VR History 101

Sunday, 8 October 2017

Virtual reality has been around for more than a decade, with breakthroughs happening practically every month. To some of us, it all seems very recent, but in truth, the science behind it isn't at all as recent as we think.

Have a look at the picture above. What do you think it is? It has a phone slot on the left, so it must be some kind of hipster steampunk VR headset? Nope, this is actually called a "Brewster" stereoscope and it dates back to the 19th century. Instead of a phone, people put hand drawn landscape transparencies, since photography wasn’t invented yet. The first actual stereoscope was invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. It basically worked with mirrors and 2 identical images, which if presented to each eye in the right way, the brain perceives as a view of one solid 3D object. Other, slightly more advanced stereoscopes were developed later in the century, some of which are still produced today.
Pretty cool stuff, however the stereoscope only fools one of our senses…

Now we’re talking. But wait, what does an arcade machine have to do with virtual reality? This right here is the Sensorama, invented by Morton Heilig in the 1950s. It displayed 3D films with sound, the seat would tilt and wait for it... you could feel the wind and sense aromas during certain scenes. A real leap forward in the world of VR, targeting not just 1, but 4 of your senses. Sadly, the Sensorama never got funded so it isn't the direct ancestor to all the fancy tech of today.

In the 80s, NASA produced a virtual reality system for astronauts, with which they could control robots outside a space station, hence the birth of the Virtual Visual Environment Display (VIVED). Users can virtually explore a 360 degree environment and interact with its components. This R2D2 like head mounted display unit was also used for entertainment, scientific as well as educational purposes. Thanks to NASA’s gizmo, a standard suite of VR tech was established, among which head trackers, 3D audio technology and speech recognition, all of which lead to VR as we know it today...