The 12 Milestones in the History of Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality was certainly the most popular topic at the major as well as small tech conferences and events in 2016. The most discussed themes were how virtual reality will influence our lives and its impact in entertainment, social media, games, work, education as well as medicine. Virtual reality devices will perhaps be found in every home only in 2 or 3 years from now due to the fact that each day the VR technology is more powerful, accessible, cheaper and compatible with greater range of our devices.

However, there has not been anyone who spoke about how the concept of virtual reality has been developed. What is the history behind this currently highly entertaining technology? How much time did it take engineers to create the elaborate devices we see today?

For our community, we created a historical overview of the 12 milestones that made virtual reality what it is today: https://versus.com/en/2017/01/10/the-12-milestones-in-the-history-of-virtual-reality.

We have researched the influences on the virtual reality technology and created an infographic to share our insights with everyone: https://s3.amazonaws.com/urgeio-versus/00-blog-pics/00-post_header/The%2012%20Milestones%20in%20the%20History%20of%20Virtual%20Reality.png

Going from the Stereoscope, the device from 1838, based on binocular images displayed so as to create the illusion of depth, to demonstrate that when two pictures presented in a certain way, build a 3-dimensional object, to the first idea about the “cinema of the future” in 1955 or to the 80s Nintendo Power Glove used a virtual reality controller for games, are just a few interesting historical facts from our infographic . Or did you know that, back in the 1985, NASA spent huge resources on the VIVED Virtual reality headset in order to control their robots, instead of conducting risky operations? Each of the experiments and visions on how the VR technology can be part of our lives built the grounds for something big – 2016: the year of virtual reality.

About 3 years ago VR became affordable and thus popular with the help of the Google Cardboard. Only in 1990s the VR technology was at the cost of about US$50,000-100,000. Our infographic presents the 12 devices that that shaped the VR technology, as we know it today, based on price, weight, screen resolution, field of view, tracking area, tracking sensors, stereo speakers, gesture control, as well as a brief history.

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- URGE IO GmbH
- Alt-Moabit 98, 10559 Berlin, Germany
- Monika Dimitrova, Project Manager

This release was published on openPR.