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Tech Throwback: How Virtual Reality Went From Imagination To Technology

Virtual reality, or VR as many call it, is a simulated experience that can be similar or very different from the real world. Thus, VR can be a simulated experience of either a new yam festival in Imo State or an alien world on the planet Venus.

 

It is hard to exactly pin down when virtual reality became a tangible concept. This is because from human existence, there have likely been many people who imagined a different world from the one they were in or even people imagining their hometown in a foreign place due to nostalgia.

 

However, the earliest example we could find was of the Sensorama machine in 1962. This machine was the brainchild of Morton Heilig, a cinematographer in the mid-1900s. Heilig designed the device to produce the sense of sight, sound, smell and touch while displaying five short films.

 

He also made a ‘Telesphere Mask’, something like a telescopic television, it showed moving objects in three dimension. It was with Morton Heilig that the world of technology fully embraced the concept of VR or virtual reality.

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Ivan Sutherland made the first head-mounted VR display system in 1968. It showed users a wire-frame model of rooms that made it seem like they were inside the room. By late 1970s, the real need for virtual reality gadgets rose.

 

Industry leaders recognised that they could use them for medical, flight simulation, driving and even military training purposes. Individuals like David Em and Eric Howlett designed concepts and systems for NASA in 1978 and 1979.

 

Jaron Lanier tried making VR tech more appealing to the public instead of just the above mentioned industries. He founded VPL Research and they made VR devices like the DataGlove, EyePhone and AudioSphere.

 

It was in 1991, when Sega entered the scene, that the gaming purposes of virtual reality became more prominent. The Sega VR for arcade games was a pioneer in the industry. Later, Carolina Cruz-Neira, Daniel J. Sandin and Thomas A. DeFanti from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory created the first cubic immersive room, the Cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). People inside CAVE could see their own bodies in relation to others in the room.

 

From then on, it has been one giant leap after the other in the virtual reality industry. It has also led to advancements such as augmented reality, mixed reality and even something called extended reality.

 

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Onwuasoanya Obinna

A reader of books and stringer of words. Passionate about Science and Tech. When not writing or reading he is surfing the web and Tweeting.

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