The Virtual Reality: The History Of Virtual Reality

But if we are looking for a more modern take on virtual reality we would start in the early 1800’s with a paint style called “Panoramic paintings”. So what are these and how do they relate to virtual reality. Well these paintings were made to fill a person’s field of vision, making them feel like they are at the historical event, scene, or battle they are looking at. (“History Of Virtual Reality”, 2017).

From these painting we jump to 1838 with stereoscope and then the view master in 1839. The stereoscope is a device that showed two side by side images or photos that gave the person using the steroscope a sense of immersion. The stereoscope was created by Charles Wheatstone, but then one year later William Gruber approved upon the idea of

The link trainer was created by Edward Link and it is consisted to be the first flight simulator and it was entirely electromechanical. The link trainer was used to train pilots in world war two and improved the skills of those who already know how to fly. (“History Of Virtual Reality”, 2017).

Then we jump to the 1950’s with the Sensorama created by cinematographer Morton Heilig. The sensorama was an arcade-style theatre cabinet that would stimulate all your senses (hits the name sensorama). It has a stereoscopic 3D display along with stereo speakers. It also has smell generators, a fan and a vibrating chair. It was intended to fully immerse a person (“History Of Virtual Reality”, 2017).

Next we jump to 1960 with the first VR head mounted display called the Telesphere Mask .Which was created by the same guy that created the sensorama, Morton

Especially with the Matrix coming out in 1999. It really brought the idea of virtual reality into the forefront.

So now that we have gone through the history, let’s talk about what’s been going on with virtual reality today. What’s it currently being used for. Well like in the past it is still mostly used for entertainment and training purposes. For example when it comes to entertainment we already talked about “Google cardboard”. With the Google cardboard you can kind of go on a virtual tour of different places around the world. Another example of entertainment would be Sony’s Playstation VR which we also talked about earlier.

So what are other things VR is being used for today? Well according to the article titled “Beyond Gaming: 10 Other Fascinating Uses for Virtual-Reality Tech” By Knvul Sheikh ( a staff writer for livescience.com) there are a heedful of other things that are being done with VR. So let’s go over some of them. Well one of the things that Sheikh talks about is Space and how astronauts have been using VR. One of the things that they are doing is that they are using VR technology to control robots on Mars. They also added a Virtuix Omni treadmill to their VR setup and now researchers are able to simulate a walk on Mars to prepare astronauts for a potential human landing. (Sheikh,