This year in my class I am learning about Virtual Reality. I will talk about the history of virtual reality and what is was first used for. Then I will talk about virtual reality today as it rises again in our modern world. Lastly will be the future of virtual reality and how it will impact our near future.

Virtual Reality was first brought up in the 1960s when Ivan Sutherland made the Head-Mounted Display or HMD for short. According to Encyclopedia of World Scientists by Elizabeth H. Oakes the prototype was a mounted display with "infrared cameras that moved in conjugation with pilots' head movement, thus acting as their eyes at night and thick fog." Sutherland later advanced his HMD by adding computer-generated scenes to replace the cameras in 1966. The first virtual reality systems were mainly used in the air force to train pilots how to fly. Later in the mid-1990s the gaming industry were starting to implement virtual reality into gaming but do “the headset’s graphical output, he said, lay in the barfogenic zone”. (Barras, 2014)

            Today in our modern world one company reignited virtual reality in 2012 and that was Oculus. They launch a Kickstarter back in 2012 and made over $2.4 million from it, to start up the project. Later in 2014 Facebook bought them for $2 billion. However other companies are also creating their own VR systems like Sony and Google. Virtual Reality is also being used in other fields besides gaming like medical, education, and the military. For medical used they train interns with virtual simulation to test their abilities to see how they would handle it just like in the field. All of the branches of the military use virtual reality for battlefield simulations, flight training, medic training, vehicle simulation, and virtual boot camps. (Virtual Reality in the Military. 2009)

            The future of virtual reality can go any in direction.  The holodeck from Star Trek could a thing in the future. Virtual reality in the future could disable your motor function as you play the game or simulation so you do don’t move around. Other form of virtual reality systems could be a 3D room or a hologram. It could also be implemented into the working place so many people could be working at home in their beds. Virtual reality can go really far if it implemented in the right way.

            Virtual Reality history is young and it future is bright. It will continue to make news as it grows. As for right now it most own buy the military and developers, but soon some this year it will be available to the public.

References

Virtual Reality in the Military. (2009, January 1). Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://www.vrs.org.uk/virtual-reality-military/index.html

How virtual reality overcame its 'puke problem' (2014, March 26). Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140327-virtual-realitys-puke-problem

Encyclopedia of World Scientists. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14, 2015, from http://books.google.com/books?id=uPRB-OED1bcC&printsec=copyright&source=gbs_pub_info_r#v=onepage&q&f=false