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This is an essay about virtual reality and is aimed to inform individuals about the
challenges that virtual reality faced on it road to the mainstream. I hope that you at least learn
much more about this subject and leave this feeling enlightened.
The Road To VR
Today we dream of a future in which we can use the internet to be someplace else to
see and feel exotic places around the world and have created elaborate machines to attempt to
recreate or even create distant lands. But we didnt always see things that way it wasnt until the
inception of the panoramic mural was created that we realized how badly we wanted to be
somewhere other than here. We were content with just leaving it at that until later after the
invention of television and movies that we could see did we want more of an experience. One
man named Morton Heilig wanted to understand how we truly see an environment and
hypothesized that when experiencing something we use: seventy percent of our sight, also
using twenty percent of our hearing, five percent of smell, four percent of our touch, and only 1
percent of our taste. With this idea he concocted an idea to make a headset in which the user
could see hear and smell the place in which the television takes place and dubbed the
innovation the Stereoscopic-Television Apparatus or STA for short. The STA was the first of its
kind and led to Heilige thinking about a more plausible alternative and so he created the
Sensorama. The Sensorama was the same idea as the STA but instead of being head mounted
it was a static machine and Heilig managed to build a successful prototype of it. The Sensorama
failed because of the high cost of production and the lack of marketability and thus cut his vision
short until it would be revisited later. After a man by the name of Ivan Sutherland with the help of
his student Bob Sproull created the first head-mounted display or HMD system. This system
could track the movements of the user and was able to make the user feel like he was
somewhere else. This technology was a huge leap forward and was designed to work with a
closed circuit camera system in which the user could be a safe distance away and be able to
monitor each camera individually. The HMD was dubbed the Sword of Damocles because the
devices motion tracking components were hanging overhead. These two men showed the limits
of the technology during the 1960s and set a precedent that really didnt make any big leaps
until more modern day HMD were created.
companies than before. With the success of the dev kit 1 under way they began to try to fix one
of the main problems facing the system, motion sickness after prolonged use.the creator of the
Oculus Rift Palmer Luckey met with Alan Yates a Valve Engineer at the time and discussed
these issues. Yates lent Palmer the prototype that was to become the HTC Vive, we know
today. This gift gave Palmer the groundwork to begin fixing the motion sickness issues that the
first kit had and ended up doubling the amount of playtime that users could experience before
the nausea set in with their next development kit. During the shift between phase 1 and phase 2
Oculus was purchased by Facebook which caused the Oculus, and also virtual reality, to gain a
great boost in terms of credibility. Later that year the Development Kit 2 came out for the Oculus
Rift and that was a giant leap as it focused on fixing the motion sickness problem the first kit
had. this lead into the first argument that mainstream consoles should support either the Oculus
Rift or their own virtual reality headset. Playstation saw the increase in demand for virtual reality
and decided that since their gamers wanted a virtual reality headset they would give them a
virtual reality headset and announced project Morpheus a VR headset for the PlayStation 4 at
Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3 in 2014. Later in March 2016 Oculus Released its first
commercially viable Oculus Rift for everyone to enjoy. A week later Valve Software and HTC
finished development and released their own headset for PC gamers called the HTC Vive. The
Vibe was created to be a direct competitor to the Oculus Rift because of lack of negotiation with
the former Oculus company after being purchased by Facebook. Today the two top Selling
Consumer headsets are the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive and with little games on both it is
hard to tell which one will be the mainstream virtual reality headset.
a risky technology it is still extremely helpful to the medical community and so should be
pursued further in order to expand the arsenal of a doctor's diagnostic tools.
Bibliography
1. http://gematsu.com/2016/02/ibm-japan-announces-sword-art-online-virtualreality-project
a. Romano, Sal. "IBM Japan Announces Sword Art Online Virtual
Reality Project - Gematsu." Gematsu. Gematsu, 22 Feb. 2016. Web. 26 Oct.
2016.
2. http://uploadvr.com/Atari-founder-nolan-bushnell-virtual-reality-interview/
a. Davies, Alex. "Atari Co-Founder Nolan Bushnell: The Public VR
Market Is Going to Explode." UploadVR. UploadVR, 22 June 2016. Web. 26 Oct.
2016.
3. http://time.com/4324598/alienware-interview-virtual-reality/
a. Eadicicco, Lisa. "3 Things To Know About the Future of Virtual
Reality." Time. Time, 12 May 2016. Web. 26 Oct. 2016.
4. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-virtual-reality-is-used-for-ptsd-and-anxietytherapy-2016-1