HISTORY115 - Virtual Reality

I have long wanted to understand how virtual reality works and the history of its development.  I’ve looked at it several times in the past as a possible blog subject, but was discouraged by its complexity and a seeming lack of organized, understandable (to me) source materials.   On several recent articles, I used the newly-available AI/chatGPT summaries in my Google research and found that they really opened up my research world, providing very well organized, comprehensive, understandable explanations of key issues (with sources listed) and thus a handy framework to expand my research.   

 

So, I decided that now was the time to tackle the history of virtual reality.  My general challenge is for me to understand and appreciate this evolving technology, and to create an article that the reader can understand, enjoy, and learn from. 

My specific challenge is to overcome a huge limitation:  I am unable to demonstrate this amazing technology in this format (without the required equipment).  After a false start, I decided to first describe the full-up VR technology that is available today, including some of the fantastic ways it can be used.  I want the reader to appreciate how wonderful and important VR is, before getting into the history of its development. 

I will list my principal sources at the end.

 

Introduction

Virtual Reality (VR) is a technology that allows users to immerse themselves in a simulated, computer-generated, three-dimensional (3D) environment, interacting with it as if they were physically present - a lifelike experience that looks and seems real.  This artificial environment can be similar to, or entirely different from, the real world.

VR typically incorporates visual and sound effects, and may also create sensations of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. 

A person immersed in VR environment is able to look around the artificial world, move around in it, and interact with it (explore and manipulate virtual objects).

The virtual effect is created by specialized hardware and software, including VR headsets, consisting of a head-mounted display with a small screen in front of the eyes that look through stereoscopic 3D lenses with head motion tracking to allow users to explore interact with virtual world as if they were physically present.  Virtual effects can also be experienced in specially-designed rooms with multiple large screens.  Computer software, includes 3D modeling, animation, and physics simulations, which generate realistic and immersive environments. 

Hand-held VR controllers translate user physical movements into digital actions, enabling them to pick up objects, navigate virtual spaces, and interact with virtual elements in an intuitive and immersive way. 

Modern example of a user operating in a virtual environment created by his headset, and using a VR controller in each hand

Applications of the evolving VR technology include those listed below.  There are many other current and emerging applications.

Gaming:  Gaming was/is a major driver of commercial VR technology, offering highly immersive and interactive experiences with realistic graphics and 3D environments. 

Training: VR is revolutionizing training across industries.   Pilots can train in realistic flight simulators, and construction workers can learn to operate heavy machinery without real-world risks.  Surgeons can practice complex procedures in a safe, simulated environment.  

Education: VR offer engaging and interactive educational experiences, such as virtual field trips to historical sites, museums, art galleries, or scientific demonstrations.  For example, in a well-designed immersive VR art gallery environment, you can walk closer to a particular painting to get a better view. VR allows for a level of proximity and detail that might not be possible in a physical gallery due to ropes, barriers, or crowds.

Healthcare: VR is being used for therapeutic purposes, including pain management, physical rehabilitation, and mental health treatment.  It can also aid in medical diagnosis and surgical planning. 

Architecture and Design: VR allows architects and designers to visualize buildings and spaces in 3D, making it easier to make design decisions and showcase projects to clients.  It also helps in visualizing interior designs and testing spatial layouts. 

Marketing and Sales: VR allows businesses to create immersive product demonstrations and virtual showrooms.  This can enhance customer engagement and provide a more compelling brand experience. 

Virtual tourism: With VR you can exploring tourist destinations from the comfort of home.  For example, in an immersive national park scene, you can move around and view spectacular scenery from different distances and angles. 

Sports: VR is finding diverse applications in sports, ranging from athlete training and performance enhancement to fan engagement and injury rehabilitation.  VR can improve skills, analyze performance, and create new ways for fans to experience sports.  For example, baseball players can see pitches and take batting practice in an immersive VR environment.  Batters can improve their timing, pitch recognition, and make game-speed swing decisions without a batting cage or live pitching. They can work on specific drills designed to improve different aspects of hitting, like pitch recognition or hitting to specific areas of the field.

I want to stress the point that these applications are real!  There are several platforms available today for each application.

As we transition to the history of VR development, you will see that VR has been in continuous development for almost a century, with many contributors gradually, step-by-step inventing and assembling the building block technologies and systems that evolved and are integrated into today’s VR systems.

