Shaky successes and deafening failures in the long and strange history of virtual reality

Original author: Brian Crecente
  • Transfer
image

People behind the progenitor of virtual reality in the 50s, the Atari Research Center of the 80s and other amazing milestones of development.

I am in the interrogation room of Guantanamo, I breathe heavily, I sit in the pose of the tortured, all my muscles scream. I float through the world of shadows, transparent trees cling to the changing space around me, rays of light pass by my gaze. I lie in a cage, deep down - below the coral, where there is no light. I was shrouded in the deep darkness of the ocean. She welcomes me.

Foreword


Time, place, even the very sense of self can lose value in these creations, woven from a web of fantastic stories, illusory fictions of magical realism and synthetic synthetic hallucinations that expand consciousness.

But unlike ephemeral dreams, worlds created in virtual reality do not disappear anywhere. They are awaiting your return; they know that you are outside, and you can control everything that you see and hear.

Today, almost everyone can, as Timothy Leary once said, “enable, load, dive”. Prices for virtual reality devices start at $ 100. The equipment works with phones, computers and game consoles.

But it was not always so.

The long and slow evolution of virtual reality remembers its convulsions and ups, precarious success and deep failures. It was a journey of closed laboratories, bold experiments, game consoles and robot dogs. Its founders came from everywhere. They were writers, actors, philosophers, mathematicians, musicians, self-taught, and scientists.

Some were attracted by technology that was close to them because of the desire to improve cinemas; others have seen the ability to heal the afflicted. For some, it was the pinnacle of the development of displays, or the ideal means of self-expression, or an instrument for astronauts, or a way to be in two places at the same time, or an expander of consciousness.

For more than 50 years, innovators of virtual reality have been bothering all this equipment for the development of imagination, adaptation, learning, evolution and development.

There is a straight line that can be drawn from Mort Heilig’s Sensorama in 1958 to Oculus Rift Palmer Lucky in 2016. This line passes through four eras of virtual reality, which took place in the research centers of MIT , Atari, NASA and the University of Southern California. Thanks to this knowledge, transmitted from teacher to student over several decades of research, virtual reality finally gained a name, got on its feet and found its audience in the face of players, gadget owners, and in the future, perhaps everyone else.

This story slightly affects the deep history of virtual reality, which helped shape many people. It includes the top 25 innovators in the area, starting with Mort Heiliga, who many consider the father of this technology.

The article in any case does not claim to comprehensive study of people who influenced the development of virtual reality. This is just a demonstration of the breadth of interests and the creative approach of some of the luminaries of virtual science and art.

Process


Studying the vast and wild world of virtual reality and its more than 50-year history is not an easy task.

Getting ready to tell this story, I began with an analytical approach. I hoped to make a list of significant people whose work greatly influenced the history, development and ensured the wide popularity of virtual reality.

First, I investigated the patents of already known works, finding those who created innovations and those who worked with them. I followed the biographies of the early and modern innovators. He created a family tree, connecting the student with the teacher, the employee - with the employer, the researcher - with the research center.

Then I started looking for contacts on this rather short list. I sent them emails asking: who do they consider the most significant people in the history of virtual reality?

In response, I received a list of 40 people. I made a questionnaire out of it and sent it to several respected technical sites, which often write about virtual reality. Both Road to VR and UploadVR answered me and participated in the survey. The questionnaire offered to evaluate each of the innovators on their impact on VR technology. He also offered to add to the list of those whom I could miss.

I got a list of about 50 names.

I sent letters to everyone I could find, and asked everyone to appreciate the contribution he made to the development of virtual reality. I answered and filled out a questionnaire about 20 people. I took the results of the last survey, averaged them with the results of the websites and reduced the list to 25 names that you see here.

Mort Heilig, Sensorama, 1958


imageImagine: now is the year 1964, you are rushing to the slot machine hall near Times Square. The noise of mechanical automatons took possession of you. You see games about duck hunting with guns, a couple of pinball machines such as Riverboat, maybe Big Boxing. Right next to the door of the playing hall you stumble upon a large device. It looks like a large vending machine with drinks or cigarettes, but in front of it is fixed a chair and a device for lifting the seat to the field of view. The word “Sensorama” slowly rotates over the car.

