From the first 3D Stereoscope to Apple Vision Pro: The evolution of XR through the ages

With the launch of Apple’s Vision Pro, a $3500 mixed-reality headset, the interest in the term “extended reality—where users can see the real world through the headset, but also interact with digital objects projected onto the real world—is seemingly high. But the truth is “extended reality” is something that has been around for a very long time.

We take a look at the origins of Extended Reality (XR), specific facts about VR/AR, and the people who have made the most impact with their work in the field of immersive technologies.

The 1880s

3D technology and virtual reality may seem new to many but their origins go back to the 1830s. Sir Charles Wheatstone, a Professor of Experimental Philosophy at King’s College, London, presented the concept (based only on drawings) of a “stereoscope” to the Royal Society of London. Wheatstone’s paper gave an overview of the concept of “stereopsis” or “binocular vision” where the brain combines two images (one from each eye) of the same object taken from different points to make a single 3D image.

Wheatstone was behind the first stereoscopic viewer in 1838 which created the illusion of 3D. (Image credit: King’s College, London)

This led to the development of the first stereoscopic viewer in 1838 which created the illusion of 3D. Although it was designed to investigate binocular vision, the stereoscope also acted as a form of drawing-room entertainment. No wonder Wheatstone’s invention of a stereoscope helped lay the groundwork for modern 3D and VR technology. In fact, most modern headsets use stereoscopic displays to show virtual objects in a third dimension.

The 1950s to the 1970s

While Wheatstone’s work on the stereoscope will always be instrumental in setting the template of 3D and VR technology, it was the visionary inventor and cinematographer Morton Heilig who gave the world the first VR machine.

In 1956, Heilig created something called “Sensorama Simulator”, a large booth that could fit four people. Sensorama, which was marketed as “the revolutionary motion picture system”, played a 3D film along with stereo sound, aromas, fans, and a vibrating chair to create an immersive sensory environment. Heilig created six short films, which he shot, produced, and edited to demonstrate what the VR machine was capable of. Ten years later, in 1962, Heilig patented the Sensorama Machine.

Although Sensorama did provide a 3D display with stereoscopic sound, it was not interactive and only played prerecorded short films. But two engineers (Comeau & Bryan) from Philco Corporation were already thinking about how to take Heilig’s idea to the next level. They created the ‘Headsight’, a headset which offered one screen per eye like a modern-day VR/Mixed-reality headset complete with head-tracking technology. Introduced in 1961, the Headsight was the first motion-tracking head-mounted display (HMD).

Even though the Headsight was superior to anything seen in the immersive tech space, it wasn’t designed for virtual reality experiences (the term didn’t exist at that time). Instead, the Headsight was designed specifically for the military to allow them to remotely observe dangerous situations. It worked in conjunction with a remote camera that would track the user’s head movements so that they look around more naturally. Headsight was the first step toward a fully functional virtual reality headset.

Seven years later, computer scientist Ivan Sutherland and his student Bob Sproull created the first headset connected to a computer-generated 3D environment. The head-mounted display, named The Sword of Damocles, was too heavy and had to be mounted to the ceiling. But the headset was the first one to be connected to a computer, allowing users to see a computer-generated 3D world. Sure, computer visuals were basic and made up of wireframe rooms and objects. But then, the headset allowed users to experience a computer-generated 3D environment for the first time, and that too in 1968. More so, the headset, in a sense, was geared to provide augmented reality than virtual reality.

Then MIT created the Aspen Movie Map, a new way to take a virtual tour of Aspen, Colorado as far back as 1978. The idea was to take users on a computer-generated tour through the town of Aspen. It was created using photographs from a car driving through the city. Users didn’t require headsets but the virtual tour was meant to be interactive, similar to how Google Street Views functions.

The 1980s to the 1990s

The development of VR and supported applications had begun to gain steam with Jaron Lanier in the 1980s. Lanier along with Thomas Zimmerman founded VPL Research, the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves. Founded in 1985, Lanier, who is credited with coining the term “virtual reality”, really took VR to a whole new level. His company not only found ways to create commercial VR hardware but also write software for the devices which made Lanier the pioneer in the field of virtual reality.

At one point, Lanier’s company was selling VR headsets for as high as $49,000. While VR technology was still in its inception and the cost of the headset and the computer to run it made it limited to a select few, the biggest challenge Lanier faced was transporting the headset and giving a demo to those who are interested in the technology.

