The earliest virtual reality equipment can be traced back to 1962. A device called "Sensorama" allows people to sit in a chair, put their heads in, and form a sense of space through three display screens, thus realizing a virtual reality experience. Subsequently, the head-mounted Sutherland display appeared, but due to technical limitations, it was very bulky and needed to design a special support bar on the ceiling, which was dubbed "Sword of Damocles".
In the mid-1980s, virtual reality equipment was mainly used in some government and military institutions, such as the flight simulator of NASA. By the end of 1980s, jaron lanier, a former Atari employee and now the "father of virtual reality", finally put forward the concept of VR (Virtual Reality), but it didn't succeed.
Although people have been fantasizing about the arrival of virtual reality in various sci-fi movies, it was not until 199 1 that a device named "Virtual 1000CS" appeared in the consumer market. But because of its bulky shape, single function and expensive price, virtual reality is still a conceptual existence.
In the era of Internet and intelligent platform generate, technology manufacturers have picked up the concept of virtual reality again, and Oculus Rift and other devices came into being. Oculus Rift is obviously the hero who really makes ordinary consumers pay attention to virtual display devices. Although the financing of this virtual reality head-mounted display, which landed on Kickstarter crowdfunding platform in 20 12, failed, it obtained160,000 USD of venture capital and completed the first round of capital accumulation. Later, from 2065438 to March 2004, Facebook bought the company for $2 billion. Oculus Rift is still in the development stage, and the second version of its development kit is sold to developers and core users, which has not yet appeared in the retail market. The main improvement of the second edition development package is to reduce nausea and dizziness, improve the effect of organic light-emitting diode display screen, and the camera can better capture the user's head movements.
Another virtual reality display that has attracted great attention is Sony's Project Morpheus. Compared with the cross-platform compatibility of Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus is only for Sony's PS4 game console, which is more like a vertical game peripheral. Of course, its advantages also lie in the number of users of PS4, stronger purchasing power and the support of many game manufacturers. The successful demonstrations at several game exhibitions this year seem to let players see the future of virtual reality games.
Oculus Rift, which is still under development, has actually formed a huge peripheral industry, including virtual reality treadmills, whole-body sensors, etc., and it is expected to build a virtual reality platform with diverse experiences. The first manufacturers of virtual reality devices, such as Facebook and Sony, obviously focused on home entertainment, connecting devices such as PCs and game consoles through virtual reality monitors to realize virtual social interaction, applications and games, aiming to build a huge platform.