Origins of VR

Intro

Virtual Reality, the computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors.

Virtual Reality also called VR is being able to experience something without leaving your home. Virtual Reality is not real, it is virtual, as the name suggest. VR allows you to travel to or do things that would never have been possible in real life.

Image Credit: Griffin Streeter

In VR you can travel the grand canyon, hang out with friends, or play ultimate frisbee basketball, in zero gravity without ever having to leave your room. VR creates new opportunities, you can play a hyper-realistic version of Call of Duty, that can actually make you think you are really getting shot at, while you are just at your house. VR also allows for new events, and sports. In early 2020 Oculus released Oculus Venues, which allows you to attent concents or sporting events in VR, you could go see a movie with friends in VR. But to really understand VR, you need to know how it started.

Early VR

VR dates back all the way to the 1960s when the first head-mounted display called the Telesphere Mask was invented. It was no where near what VR is like today. The Telesphere Mask was big and heavey and could not be enjoyed by very many people.

It wasn't until 1985 when Jaron Lanier and Thomas Zimmerman founded VPL Research, Inc. Which is when the first "real" VR came into the world. They sold many products, including the DataGlove, EyePhone HMD and the Audio Sphere. However these products were not very consumer based, and were only really intended for the enterprise market. At the time there were not very many games or experienced for VR since the tech was so new.

1991 was when consumers could actually experience VR. In 1991 a company called Virtuality Group founded by a former Nasa scientist launched the Virtuality. The Virtuality were VR arcade machines where people could pay to expericnce VR. These machines were usually expensive but it was still revolutionary for its time, and people still enjoyed it. Not soon after the Virtuality, many other VR arcades came into existance, including arcades from SEGA and Nintendo.

1995 could have been a great year for VR. The first consumer based VR headset, that you could actually buy and use at your house was released, it was the Nintendo Virtual Boy. It was highly anticipated and it was a shocker to the world when the item flopped. The experience was terrible and caused many to experience headaches and nauseousness.

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VR didn't really change for the next few years until Google released the Google Streetview in 2007, it was a great product and was the best the industy had ever seen, however it was way too ahead of its time and the software wasn't caught up yet and the product flopped, just like the Virtual Boy.

At this point, most people thought of VR as dead, and it kinda was until a company called Oculus was founded in by Palmer Luckey in 2012. Their first product was Oculus Rift, the Rift raised over 2.4 million on kickstarted in its first year. In 2014 Facebook bought Oculus, and in 2016 the Oculus Rift was released. At first the headset was expensive and required serveral hours to set upand required a serval thousand dollar gaming PC, but it was the first real consumer VR headset. The Rift allowed anyone to buy and play VR.

In the next few years the Rift took off and sold over 500,000 units. And many other companys started their own consumer VR, Playstation released the Playstaion VR for use with the Playstation 4, HTC released the HTC Vive and later the Vive Elite, and even Google tried again with a cheap headset, the Google Cardboard for use with a smartphone.

VR really took off though, in 2018 when Oculus announcent the Oculus Rift S, a new an improved VR headset that required less setup, and the Oculus Quest, the first ever standalone VR headset that could be used on its own without a PC or a phone. Both headsets were to be released in May, 2019 for $400. THIS WAS INCREDIBLE. This was the first time cheap consumer, standalone VR could be had.

Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest was the first ever standalone VR headset in 2019, and it is still one of only 2 standalone VR headsets today. The other being the Oculus Quest 2 released in late 2020 and can be bought for $300, also owned by facebook and succusor to the origional Quest. It is estimated that between 2 and 3 million Oculus Quest and Quest 2 headsets have been sold. That is nearly 1% of the population of the Untied States which is the highest VR adoption has ever been.

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The Oculus Quest has helped millions of people get into VR, and it has helped the entire industry by having more users means that more content for VR will be created.

The future of VR

The future of VR looks amazing. With omni-directional treadmills, and haptic vests, and hand tracking instead of controllers right on the horizion. VR is about to get ever more real. And in the next 10 years we will have technologies such as brain tracking and full body tracking as a standand in VR it will get even more realistic from there.

There are also many new headsets rumored to relase this year, including a PSVR 2 and an Oculus Quest 3, these new headsets will help get even more people into VR, and even more people to relize that VR is amazing.

Conclusion

I think that VR will continue to grow, just as smartphones have. In the beginning, when cellphones were brand new, they weren't very popular, they were expensive and didn't always work, just like older VR headsets. But as soon as Steve Jobs got on stage and announced the first Iphone, smartphones took off and only become more popular from there, this is similar to what has happened with the relase of the Oculus Quest, and Quest 2.

I think that if you are willing to spend the $300 for an Oculus Quest 2, you should give VR a try. You won't be disappointed and you will relize the try beuaty of VR.