You can turn on the machine in just a quarter. Soon you will be traveling through Brooklyn, the chair shaking under you, “rolling” along the road, the wind from the fan blows your face. The wide screen shows a full color view of the city from the front seat of a motorcycle. Suddenly you even smell like you're there.

“He began to create a prototype in 1958,” says Marianna Heilig. - In 1960, he almost finished the car, and in 1964, she fully worked. He has already shown it to the press, and articles have been written about it. ”

The user could select one of four videos, including a trip through Brooklyn and a close-up of a belly dancer performance. Despite the potential of the "Sensorama", the best that Heilig achieved was setting up a machine among the arcade machines of theme parks, and a little later - in the hall of slot machines in New York.

“The car had a theoretical success, but most looked at it as a wonder.”

image

More about Morte Heilig



Ivan Sutherland, Damocles Sword, 1966


imageWhile Mort Heilig was struggling to find sources of financing for the commercialization of his virtual reality machine, Ivan Sutherland worked on his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Then he received a master's degree in Caltech and, finally, a PhD in MTI.

Sutherland, who created the first head-mounted display of virtual reality in 1966, made a huge contribution to the field of computer graphics. Later he was called the father of this industry.

His work on what he called the perfect display (Ultimate Display) began in 1965, when he published an article about how he came up with a room in which a computer could control the existence of matter.

“The chair displayed in such a room will be strong enough to sit on it,” he wrote. - Handcuffs will hold down the movement, and the bullet displayed in such a room will be fatal. With the appropriate software, such a display can literally be the Wonderland that Alice has fallen into. ”

With the help of student Bob Sproul, Sutherland began to integrate multiple devices into one head-up display. The end result was a stereoscopic display and a sophisticated mechanical head position tracking system, which allowed users to look around inside rooms with “wire” (wireframe) 3D graphics.

To track the movement and ease the weight of the device, all the equipment was attached to a mechanical “arm” suspended from the ceiling of the laboratory. A rather dangerous-looking device was attached with straps to the user's head and received the nickname "Sword of Damocles".

image



Myron Krueger, Videoplace, 1975


imageAs Todd Richmond, director of the Mixed Reality Lab of the University of Southern California, said, artists do not have to bother with any fuss. They do not need to worry about how to sell their work or make it profitable.

One of the early innovators studying non-commercial and unscientific use of virtual reality was Myron Kruger. On Kruger, as well as on many other early innovators, it is difficult to hang any label. After receiving a PhD in computer science, he began to explore interactivity within art and with art, mostly using computers and often in the context of augmented or virtual reality.

His most significant work was Videoplace, which has changed and evolved since 1975. In the first version of Videoplace, the computer was not used: two people interacted through the video screen and the projected images. The current version contains 25 different programs and is more like a laboratory of virtual and artificial reality. This early work greatly influenced both virtual reality and the technology of “room” virtual reality, known as CAVE.

image
One of the versions of Videoplace



Eric Howlett, LEEP, 1978


imageMIT graduate, inventor and eternal enthusiast Eric Howlett, 30 years after college, managed to work in different positions: he was a researcher, engineer, marketing manager and consultant in optics. His last work in 1978 led to the invention of an ultra wide stereoscopic system.

The creation of this special optical system determined how most people see virtual reality today. It provides a wide field of view, very important for immersion. “His main discovery was that you can achieve a very wide viewing angle by first distorting the images to neutralize the distortions introduced by the lenses,” says his son Alex Howlett, Polygon. "This pre-distortion technique, invented by my father for the needs of wide-angle color photography, has now become one of the fundamental principles of VR technology, regardless of the optics used."

Scott Fisher, who worked on Virtual Interactive Environment Workstation for astronauts at NASA's Ames Research Center, was one of the first to use the Howlett system Large Expanse, Extra Perspective (LEEP). This system was also used in the 80's theme parks. It was a handheld LEEP system that later led to the meeting of Palmer Lucky with Mark Bolas, founder of Mixed Reality Lab, and his part-time lab work. She, in turn, inspired Lucky to create Oculus Rift. In fact, LEEP lenses were used in the Oculus Rift prototype.

image
Eric Howlett and LEEP



Michael Naimark, Aspen Movie Map, 1979


imageAnother innovator who brought together the boundaries of art and science. Michael Nymark's notable work in the field of virtual reality has become the Aspen Movie Map hypermedia project. The idea, which was born from an early work created for MIT's Architecture Machine Group, was to record pupils in school corridors using a stop-motion camera.

