How Virtual Reality Became a Reality

believe it or not VR has been around at least in concept for nearly a century for decades whether for training entertainment or fiction humans have dreamed about leaving the restrictions of reality behind to find greener pastures on the virtual side it wasn't until recently however that VR has really hit it strides and become commercially viable the industry has had its fair share of ups and downs and surges and popularity over time but now more than ever the typical idea of total escapism becomes more real so some basic questions how has the tainted past of VR managed to prevail through years of failures what milestones have pushed VR into the state it is now and what is the future of virtual reality is this just a gimmicky trend or humanity's future this is a brief history of VR one of the first times virtual reality was ever coined as a term was all the way back in 1935 Stanley G Weinbaum fictional story Pygmalion spectacles introduced readers to the idea that a device can allow you to escape reality into a simulated environment within the story the main character meets the Palmer Luckey of the time a professor hard at work on an experimental device that device being a pair of goggles that can simulate all senses sight sound taste touch you name it to transport you to worlds never thought possible all while being grounded on earth in seemingly no real danger no matter how death-defying the task being performed was needless to say even to this day we haven't been able to replicate the original vision of what VR is capable of although this early look into the potential of the technology even if fictional inspired visionaries for decades to keep hard at work in the pursuit of a true virtual reality the first real attempts at VR came in the form of scent stimulation in the 1950s 3d graphics obviously weren't technically possible but adding to the already existing experience of film was a far more attainable goal in 1957 Morton Heilig invents the sensorama a seated viewfinder experience that allowed you to be in the film by blocking outside visuals emitting smells fans to add a mock sense of touch and a vibrating chair for some haptic feedback during films like the motorcycle where fans were used to simulate air flow and smells of car exhaust filled the station to make you really feel like you were stuck in traffic in the 1950s breathing in tons of unburned leaded fuel unfortunately the sense Rama was a flop but right around the same time period the first actual head mounted display was created an H MD is by definition a display device worn on the head or as part of a helmet that has a small display optic in front of one or each eye and that's why it's called a head mounted display in 1961 two pioneers at Philco corporation traded the very first HMV called the head site for the first time displays were mounted to a wearable device this wasn't for games though the military contracted the development of the head site to enable soldiers a remote viewing experience of hazardous materials moving the headset around allowed a camera on the other end to move and the user was able to receive those visuals via the display this obviously wasn't a commercial application but it wasn't long until consumers got their very first taste of world teleportation using a form of head mounted display the stereoscope like this one from viewmaster offered a very simple still image for viewers to stare at and while this implementation of VR stretches the boundaries of what a VR device actually is since neither the environments or product itself is in any way virtual the actual technology behind making a stereoscope work is reminiscent in every 3d simulated device that we use today and that's stereoscopy a film technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision essentially two lenses directing a user's vision to a single focus point to create the illusion of depth if you can't create a molecule perfect world as you see in holodeck for example then the best alternative is to at least give the illusion that something is closer far away fast-forward through the 60s and we see progress chugging along Ivan Sutherland creates the first AR and VR headset at MIT that gives a whole new meeting to pulley systems as this device was ceiling suspended and massive the 70 is mostly focused on integrating VR and a flight simulators by the end of the decade even taking a headset into an actual flight via the vital headset that had some sort of rudimentary eye tracking the 1980s however is when we see the first explosion of virtual reality gloves headsets NASA VR had moved from just being an experimental idea rarely used practically to being used and sold by companies to companies looking to utilize the potential of VR it was during his decade that Sayer created the first gloves available for purchase in 1982 those served to be the blueprint for later projects like the power glove in cyber glove and it was also this decade that NASA truly became interested in VR but more on that in just a moment while flight simulator technology was still improving a small research company founded VPL known as the first company to make and sell both functioning VR HMDs as well as tracked gloves known as the data glove and the headset was called the iPhone that's right the iPhone was actually the name of their device talk about being ahead of their time but back on NASA if you look online for VR headsets created in the 80s you'll find image after image of motorcycle helmets repurposed with displays instead of a windshield with a massive NASA logo on it this