 

Precursor Development: Stereoscope

In 1838, English physicist and inventor Charles Wheatstone’s research demonstrated that the brain processes the different two-dimensional images from each eye into a single object of three dimensions.  Viewing two side by side stereoscopic images or photos through a stereoscope gave the user a sense of depth and immersion. 

In 1849, another British scientist, David Brewster, invented an improved stereoscope, which he called a "lenticular stereoscope" and which became the first portable 3D-viewing device.  He also invented the stereoscopic camera that used double-lensed cameras, thereby replicating the two images received by our two eyes and producing a pair of photos that provided a 3D image when seen through a special viewer.

The design principles of the stereoscope are used today in VR head-mounted displays.

An early lenticular stereoscope.

 

VR Concept Exploration and Pioneering Inventions (1930s-1960s)

VR development between the 1930s and 1960s was characterized by early exploration of immersive experiences and pioneering inventions laying the groundwork for future VR technology. 

Science Fiction and the First Flight Simulation (1930s and 1940s)

Science Fiction Inspiration: Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1935 science fiction story, "Pygmalion's Spectacles," introduced the idea of goggles that allowed the wearer to experience a fictional world through multiple senses, anticipating many aspects of modern VR.

First Flight Simulation: In the mid-1930s, after several fatal crashes during Army Air Corps air mail flights, when pilots faced difficulties flying in bad weather without proper instrument flight training, the Link Trainer was used for pilots to practice flying by instruments.  Invented in 1929 by Edwin Alber Link, the electromechanical device could simulate the motions and sensations of flight on the ground. The Link Trainer's significance grew rapidly, especially during World War II, when it became a crucial tool for training over half a million pilots from various Allied nations. The trainer played a vital role in preparing pilots for combat missions by providing a safe and effective way to practice flying in different scenarios.  This marked the true beginning of the flight simulation industry, providing an early example of an immersive training device.

The first electromechanical flight simulator was used to train pilots for World War II.

 

Multisensory Immersion and Early Head-Mounted Displays (1950s)

Multisensory Immersion: Morton Heilig, a cinematographer, designed the Sensorama in the mid-1950s, a mechanical device featuring a stereoscopic display of 3D film, fans, smell generators, stereo sound, and a vibrating chair for a multi-sensory experience.

Morton Heilig’s Sensorama simulated all the senses.

 

Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs): Heilig also developed the Telesphere Mask in the late 1950s, which provided stereoscopic 3D and wide vision with stereo sound, considered an early iteration of an HMD. 

Foundational Technologies (1960s)

Motion Tracking: Philco Corporation engineers developed Headsight in 1961, a surveillance system to allow for immersive remote viewing of dangerous situations by the military.  The system had a head-mounted display that tracked head movement.

The Ultimate Display: Harvard Professor Ivan Sutherland's concept of the Ultimate Display in 1965 envisioned a virtual world that could be indistinguishable from reality through advanced HMD technology and interaction.  This paper would become a core blueprint for the concepts that encompass virtual reality today.

The Sword of Damocles: In 1968, Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull created the Sword of Damocles, an early HMD system capable of displaying simple wire-frame 3D models (geometric shapes) and tracking head movement.  The name "Sword of Damocles" came from the system's heavy, ceiling-mounted structure, which resembled the mythical sword hanging precariously over Damocles' head.  The HMD system required a mechanical structure suspended from the ceiling to track the user's head movements and update the virtual environment accordingly.  This groundbreaking invention laid the foundation for the virtual reality devices we use today.

Harvard Professor Ivan Sutherland created the first head-mounted display system for use in an immersive computer simulation.

Artificial Reality: In 1969, American inventor Myron Krueger began developing interactive computer-generated environments (that responded to the people in it), leading later to his work on artificial reality experiences (see below). 

This period from the 1930s to the 1960s laid the conceptual and foundational technological groundwork for virtual reality, progressing from fictional concepts to early immersive experiences and rudimentary head-mounted displays. 

Key Advancements and Exploration of Applications (1970s-1990s)

From the 1970s to the 1990s, VR development saw significant strides, moving from experimental lab projects towards commercial applications, although with mixed success. 

Early Stages (1970s)

Pioneering Systems: Research institutions and the military started exploring the potential of VR for tasks like flight simulation and training.  General Electric developed a flight simulator with a 180-degree view.

