Mixed and virtual reality have captured the imagination of many sci-fi writers and movie makers for decades, even up to the late 21st century. Leia Organa of Star Wars pops up in a hologram to warn the Rebels that Darth Vader is going to blow up a planet. Or until very recently, the First Avengers movie had holographic computers inside the big Spaceship/ Aircraft carrier. Books like Ready Player One capture this exact idea but take it to a whole new level.
Virtual reality
The very first virtual reality devices were created in the early days of the inception of personal computers. When the two Steves from Apple were working on the Apple Two, down south in Hollywood, a filmmaker called Morton Heilig was toying with the idea of a very peculiar arcade game. But the experience he wished to bring to this game couldn’t be replicated within the constraints of a regular arcade machine.
And so he came up with his own device called the “Sensorama,” arguably the world’s first virtual reality device. It featured a whole host of games, one of which was a game called “Bike Ride Around Brooklyn”, It featured a game where a user could experience what a motorcycle ride around Brooklyn would feel like, including the visuals, the smell, the gush of air in the face, and also the vibrations coming from the engine of the motorcycle. To do this, the device had a panoramic display, a vibrating seat and a smell generator to feature the various smells on the road as well as the small gush of wind in the face.
Enter the Sword of Damocles
Although the Sensorama was a pioneering product, it didn’t get any commercial success, partly due to bad marketing and the maintenance cost (it’s not viable to fill the machine with bags of Brooklyn scent every couple of weeks now, is it?). So for a long time, the whole concept was piled up on the shelf.
But not for long. In 1989, a small computer science professor from MIT had a spectacular idea to create a virtual immersive device that would provide users with a totally immersive virtual experience, and he named it “The Sword of Damocles.” It was not a very obvious name for the everyday user, but it was never intended to be for the common audience in the first place. Rather, it served purely as a research tool within the university.
Augmented reality
Augmented reality, a term coined by Thomas Caudell, is the combination of the words augment, which means to “increase or add,” and the word reality. So the word augmented reality basically means to increase or add something more to the existing perception of reality that would drastically change its nature.
The lens
Although there were prototypes of devices that vaguely represented something similar to an augmented reality device, none were on par with what we think of as virtual reality today until Google came into the picture.
The year is 2013, and Google launched its most innovative product yet of that time — The “Google Lens”. But just like its predecessor, the Sensorama, it didn’t take off as expected. Due to unclear value propositions and its high cost, consumers didn’t find the product particularly nifty and didn’t find a vacuum for the product to occupy their lives.
The current era
Fast forward to today, and there’s a multitude of different products that are on the market from various brands, such as Microsoft Hololens, Meta Quest headsets, and the newly introduced Apple Vision Pro. A lot of buzz has been created in the Mixed/ Augmented reality space in the past few years. Especially because of the recent Decentralized/ Metaverse movement, a lot of brands have hopped on the bandwagon. And some of the devices have proven to be extremely useful, and the features they provide are nothing short of revolutionary.
But the stir recently in the space boomed once again after Apple released its first mixed reality headset prototype, the “Apple Vision Pro.” This is the first view of a general purpose mixed reality product. Prior to the Vision Pro concept, most of the devices out there on the market were built for or at least marketed with the intention of gaming. But with Apple’s Vision Pro, the landscape just completely changed. Now for the first time, you have a comprehensive product that elevates the normal functions we do on flat screen computers.
The future and beyond
With the introduction of these modern mixed reality devices, there’s a lot of companies that are making products for these platforms. Apart from gaming companies, there’s a whole plethora of architectural and design companies that are out there trying to revolutionize the market with their products. There’s educational companies, construction and design companies that are trying to take the float on this new trade wind that is mixed reality. Some of these are really uniquely professional products, like the ones in architectural design, where there’s an opportunity for designers to create a sketch of a building while directly looking at the intended land.
So there’s two possibilities the technology could unravel, one as a general product where all the tasks we do on a normal computer would be shifted to the virtual space, and the experience of using some of those would be elevated far beyond the way they are right now. Imagine a normal video calling application where, instead of seeing the person on the other side on a flat screen, we’ll be able to feel like the person is right in front of us in flesh and blood.
Entertainment would be elevated far beyond what it is today, and I’m not talking just about games; watching Night King’s Army in season 8 would feel as if you were an actual Nightwalker. Digital experiences are going to change dramatically.
Then there’s another possibility, where the product would only be used by just architects, teachers, doctors, and medical students. Medical training won’t have to rely on cadavers anymore; they could learn about morphology from a vision pro. Instead of rendering a 3D model of a building, architects would be able to provide a real life view of a structure.
But would that be the case? We could only sit back and watch to see things unfold, or else get your hands dirty and try making stuff, because the future could never be imagined; it could only be invented.
