VIRTUAL ORIGINS

VR has been kicking about for a while in various forms. Perhaps the most memorable precursor to modern VR was Nintendo’s oft-maligned Virtual Boy, a table-mounted headset that demanded you press your eye holes into it to experience wonky stereoscopic 3D games in all their red-tinted 32-bit glory. It was frankly horrible, and a huge commercial failure for Nintendo.

The Virtual Boy (pictured above) might be a familiar industry touchstone, but it wasn’t a true VR headset; the focus was on headache-inducing parallax 3D. Sony’s Glasstron visor was a true predecessor of VR as we know it today; a proper headmounted display that enabled gamers to take a seat in the cockpit of a war machine in MechWarrior2. Sony released five models of the Glasstron across three years in the ’90s, and while they weren’t a huge success, they would set the stage for Sony to produce PlayStation VR nearly 20 years later.

Some smaller companies tried to take a stab at VR before the turn of the century, too, none leaving much impact. In Britain, IBM-funded company Virtuality Group experimented with VR headsets in arcades, and some have argued that the arcade is the perfect setting for VR; a chance to try out games and experiences in virtual reality, without having to fork out hundreds of dollars for the hardware. In fact, modern VR headsets aren’t an uncommon sight in arcades today, although the decline of arcades in general doesn’t bode very well for that avenue of success.

It’s difficult to chart how exactly the history of VR led to Palmer Luckey’s Oculus Rift prototype in 2012. It was a fresh start; an effort to revive VR with the new technology of the day. And it worked. VR was back with a bang, ready to enter a new golden age, only to grind to a halt again as the buzz of excitement died down, and the harsh realities set in.