was a time that the NASA Ames Laboratory created the view hmd specifically for use as a virtual workstation both to view live video feeds and to familiarize future astronauts with basic controls within a wireframe world this isn't to say that consumer VR wasn't at least attempted though Atari had create its own VR research lab in 1982 only to have the entire gaming market in North America crumble to pieces the very next year in what's known as the video game crash of 1983 the private sector continued to chug along being funded by government grants and military contracts until finally the consumer and console market caught wind of the potential that VR had with in the early 1990s Sega Nintendo and various other arcade companies announced that they had started development of their own VR devices the 1990s marked the first time that virtual reality went truly consumer or at least tried to you may not know this but Sega was almost the first console manufacturer to create a consumer release VR headset that looks shockingly similar to the form factor that we currently have in 1991 the Sega VR was announced the really impressive part of this often overlooked segment of the ars past is Sega's ability to shrink at the time a $70,000 device into an affordable $200 headset to come to market by 1993 but things didn't turn out so well for Sega VR the time tracking solutions for something like an H MD did exist but they were prohibitively expensive each unit costing an estimated fifty thousand dollars just to track the position or rotation of a headset but a company called Ono son died was contracted by Sega to use their own three degree freedom tracking method that would cost around one dollar per unit produced this was done by a system of magnetic sensors a photo detector and a sphere filled with liquid along with an LED on one side if the LED light was refracted by a certain percentage while being tilted therefore affecting the results of the photo detector then the console would roughly estimate the degree of tilt of the user's head unfortunately this was also one of the biggest reasons the Sega VR failed I've seen some conflicting reports of why exactly the Sega VR was canceled but some of the consensus ranges from quote the explanation for the termination was Sega's concern of people injuring themselves as the VR effect was too realistic and quote - motion sickness nausea warnings from multiple doctors that prolonged use may have serious side effects which seems like a much more realistic outlook as to why the system was canceled Sega still went on to create the VR 1 a VR arcade setup that actually proved to be decently successful at least relative to a console that never launched and of course I couldn't have a history of VR video without mentioning the Virtual Boy Nintendo took their own shot at the VR craze and I think we all know what happened the console ended up becoming one of the biggest commercial gaming flops of all time being discontinued barely a year after its launch of course the Virtual Boy is honestly barely even VR it's not a headset so it's not an HMD you know a head mounted display it's got extremely simple controls with practically no motion controls a monochrome display but it still counts as a piece of VR history because well the commercial flop of the Virtual Boy is a giant part and what became a total stagnation of commercial VR devices for the next 10 plus years it was at this point that people heard virtual reality or virtual boy and saw it for what it was a pretty gimmicky expensive device that was extremely limited I like to think that these devices were just ahead of their time and they'd failed due to limitations in hardware and trying to keep costs low the number-one goal of Sega Nintendo virtual i/o and the plethora of other companies creating these early headsets was to take a technology that was extremely expensive and make the best of ice that they can for the cheapest this is how we got the virtual boy one of the last big hurrah of the 90s in terms of VR was arcade cabinets from global VR known as the Vortech 3d now maybe it's because of my specific age but when I was growing up I saw these things everywhere and I always had a weird draw to them playing beachhead 2000 is something I will always reminisce and think about as in terms of virtual reality I have massive nostalgia being amazed by actually being in the game the arcade and your parents go away for the 10 minutes that you have to play and for that time all you can see or hear is what's going on a beachhead but these cabinets actually started to shut down in cease production in just 2004 and signals why I would call the 2000s a hibernation period for VR the world was a little preoccupied and gaming in general had taken a sharp turn very organically within just 20 years gaming had turned from meeting up with friends to either play the NES or go to an arcade to the launch of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox things had changed unfortunately VR was left on the back burner in terms of gaming the 90s pretty much spell out the flop of VR and the tag of virtual reality really needed time to recover we just weren't quite there yet mix that with the lack of big-name government contracts for what VR had to offer and quite literally there's a decade of vast improvements for technology as a whole but not really regarding VR directly it's all the improvements that happened around it that indirectly affected VR later on every purpose that the military had to use VR was filled by new emerging tech that did that specific job just better drones for remote