History of virtual reality
The history of virtual reality traces the development of immersive simulated environments from 19th-century stereoscopic optics through experimental head-mounted displays, the coining of the term "virtual reality" in the 1980s, two failed commercial waves in the 1990s, and the revival that began with the Oculus Rift in the early 2010s. The modern phase is defined by standalone headsets such as the Meta Quest line, console systems such as PlayStation VR, and Apple's entry with the Apple Vision Pro in 2024.
Virtual reality has no single inventor. The concept drew on stereoscopy, flight simulation, computer graphics, and motion tracking, and each of these contributed pieces that were combined and recombined over more than a century. Several of the ideas now treated as foundational, including Ivan Sutherland's "Ultimate Display" and the wired glove, were demonstrated in research labs decades before consumer hardware could deliver them affordably.
Optical and mechanical precursors
The earliest component of virtual reality was stereoscopic display. In 1838 the English physicist Charles Wheatstone described the stereoscope, a device that presented a slightly different flat image to each eye so that the viewer's brain fused them into a single image with depth.[1] Wheatstone's work established that binocular disparity, not the scene itself, produced the sensation of three dimensions, which is the same principle that drives every modern VR headset.
A second strand came from flight simulation. In 1929 Edward Link built the Link Trainer, an electromechanical cockpit that pitched and rolled to teach instrument flying; the United States military bought the trainers in quantity, and more than 10,000 were used during the Second World War.[1] Simulators did not show a virtual world, but they pioneered the idea of training a person inside a convincing, controllable substitute for a real environment.
Heilig's Sensorama and the first head-mounted display
The cinematographer Morton Heilig is often called the father of immersive media. He built the Sensorama, an arcade-style cabinet that played short stereoscopic 3D films while adding stereo sound, wind from fans, vibration, and smells, and he received a United States patent for the "Sensorama Simulator" granted on 28 August 1962.[2][1] Heilig also patented the Telesphere Mask, granted in 1960, which is generally regarded as the first head-mounted display. The mask delivered stereoscopic 3D and stereo sound but had no motion tracking, so it played fixed film rather than responding to the wearer's movement.[1]
In 1965 the computer scientist Ivan Sutherland published the essay "The Ultimate Display," which described a long-term goal in which a computer-controlled room could simulate objects so convincingly that "a chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in."[3] In 1968 Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull built a working head-mounted display at Harvard University. The headset was so heavy that it was suspended from the ceiling on a mechanical arm, which earned it the nickname Sword of Damocles. It tracked the wearer's head and redrew a simple wireframe scene from the matching viewpoint, making it the first HMD driven by a computer in real time rather than by recorded film.[1][4]
VPL Research and the term "virtual reality"
The phrase "virtual reality" reached the public through Jaron Lanier, who founded VPL Research with the engineer Thomas Zimmerman in 1984 in Palo Alto, California. "VPL" stood for Virtual Programming Languages, and Lanier is widely credited with coining or popularizing the term virtual reality to describe the company's products.[5][6] VPL was the first company to design, build, and sell complete VR systems, including the DataGlove, which used fiber-optic sensors to read finger bend, and the EyePhone head-mounted display.[5] The DataGlove appeared on the cover of Scientific American in October 1987.[5]
VPL's hardware was expensive, with the DataGlove priced in the thousands of dollars, but it influenced consumer products. VPL licensed glove technology to Mattel, which produced the much cheaper Power Glove controller for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1989.[5] During the same period NASA's Ames Research Center built the Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW), a research system that combined a head-mounted display with a glove for tasks such as astronaut training and teleoperation.[1]