The founder of the laboratory (and the future founder of Wired magazine) Nicholas Negroponte found money in DARPA for a much larger version. DARPA was required to create a program that introduces soldiers to the landscape of the city in which they had never been.

The project involved a lot of people. Nymark as a graduate student supervised filming and production. A film crew traveled to Aspen, Colorado to film the city’s streets 10 feet (about 3 meters) per frame. The completed project was shown in the “media room” with immersion and allowed users to interactively choose where they would like to go. It was an early version of what Google Street View offers today. Last year, Naimark became the first ever Google permanent artist in the new VR department of the company.

Although the project was not as complicated as modern head-mounted displays, it created the feeling of being in a real place and allowed him to choose what he sees and where he goes.

image
Aspen movie map



Susumu Tachi, Telexistence, 1980


imageWorking as a biorobotics department after graduating from Tokyo University with degrees in engineering mathematics and digital physics, at the end of the 70s Susumi Tachi took the position of a visiting scientist at MIT. In 1980, he proposed the concept of telepresence (telexistence), which was understood as a realistic sense of being elsewhere. Telepresence can be provided by remote equipment and robotic interfaces, as well as through virtual reality.

Thaci conducted research on many projects that are exploring this idea. He is currently leading a study group on media embodied in the body. The Tachi Lab at Keio University is studying virtual reality, augmented reality and telepresence.



Thomas Zimmerman, wired glove, 1982


imageIn 1982, Thomas Zimmerman received a patent for a flexible optical sensor, which, among other things, could be used to recognize flexion of a gloved finger. At first, he wanted to use his invention as an interface for playing music, allowing him to play the air guitar , extracting the sounds of a real guitar.

At the time, Zimmerman worked at the Atari Research Center in California with other major figures in the field of virtual reality, such as Jaron Lanier. When Atari began to fall apart in 1984, Lanier and Zimmerman founded VPL Research, a company specializing in virtual reality tools. In the VPL, Zimmerman created Data Glove ("data glove") - a technology that was later used by Nintendo and other companies. Nintendo's

image
Power Glove



Alan Kay, Atari Lab, 1982


imageAlan Kay began his graduate work at the University of Utah College of Engineering, where he worked, among others, with Ivan Sutherland. In the early 70s, Kay worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a center that is famous for its enormous influence on modern technology, from laser printers to the development of personal computers. There he helped create the Smalltalk programming language and gained fame as a gifted researcher and scientist.

In 1982, Atari offered Kay to create his own laboratory and invite people into it who would think about why computers would be useful in 5-10 years. This group, mostly taken over from Arch Mach Lab by MTI, has made a deep contribution to virtual reality. When Atari closed the lab, quite a large part of the people went to NASA, and the rest created their own startups. Almost all of them have significantly influenced the way virtual reality looks and is created today.



Scott Fisher, NASA VIEW Project, 1985


imageThe life of Scott Fisher has affected all three eras of virtual reality. He caught her growth from the science fiction stage to the NASA project and what we see now, securing the phone on her head.

According to him, it all started in a "magical place": Architecture Machine Group (Arch Mach) MIT, a gathering of enthusiastic researchers, hiding on the fifth floor of the ninth building. At the head of the group was the visionary Nicholas Negroponte. It was a place that brought together the most modern technologies, the greatest thinkers and trusted students of the last courses.

Years later, Arch Mach evolved into the MIT Media Lab, the birthplace of the concepts that led to the creation of Lego Mindstorm toys, Google Street View, airbag sensors and One Laptop per Child organization.. But in 1978, when Fisher joined the group, she was also called Arch Mach.

“As a teenager, I was obsessed with stereoscopic images,” he says. “As a result, they became my last year job. I researched new ways of presenting binocular images through drawings and other media. ”

Constant pursuit of virtual reality led him first to Atari Research Center, then to the legendary School of Cinematography of the University of Southern California and to the Virtual Interface Environment Workstation (VIEW, Virtual Interface Environment Workstation) of the Ames Research Center at NASA. The aim of the project was to create a system that would allow astronauts in space to control, via telepresence, anthropomorphic robots that repair the space station outside.

