, a stereoscopic visual simulator, was introduced in 1939.|alt= The development of
perspective in
Renaissance European art and the
stereoscope invented by
Sir Charles Wheatstone were both precursors to virtual reality. The first references to the more modern-day concept of virtual reality came from
science fiction.
20th century Morton Heilig wrote in the 1950s of an "Experience Theatre" that could encompass all the senses in an effective manner, thus drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. He built a prototype of his vision dubbed the
Sensorama in 1962, along with five short films to be displayed in it while engaging multiple senses (sight, sound, smell, and touch). Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a
mechanical device. Heilig also developed what he referred to as the "Telesphere Mask" (patented in 1960). The patent application described the device as "a telescopic television apparatus for individual use... The spectator is given a complete sensation of reality, i.e., moving three-dimensional images that may be in color, with 100% peripheral vision, binaural sound, scents, and air breezes." In 1968, Harvard Professor
Ivan Sutherland, with the help of his students, including
Bob Sproull, created what was widely considered to be the first head-mounted display system for use in immersive simulation applications, called
The Sword of Damocles. It was primitive both in terms of
user interface and visual realism, and the HMD to be worn by the user was so heavy that it had to be suspended from the ceiling, which gave the device a formidable appearance and inspired its name. Technically, the device was an augmented reality device due to optical passthrough. The graphics comprising the virtual environment were simple
wire-frame model rooms.
1970–1990 The virtual reality industry mainly provided VR devices for medical, flight simulation, automobile industry design, and military training purposes from 1970 to 1990.
David Em became the first artist to produce navigable virtual worlds at
NASA's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1977 to 1984. The
Aspen Movie Map, a crude
virtual tour in which users could wander the streets of
Aspen in one of the three modes (summer, winter, and
polygons), was created at
MIT in 1978. 's 1985 VIEW headset In 1979,
Eric Howlett developed the Large Expanse, Extra Perspective (LEEP) optical system. The combined system created a stereoscopic image with a field-of-view wide enough to create a convincing sense of space. The users of the system have been impressed by the sensation of depth (
field of view) in the scene and the corresponding realism. The original LEEP system was redesigned for NASA's
Ames Research Center in 1985 for their first virtual reality installation, the VIEW (Virtual Interactive Environment Workstation) by
Scott Fisher. The LEEP system provided the basis for most of the early virtual reality headsets. DataSuit, a full-body outfit with sensors for measuring the movement of arms, legs, and trunk. Developed . Displayed at the
Nissho Iwai showroom in Tokyo By the late 1980s, the term "virtual reality" was popularized by
Jaron Lanier, one of the modern pioneers of the field. Lanier had founded the company
VPL Research in 1984. VPL Research has developed several VR devices like the
DataGlove, the EyePhone, the Reality Built For Two (RB2), and the AudioSphere. VPL licensed the DataGlove technology to
Mattel, which used it to make the
Power Glove, an early affordable VR device, released in 1989. That same year
Broderbund's
U-Force was released.
Atari, Inc. founded a research lab for virtual reality in 1982, but the lab was closed after two years due to the
video game crash of 1983. However, its hired employees, such as
Scott Fisher,
Michael Naimark, and
Brenda Laurel, kept their research and development on VR-related technologies. In 1988, the Cyberspace Project at
Autodesk was the first to implement VR on a low-cost personal computer. The project leader Eric Gullichsen left in 1990 to found Sense8 Corporation and develop the WorldToolKit virtual reality SDK, which offered the first real time graphics with
Texture mapping on a PC, and was widely used throughout industry and academia.
1990–2000 The 1990s saw the first widespread commercial releases of consumer headsets. In 1992, for instance,
Computer Gaming World predicted "affordable VR by 1994". In 1991,
Sega announced the
Sega VR headset for the
Mega Drive home console. It used LCD screens in the visor, stereo headphones, and inertial sensors that allowed the system to
track and react to the movements of the user's head. In the same year,
Virtuality launched and went on to become the first mass-produced, networked, multiplayer VR entertainment system that was released in many countries, including a dedicated VR
arcade at
Embarcadero Center. Costing up to $73,000 per multi-pod Virtuality system, they featured headsets and exoskeleton gloves that gave one of the first "immersive" VR experiences. system at
IDL's Center for Advanced Energy Studies in 2010 That same year,
Carolina Cruz-Neira,
Daniel J. Sandin, and
Thomas A. DeFanti from the
Electronic Visualization Laboratory created the first cubic immersive room, the
Cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). Developed as Cruz-Neira's PhD thesis, it involved a multi-projected environment, similar to the
holodeck, allowing people to see their own bodies in relation to others in the room. Antonio Medina, an MIT graduate and NASA scientist, designed a virtual reality system to "drive" Mars rovers from Earth in apparent real time despite the substantial delay of Mars-Earth-Mars signals. immersive
AR system developed in 1992. Picture features Dr. Louis Rosenberg interacting freely in 3D with overlaid virtual objects called 'fixtures'. In 1992,
Nicole Stenger created
Angels, the first real-time interactive immersive movie where the interaction was facilitated with a
dataglove and high-resolution goggles. That same year, Louis Rosenberg created the
virtual fixtures system at the
U.S. Air Force's
Armstrong Labs using a full upper-body
exoskeleton, enabling a physically realistic mixed reality in 3D. The system enabled the overlay of physically real 3D virtual objects registered with a user's direct view of the real world, producing the first true augmented reality experience enabling sight, sound, and touch. By July 1994, Sega had released the
VR-1 motion simulator ride attraction in
Joypolis indoor theme parks, as well as the
Dennou Senki Net Merc arcade game. Both used an advanced head-mounted display dubbed the "Mega Visor Display" developed in conjunction with Virtuality; it was able to track head movement in a 360-degree stereoscopic 3D environment, and in its
Net Merc incarnation was powered by the
Sega Model 1 arcade system board.
Apple released
QuickTime VR, which, despite using the term "VR", was unable to represent virtual reality, and instead displayed 360-degree
interactive panoramas.
Nintendo's
Virtual Boy console was released in 1995. A group in Seattle created public demonstrations of a
"CAVE-like" 270 degree immersive projection room called the Virtual Environment Theater, produced by entrepreneurs Chet Dagit and Bob Jacobson. Forte released the
VFX1, a PC-powered virtual reality headset that same year. In 1999, entrepreneur
Philip Rosedale formed
Linden Lab with an initial focus on the development of VR hardware. In its earliest form, the company struggled to produce a commercial version of "The Rig", which was realized in prototype form as a clunky steel contraption with several computer monitors that users could wear on their shoulders. The concept was later adapted into the personal computer-based, 3D virtual world program
Second Life.
21st century 2000–2010 The 2000s decade was a period of relative public and investment indifference to commercially available VR technologies. In 2001, SAS Cube (SAS3) became the first PC-based cubic room, developed by Z-A Production (
Maurice Benayoun, David Nahon), Barco, and Clarté. It was installed in
Laval, France. The SAS library gave birth to Virtools VRPack. In 2007,
Google introduced
Street View, a service that shows panoramic views of an increasing number of worldwide positions such as roads, indoor buildings and rural areas. It also features a stereoscopic 3D mode, introduced in 2010.
2010–present Crescent Bay prototype headset 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. In 2012, the Rift was presented for the first time at the
E3 video game trade show by
John Carmack. In 2014,
Facebook (later Meta) purchased Oculus VR for what at the time was stated as $2 billion but later revealed that the more accurate figure was $3 billion.
ZeniMax, Carmack's former employer, sued Oculus and Facebook for taking company secrets to Facebook; 2018 In 2013,
Valve discovered and freely shared the breakthrough of low-persistence displays which make lag-free and smear-free display of VR content possible. This was adopted by Oculus and was used in all their future headsets. In early 2014, Valve showed off their SteamSight prototype, the precursor to both consumer headsets released in 2016. It shared major features with the consumer headsets including separate 1K displays per eye, low persistence, positional tracking over a large area, and
Fresnel lenses.
