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The beginnings of Virtual Reality

Posted: 18 / 03 / 2021
The beginnings of Virtual Reality
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In its beginnings, what we know today as VR, was very far from reality, but it had the same goal. Today we want to tell you the whole story behind today's virtual reality, its very first steps.

The notion of virtual reality was only associated to science fiction, until various scientists and inventors decided to bring it to life and create feasible models.

The first person in the entire world that was interested in virtual reality was Charles Wheatstone, who began his studies in 1838 by creating a series of flat images of the same object that, when combined, created the illusion of a 3D environment, which he called stereoscopic drawings;

In 1929, the "Blue Box" was created especially for air military training. This device simulated weather conditions and moved according to the orders given by the pilot in order to be able to train virtually;

Based on the Wheatstone stereoscope, William Gruber created the View-Master in 1939, a device that allowed to see two images at the same time, which gave a sense of depth. In the end, its functions were far from reality and it ended up being sold as a children's toy;

Later, in 1956, the Sensorama 3D device was created, which already included great technological advances such as a smell generator, vibrating seat, stereo sound and 3D image. Even short films such as "I'm a Coca Cola Bottle" were produced to be played on the Sensorama.

Scientist Ivan Sutherland created "The Sword of Democles" in 1968, which he described as "the final screen". This device allowed users to scroll and change the perspective of images by following the user's head movement. Although this project never saw the light of day due to its heavy weight, it was a breakthrough in the field of Virtual Reality and also laid the foundations for Augmented Reality.

In 1980, Tomas Furness created the "Super cockpit", a flight simulator that allowed pilots to control the aircraft by gestures, eye movements or words. Moreover, this device projected three-dimensional maps in real time so that pilots could orient themselves. 

Around the 1980s, an engineer named Jaron Lanier made virtual reality popular, and his company Visual Programming Lab sold its first EyePhone and gloves for 9,000 and 9,400.
 
As we have already seen, the study of virtual reality has not appeared now, but over the years, a lot of people have worked very hard to make progress in this world and reach what we know today as VR. 

In addition, we now have great technological advances that make possible to carry out many projects, which in the past did not exist and this was a problem when it came to implementing all the advances.

This is just the beggining and we are sure that there are still many new developments and advances in the world of Virtual Reality, so be prepared because there will be many new things to come.