The Rise and Fall of Virtual Reality
Griffin Kao, Jessica Hong, Michael Perusse, Weizhen Sheng · Apress eBooks · 2020
In Pygmalion’s Spectacles , Stanley G. Weinbaum describes “a movie that gives one sight and sound. Suppose now I add taste, smell, even touch ... Suppose I make it so that you are in the story, you speak to the shadows, and the shadows reply, and instead of being on a screen, the story is all about you, and you are in it. Would that be to make real a dream?” Such a fantastical description may sound familiar. Virtual reality (VR) describes technology that allows a user to experience an entirely virtual world. Though VR is often seen as a cutting-edge technology of the modern day, its core concepts originated much earlier. In fact, Pygmalion’s Spectacles was written in 1935, and some of the foundational VR technology was created even earlier. With VR existing for decades, what has prevented it from fully catching on? To answer this, we’ll have to start at the very beginning.