More about Fisher




Jaron Lanier, Virtual Reality, 1987


imageComputer science specialist, writer and musician Jaron Lanier worked in the early 80s as a game developer, creating experimental games such as Moondust for the Commodore 64 and Alien Garden for the Atari 800. In 1983, he began work in the Atari research laboratory.

In 1984, Lanier left the lab to set up VPL Research with Tom Zimmerman. At this company, Lanier continued to work on a visual programming language and focused on the commercialization of hardware technologies devised in Atari, including Zimmerman's Data Glove, early digital costumes and a head-up display called the EyePhone. After psychologist Timothy Leary, renowned as the technician for the expansion of consciousness, was fascinated by the computer and virtual reality as a non-psychedelic way of consciousness expansion, he began working with some VPL employees.

Lanier research includes multiplayer virtual reality simulators and avatars. He is also often called the creator and popularizer of the term “virtual reality”. Lanier now works at Microsoft Research.



Скотт Фостер (Scott Foster), Crystal River Engineering, 1989 год


imageWorking with spatial sound innovator Beth Wenzel at NASA's Ames Research Center, Scott Foster was at the forefront of sound progress in virtual reality. After receiving a contract from Scott Fisher from NASA to help create a sound for VIEW, Foster founded the Crystal River Engineering in 1989. Foster's work on this and other projects helped to reveal the importance of 3D sound in virtual environments.

Innovation Crystal River Engineering began to be implemented in commercial products. In 1996, the company merged with Aureal Semiconductor, which used the technology to create A3D and Vortex sound cards. The company went bankrupt after receiving a patent infringement lawsuit from Creative Labs, which later bought up all the intellectual property and technologies of Aureal (and Crystal River Engineering).



Char Davies, Interior Body, 1990


imageCanadian artist Cher Davis became interested in computer graphics and animation in the mid-80s. In 1988, as vice president of virtual reality research, she began working at Softimage, a company engaged in the creation of 3D animation programs. While working at the company, Davis began to explore ways to adapt software for her artistic activities. The first such notable project was Interior Body Series (1990), which used digital 3D images exposed in lightboxes, demonstrating the possibilities of computer graphics in painting.

Her 1993 experience Osmoseput users of virtual reality into a landscape in which one could navigate with the help of breath and balance. In 1998, Davis presented the Oshese concept-based project Ephemere , which allowed her to look at the body from the inside and study it. Davis's transition from the 2D territory of traditional art to the exciting 3D worlds of the virtuality of its new art allowed expanding the ways of using virtual reality and increasing the impact of the environment, exposing it to a new and heterogeneous group of users.


Ephemere



Nicole Stenger, Angels VR film, 1992


imageThe Angels film (“Angels”) , conceived by Nicole Stenzher, when she was a research assistant at MIT in the late 80s and early 90s, became the first virtual dive film. The filmmakers used VPL head-up displays and data gloves to explore the many virtual worlds inhabited by angels. Interacting with the hearts of the angels, the participants could watch scenes representing bliss, loss and fusion. Afterwards, Stenger created several more VR films, the most notable of which were part of the trilogy, launched by Angels and completed in 2007 with the Dynasty film (Dynasty) . In it, users traveled through time to meet their ancestors. After the trilogy, she set about creating The Isle That Was a Book andThe Wish .

Her works on art and virtual reality also made a great contribution. The most noteworthy was “Mind is a Leaking Rainbow” (“The brain is the current rainbow”), in which she talks about virtual reality as a form of a state of grace in which all sensory responses can “pulsate in a single harmony”. Stenger is currently working on transferring his projects under the Oculus Rift, and then plans to test his work under other VR equipment.


Angels



Brenda Laurel, Placeholder, 1993


imageImagine a retelling of Ray Bradbury's novel “Trouble is Coming,” in which you are the main character. Now imagine that you can do anything in a computer-controlled virtual reality. It makes you the center of the story and turns your room into places that have come down from the pages of the book. You can feel the evil hidden in a mobile amusement park, feel the tingling in your fingertips. The walls around you move, showing first the scene in your bedroom on the second floor, and then when you jump out of the bedroom window, motion blur and the courtyard below.

Everything is possible here, you can even not go to those sinister dark attractions.

