The Metaverse — of the 1990's
How the “next big thing” fell into a Virtual Winter for 15 years.
With so much hype around the Metaverse these days, I’m often asked what it was like to run a VR company throughout the 1990’s. At the same time, many people are surprised that any companies were working on VR back then. The fact is, there were quite a few startups and they did amazing things with far greater technical constraints than today.
As for me, I shot the video above in a tiny office in Palo Alto in 1993. I had recently founded Immersion Corp with the goal of bringing VR to mainstream markets. Having spent a few years working in VR labs at Stanford, NASA and the US Air Force, I was convinced that immersive media (i.e. VR & AR) would become ubiquitous if we could just make it affordable and easy to use.
In fact, I was sure VR would be widely adopted within a decade. I know this sounds wildly optimistic, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. And I wasn’t the only one with that outlook — a creative and vibrant industry emerged in the late 80’s and early 90’s, complete with VR tradeshows and VR conferences and VR magazines. Many of us believed virtual reality would be mainstream within 10 years. Clearly, we were off by decades.
By the mid-90’s the enthusiasm had peaked and the industry fell into what can only be described as a VR Winter from about 1997 to 2012. During those fifteen cold years, you could hardly use the phrase “virtual reality” with venture capitalists and expect to be taken seriously. As a result, most of the early VR companies went bankrupt and disappeared despite having pioneered many of the key technologies for virtual worlds.
So what killed VR back then?
The typical answer is that it was over-hyped, with hardware that was too expensive and fidelity that wasn’t good enough. While true facts, they don’t explain why VR totally fell off the map. No, what really killed the industry was the internet. You see, in the late 80's and early 90’s, VR was the “next big thing” in Silicon Valley. But in 1995 the internet suddenly took off, grabbing the crown in a massive way. The phrase “virtual reality” quickly became old news and the butt of jokes about failed markets.
The last gasp was probably in 1997 when a few VR companies were invited to the Clinton Inauguration as part of the “virtual bridge to the future”. In fact, when Al Gore came through to try the exhibits, he probably should have turned off the lights on VR as he left the room. The industry was freezing over fast. Ironically, the event was held in tents during a rare “polar vortex” in DC that was so cold, some companies had a hard time getting their computers to start each morning. The VR winter had truly begun.
Still, a handful of companies survived by pivoting to related markets that allowed the pursuit of immersive technology without marketing it as VR. Immersion was one of the lucky ones that managed to keep going. In fact, we went public in 1999 and the company still exists today. (Note, I left in 2002 to become a professor and found startups in AR and AI)
How did VR companies survive the virtual winter?
While I can’t speak for other companies, survival at Immersion was about finding opportunities that didn’t rely on the tainted words “virtual reality.” Our mission was to create affordable immersive interfaces, complete with precise manual tracking and realistic haptic feedback. But when the markets for general-purpose VR didn’t materialize, we had to adapt, focusing on opportunities that were viable at the time.
This meant the prototype above evolved in multiple directions at once. The mechanical arm technology, because of its spatial accuracy, turned out to be extremely useful for digitizing 3D objects when creating virtual worlds, as well as for creating 3D video games and 3D movies. While VR didn’t take off in the 90's, the use of 3D in games and movies exploded.
This pushed us to develop a product called the Microscribe 3D that enabled artists and animators to quickly turn physical objects into 3D models with high accuracy. The Microscribe was used in the creation of many feature films, from Shrek and Ice Age to Titanic and Bugs Life, as well as many 3D video games such as Area 51 from Time Warner (see GIF below).
We also maintained a focus on haptics (i.e. adding the sense of touch to computing), as nothing makes virtual environments more realistic than being able to physically interact. But we shifted from general purpose VR to a related market — first person gaming. This resulted in Immersion launching the first consumer haptic joysticks, consumer haptic mice, and consumer haptic steering wheels, eventually licensing the technology to most major manufacturers. These were VR products that managed to sell hundreds of thousands of units even though “virtual reality” was in the depths of winter.
We also pivoted in the opposite direction, going for high-end applications that could afford high-fidelity hardware. In the 1990’s that meant medical VR. So we partnered with medical experts and developed VR interfaces for specific medical procedures, including laparoscopic surgery, endoscopic surgery, bronchoscopy, and even spinal epidurals — all with realistic haptic feedback. It’s hard to believe today, but by the late 1990’s, these virtual reality systems were being used in major medical schools around the world for training doctors to perform surgical procedures.
Of course, I’m only recounting my experience. I’m sure other companies had their own unique pivots to survive the winter, whether in gaming or other high-end applications. The point is, there were a few warm spots during those frigid years that allowed VR to keep advancing.
One company was even building a full metaverse in the 90’s (there.com) and it was impressive. In fact, most of the metaverse features touted today were present in There. We even worked with them in 1999 to build haptics into that world. But of course, it was all on flat monitors, as VR headsets were dead and buried, probably in a landfill with VCR tapes of The Lawnmower Man.
And then… a product launched that changed everything.
No, I’m not talking about the Oculus headset in 2012. I’m talking about the iPhone in 2007. After all, it was the launch of the iPhone and the many smartphones that followed that brought the cost of small, lightweight, high-quality screens down to a level that finally made VR viable for consumer markets. Smartphones also drove down the cost of motion sensors, processors and other components needed for VR hardware. Google made this point brilliantly in 2014 when they launched Google Cardboard, a headset built entirely from a smartphone and a foldable piece of cardboard.
Still, it was the iPhone that enabled the winter to finally thaw, bringing VR out of its cryogenically frozen state. And yes, it was the success of the Oculus headset that enabled the phrase “virtual reality” to come out of retirement and be used with investors without getting you laughed out of the room. At the same time, there was healthy skepticism in the 2010's, with many pundits warning that the hype-cycle from the 1990’s was repeating with wildly unrealistic timelines and market projections. And while that was probably true, there was one big difference during this second VR surge — it wasn’t just startups pushing the vision, it was major corporations.
Which brings us to today — a time when the word metaverse has propelled virtual worlds back to its former status as “the next big thing.”
So, will the Metaverse really happen this time?
There are those who say the metaverse is just the latest marketing hype, claiming it already exists in the form of Minecraft and Roblox, and will never extend beyond gaming and entertainment. I strongly disagree. In fact, I am increasingly confident that by 2030, immersive media will rival flat media as the means by which most people access digital content.
But don’t get me wrong — I don’t believe most adults will spend countless hours wearing VR headsets to control cartoon avatars in cartoon worlds. That will be a popular and growing form of social entertainment, but it will not transform society. On the other hand, I’m convinced that augmented reality, enabled by light weight eyewear, will create an AR metaverse that transforms our lives, replacing phones and desktops as our primary interface to digital content. Sure, I’ve gotten the timing wrong before, but this time the momentum is unstoppable — another winter is not coming.
Note: see Metaverse 2030 for a vivid portrayal of our augmented future.
KEYWORDS: Metaverse, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), Extended Reality (XR). Haptics. VR Winter.