1990s arcade and console VR
The first attempt to sell virtual reality as entertainment came from arcades. The British company W Industries, founded by Jonathan Waldern in 1987 and later renamed Virtuality, launched its arcade VR machines in 1991. A Virtuality unit paired a stereoscopic headset with a joystick or a gun controller and used magnetic position tracking, and networked cabinets let players share the same virtual space in games such as Dactyl Nightmare.[7] The systems were costly to buy and run, and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1997 as home gaming grew.[7]
Console makers tried to bring VR home and mostly failed. Sega showed a head-tracked headset for the Genesis, the Sega VR, in prototype form at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in 1993, with a planned North American release later that year. The product never shipped and was cancelled in 1994; Sega publicly blamed the risk that the immersive effect was too strong and that players might injure themselves, while a Stanford Research Institute evaluation had warned of headaches, dizziness, and nausea, especially in children.[8][9]
Nintendo did ship a stereoscopic console: the Virtual Boy, designed by Gunpei Yokoi's R&D1 division and released in Japan on 21 July 1995 and in North America on 14 August 1995 at US$179.99.[10] It used a red monochrome stereoscopic display licensed from Reflection Technology and was viewed through a tabletop eyepiece rather than worn on the head. Criticized for its single-color graphics, lack of head tracking, uncomfortable posture, and thin software library, it sold about 770,000 units worldwide and was discontinued in North America in 1996, the shortest commercial life of any Nintendo console.[10] The 1992 film The Lawnmower Man, which used actual VPL equipment, kept public interest high even as the hardware underdelivered.[1]
The 2010s revival
Modern consumer VR began with Palmer Luckey, a hardware enthusiast who built a lightweight, wide field-of-view headset prototype that became the Oculus Rift. Luckey founded Oculus VR and launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Rift on 1 August 2012; it passed its US$250,000 goal within a day and finished with more than US$2.4 million pledged.[11] The first Rift development kit, DK1, shipped to backers on 29 March 2013, and DK2 followed in July 2014.[12] In March 2014 Facebook acquired Oculus VR for about US$2 billion, a deal that signaled to the wider technology industry that VR was a serious platform.[11]
Consumer hardware reached the market in 2016. Oculus began shipping the consumer Rift (CV1) on 25 March 2016, and the HTC Vive, developed by HTC with Valve and using Valve's room-scale SteamVR tracking, followed on 5 April 2016.[12][13] Sony brought VR to consoles with PlayStation VR in October 2016. A separate, cheaper track used smartphones as the display and processor: Google introduced Google Cardboard at its developer conference on 25 June 2014, and Samsung and Oculus released the consumer Samsung Gear VR in November 2015.[14][15]
The standalone era
Phone-based VR faded as dedicated standalone headsets arrived. Google's Daydream platform, announced in 2016, was discontinued in 2019 after limited adoption, and the Gear VR service ended in 2020.[16] The turning point was the original Oculus Quest, released on 21 May 2019 for US$399. It was the first Oculus standalone headset with six-degrees-of-freedom tracking, using the camera-based Oculus Insight system to track the head and controllers without external sensors, and it ran on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip.[17] Its successor, the Quest 2, launched in October 2020 and went on to become the best-selling VR headset to date, selling far faster than earlier headsets; Meta later reported that the Quest line as a whole had passed roughly 20 million units shipped.[18] Oculus was rebranded under the Meta name, and the product line is now the Meta Quest.