Unfortunately, the Atari Interactive Fantasy System was never released. She remained a series of “bizarre scenarios,” as Brenda Laurel called them in the fall of 1983.

This concept was one of the many ideas on how to work with virtual reality that emerged when Brenda explored ways to use narrative. Laurel became one of the pioneers of developing VR as a medium in the 80s and 90s.

In 1992, Laurel began working on a two-user VR project from three worlds, funded by the Banff Center for the Performing Arts.

“At that time, it was an extraordinarily ambitious project,” says Laurel.

To implement the concept, the project team received the first RealityEnginefrom SGI assembly line. In the end, Placeholder was running on 13 computers, RealityEngine, MacBook, "taped together."

Read more about Laurel



Carolina Cruz-Neira (Carolina Cruz-Neira), CAVE, 1995


imageAfter graduating from the Universidad Metropolitana of Venezuela and receiving a master's degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, Carolina Cruz-Neira began work on her PhD thesis under the guidance of computer graphics pioneer Thomas DeFanti. In 1995, Cruz-Neira with a group of graduate students worked on the first Cave Automatic Virtual Environment system (“Cave Automatic Virtual Environment”). CAVE is a virtual reality room that projects interactive images onto walls. It got its name from the work "The State" of Plato. The allegory with the cave raised the question of whether a large part of what a person sees is just shadows on the wall, and not real objects.

This approach to VR is different from the current approach that is gaining popularity in that it does not require equipment to be put on the head. Instead, there are many sensors, projectors, and other devices in the room. Cruz-Neira also developed the software used in CAVE. Although this approach differs from head-mounted displays currently being purchased for home use, room-sized systems remain popular and important for research, as well as test samples of various types of simulations.



Michitaka Hirose, COSMOS, 1998


imageProfessor Michitaka Hirose, who taught human-machine interface and systems development at the University of Tokyo, got his first experience in virtual reality when he was a guest lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. Over time, he moved to work on large-scale virtual reality projects. His work was Scalable Virtual Reality Contents, intended for use by VR in education, and two five-screen immersive environments called CABIN and COSMOS. CABIN and COSMOS were later connected via the gigabit network and used for research in the virtual worlds of telepresence, touch and coexistence.

Now Hirose, together with Tomohiro Tanikawa and Takuji Narumi, are working in the cyberinterface laboratory of the University of Tokyo. They develop user interfaces that unite humans and computers in virtual reality.



Richard Marks (Richard Marks), EyeToy, 1999


imageIn the 90s, Richard Marks went to work in the research and development department of PlayStation, where his team worked on two great ideas.

One was exploring the capabilities of a traditional webcam connected to a PlayStation 2. The second was researching the potential of Sony's Aibo robot dog connected to the console.

“Aibo didn’t know much in the real world, but if you connect it to PS2 and teach different tricks in a virtual environment, then this data could then be loaded into a robot,” says Marx. "But as a result, we began to strive for another."

Instead, Marx began exploring the capabilities of a camera connected to a PS2. The result was the EyeToy device created in 2003.

“I was actively involved in the development,” says Richard. "Conducted a lot of preliminary research."

When the project was completed and the PlayStation team knew that it would be released for sale, Marx moved to Europe for a few months to work with Phil Harrison. Phil used to be the head of research and development, but at the time he became head of Sony Computer Entertainment of Europe, and his studios were working on games that were supposed to support the new device.

“I spent there three months doing prototyping games,” says Marx. "Learned a lot about game development."

This small device has sold over 10.5 million.

image
EyeToy

More about Marx



Skip Rizzo, Bravemind, 2005


imageWorking as the director of medical virtual reality at the Institute of Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, Albert Skip Rizzo explored the use of VR for rehabilitation and recovery from psychological trauma. Rizzo's work on the use of virtual reality for treatment dates back to the early 90s, however, it coincided with the “nuclear winter” VR, when this technology became almost extinct. The most famous of his work was the project Bravemind, which began in 2003, but received funding only in 2005. The program used virtual reality scenes to treat disorders. The software also allowed patients to experience traumatic events in virtual reality in order to open the door to healing.

