ONLINE BOOK Virtual Reality 1.0 -- The 90's: The Birth Of VR, In The Pages Of CyberEdge Journal _BEST_
Our everyday activities combine sensory inputs from both the material and virtual worlds. From a Zoom call with colleagues to finding a restaurant using a smartphone, much of this material-virtual crossover is now so routine as to be unremarkable. VR and related technologies scale up this blending of the physical and digital by creating whole virtual environments that we can interact with. One of the problems with working in this field, however, is a dense thicket of terminology that can be somewhat off-putting for all but the most technically minded. Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and extended reality (XR) are commonly discussed, sometimes with overlapping or even contradictory definitions. We outline these briefly here to help clarify our focus within this book.
ONLINE BOOK Virtual Reality 1.0 -- The 90's: The Birth of VR, in the Pages of CyberEdge Journal
In 1938, French avant-garde playwright Antonin Artaud described the illusory nature of characters and objects in the theatre as "la réalité virtuelle" in a collection of essays, Le Théâtre et son double. The English translation of this book, published in 1958 as The Theater and its Double,[4] is the earliest published use of the term "virtual reality". The term "artificial reality", coined by Myron Krueger, has been in use since the 1970s. The term "virtual reality" was first used in a science fiction context in The Judas Mandala, a 1982 novel by Damien Broderick.
In 2010, Palmer Luckey designed the first prototype of the Oculus Rift. This prototype, built on a shell of another virtual reality headset, was only capable of rotational tracking. However, it boasted a 90-degree field of vision that was previously unseen in the consumer market at the time. Luckey eliminated distortion issues arising from the type of lens used to create the wide field of vision using software that pre-distorted the rendered image in real-time. This initial design would later serve as a basis from which the later designs came.[37] In 2012, the Rift is presented for the first time at the E3 video game trade show by Carmack.[38][39] In 2014, Facebook purchased Oculus VR for what at the time was stated as $2 billion[40] but later revealed that the more accurate figure was $3 billion.[39] This purchase occurred after the first development kits ordered through Oculus' 2012 Kickstarter had shipped in 2013 but before the shipping of their second development kits in 2014.[41] ZeniMax, Carmack's former employer, sued Oculus and Facebook for taking company secrets to Facebook;[39] the verdict was in favour of ZeniMax, settled out of court later.[42]
Some people identify the birth of virtual reality in rudimentary Victorian "stereoscopes," the first 3D picture viewers. Others might point to any sort of out-of-body experience. But to most, VR as we know it was created by a handful of pioneers in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962, after years of work, filmmaker Mort Heilig patented what might be the first true VR system: the Sensorama, an arcade-style cabinet with a 3D display, vibrating seat, and scent producer. Heilig imagined it as one in a line of products for the "cinema of the future," but that future failed to materialize in his lifetime.
The first book in what would become an underrated, four-book sci-fi opus centers upon a future where the internet is made up of a series of connected virtual worlds accessed by virtual reality implants and bathtubs. Oh, and there is a mysterious disease that traps people in virtual comas.
Called one of the 10 best books of the year by the New York Times, Jonatham Lethem's novel features a host of surreal elements, including the Second Life-ish computer universe, "Yet Another World." He's said the book was influenced by virtual reality and much of the real reality in the book was meant to mimic regular life, but suckier. Kind of like virtual reality.