Early Virtual Worlds: MIT created the Aspen Movie Map, a pioneering virtual tour of Aspen, Colorado using photographic images.

Interactive Environments: Myron Krueger developed Videoplace, an artificial reality laboratory allowing users to interact with computer-generated graphics and each other's silhouettes through video projections.

Emerging Technologies (1980s)

VR Devices: The term "virtual reality" was popularized by Jaron Lanier, an American computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist, and composer of contemporary classical music.  In 1984, Lanier founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR products.  They developed devices such as the DataGlove (for hand gesture interaction) and the EyePhone (a head-mounted display).

Jaron Lanier is considered to be a founder of VR.

Improved HMDs: NASA's Ames Research Center developed the Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW), which used the LEEP optical system to create a realistic sense of depth and immersion by providing a wide field of view.  The system also employed gloves for tactile input, speech recognition, and gesture tracking.

Military Simulations: Early VR development received substantial investment from the military, particularly for flight simulators, training, and decision-making systems.  Thomas Furness developed the Super Cockpit flight simulator with advanced features like 3D maps and real-time sensory data.

Early Commercial Attempt: Atari founded a VR research lab, but it closed due to the video game crash of 1983-1985, a large-scale recession in the video game industry in the U.S., attributed to market saturation and poor quality.

Increased Interest and Applications (1990s)

Commercial VR: Arcade VR machines offered immersive multiplayer experiences with headsets and wearable electronic gloves, providing users with the sense of touch, achieved through electrical stimulation to the hand and fingers, simulating tactile sensations like pressure, vibration, and even temperature. 

Home VR Systems: Sega announced the Sega VR headset, though it was eventually canceled.  Nintendo launched the Virtual Boy console, but it failed commercially due to various limitations.

Institutional Use: NASA scientists created VR systems for applications like controlling Mars rovers.  Researchers utilized VR for exposure therapy to treat PTSD in Vietnam veterans.

Medical Simulation:  Medical simulations began to take off, utilizing VR technologies for surgical training and other applications.

CAVE Systems: The Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE) system was introduced, allowing users to enter room-sized virtual environments projected onto walls. 

For complete immersion, CAVE systems incorporated 360-degree cameras capable of capturing the entire surrounding space for a complete virtual reconstruction.

The period from the 1970s to the 1990s was crucial for laying the groundwork for modern VR.  While technical limitations, commercial challenges, and cost hindered widespread adoption, important steps were taken in areas like display technology, head tracking, interactive environments, and specialized applications, particularly in military and medical training. 

 

Resurgence and Modern VR (2000-Present)

From 2000 to the present, VR development went through distinct phases, characterized by periods of declining and then surging interest, leading to significant technological advancements and explosive growth. 

Quiet Period and Underpinnings (2000-2010) 

Decline: The early 2000s saw a decline in public and investment interest in commercially available VR technologies, partly due to disappointing sales in the previous decade and the dot-com bubble burst in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when "irrational exuberance" saw the Nasdaq Composite Index soar to unprecedented heights, only to crash dramatically, causing significant losses for investors. 

Advancements: Despite the overall VR decline, advancements continued in research and niche applications, including the development of PC-based CAVE systems and Google's introduction of Street View (later with a stereoscopic 3D mode).

CAVE system applications include scientific research, medical training, architectural design, and entertainment.  These systems offer immersive, collaborative virtual experiences by projecting 3D images onto multiple screens surrounding the user, creating a shared virtual space. 

Google Street View is featured in Google Maps and Google Earth applications to provide interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world, allowing you to virtually walk down streets and experience locations as if you were there.  It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include all of the country's major and minor cities, as well as the cities and rural areas of many other countries worldwide.  The interactive panoramas are made up of stitched VR photographs.  Most photography is done by car, but some is done by tricycle, camel, boat, snowmobile, underwater apparatus, and on foot.

Google camera cars traversed areas depicted in Google Maps and Google Earth to take stereoscopic VR photos

Commercial Ventures: Some notable commercial ventures succeeded, such as Virtuality Gaming Machines that delivered real-time VR gaming via a stereoscopic VR headset, joysticks, tracking devices, and networked units for a multi-player experience.