He also worked on the creation of gaming VR systems and equipment to help patients with autism spectrum disorders, for those undergoing post-stroke rehabilitation, people with brain injuries and for preparing to use prostheses. He is currently working to expand the use of Bravemind to treat other forms of injury and to help non-military victims of traumatic events such as the terrorist attack in Paris.

image
Bravemind Scenarios for Post-Traumatic Military Forces



Mel Slater, EVENT Lab, 2008


imageMel Slater founded his first virtual reality lab in London in 1991. Since 1997, he has been a professor of virtual environments at University College London. Ten years ago, he founded the Laboratory of Experimental Virtual Environments for Neuroscience and Technology (EVENT) of the University of Barcelona. He is engaged in the study of the presence in virtual reality, used in social situations, and reproduced in VR the results of classical socio-psychological experiments, in particular, the Stanley Milgram experiment. He also studied the effect of a witness that occurs when people react to violent incidents. Over the past few years, he has studied body perception, using VR to replace users' bodies with virtual bodies of natural sizes, moving in sync with real movements. For example, the work of 2013 explored how this principle can be applied to get rid of internal racial prejudices and racism.

The creator of VR journalism Nonni de la Peña quotes the work of the laboratory and Slater as one of the reasons that she began to cover the news of virtual reality and immersion in it.



Mark Bolas, MxR, 2008


imageMark Bolas's early work in virtual reality began in the late 80s when he was pursuing his master's thesis at NASA under the guidance of Scott Fisher. Bolas co-founded Fakespace, which supplied equipment to virtual reality laboratories. But his greatest contribution to VR was created when Scott Fisher, who graduated from the University of Southern California, hired Bolas as an assistant professor for the University’s School of Cinematographic Art in 2004.

Fisher calls Bolas “awesome” and says that almost immediately after that, Mark began working in parallel in the media department and at the Institute of Creative Technologies, which was mainly involved in creating a functioning holodeck.

Todd Richmond, the current director of Mixed Reality, says that in 2009, Bolas founded the laboratory and studio Mixed Reality (MxR) with the original goal of reducing the cost of creating head displays and developing such displays. This is exactly what this laboratory has been doing for seven years, creating such creations as a display that goes up (2012). She publicized the design of these displays and helped people like Palmer Lucky and Nonni de la Peña.

Richmond says that “the lab won” in the creation of cheap displays about a year ago, but continues to explore areas such as touch, sound in VR and light.

De la Peña told Polygon that Bolas’s willingness to open a laboratory for a multitude of people was a great contribution to the success of the VR generation. Richmond supports this statement and adds that Bolas' desire for the rapid prototyping of ideas has led to the constant development of new equipment for VR.

This summer, Bolas left the University to work as a co-director for program management at Microsoft. In a recent interview, he told Polygon that a designer fuse stimulates the rhythm of research in virtual reality and shared how his new work will affect VR.

“In my opinion, virtual reality is a single genre that uses algorithmic power to quickly connect people with what they like,” he said. "I look at my work at Microsoft as an evolution of this connection."



Alex Kipman, Kinect, 2010


imageAlthough Alex Kipman worked at Microsoft for more than 15 years, he made the most fuss in 2008 when he moved from the Windows department to the Xbox department. It was there that Kipman began his work on Microsoft Kinect peripheral equipment. He saw this device as “a more natural way for people to interact with technology,” he told Kotaku in 2010. "Kinect is the beginning of a new journey."

The device itself, an array of microphones and cameras that turned the movements and words into action inside the games and controlled the Xbox console, sold over 24 million copies. In 2013, Microsoft released the updated Kinect for Xbox One, which at that time required a Kinect device.

In January 2015, Microsoft demonstrated HoloLens, a self-contained, mixed reality device that turned the world into a video game, a video instruction, or a trip to a real Mars for the user. Kipman led the project at Microsoft and introduced new equipment on the scene during a meeting with the press. A device version for developers was released in March and cost $ 3,000.

image
Kinect



John Carmack, a great event for Oculus Rift, 2012


imageWhile Palmer Lucky worked on lighter, cheaper, and consumer-friendly head-mounted displays at home and in the MxR laboratory at the University of Southern California, id Carmack from id Software also experimented with this technology. Interested in the approach of Lucky to some design and technical problems, Carmack imbued with his helmet. Soon after, id Software announced that the updated version of Doom 3 BFG Edition will be compatible with this device. But the biggest event for the virtuality technology was that Carmack brought the Oculus Rift prototype with its own software to the E3 2012 exhibition and showed it to the developers and the press, raising a huge wave in the media.

