A Brief History of VR

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A Brief History of VR

• Three-Dimensional Display
• Virtual Reality Systems
• Important Events

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3D Display
1838 - Wheatstone Stereoscope 1849 - Brewster
Stereoscope 1903 - Parallax Barrier 1948 -
Holography
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3D Display

• 1967 - Traubs Varifocal Mirror
• 1979 - LEEP Optics
• 1970s - Computer-based stereo displays
• 1985 - Commercial LC shutter displays

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Virtual Reality Systems
Sensorama Morton Heilig, 1956
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Ivan Sutherland

• The Ultimate Display (FIPS 1965)
• Data Visualization A display connected to a
  digital computeris a looking glass into a
  mathematical wonderland.
• Body Tracking The computer can easily sense the
  positions of almost any of our body muscles.

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Ultimate Display (cont.)

• Virtual Environments that mimic real
  environments A chair display in such a room
  would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs
  displayed in such a room would be confining, and
  a bullet displayed in such a room would be
  fatal.
• VEs that go beyond reality There is no reason
  why the objects displayed by a computer have to
  follow ordinary rules of physical reality with
  which we are familiar.

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First HMD-Based VR

• 1965 - The Ultimate Display paper by Sutherland
• 1968 - Ian Sutherlands HMD

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SpaceGraph - 1981
Commercial Volumetric Display from BBN
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1983 - Artificial Reality

• Video Place

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1985 - Nasa Ames VIVED
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Super Cockpit - Tom Furness
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FakeSpace Boom Display - early 1990s
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CAVE - 1992
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Virtual Workbench-1995 (Responsive Workbench,
Immersidesk, etc.)
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VPL Founded - 1985

• First VR Company
• VPL Research by Jaron Lanier and Thomas Zimmerman
• Data Glove
• Term Virtual Reality

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VR Comes to the Publics Attention
1987 Article by Jim Foley that features the VPL
Data Glove
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Siggraph 1990
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1993 - First IEEE Virtual Reality Annual
International Symposium (now IEEE VR)

• VRAIS 93 in Seattle
• Research Frontiers in VR workshop at
  Visualization 93
• Timothy Leary Wasnt Invited

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1995 - Effectiveness of computer-generated (VR)
graded exposure in the treatment of acrophobia in
American Journal of Psychiatry
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History VR Systems

• 1956 - Sensorama
• 1965 - The Ultimate Display paper by Sutherland
• 1968 - Ian Sutherlands HMD
• 1981 - SpaceGraph
• 1983 - Myron Kruegers Artificial Reality
• 1985 - NASA Ames VIVED
• 1986 - Super Cockpit
• 1992 - The CAVE (at SIGGRAPH)

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History Happenings

• 1985 - VPL Founded
• 1987 - Foleys Scientific American Article
• 1990 - Hip, Hype and Hope Panel
• 1993 - First IEEE Virtual Reality Annual
  International Symposium (Now IEEE VR)
• 1995 - Effectiveness of computer-generated (VR)
  graded exposure in the treatment of acrophobia in
  American Journal of Psychiatry