If we are to look into the field of technology developments, few things got as much time in the spotlight this year as the advances in virtual reality. Most tech titans seems to have realized that since VR is finally here, it’s their time to make it shine, so most major companies are working on their own devices. These, among a few more others, are the reasons why virtual reality is the future of technology.
VR in the past
The first mention of virtual reality would in 1938, in Antonin Artaud’s ”Le Théâtre et son double”, when he referred to the illusory nature of objects in theatre as “la réalité virtuelle”. The book was translated to English in 1958, and that was the first time the term was published.
The term was only used with its current meaning in the 1982 sci-fi novel “The Judas Mandala” and starting with the late ‘80s and early ’90s, it started seeing a huge rise in popularity both in pop culture and in research.
VR in the present
With countless shows, movies, and novels taking the concept of virtual reality and having fun exploring it in new and interesting ways, it’s only natural that the generation that grew up expecting a future filled with such inventions decided to take matters into their own hands, and produce their own devices.
So, now the market is full of prototypes, as well as finished models, that promise to take us where the developers’ imaginations once went. We have a rising industry that is developing both hardware and software for what the developers dreamed of in their childhood and teenage years.
We have games, pictures, exercise programs, and even videos that allow you to get sucked into a fake world, some better than others, and we keep working on the technology, hoping that one day, maybe soon, we’ll get what we were promised.
VR in the future
And this takes us to what is currently in development, as well as the future of the industry.
According to HTC Vive, they made such a huge breakthrough in VR technology that they decided to skip their first model of VR devices, and instead launch the second one, with the new and improved features, next year.
Avegant’s Glyph promises a completely new way of experiencing movies, with their device projecting the video directly to your eyes, giving you a fully realistic virtual reality.
There are currently two paths the industry can take.
It can either keep developing at extraordinary speeds, and in a couple of years it will bring us all that was promised by the ‘90s, or it can die out, people realizing that they don’t really need VR in their lives.
However, as a quick reminder, it was at one point speculated that nobody would ever need or use a computer.
Image source: Pixabay
