VR Timeline

A Virtual Reality Timeline

… which will never be quite complete, but which offers a general guide of how VR has evolved

When	Who	Where	What
pre-history	humankind	Altamira, Lascaux, Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, etc	cave paintings; storytelling; ritual dance, other ritual paraphernalia
always	children	everywhere	imaginative (immersive) play
now	humankind	almost everywhere	“a willing suspension of disbelief”: theatre, television, arcade games
13th Cent.	Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337)	Italy	(3D) perspective in art http://gallery.euroweb.hu/tours/giotto/ http://www.ora.com/people/staff/stevet/fdnc/ch22.html
1833	Sir Charles Wheatstone	England	the stereoscope; improved by Sir David Brewster, 1844
1838			The Stereopticon
1928 – 1939	Edwin Land		develops Polaroid glasses (1928). Shows first experimental stereoscopic (3D) film (1935). First stereo feature film produced for Chrysler Coroporation’s exhibit at New York World Fair, 1939
1929	The Link Trainer (flight simulator)	USA	Link patents original design for flight simulator. Later used for pilot training during WWII
1930	Herman Ives	???	lenticular lenses; ‘multiplexed’ 3D images capitalising on binocular parallax for the illusion of depth
1952			The Cinerama Projection System
1958			Philco Television head-mounted display (HMD)
1960, 1962	Morton Heilig	New York	The ‘Stereoscopic Television Apparatus for Individual Use’ ‚Äî a head-mounted stereophonic TV display (1960); and the ‘Sensorama Simulator’ (1962)
	Douglas Engelbart
1965	Ivan Sutherland	IFIP Congress	Presents a paper ‘The Ultimate Display’, at a conference of the International Federation of Information Processing Societies,.setting forth explicit programme for the development of computer graphics and the design of virtual worlds
1966			2D molecular modeller developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
1966+	Ivan Sutherland	MIT (1966); University of Utah (1966+)	invents HMD (1966); first fully functional HMD with first virtual world software, January 1st, 1970
1968			Computer Graphics and HMDs first used for flight simulators.
from late 1960s to present	Frederick Brooks, Henry Fuchs, Stephen Pizer, Warren Robinett	Dept. of Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	scientific visualisation; pharmaceutical chemistry (molcular modeling) and medical imaging; ARM (Argonne remote manipulator) with force feedback; ‘architectural walkthrough’ of Sitterson Hall
1970	Frederick Brooks and graduate students	Dept. of Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill	works starts on combining force-reflection feedback with interactive computer graphics; ARMs obtained from Argonne National Laboratories
1978+	Association pour la Création et la Recherche sur les Outils d’Expression (ACROE)	LIFIA, Grenoble	force-feedback devices (‘virtual violin’) for sound synthesis; transmission of gesture as a means for linking human eye-hand skills and imagination with computerised rendering tools
1983(?)	Brenda Laurel, Scott Fisher, Michael Naimark, Jaron Lanier, Eric Hulteen, Susan Brennan, Thomas Zimmerman	Atari Research Laboratory, Sunnyvale, California.	Interactive 3D games
1984	William Gibson	[n/a]	the novel Neuromancer introduces the notion of ‘cyberspace’ and the Matrix
1985-1990	Scott Fisher, Warren Robinett	NASA/Ames Aerospace Human Factors Research Division	First use of combined Dataglove (from VPL) and HMD in the Virtual Environment Display (VIVED) system. 3D sound added. Evolves into Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW); voice commands and speech recognition. Scott Fisher leaves NASA to co-found Telepresence Research with Brenda Laurel, 1990.
198?+	Jaron Lanier, Thomas Zimmerman	VPL Research Inc, Palo Alto, California	Lanier and Zimmerman co-found VPL Research Inc. Evolution of Lanier’s “visual programming language” Mandala / Grasp / Embrace. Zimmerman’s optical-flex-sensing glove (‘DataGlove’). Ann Lasco-Harvill joins VPL, 1987, to work on development of first DataSuit. First off-the-shelf vendor of VR systems from 1988.
1986	Advanced Telecommunications Research	Kansai Science City, Kyoto	ATR established. Multimillion dollar multidisciplinary project to enable telecollaboration in virtual spaces, without the use of HMDs, gloves or body suit, through the construction of surrounding ‘virtual rooms’
1987	VPL, AGE, Mattel	VPL Research Inc, Palo Alto, California	development of the $100 PowerGlove for the video games market.
1988	John Walker	Autodesk	Sept 1988: John Walker’s “Through the Looking Glass: Beyond User Interfaces” paper launches Autodesk’s “Cyberpunk Initiative”.
1989	Autodesk / VPL	California	Autodesk and VPL (DataGlove, head-tracker) begin commercial development of VR
1989	VPL & Autodesk	San Francisco (VPL); Anaheim (Autodesk)	‘Virtual Reality Day’, June 7th, 1989. VPL demonstrate their RB2 (‘reality built for two’) system at TEXPO in San Francisco Civic Auditorium; Autodesk’s “Weird Science” cyberspace demo at Anaheim.
???	Thomas Furness	Human Interface Technology Laboratory (Seattle)	project to overcome HMD problem of peripheral vision by inscribing images directly to the retina
1990	HITL	Human Interface Technology Laboratory (Seattle)	HITL creates a virtual Seattle.
1990	???	University of Texas, Dept of Architecture	First Conference on Cyberspace (May 1990)
1991	VPL, UNC, Human Interface Technology Lab, Media Lab	[various]	“Reality Net” ‚Äî RB2-based (?)
1992	Neal Stephenson	[n/a]	publishes Snow Crash
199?	BICC	?	Virtuosi(?) – telecollaboration through virtual presence
199?	Margaret Minsky	‘The Snake Pit’, MIT Media Lab	modeling haptic perception
1993	Autodesk	USA	Autodesk launches Cyberspace Developers Kit
1993	Division	UK	Division (founded 1989) goes public and first UK VR initiative set up.
1993	John Carmack, John Romero, Adrian Carmack	id Software, Dallas	Doom released; Quake released 1996
mid 1990s			Mars exploration robots controlled from Earth through VR.
1996
2010			“By 2010, that first room of Sutherland’s will have multiplied itself into a virtual cosmos. It is impossible to say, in today’s terms, how vast that future cyberworld will be.” (Howard Rheingold, 1991 Virtual Reality)