HTC and Valve announced the virtual reality headset
HTC Vive and controllers in 2015. The set included tracking technology called Lighthouse, which utilized wall-mounted "base stations" for positional tracking using
infrared light. ) headset worn at
Gamescom 2015|alt=|left In 2014,
Sony announced Project Morpheus (its code name for the
PlayStation VR), a virtual reality headset for the
PlayStation 4 video game console. The Chinese headset
AntVR was released in late 2014; it was briefly competitive in the Chinese market but ultimately unable to compete with the larger technology companies. In 2015, Google announced
Cardboard, a do-it-yourself stereoscopic viewer: the user places their
smartphone in the cardboard holder, which they wear on their head.
Michael Naimark was appointed Google's first-ever 'resident artist' in their new VR division. The Kickstarter campaign for Gloveone, a pair of gloves providing
motion tracking and haptic feedback, was successfully funded, with over $150,000 in contributions. Also in 2015,
Razer unveiled its
open source project
OSVR. -based budget headset
Samsung Gear VR in dismantled state By 2016, there were at least 230 companies developing VR-related products.
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google,
Microsoft, Sony and
Samsung all had dedicated AR and VR groups. Dynamic binaural audio was common to most headsets released that year. However, haptic interfaces were not well developed, and most hardware packages incorporated button-operated handsets for touch-based interactivity. Visually, displays were still of a low-enough resolution and
frame rate that images were still identifiable as virtual. In 2016, HTC shipped its first units of the HTC Vive SteamVR headset. This marked the first major commercial release of sensor-based tracking, allowing for free movement of users within a defined space. A patent filed by Sony in 2017 showed they were developing a similar location tracking technology to the Vive for PlayStation VR, with the potential for the development of a wireless headset. In 2019, Oculus released the
Oculus Rift S and a standalone headset, the
Oculus Quest. These headsets utilized inside-out tracking compared to external outside-in tracking seen in previous generations of headsets. Later in 2019, Valve released the
Valve Index. Notable features include a 130° field of view, off-ear headphones for immersion and comfort, open-handed controllers which allow for individual finger tracking, front facing cameras, and a front expansion slot meant for extensibility. In 2020, Oculus released the
Oculus Quest 2, later renamed the Meta Quest 2. Some new features include a sharper screen, reduced price, and increased performance. Facebook (which became Meta a year later) initially required users to log in with a Facebook account in order to use the new headset. In 2021 the Oculus Quest 2 accounted for 80% of all VR headsets sold. In 2021,
EASA approved the first Virtual Reality-based Flight Simulation Training Device. The device, made by
Loft Dynamics for rotorcraft pilots, enhances safety by opening up the possibility of practicing risky maneuvers in a virtual environment. This addresses a key risk area in rotorcraft operations, where statistics show that around 20% of accidents occur during training flights. In 2022, Meta released the
Meta Quest Pro. This device utilised a thinner, visor-like design that was not fully enclosed, and was the first headset by Meta to target mixed reality applications using high-resolution colour video passthrough. It also included integrated
face and
eye tracking,
pancake lenses, and updated
Touch Pro controllers with on-board motion tracking. In 2023, Sony released the
PlayStation VR2, a follow-up to their 2016 headset. The device includes inside-out tracking, eye-tracked
foveated rendering, higher-resolution OLED displays, controllers with adaptive triggers and haptic feedback,
3D audio, and a wider field of view. While initially exclusive for use with the
PlayStation 5 console, a PC adapter was released in August 2024. Later in 2023, Meta released the
Meta Quest 3, the successor to the Quest 2. It features the pancake lenses and mixed reality features of the Quest Pro, as well as an increased field of view and resolution compared to Quest 2. In October 2024 Meta released a lower cost entry headset the
Meta Quest 3S with the same fresnel lenses as the
Quest 2 and a lower resolution of 1832x1920 as compared to 2064x2208 on the
Quest 3. In 2024, Apple released the
Apple Vision Pro. The device is a fully enclosed mixed reality headset that strongly utilises video passthrough. While some VR experiences are available on the device, it lacks standard VR headset features such as external controllers or support for
OpenXR and is instead branded as a "
spatial computer". In 2024, the
Federal Aviation Administration approved its first virtual reality flight simulation training device: Loft Dynamics' virtual reality
Airbus Helicopters H125 FSTD—the same device EASA qualified. As of September 2024, Loft Dynamics remains the only VR FSTD qualified by EASA and the FAA. ==Technology==