices became a popular input devices for VR systems, albeit with different implementations.
• From 1965 onwards, a team led by Tom Furness at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base pursued the development of head-mounted displays for visually coupled systems designed for pilots. Around the same time, Ivan Sutherland was also working on similar projects at Harvard and the University of Utah.
• Sutherland is credited with being the first person to demonstrate a head-mounted display that utilized both head tracking and computer-generated imagery. This system called the Sword of Damocles, was named after the story of King Damocles, who was constantly in peril with a sword hanging above his head by a single hair of a horse’s tail. In 1985, Scott Fisher, who was then working at NASA Ames, along with other researchers at NASA, developed the Virtual Visual Environment Display (VIVED), which was the first commercially viable, stereoscopic head-tracked HMD with a wide field of view. The VIVED was based on a scuba diver’s face mask and used displays from two Citizen Pocket TVs.
• Beth Wenzel and Scott Foster developed a groundbreaking VR system called the Convolvotron which enabled the creation of localized 3D sounds. The affordability of the system’s HMD played a pivotal role in the emergence of the VR industry. The system was later followed by the VIEW (Virtual Interface Environment Workstation) system.
• In 1985, Jaron Lanier and Thomas Zimmerman left Atari to start VPL Research, where they developed commercial VR gloves, head-mounted displays, and software. The professional research market and location-based entertainment became the primary focus of various companies in the 1990s, leading to the growth of VR. Some of the well-known companies established during this period included Virtuality, Division, and Fakespace.

In the 2000s

• During the period between 2000 and 2012, VR was largely overlooked by the media, earning the name “VR winter.” However, this didn’t hinder the extensive VR research that was still conducted by various organizations including corporate, government, academic, and military research labs worldwide.
• The focus of the VR community shifted towards human-centered design during this time period, placing a greater emphasis on user studies. As a result, it became challenging to have a VR paper accepted at a conference without some form of formal evaluation included. Despite this, thousands of research papers related to VR from this era exist and contain a vast amount of knowledge that is largely overlooked and unknown by individuals new to the field.
• In the 1990s, consumer HMDs lacked a wide field of view, which prevented users from feeling a sense of presence. However, in 2006, Mark Bolas and Ian McDowall developed a 150-degree field of view HMD, called the Wide5, which they used to conduct studies on the impact of the field of view on the user experience and behavior. This research led to the creation of the low-cost Field of View To Go (FOV2GO) system, which won the Best Demo Award at the IEEE VR 2012 conference and served as the basis for many of today’s consumer HMDs.
• In the early 2010s, Palmer Luckey, a member of USC’s MxR Lab, shared his VR headset prototype on Meant to be Seen, a forum where he met John Carmack, who is currently CTO of Oculus VR. They formed Oculus VR, and shortly afterward, Luckey left the lab to launch the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. The media and hacker community once again showed interest in VR, and many companies, including Facebook, began providing resources for VR development. Facebook went on to acquire Oculus VR for $2 billion in 2014, ushering in a new era of VR.
• Hardware devices serve as input/output for communication between humans and systems. In the context of interaction, transfer function refers to converting either human output to digital input or digital output to human input. The user and VR systems are divided into input, application, rendering, and output components. Input captures user data such as eye and hand location, button presses, etc. The application handles non-rendering aspects of the virtual world such as physics simulation and user interaction. Rendering involves transforming computer-friendly formats to user-friendly formats that create the illusion of reality, including visual rendering. Finally, output refers to the physical representation that the user directly perceives.

Timeline	VR status
1832	Sir Charles Wheatstonehuman-centered invented the stereoscope, which is a form of stereoscopic 3D TV that predates photography.
1851	David Brewster, the inventor of the kaleidoscope, created a hand-held stereoscope that was smaller and more accessible for consumers by using lenses. His invention was presented at the Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, where it caught the attention of Queen Victoria, who found it very pleasing.
1856	This led to the sale of millions of stereoscopes and their growing popularity among the general public.
1860-62	Brewster’s design is conceptually the same as the 20th-century View-Master and today’s Google Cardboard.
1894	Sense of self-motion and motion sickness introduced in the machine for a better experience.
1895	The film began to go mainstream; and when the audience saw a virtual train coming at them through the screen in the short film “L’Arriv´ee d’un train en gare de La Ciotat”.
1900	VR-related innovation continued, that moved beyond simply presenting visual images. New interaction concepts started to emerge that might be considered novel for even today’s VR systems.
1916	Head-worn gun pointing and firing device patented by Albert Pratt, Albert Pratt’s head-mounted targeting and gun-firing.
1928	Edwin A. Link and the first flight simulator.
1935	Edwin A. flight simulator used by the military during the end of world war 2.
1935-36	Pygmalion’s Spectacles is perhaps the first science fiction story written about an alternate world that is perceived through eyeglasses and other sensory equipment.
1945	McCollum patented the first stereoscopic television glasses inspired by Pygmalion’s Spectacles.
1950	Morton Heilig designed both a head-mounted display and a world-fixed display.
1960	Heilig’s Stereoscopic Television Apparatus patent.
1961-62	The first tracked HMD that incorporated head tracking was created by engineers at Philco Corporation. Additionally, IBM’s glove patent was invented by Rochester and Seibel.
1965	Tom Furness and others at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base worked on visually coupled systems for pilots that consisted of head-mounted displays.
1967-68	The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base head-mounted.
1985	Scott Fisher, now at NASA Ames, along with other NASA researchers developed the first commercially viable, stereoscopic head-tracked HMD with a wide field of view, called the Virtual Visual Environment Display (VIVED).
1988	The NASA VIEW (Virtual Interface Environment Workstation) System.
1990	Various companies focus mostly on the professional research market and location-based entertainment.
1993-96	The VR industry was forecasted to flourish by various publications. The wired magazine predicted that in five years, more than 10% of people would wear HMDs while traveling. The New York Times reported that Jonathan Waldern, the managing director of Virtuality, anticipated the VR market to attain $4 billion. However, the VR industry ultimately hit its peak and began to gradually contract, leading to the downsizing of many VR companies.
1998	VR companies, including Virtuality, went out of business by 1998.
2000	VR winter
2003-05	VR research continued in depth at corporate, company, organizations, government, academic, and military research laboratories around the world. VR community started to turn toward human-centered design with an emphasis on user studies.
2007	street view and the 360-degree view were introduced by Google.
2010	first VR headsets were designed by Oculus.
2012	people start funding the production of VR headsets.
2014	Sony starts their VR production, on the other hand, Facebook shows its interest in VR and buy Oculus.
2015	The new era of VR was born, this was the prime time for VR.
2016	Companies were developing VR products for on travelling a large scale. VR production rates were growing at an exponential rate.
2019	Forbes describes this as The Year Virtual Reality Gets Real.