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Online resources and tutorials for the elective Desktop Virtual Reality module of the BSc Computer Information Systems Design in the Faculty of Computing, Information Systems, and Mathematics, Kingston University, UK. This module is taught by (and the web site managed by) Second Life resident Khoisan Fisher (a.k.a. Chris Hutchison), whom you may contact as khoisan.fisher[AT]gmail.com.
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- solipCISM gets makeover 3 September 2009
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  An interesting (though not new) issue has been raised in the SL Educators forum with respect to how avatars should attire themselves for formal (non-recreational) contexts such as lectures, meetings, and public events: Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 15:07:47 -0400 From: “Villano, Paul Mr CIV USA TRADOC” Subject: Re: [SLED] Professional Attire Recommendat […]
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  I first came across this a few months back, but didn’t have time to blog it. I still don’t have the time, but am at least posting a video as a reminder to come back to this. PIVOTE is a virtual learning authoring system for virtual worlds. It was developed as part of the JISC funded [...]
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- The End of Second Life? 1 March 2009
  My friend Dzevad yesterday alerted me to a blog piece by Owen Thomas, published in ValleyWag on Sunday 22nd February 2009, entitled “The End of Second Life” in which the author cynically, quite unfairly, but tellingly, writes: Those who can’t do, teach. Second Life, the most overhyped virtual world, has been abandoned even by its most [...]
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- Making the business case 12 February 2009
  In my course overview in yesterday morning’s first face-to-face class of the module I stressed to students that we would and should be considering not the technologies alone but also the business case for developing in Second Life. I’d cited Cisco, inter alia, as an instance of good practice. Returning home in the evening, I [...]
  Chris Hutchison
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A Virtual Reality Timeline

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