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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- New bookshop, new books 14 December 2009
  The new Bookshop is now open in solipCISM Village, with new titles on teaching and learning in Second Life: Aldrich, C. (2009). Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds: Strategies for Online Instruction. London: Jossey Bass. ISBN-13: 978-0470438343. [Amazon] [Product description from Amazon] Higher education institutions are increasi […]
  Chris Hutchison
- JISC, ‘Getting Started With Second Life’ 30 November 2009
  I’ve just found the very useful JISC publication , ‘Getting Started With Second Life’, at 32 pages a succinct and very readable guide for educators that addresses just about all the core issues for newbies, from first signing up for an account through to answering questions relating to common mistakes and assumptions. The only shortcomings […]
  Chris Hutchison
- Building the bookshop 30 November 2009
  The new solipCISM bookshop, located in the new Village at 4000 metres over the island, is now near completion. At the present time it displays and (via a link to Amazon) sells only books related to Second Life, plus a couple of my own books. My hope is that other staff in the faculty will [...]
  Chris Hutchison
- Phone line installed on solipCISM 26 November 2009
  You can now reach Khoisan by telephone in solipCISM. Students and others have always been able to see whether or not I’m online, but unless they’ve been on my Contacts list they’ve had no direct way of contacting me when online. To address this inconvenience, I googled a telephone box image, built a telephone box, and [...]
  Chris Hutchison
- Rezzable and Heritage Key 15 November 2009
  It had been, as much as anything else, my longstanding interests in virtual history and virtual archaeology that had, after some years of teaching my desktop VR module, motivated me to devise and launch my final-year undergraduate Culture & Heritage Informatics module two years ago. I’d been surprised and impressed by a number of historical [...]
  Chris Hutchison
- The Middle Passage Experience comes to solipCISM 9 October 2009
  I’m delighted to announce the arrival of Tamsin Barzane’s Middle Passage Experience installation as a new permanent exhibition on solipCISM. I first blogged the exhibition back in early July when it was curated on Saminaka. Prim limitations at that time meant, however, that the exhibition there could only be temporary, so I’m very pleased […]
  Chris Hutchison
- Ananse’s Web 9 October 2009
  I’ve written before about the cultural and educational African presences in Second Life, and documented elsewhere Tamsin Barzane’s impressive Middle Passage exhibition on Saminaka. Back in early August Tamsin invited me to a meeting of Africanists convening on Friday 10th August in the magnificent Saminaka Library. [2009/08/06 4:27] Tamsin Barz […]
  Chris Hutchison
- solipCISM gets makeover 3 September 2009
  In preparation for the next academic year, beginning in four weeks from now, solipCISM has had an extensive makeover this summer, with much of the existing content redesigned, rebuilt, or re-textured, as well as much new content added. The Welcome Zone has been largely redesigned and rebuilt, now with well-stocked freebie shops as well as [...]
  Chris Hutchison
- Demonstration of 3Di OpenSim for education 3 September 2009
  Other than maybe better integration with the web, I’m not yet sure I quite yet see the point of this–Second Life running in a frame within a standard web browser (available for both Firefox and IE)–maybe because the documenttion is scant in English (3Di is a Japanese company), but it seemed to me worth posting [...]
  Chris Hutchison
- Second Life running on an iPhone 3 September 2009
  I first found these YouTube videos almost a year ago, but hadn’t thought to flag it in this blog. At that time, the company that was leading the development of Second Life on mobile phones was streaming mobile game service provider Vollee: Vollee is a technology company which streams PC applications to mobile handsets. By hosting [...]
  Chris Hutchison
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A Virtual Reality Timeline

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