The History of Virtual Reality

The origins of virtual reality according to Edge Magazine #254 (2013) "To enter an artificial world so convincing it fools your eyes and mind was the dream of virtual reality long before the idea had been given a name. As early as the 1500s, itialian artists were painting frescoed rooms designed to evoke more expansive spaces" optical illusions are a distortion of the reality in the same way as VR, both are attempts to trick the human mind. The floor of the duomo in Florence Italy is tiled in a way that distorts the proportions of the room and when viewed from above makes the flat floor look like a giant pit.

"The first experiments with head tracking were successfully completed in 1968 at MIT's Lincoln Labratory, where The Sword Of Damocles - a terrifying contraption suspended from the ceiling of a lab - offered mechanical tracking and a headset displaying simple wireframe rooms and cubes." (Edge #254. 2013) The contraption itself is shown to the left, this is the first example of VR as we know it and after this the concept seemed to lay dormant until 1991 when "W industries" later renamed "Virtuality" marketed the "Amiga 3000" which retailed for $60,000 and couldn't offer anything revolutionary for gamers.


1991 began the string of failed VR Hardware, Sega VR for megadrive was an ambitious project planned to be sold for an acceptable price of under $200, unfortuneately this price was unrealistic and the project ended up being cancelled although the reason for this is aparently "Sega's supposed concerns that players might hurt themselves in such a believable world" which is pretty laughable considering the graphical capabilities of games at that time.

 1994 saw the partnership of Atari and Virtuality and the creation of the Jaguar VR headset, which was abondoned and some of the technology meant for Atari was taken during Virtuality's downfall and used by both Philip's Scuba HMD (head mounted display) and Takara's Dynovisor, but none of the headsets did very well and recieved very poor reviews. The Dynovisor is shown below.

"Perhaps the most successful attempt at home VR in the early '90s was Forte's VFX-1 HMD for PC" this hardware retailed for around $400 and had a fairly effective motion tracker, it was expected to run on almost 500 system but unfortuneately in 1994 viedo cards where not an essential PC component, in 1997 the company was liquidated and Vuzix bought the assets. the VFX-1 HMD is shown below.

Many years later in 2005 eMagin who were business-focused display specialists thought they'd have a go at creating a home VR called Z800 3DVisor, the headset started at $800 but now sells for $1800 because the company is making fewer and fewer, the headset featured two OLED screens and a 40-degree field of view, eMagin seem to the the only company that haven't had terrible losses after creating a home VR headset. The Z800 is shown below.

The Oculus Rift created by 20 year old Palmer Luckey started as a hobby he then developed and refined his HMD to get a result that he wanted, "Our visual system is by far the most powerful sense we have, and it overrides pretty much everything else, so I wanted something that actually covers as much of your visual field as possible. I was looking for something that made it actually feel like you were inside of the game, not just looking as a screen that happened to be strapped to your head." (P. Luckey, 2013) Luckey work was of great interest to id Software's John Carmack who showed off Luckey's 6th homemade prototype at E3 2012.

In the weeks following E3 Luckeys hobby became a business the project was placed on Kickstarter and "By the time the clock ran out, Rift had made ten times its $250,000 goal.In comparison to the Oculus Rift none of the previous VR systems can compete, featuring a 90-degree field of vision, excellent motion sensing, stunning graphics and low latency all at a low price of $300 there really has never been a better time for Virtual Reality.


References

 Maxwell, B (June 2013). Edge #254. Bath: Future Publishing. p76-79.

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. 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.mtbs3d.com/gallery/albums/userpics/10002/220936stereo10slide.jpg. [Accessed 09 October 2013].

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. 2013. . [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.3dvisor.com/wp-content/themes/3DVisor/images/Z800.jpg. [Accessed 09 October 2013].