There is no denying it. Virtual reality is a breakthrough technology that allows you to step through the computer screen into a 3-D artificial world. You can look around, move around, and interact within computer worlds every bit as fantastic as the wonderland Alice found down the rabbit hole. All you have to do is put on a headset and…
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Throughout history, attempts have been made to capture the essence of an experience and distil it in some form to make it available for us to enjoy and analyze. Through the direct experience of theatre, music. and paintings, people have been able to perceive both the real and imaginary expressions of other worlds, other times. new ideas, and new perspectives…
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As Morton Heilig struggled to convince a reluctant entertainment business to back his ideas, the first minicomputer based on transistors rather than tubes became available in 1960. The Digital Equipment Corporation’s (DEC) PDP-1 was the harbinger of the technology that would, more than 25 years later, succeed at popularizing virtual experiences where Sensorama failed. The PDP-1 represented a revolution in…
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During World War II, the military discovered the true value of training pilots in flight simulators. In fact, studies showed a pilots chances of coming back from a mission jumped 95% if he had made it through the first 5 missions. Thus, anything that increased their chances of survival in those first few missions was critical to saving more pilots…
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With a background in creating visual displays for the military since 1966 and extensive research in the field of visual perception, Thomas Furness III had the experience the Air Force needed. After years of fighting for funding, Furness finally got the go-ahead to prototype a state-of-the-art control system at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. In 1982, he demonstrated a…
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It wasn’t until 1986 that computing power had increased sufficiently to justify dusting off the GROPE system and having another go at the problem. A simulation of a drug with over 1500 atoms and a protein of 21 atoms was modelled on the new GROPE-III system. Wearing polarized eyeglasses, the chemist viewed a stereoscopic image of the molecules. This gave…
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By the mid-1980s, all the important components of today’s virtual reality systems existed in one form or another, awaiting an inventive mind to bring all the pieces together and the exploration of virtual worlds to begin in earnest. In 1981, Michael McGreevy, who was studying for a PhD in cognitive engineering, and Dr Stephen Ellis, a cognitive scientist, began a…
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While at ARC, Fisher had met Thomas G. Zimmerman, the developer of a new kind of glove that could be used to measure the degree of bend or flex in each finger joint. Zimmerman had originally developed the glove with the intent of using it as an instrument to create music. By hooking it up to a computer that controlled…
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All the pieces of VR that we still use today were coming together nicely, but sound was still in stereo at best which meant it wasn’t matching the 3D world. But it wasn’t just interactive gloves that NASA’s Scott Fisher was familiar with, he also knew an awful lot about 3-D or binaural sound. Just as stereoscopic images produce a…
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At the height of the video-game craze in 1983, Lanier created a popular game called Moondust for Atari. The success of the game and the royalties it generated gave lanier the freedom to pursue the silicon Vally ethos of being an entrepreneur. A year later, VPL Research was officially founded and Scott Fisher from NASA came rocking. Sadly conservative companies…
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