Jaron Lanier is widely considered “The father of Virtual Reality.” (Image credit: Jaron Lanier official website)

But as we entered the 1990s, virtual reality got a big push, especially among the average consumers, through VR arcade machines. The Virtuality Group released several arcade games and arcade machines that allowed gamers to a new 3D gaming world. Around the same time, Japanese gaming giant Sega revealed its plans to enter the VR market with a headset designed to work with its Genesis and Mega Drive consoles. But Sega never released the headset. It was discontinued shortly after its big reveal at the Consumer Electronics Show, and the company since then never returned with a VR headset. However, the company did release Sega VR-1, a motion simulator arcade machine in 1994.

But things were about to change in the virtual reality market with the entry of Nintendo but no one expected it would be that bad. In 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in North America. The console promised gaming in virtual reality but failed to deliver on all fronts. Not only was the console weird looking, but the games also weren’t really in virtual reality. They were basically red lines stacked on top of each other, seen through a viewfinder. Nintendo reportedly sold 770,000 Virtual Boy units worldwide during its limited lifespan, making it the worst Nintendo console of all time.

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After the failure of Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, things went really quiet for the consumer VR market for a very long time. Most brands that were active in VR at one point in time had either stopped experimenting with VR or temporarily put future devices on hold. That being said, research in both VR and AR (the term “augmented reality” was coined in 1990 by Boeing researcher Tom Caudell) was continued.

In fact, interest in AR, a technology that combines the digital world with real elements, during the late 90s had started to pick up. In 1998, Sportsvision broadcast the first live NFL game in AR, and a year later, Nasa made use of augmented reality for flying the X-38 by creating a special AR dashboard for navigation. And in the early 2000s, the world’s first outdoor AR game, ARQuake, was launched.

From 2010 to 2020

But from 2010 onward, the XR market entered a new phase, thanks to then-18-year-old Palmer Luckey, who created the first prototype of the Oculus Rift headset. It featured a 90-degree field of vision, and relied on a computer’s processing power to deliver the images. Luckey then launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the brand-new Oculus Rift VR headset in 2012, and it was a smash success. Luckey raised $2.4 million, and his company Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for around $2 billion.

Although the market for VR headsets was niche back then, Facebook’s interest in virtual reality caught the attention of both investors and the general public. Development in the VR space sped up faster than expected, and brands like Sony had begun to work on VR headsets. The announcement of Project Morpheus, a VR headset for the PlayStation 4 (PS4), got a lot of attention.

Google Glass were a pair of smart AR glasses with no actual use case. (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

While headsets like the Rift and HTC Vive rose in popularity, they were still catering to enthusiasts. That was the time when Google released its first Cardboard device, a low-cost cardboard VR viewer for smartphones. Samsung soon followed with its Gear VR, a headset that requires a smartphone to work.

Parallelly, AR was seeing a lot of interest from Big Tech. In 2012, Google took everyone by surprise by unveiling its Google Glass AR glasses, AR glasses which overlay digital information onto the real world and allow users to access apps like Gmail. Google Glass, however, was poorly received due to its high price and privacy concerns.

Then in 2016, Microsoft released its HoloLens headset, which heavily leaned on “mixed reality” as the technology blends the digital and real world. This was the time when “Pokémon Go” was one of the hottest mobile games that brought AR into the mainstream. Even Apple, for that matter, wanted to get into AR space with an augmented reality developer kit, dubbed ARKit, in a move that aims to bring augmented reality experiences to iPhones and iPads.

Between 2017 and 2019, a lot of big and small startups entered the XR market but no one made as big noise as Magic Leap. The buzzy, secretive, startup was on a roll-coaster ride by raising funds from investors but its first headset, released in 2018, proved to be a big flop. The company has since shifted its focus to industrial and healthcare uses of its headsets.

Can Metaverse make a comeback in 2023?

The past two years have been a disaster for the Metaverse, the word Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg describes a fully realised digital world that exists beyond the one in which we live. It’s still a nerd(y) concept that he tried to push into the mainstream by changing the name of his social networking company to Meta in 2021 and then pouring billions of dollars into still developing virtual reality. This year, especially after the launch of Apple’s Vision VR, everyone has acknowledged that Zuckerber’s Metaverse strategy may not be what people want.

Apple says Vision Pro is its entry into ‘spacial computing.’ (Image credit: Anuj Bhatia/Indian Express)

Contrary to the initial belief many had about Apple and its XR strategy, people are now supporting the Cupertino-based company’s route of making headsets popular after others failed to capture the public’s imagination. Developers, especially, are excited excitement about the headset. And again, at $3,500, the Vision Pro is aimed at developers and true Apple fans. But Apple’s thought of face computers as a spatial computing platform and not a singular device still makes a lot of sense than the Metaverse which remains a ghost digital town despite Meta selling millions of Quest headsets.