VR Revival and Mass Adoption (2010 - 2025)

Oculus Rift Headset: In 2012, Palmer Lucky founded the Oculus company to launch the Oculus Rift headset that sparked renewed VR interest and kicked off the modern VR industry.  It was the first VR headset to provide a realistic experience at an accessible price, utilizing novel technology to increase quality and reduce cost by orders of magnitude compared to earlier systems.  This led to a surge in development and competition among companies.

Major Investments and Product Launches: Facebook's acquisition of Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion further fueled investment and signaled the potential for broader applications beyond gaming.  Other companies like Sony (PlayStation VR) and Google (Cardboard) entered the market with varying approaches.

The Mid-2010s Breakthrough: Companies like Oculus, HTC Vive, and Sony (PlayStation) introduced high-quality VR headsets, leveraging improved graphics and motion tracking.

Mixed Reality: In 2015/2016, Brazilian software engineer and inventor Alex Kipman developed the Microsoft HoloLens, a computer-powered headset featuring sensors and lenses for a mixed reality experience which blends the virtual and real worlds in the eyes of the wearer.

Increased Accessibility: Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR offered more affordable, smartphone-powered VR experiences, expanding the market.

Standalone VR: The introduction of untethered headsets like the Oculus Go and Oculus Quest made VR more convenient and accessible by eliminating the need for a powerful PC or smartphone.

Yours truly looking at a VR demo.

Recent Developments: In 2021, Facebook, rebranded as Meta, focused on developing a "Metaverse" of interconnected virtual reality worlds, extending beyond gaming to areas like social VR and enterprise applications.  Meta continued to release improved versions of their Quest headsets, and Apple introduced the Vision Pro.

Continued Innovation: Development in VR continued with improvements in display resolution, field of view, motion tracking, processing power, and even discussions about integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Growing Applications: VR is now being applied beyond entertainment, across various industries. 
See the Introduction.”

VR development from 2000-2025 shifted from a niche area with limited public interest to a rapidly evolving technology with significant investment, diverse applications, and increasing accessibility for consumers and businesses alike. 

However, many users experience nausea and discomfort due to the sensory disconnect between virtual and physical movements, significantly detracting from the experience and discourage continued use.  Headsets can be heavy and uncomfortable, and prolonged usage can lead to eye strain and fatigue.

 

Future

The Challenge: VR hasn't fully integrated into mainstream practical applications because it still needs to address the balance between immersive experiences and user comfort and convenience. Many users experience nausea and discomfort due to the sensory disconnect between virtual and physical movements. This can significantly detract from the experience and discourage continued use.  Headsets can be heavy and uncomfortable, and prolonged usage can lead to eye strain and fatigue.  Also, there a need to expand the compelling range of readily available content that justifies the investment for a broad audience. 

The Solution: The VR industry is evolving rapidly, with continuous advancements in hardware, software, and content development.  As the challenges identified above are addressed, VR will become a more integrated and accessible part of our daily lives.  VR experiences will become significantly more realistic, with advancements in graphics and sensory feedback systems making it difficult to distinguish virtual from real environments.  VR will merge with other technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality, and, the Internet of Things to create hybrid platforms, offering more interactive and personalized experiences.  (It’s beyond the scope of this blog to explain these technologies; happy researching!)

The future of VR is very exciting.  VR is predicted to continue to move beyond gaming and entertainment into many other industries and applications, becoming an indispensable tool.  The industry is poised for significant continued growth.  The global VR market projections indicate a rise from $20.83 billion in 2025 to $123.06 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights. 

 

 

Virtual reality is important because it has the potential to transform how we interact with and experience the world around us.  It provides a new way of experiencing information, allowing individuals to learn, practice, and explore in a safe and controlled environment.

 

 

Sources

My principal sources include: “Virtual Reality,” Wikipedia.com; “History of Virtual Reality,” vrs.org; “The Evolution of Virtual Reality: Exploring The Past, Present, and Future,” forbes.com; plus, numerous other online sources.  I am increasingly, and hopefully carefully, using Google’s AI/ChatGPT summaries of searches, including for this blog “what is virtual reality,” “history of virtual reality,” “what is the vr development timeline,” “summarize vr developments in 1930s-1960s,” “summarize vr developments in 1970s-1990s” “summarize vr developments from 2000 to present,” “vr applications,” “what is the future of vr,” and “why haven't practical mainstream applications of vr taken off.”