viewing practical training for astronauts that had improved significantly large but reliable flex and leaders that did their job well you get the point VR wasn't a focus and it wasn't until after the 2008 recession that VR would get the mass attention that had lacked for almost a decade enter Palmer Luckey lucky was a tinkerer as a kid according to the book history of the future lucky would take apart and put back together game cubes in a spare time now I know I have had quite a few Xbox 360 is open to try and fix a red ring or a 74 error but Palmer took it to a whole new level actually modifying consoles or other devices to suit specific needs like making a Gamecube a portable device all at the age of 15 from 2009 to 2012 Palmer he had a pretty groundbreaking vision for the future of yard first let me just briefly talk about how VR works at least prior to Lucky's involvement because one of the most expensive and difficult things to do in VR was correct the distortion caused by lenses that are necessary to create the stereoscopic image that gives that illusion of depth previously nearly all headsets that even address the distortion attempted to fix the problem by using extremely expensive and hard to manufacture lenses to give you an idea there's a reason why certain binoculars are so expensive over others the quality and precision of the lenses can be the difference between a $15.00 pair of binoculars and a $4,000 pair of binoculars the same applies to any device using a set of manufactured lenses lucky thought hey why not use cheap lenses that are consistent in their performance at least enough and correct the distortion that's always present via software instead of using the expensive specialized lenses that do the same job on top of that lucky became interested in creating his own hmd at just the right time the smartphone hardware race was well underway driving the cost of small high-resolution displays far cheaper than they have ever been before between cheap lenses software correction and cheaper displays lucky had this to say that let me make something that was a lot lighter cheaper with a much wider field of view than anything else out there and this was a guy in his parent's garage not a mechanical or electrical engineer in a lab over those three years lucky had created a tracked headset that actually did provide the widest field of view and clarity available it was around 2012 when John Carmack the co-founder of Ede software and programmer for classics like doom Wolfenstein and quake found Lucky's project online through a tech blog Palmer sent off a free prototype Carmack repurposed doom 3 to run on the headset and just like that in the tech scene Palmer Luckey in the word oculus became one of the hottest names of emerging stars within the next two years brand and I read Michael Antonov Nate Mitchell and lucky launched the oculus rift Kickstarter to raise two point four million dollars almost ten times the original funding goal pretty much from this point forward the number of companies involved in VR the investments and the research absolutely exploded while oculus was raising millions to literally kick start their own VR missions valve was quite publicly working on their own VR setups laying much of the groundwork that would in the future become the bog-standard low persistence displays a high frame rate lens technology improvements and most importantly tracking techniques the funny part here is valve in oculus we're actually working together at this time Akio is planning on using the tracking techniques that Valve had developed stating quote valve would collaborate with oculus on tracking to drive PC VR forward it also said it had no plans to release its own VR hardware although it noted this could change in the future and cool oh really well hey no spoilers this collaboration went through until the end of 2014 you might ask what happened to end such a godly group up but rumor has it everything got effed up by that I mean Facebook bought oculus in its entirety and supposedly communication between valve and oculus pretty much stopped as they went their own ways so there's this common idea that HTC hardly assisted in the development of the HTC vive there are also people out there that have absolutely no idea that valve had anything to do with the original five well both are wrong valve created the laser tracking methods that we see in all steamvr base stations today but it was HTC that took the rudimentary prototypes still with exposed circuitry and all and condense the product down to a form factor that we have today now controllers the first controllers from valve to use in VR were actually just steam controllers with trackers affixed at the top to enable tracking quote we said you know what we're not going to have an X a B and Y we're going to say no we're going to make something specifically for the thing we're making it for and Qin and thus after many prototypes we ended up with the vive ones that are still used today even being shipped in brand new headset bundles from five from the end of oculus working with valve and the new partnership with HTC it only took two years for the HTC vive to launch with full six degree freedom tracking including controllers and it would be completely sold out for months even though it was launching at a steep price of $800 so while valve and HTC got to work what was occupying this whole time since being acquired by Facebook well just before the acquisition oculus had released and began shipping its dk1 headsets remember this is 2013 the headset had a resolution of effectively 640 by 800 per I 