shots 159: U is for Unreality

Don your goggles and escape into an alternative reality with Solomon Rogers, founder and managing director of Rewind FX, as he explores the history of VR and muses on its future potential

The resurgence of virtual reality in recent years has been the single most influential change in the direction of the entertainment industry and may well change how we consume content forever. After a slow and stuttering start over four decades ago, the handbrake was finally released when Palmer Lucky launched Oculus Rift in 2013. Since then, VR has pushed its way into every aspect of media, marketing, entertainment and design. It has led to the development of communities, melded new design methodologies, fuelled numerous tech start-ups and ignited countless production companies. But with this new medium comes the need for caution; what can we learn from VR’s past to prevent the mistakes of the future, and where is that future heading?

1970s: Virtual Genesis

Virtual Reality as a concept is thought to have been first written about by sci-fi author Stanley G. Weinbaum in his short story of 1935, Pygmalion’s Spectacles, in which a professor invents a pair of goggles that enable the main character to see a “movie that gives one sight and sound… taste, smell, and touch… You are in the story, you speak to the shadows (characters) and they reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it.”

However, the first real example of what we would consider an actual VR headset wasn’t created until 1968, when Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull built an HMD [head-mounted display]. Named the Sword of Damocles, it was a primitive device that was so heavy it couldn’t be supported by the user, and had to be suspended from the ceiling, making it reminiscent of one of the trap devices in the Saw films. The experience of using it was probably just as torturous, as the graphical capability was, not surprisingly, extremely limited, with environments comprised of simple wire-frame rooms. So, while the seeds of discovery had been sown for the future, VR made little impact outside of specific tech circles and it would stay that way for quite some time.

1980s: Prehistoric HMD

During the 80s, interest in VR technology grew, though the results rarely matched expectations. It was during this period that Jaron Lanier, one of the industry’s pioneers, popularised the term ‘virtual reality’. Following Atari’s poor attempt at creating a research lab dedicated to VR in 1982, Lanier, along with Thomas G. Zimmerman, founded VPL Research (nothing to do with underwear) in 1984. It was here that he developed several VR devices, such as the EyePhone (nothing to do with Apple). The EyePhone actually looked and behaved very similarly to modern day HMDs; put a VR novice in front of a line-up of headsets and they probably wouldn’t be able to pick out which was from 2013 and which was developed 24 years earlier. The EyePhone looked like a potential triumph for VR, until you factored in the cost – upwards of US$250,000 in 1989 .

VPL was also responsible for the Data Glove, which was ultimately licensed to Mattel. Mattel went on to create the more recognisable Power Glove – a wholly deserved critical and commercial failure. As anyone who had the misfortune of using it will tell you, it was almost unmanageable in every aspect; suddenly the ‘It’s so bad’ Power Glove tagline from the Nintendo-funded movie flop, The Wizard, took on a whole new meaning. However; it was the first example of an affordable piece of VR tech and set the scene for future commercially available hardware. Despite these promising developments, and the introduction of industry publications CyberEdge and PCVR Magazine, VR remained on the outskirts of public consciousness, especially with the growing popularity of the internet. It was relegated to the sidelines of the tech industry, providing devices primarily for the medical and military sectors.

1990s: The Pixelated Dark Ages

1991 saw VR really take off. Sega announced their Sega VR headset for arcade games and the Mega Drive console, which used a combination of stereo headphones, LCD screens in a visor and inertial sensors to respond to user movements. Sadly, the product suffered from development issues and was ultimately dropped from the 1994 release line-up. Though Sega claimed that the VR was just “too realistic” and that people could have injured themselves while wearing the headset, it was more likely down to the dreaded ‘sim sickness’, nausea caused by ‘perceived’ but not ‘felt’ motion.

They tried again a few years later with the Sega VR-1 arcade attraction, which tracked player head movement and featured fully 3D graphics. Around the same time, a company called Virtuality launched the first mass-produced, multiplayer VR entertainment system for arcades and theme parks. Featuring headsets and exoskeleton gloves, it enjoyed way more success than the competition – possibly due to the ability to interact with other users while inside the system – and despite crude graphics and limited processing power, Computer Gaming World lauded it for having “all the necessary hallmarks of a fully immersive system”. The big bump in the road? A decidedly un-wallet friendly cost of US$73,000, once again pricing the everyday consumer out of the VR race.