Sony released a second console headset, the PlayStation VR2, on 22 February 2023 at US$549.99; the company reported that just under 600,000 units had been sold in the first six weeks.[19] Apple entered the category with the Apple Vision Pro, which went on sale in the United States on 2 February 2024 at US$3,499 for the 256 GB model. Apple marketed it as a "spatial computer" with high-resolution micro-OLED displays, eye and hand tracking, and a tethered external battery, positioning it toward mixed reality and productivity rather than gaming.[20]
Timeline
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1838 | Charles Wheatstone describes the stereoscope, establishing binocular disparity as the basis of 3D perception.[1] |
| 1929 | Edward Link builds the Link Trainer flight simulator, an early controllable substitute environment.[1] |
| 1960 | Morton Heilig patents the Telesphere Mask, regarded as the first head-mounted display (no tracking).[1] |
| 1962 | Heilig's Sensorama Simulator patent is granted; a multisensory film cabinet with 3D, sound, wind, vibration, and smell.[2] |
| 1965 | Ivan Sutherland publishes "The Ultimate Display."[3] |
| 1968 | Sutherland and Bob Sproull build the ceiling-suspended Sword of Damocles HMD with real-time wireframe graphics.[1] |
| 1984 | Jaron Lanier and Thomas Zimmerman found VPL Research; Lanier popularizes the term "virtual reality."[5] |
| 1987 | VPL's DataGlove appears on the cover of Scientific American.[5] |
| 1991 | Virtuality launches networked arcade VR machines.[7] |
| 1993 | Sega shows the Sega VR headset at Winter CES; it is later cancelled (1994).[8] |
| 1995 | Nintendo releases the Virtual Boy; discontinued in 1996 after about 770,000 units.[10] |
| 2012 | Palmer Luckey's Oculus Rift Kickstarter raises more than US$2.4 million.[11] |
| 2014 | Facebook acquires Oculus VR for about US$2 billion; Google Cardboard is introduced.[11][14] |
| 2016 | Consumer Oculus Rift (Mar 25), HTC Vive (Apr 5), and PlayStation VR (Oct) ship.[12][13] |
| 2019 | Oculus Quest launches as the first 6DoF standalone Oculus headset.[17] |
| 2023 | PlayStation VR2 is released (Feb 22).[19] |
| 2024 | Apple Vision Pro goes on sale in the US (Feb 2) at US$3,499.[20] |
See also
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 "History Of Virtual Reality". https://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality/history.html.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "US3050870A - Sensorama simulator". 1962-08-28. https://patents.google.com/patent/US3050870A/en.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Sutherland, Ivan E. (1965). "The Ultimate Display". pp. 506-508.
- ↑ "Ivan Sutherland". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Sutherland.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 "VPL Research". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPL_Research.
- ↑ "VPL Research". https://vrarwiki.com/wiki/VPL_Research.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 "Virtuality (product)". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product).
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Sega VR Revived: Emulating an Unreleased Genesis Accessory". https://gamehistory.org/segavr/.
- ↑ "The Unreleased Sega VR Headset". https://www.vrs.org.uk/unreleased-sega-vr-headset-much-effort-squandered/.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "Virtual Boy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Boy.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 "Oculus Rift: From $2.4 million Kickstarter to $2 billion sale". 2014-03-28. https://www.engadget.com/2014-03-28-oculus-rift-from-2-4-million-kickstarter-to-2-billion-sale.html.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "Oculus Rift". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 "HTC Vive Finally Gets A Release Date: April 2016". 2015-12-08. https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/08/htc-vive-finally-gets-a-release-date-april-2016/.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "The Story Behind Google's Cardboard Project". 2014-06-26. https://techcrunch.com/2014/06/26/the-story-behind-googles-cardboard-project/.
- ↑ "Samsung and Oculus Introduce the First Consumer Version of Gear VR". 2015-09-25. https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-and-oculus-introduce-the-first-consumer-version-of-gear-vr/.
- ↑ "Google Discontinues Daydream View Headset". 2019-10-15. https://www.roadtovr.com/google-puts-final-nail-daydream-coffin-discontinues-view-headset/.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Oculus Quest". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Quest.
- ↑ "Meta Has Sold Nearly 20 Million Quest Headsets, But Retention Struggles Remain". 2023-03-01. https://www.roadtovr.com/quest-sales-20-million-retention-struggles/.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 "PlayStation VR2". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_VR2.
- ↑ 20.0 20.1 "Ultimate XR Headset Showdown: PlayStation VR2 vs Meta Quest 3/3S vs Apple Vision Pro". https://ts2.tech/en/ultimate-xr-headset-showdown-playstation-vr2-vs-meta-quest-3-3s-vs-apple-vision-pro-2025/.