1. History of Virtual Reality
By: Abemelek Markos
Virtual reality’s history is believed to have started in the 1860s when artists began creating 3D panoramic murals, such as Sala delle Prospettive by Baldassare Peruzzi. These murals were designed to give the illusion of reality if looked at from a certain point.
In 1957 Morton Heilig, an American cinematographer is considered the father of virtual reality. He created simulations of 3D images that were accompanied by smell, wind, and sound. He built an immersive 3D theater where the viewers could sense motion and odors without being required to wear any special type of glasses or helmets called Sensorama. His invention played a major role in the design of what we now know as virtual reality devices.
Philco Corp created the first head mounted display called Headsight in 1961. The helmet included a single CRT video screen as well as a magnetic head tracking system. However, due to its large size, the Headsight had to be suspended from the ceiling. These devices were later used by the military for training operations.
In 1968, Ivan Sutherland created the head-mounted display system (HMD) and it was the first of its kind to use computer generated wire-frame graphics. Once the viewer puts on the HMD, they enter a room and they can look around and look out the window.
Jaron Lanier is another pioneer in the field of virtual reality. Jaron and his co-worker Thomas Zimmerman left Atari to start the very first company to sell VR googles and gloves in 1984. They created a head-mounted display that was capable of tracking head movements for an immersive computer simulation called The EyePhone which cost $100,000.
Sega developed a virtual reality headset that was intended for console and arcade games. The VR headset came with a pair of LCD screens and stereo headphones which incorporated a head tracking system that adapted to the user’s movement. The arcade version was released in 1993; however, due to the difficulties in development of the console version, Sega never released it to the public.
In 1999, Linden Research, Inc. developed an online virtual world called Second Life. This virtual world allowed users to freely explore this world, interact with other users, build, create, shop, buy, trade virtual items, and even had a virtual currency. As of 2014, they had 1 million active users.
Palmer Luckey, who was decided to chase after his dreams of building a VR headset, started his company OculusVR in 2012 to create Oculus Rift. He started a Kickstarter to fund his project and promising his backers saying:
“I won’t make a penny of profit off this project, the goal is to pay for the costs of parts, manufacturing, shipping, and credit card/Kickstarter fees with about $10 left over for a celebratory pizza and beer.”
He had 9,522 backers and raised $2,437,429 and went to build the VR. Oculus Development Kit 1 was released in 2012 and had LCD display with 640x800 resolution in each eye and 3-axis rotational tracking. Dev Kit 2 was released 2 years later and had OLED screen with 960x1080 per eye as well as 3-axis rotational and positional tracking.