90 degrees field of view and an extremely low latency gyroscope tracking that absolutely knocked every headset that had come before it out of the ballpark especially considering the price of the unit only coming to $300 mid-2014 marked the launch of the development kit to essentially just a completely improved version of the dk1 with high resolutions better tracking that included positional tracking as well as rotational by 2015 more than 100,000 units had been sold obviously the heat was on it was hardly a secret that valve and HTC were working on their own VR headset that was likely to release soon oculus then announces at the cb1 or in other words the oculus rift consumer version one was set to release in 2016 right alongside the HTC 5 including far better tracking than the previous headsets integrated audio and an Xbox controller which we'll get to in just a moment so it's 2016 this year is particularly important for VR not just because of the first real consumer devices coming to market but also for me because of this VR related content on YouTube and other platforms around this time is when I first saw Gard and what it was capable of and it blew my mind even though some of these early videos aren't even shown using fully tracked headsets with controllers that all would change soon sony launches the tightly wrapped playstation vr HTC launches the vive oculus launches the cb1 and it's immediately apparent even though the software was extremely limited at the time that straight out of the box the vive was a more capable headset the original cv1 didn't even launch with VR compatible controllers all you had was an included xbox controller well on the flip side you could literally walk around your play space with a vibe I remember the feeling because I actually personally owned the oculus touch controller standalone box that didn't release until the end of 2016 for almost a year early oculus adopters were stuck with a seated experience while vive owners were quite literally pulling those back and stealing the entire Hardware trace if you talk to a VR enthusiast at the time you'd likely get the response you get what you pay for since the rift was quite a bit cheaper than the vive even including the hundred dollar touch controller bundle it was 2017 that tides began to shift however whereas the HTC vive had a massive leg up over the rift at the beginning of the year the lower cost and more traditional button layout of the rift controllers were beginning to pull new users towards Facebook's offerings not even to mention the beginning of oculus exclusive hardware vive still had a larger market share according to seem but oculus was quickly catching up it was around the same time that PI max was beginning to stir up a craze with VR enthusiasts wanting a higher resolution wider field of view headset now I won't go far too into the story of Pi max as that's likely another video for another time but between massive shipping delays on their Kickstarter and high prices the pi max remained a relatively nice choice in terms of headsets 2018 marks the true flip for oculus and HTC as a giant price slash for the rift brought the hmd and controller bundle to just $400 at one point in the year $200 cheaper than the vive all the while the library of oculus exclusives was growing as well the rift was posed as a similarly capable headset to the vive yet cheaper and has exclusive content 2018 was the year that oculus beat out the HTC vive in terms of active headsets on steamvr effectively ending the previous reign HTC had over the vr market I should also mention that Microsoft in partnership with Acer Dell Samsung HP and others released their own line of headsets deemed windows makes reality during this time these headsets used a significantly different method of tracking than both the rift and vibe opting for inside-out tracking in general wmr still to this day has failed to garner a majority market share within the VR space leading Microsoft to quietly step back from VR in general I think the majority of this stance for Microsoft was likely due to the poor sales from an oversaturation of headsets from so many manufacturers I mean you've got six dudes essentially making the exact same thing as well as the early on terrible reception to inside-out tracking that would later be improved with software even though the price was right for wmr sales of the headsets never really took off and oculus and HTC still maintained their top spots HTC also released their new headset in 2018 the vive pro a significantly more expensive version of the vibe that more than tripled the cost and was obviously aimed towards professionals using VR in their workspace it mostly only caught on with its target demographic or with VR enthusiasts but ultimately ended up frustrating consumer vive users as our ma list for long and the only upgrade path for the device was going to cost thousands but there was something significantly bigger than the v pro launch beat sabre videos of beat Sabre went viral almost immediately after the world had seen it the official launch of one of the most beloved and played VR games of all time and it also marks the year that one of my most played VR applications our chat similarly went viral if you had played or been a part of your chat before you're doing new do we wait you'll remember in overnight change in culture but more importantly player population I mentioned these two games specifically because with maybe the exception of Pavlov I don't think any two PC games have sold more headsets than VR chat and beat Sabre and the content created around them is certainly