VR & AR: When Will Reality Feel Fake?

The trailer for Ready Player One dropped in July. It depicts a future set in year 2044 where the earth is ravaged by an energy crisis. The one escape the newest generation has? Virtual Reality.

This is the latest in a long line of science fiction’s dystopian worlds where some technology allows people to escape reality. From young adult novels like the Pendragon series to the 2009 movie Surrogates to the classic that is The Matrix, we have held a morbid curiosity about a VR over the last couple decades. The scary thing is, we have gotten a lot closer to these fictions becoming realities. So the question becomes when will reality begin to feel fake? To understand this, let’s take stock of where we are now.

So when did VR begin?

The concept of virtual reality traces back to a 1935 short story entitled Pygmalion’s Spectacles. This story takes place in a future with holographic recordings, which include experiencing simulated touch and smell. From this first incarnation, many variations have been introduced. But they all follow the same basic premise outlined in 1935: an immersive world equipped with artificial sensory perception.