In 1995, Nintendo launched Virtual Boy, a critical and commercial flop, thanks to its uncomfortable and unintuitive hardware, and the post-gaming nausea, dizziness and headaches that players were reporting. These early commercial dabblings with VR might seem amusing now, but they’ve left the industry with a negative legacy.

2000s: The Digital Age of Enlightenment

2007 saw a spark of light in an otherwise black period for VR with the launch of Google Streetview, which wowed both the tech world and general public. Its comparatively simple strategy of stitching together multiple images to create a 360-degree environment, with simple virtual tour navigation of hotspots and arrows, showed us that VR might have a place at the table one day. In 2010, Google introduced a stereoscopic 3D mode, which generated enough interest to put VR in the spotlight once more.

2010s – present: The VR Renaissance (Age Of Oculus)

VR has truly exploded in the last few years, with multiple companies joining the fight with their respective hardware. The daddy of them all, of course, is Oculus Rift, which reached its US$250,000 Kickstarter target in just four hours and was eventually launched in 2013 after raising US$2.5m. A year later, Facebook got in on the act, purchasing the Oculus VR start-up for US$2bn.

The Oculus Rift has undoubtedly been the most explosive and versatile of the latest range of HMDs available, and it’s this versatility that has inspired thousands of developers and tech start-ups to begin creating VR products to rival the larger studios. The potential applications for the technology are limited only by your imagination (and your budget). At Rewind, we have been using the Rift for a diverse range of projects from entertainment and simulation, through to visualisation and product review. Take our Red Bull Air Race VR experience, which allows users to experience what it’s like to fly at 200mph in the cockpit of an air-racer – at 50ft off the floor.

This is only possible with a combination of modern game engines powering the experiences, and telemetry data from pilots to drive a virtual simulation of each flight. But it’s this graphical power of hardware combined with the Rift’s capabilities that has enabled development of fully VR-ready games, such as Zombies On The Holodeck, a survival-horror game by Survios. The system itself is compatible with any mid- to high-end PC that’s running a Windows OS, and the modest price tag means that it’s available to everyday consumers – or at least it will be by 2016.

For enthusiasts who don’t have access to a good PC or a Rift headset, there’s always Cardboard, Google’s low-budget VR solution which can turn any compatible smartphone into a VR device for less than a fiver, and has led to other companies making more robust (yet still reasonably priced) HMDs that are compatible with any smartphone. At Rewind, we use these fully portable headsets to demo our projects – such as Stonemilker, a 360-degree music video we helped create for Björk – to the public.

The future: Mixed Reality

The future for the VR industry is looking increasingly bright, now we have something to offer that won’t make people throw up or have to file for bankruptcy. There’s unlimited potential for growth in so many areas, whether it’s games, training, apps to make life easier, or just for pure entertainment; there are already several new HMDs ready for launch in early 2016 that could help to push VR into the stratosphere. Most recently, HTC and Valve announced a partnership to develop their own VR headset, the HTC Vive, which is already garnering rave advance reviews. Sony has also released details of an upcoming VR headset to rival the Rift; Project Morpheus, which would be exclusively compatible with the PS4 and bring VR to console gamers.

And there’s more to come: VR isn’t the end of the road; we’re now beginning to move into MR (mixed reality), with companies such as Microsoft getting in on the ground floor with HoloLens, a system that scans the environment to fit 3D graphics into the real world. However, the real unicorn of the VR/MR industry is the mysterious start-up, Magic Leap, which is reportedly developing an HMD that melds real life and VR. It’s all very hush-hush, but several big companies have invested $500 million into the technology, including Google (tellingly, they invested shortly after pulling Google Glass – a great ‘social experiment’ in gauging the public’s reaction to AR/MR devices).

Another side effect of the VR boom is the development of hardware to complement the already available and forthcoming HMDs. Realism and fully immersive experiences are becoming increasingly important to consumers, meaning that peripherals, such as full-body controllers and motion sensors, are becoming more popular. Spain-based NeuroDigital Technologies has been working on Gloveone, a smart glove that can accurately simulate touch, enabling users to feel and interact with virtual objects – a step up from the motion-control gloves of the 80s and 90s.

The sudden interest in VR can be simply explained by the advancements in technological capabilities that now allow us to fabricate concepts that have been around since the 50s. One of the main downfalls of primitive VR technology was the inability to effectively actualise any of the designs, no matter how good the original idea. Both HMDs and peripherals suffered from poor software, clunky and unintuitive hardware and a price tag that everyday consumers couldn’t afford. Now, we can say with certainty that those days are behind us and the dawn of truly immersive and affordable VR has begun.