monumental to the current state of VR as we know it I'm guessing that if you're somewhat new to the VRC or you're binging content related to it 20:19 is likely the year that either got you hooked physically with the headset or the first time that VR caught your eye this also happens to be the year that I started my channel the original oculus rift cv1 was out uh sure Dan by the Rif test the new flagship PC VR headset from oculus ditching the previous sensors needed a set up by adopting inside out tracking as its primary tracking method one of the first good standalone headsets that was completely powered by itself no PC require both headsets cost the same as the previous generation rift and still less than the now three-year-old vibe valve broke its partnership with HTC to release its own high end of the our headset the valve index and that while for a premium of $1000 offered superior tracking field of view pixel density and refresh rate over its counterparts even including the previously mentioned and still far more expensive HTC vive pro the true selling point for the index really was its knuckles though valve design controllers featuring over 80 sensors to somewhat accurately track finger positions on the controller meanwhile the Hartley mentioned in this video PlayStation VR had outsold any single headset in existence sitting at more than five million units sold far surpassing Sony's expectations even though limited in resolution field of view tracking volume game library and system performance Sony essentially proved that if you provide a large platform with an affordable way to do VR people will buy it it's at this point that VR feels like it really speeds up the quest and rift test begins smashing oculus store software sales records the valve index practically stays out of stock even to this day as units are sold nearly as quickly as they're offered as guards wrath storm Land & Bone works three extremely anticipated titles dropped to impressive sales and good reviews one works being a title two no breaking the steam charts as a top-selling meanwhile HTC tries to regain a foothold with the HTC five cosmos months after the competition's own hardware launches and due to pretty terrible tracking a high price and overall mixed reception the headset never managed to Massud following hardly making a dent in this team hardware survey it didn't help that around this time oculus announced full PC support for the quest as well as hand tracking further providing one of the best deals for an affordable and versatile headset whether you owned a PC or not then the bombshell drops from valve after 13 years of waiting the next half-life game half-life Alex would be releasing exclusively for VR now I had talked about the virality of beat Sabre and VR chat but that is nothing compared to the buzz that a new half-life game for VR was releasing soon after the announcement just about every headset went out of stock and Christmas 2019 turned out to be the highest selling week for VR ever both in terms of hardware and software sales so here we are in 2020 the index and Quest are still out of stock but that's due to some other complications regarding a certain outbreak in the manufacturing heart of the world software sales are strong concurrent users on various VR games are higher than previous years and half-life alex is mere weeks away in terms of actual PC VR headset ownership that exponential graph is actually turning to come true as they're approximately 70% more headsets year over a year of course this doesn't mean that the race is won though Hardware iterations and improvements still need to happen and will as long as competition stays strong between current competitors good games still need a release and overall cost needs to go down for the past few years many have worried that VR will once again enter a hibernation state as it did at the turn of the 21st century but unlike the failings in regards to consumer level virtual reality in the 1990s VR actually has a chance this go-around does this mean that we're gonna have full dive anytime soon no but what it can offer right now our experiences both social and gaming that you literally can't get anywhere else having a true virtual reality is getting closer and closer all you have to do is take a peek behind the screen door and it's pretty apparent that the history of VR isn't all just history the books still getting written all of us are a part of the story I hope you enjoyed a short history of your there are of course parts that I had to leave out otherwise this would be a 10 hour long bore fest talking about every headset ever released or every game that ever made an impact I also know I kind of scooted over the story of PlayStation VR but I think that's a whole video on its own as Sony took quite a different path than their PC VR counterparts either way I hope you liked it and and if you did just let me know thank you to all of my patreon supporters especially my omegas like exit Walther very evil shadow and ninja I couldn't be doing any of this without you don't forget to like this video if you loved it subscribe if you want more of this and to hit that freaking bell if you just can't live without it much love thrill out [Music]

Channel: ThrillSeeker

Views: 728,830

Keywords: vr, virtual reality, oculus, oculus quest, valve, valve index, thrill, thrillseeker, thrillseeker vr, vr news, history of vr, vr history, how vr is made, ar, augmented reality, history of virtual reality, history, technology

Id: UW8NapTA9oc

Length: 25min 3sec (1503 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020