The next summer, Carmack began working on Oculus VR as the company's chief technology manager. A few months later, Carmack left id Software to devote himself entirely to work on the Oculus Rift.



Nonny de la Peña, Hunger in Los Angeles, 2012


imageThe man fell into a diabetic coma, standing in line for groceries in Los Angeles. The other is forced to sit, crouched in an uncomfortable position, until the muscles fail. Two sisters are trying to protect their younger sister from a cruel husband. A peaceful corner of Syria with children playing turns into chaos from a rocket hit.

Journalists in their stories seek to convey the facts, to become witnesses that shape the world and tell the reader about it. Nonni de la Peña figured out how to accomplish this task better, getting rid of the reporter and letting society know the facts on her own. With the help of virtual reality, immersive journalism has allowed to erase the thin line separating the painful and tragic facts from the column in the newspaper.

Her work breathed life into the demand for a detailed disclosure of the methodology of torture in the United States, showed living faces in the statistics of homelessness and hunger, demonstrated in reality the horror of domestic violence and recalled children who were victims of wars.

According to her, it all started with Second Life .


Video of the gameplay from the project Hunger in Los Angeles

Read more about Nonni de la Peña



Michael Abrash, research manager at Oculus, 2014


imageMichael Abrash’s career began in the early 80s. He programmed games for the IBM PC, and then switched to Windows and got into graphics and assembly code. But to really engage in research of augmented and virtual realities, as well as what he called “put on computers”, Abrash began only in 2012.

In a 2012 post on the Valve website, Abrash explained how he first became interested in technology: it began with Neal Stevenson’s science fiction book “Avalanche”.

“I stumbled upon this book and started reading it. Then I decided to buy it, but everything ended by “digesting” it all night, ”he wrote. “I also began to think that 80 percent of this book I can realize now, and passionately wanted to do it, more than ever in my life I did not want to do anything with a computer. I read [science fiction] all my life, and now I finally had every chance to bring [fiction] to life. ”

That was in 1994, but only in 2012, after working at id, Microsoft and the RAD Game Tools, Abrash finally ended up at Valve and began to study wearing computers.

“By“ put on computers ”I mean mobile computers in which computer-generated graphics and the real world are organically combined in front of the user's gaze. There is no separate display to hold in your hands (remember the terminator’s computer vision), ”he wrote. “I’m quite sure that the platform change will take place much earlier than in 20 years, almost certainly within 10 years, but it’s quite likely that in 3-5 years, because the key aspects are data input, data processing / power / size and output “Everything that is necessary for the evolution and maintenance of the worn computers has already taken shape, although we still have much to create.”

Abrash spent almost three years at Valve. He studied AR and VR, and also described his work on his blog on the Valve site. In 2014, Abrash left Valve to become the head of research at Oculus.



Palmer Lucky, Facebook deal, 2014


imageActive collector of head-mounted displays for virtual reality and technology researcher Palmer Lucky made his big breakthrough by contacting Mark Bolas from MxR and telling him about the display he bought at auction. As a result, Bolas offered to work in the laboratory for a part of the bet, giving him the opportunity to use technology and communicate with other innovators of virtual reality.

While working in the laboratory, Lucky helped Nonni de la Peña with the VR project, temporarily giving her her display to create a work in journalism with a presence effect. The project was later shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

Lucky regularly published news about his work and prototypes on a forum forum dedicated to VR enthusiasts who read John Carmack. In 2011, Carmack asked Palmer to show an earlier version of the device and was so impressed with it that he demonstrated it in 2012 at E3.

In the same year, Luck launched a Kickstarter campaign to finance the creation of Oculus Rift models for developers. The first developer kit was released in early 2013, and in the summer of 2014, the company began releasing a second version of the device for developers.

In March 2014, Facebook bought Oculus for $ 2 billion. Many innovators and developers of VR believe that this injection of money into a VR company almost single-handedly stimulated the sharp growth and interest of business in software and hardware of virtual reality.

In March 2016, sales of Oculus Rift consumer kits began. In December, Touch controllers went on sale.

image
Oculus Rift, First Development Kit (developer kit)

Illustrator: Chris Kindred ( Chris Kindred )

Also popular now: