How the video game crash in the 1980s gave rise to the first VR glasses
No other decade shaped the development of virtual reality as much as the 1980s. The near end of video games played a decisive role in this.
VPL Research and NASA were largely responsible for the development of virtual reality in the 1980s.
(Image: Wade Sisler (NASA))
The history of virtual reality is full of curiosities, exciting stories and pioneers who have achieved unique things. However, the 1980s were probably the most important time for the development of this medium. In this decade, the history of virtual reality took a decisive turn – paradoxically, triggered by the collapse of the video game industry. Without this crash and the resulting developments, there might never have been an Oculus Rift or Valve Index.
LEEP: An inventor convinces NASA
After the first immersive experiments in the 1960s around Morton Heilig's “Sensorama” and Ivan Sutherland's “The Damocles Sword”, research into virtual realities remained quiet for a long time. It was not until the 1980s that development picked up speed again, when NASA rediscovered its interest in innovative future technologies. The ball was set rolling in 1980 by photographer Eric Howlett with his “LEEP Panoramic Stereo Photography System” – consisting of a wide-angle camera and a viewing device with a field of view of up to 140 degrees.
Although Howlett caused a sensation with his invention at the Photographic Society of America conference, he was unable to convince established companies such as Kodak. The attempt at in-house production also failed. It was only when a NASA engineer heard about the invention in the mid-1980s that LEEP became a reality and later attracted the interest of VPL Research – one of the most important companies in the history of VR.
From gardening glove to data glove
At the same time, MIT graduate Thomas Zimmerman worked on the implementation of virtual musical instruments and developed a system for measuring finger bending. His prototype consisted of a simple gardening glove with hollow tubes on each finger, equipped with LED lights and phototransistors. The more a finger bent, the less light passed through the tubes. In 1982, Zimmerman filed a patent for his optical flex sensor.
However, Zimmerman's prototype was not the first data glove ever developed. As early as 1977, Daniel J. Sandin and Tom DeFanti designed the “Sayre Glove” based on a similar principle. However, this never made it beyond prototype status. Zimmerman, on the other hand, had many plans for his garden glove in the following years.
Through his programming colleague Nancy Mayer, wife of ATARI co-founder Steve Mayer, he finally came to ATARI. The gaming giant's research laboratory was working on the future of digital entertainment media at the time and offered Zimmerman 10,000 US dollars for the patent rights to his data glove, but he turned it down.
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The video game crash as a turning point
In 1983, the video game crisis hit ATARI hard and forced the company to close its research laboratory. From then on, Zimmerman concentrated on developing voice synthesizers, and his Flex sensor disappeared into a drawer. Jaron Lanier, who had developed the innovative music game “Moondust” for ATARI, also lost his job as a result of the crash.
Lanier used the license income from “Moondust” to research a visual programming language – Code was to be replaced by characters, symbols, and sounds. Lanier wanted to make complex programming accessible to non-computer scientists. However, the project was ahead of its time: the monitors of the time were simply too small for the display.
The birth of VPL Research
In 1984, music lovers Lanier and Zimmerman finally met at a Stanford concert. For Lanier, Zimmerman's Flex sensor seemed to be the ideal input device for his visual programming language. Together they founded VPL Research and worked with a team on the technical realization of their vision. VPL Research did groundbreaking pioneering work: Lanier coined the term “virtual reality” for the first time in 1987, further developed his programming language for VR applications under the name “Body Electric” and created the first virtual avatars with the rendering engine “Isaac”.
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Zimmerman's gardening glove became the “Z-Glove” with ultrasound tracking, which recognized hand positions in three-dimensional space for the first time. The next iteration, the “Data Glove”, used magnetic sensors and fiber optics for more precise measurements. NASA recognized the potential immediately.
The emergence of the first commercial VR goggles
In 1985, the US space agency developed the “Virtual Environment Display System” – a wide-angle display system with a 120-degree field of view, mounted on a conventional motorcycle helmet with motion sensors. This was intended to allow engineers to view their models in three-dimensional space – an area of application that is part of the standard repertoire for current VR and mixed reality headsets such as the Apple Vision Pro or the HTC Vive Focus Vision in the B2B segment.
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From 1986, VPL Research helped with the further development of “VIEW”, which was based on Howlett's LEEP system and was intended to enable virtual simulations and robot control in real time. VPL Research did not take its foot off the gas and introduced the next innovation shortly after the Data Glove. The glove became an entire suit: the “Data Suit” was able to capture movements of the arms, legs, and torso and was primarily used as a motion capturing suit for film shoots.
A year later, VPL presented the first commercial VR glasses: the“VPL EyePhone HRX”, which has a strange name from today's perspective. The VR glasses were primarily intended for use by companies and in research. No wonder because even for the most tech-savvy private users, the purchase price of 49,000 US dollars – adjusted for inflation, this corresponds to around 140,000 US dollars today – would have been an almost insurmountable hurdle. VPL estimated a further 9,000 US dollars for the Data Glove, which had been further developed as an input device.
The end of an era
To operate the VR goggles, users needed enormously powerful computers for the time. For a complete set, consisting of VR glasses, data glove and computer, the acquisition costs amounted to around 250,000 US dollars. This corresponds to a value of around 700,000 US dollars today. However, the devices were far from comparable with today's standards and, despite all the innovation, suffered from the technical limitations of the time.
The “EyePhone” had a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels per eye and only managed five to six images per second. For comparison: TV sets at the time already achieved 30 frames per second, today's popular VR glasses such as Valve Index, Meta Quest 3 or Playstation VR 2 work with frame rates of up to 144 Hz and the Apple Vision Pro has a resolution of 4K. Despite the (theoretically) impressive technology, there were hardly any lucrative areas of application and the consumer market remained out of reach due to the high production costs. Nevertheless, in 1989, a slimmed-down DataGlove version achieved dubious fame as a hyped Nintendo accessory.
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VPL became increasingly unattractive to investors and had to file for bankruptcy in 1990 – shortly before the first big VR hype in the entertainment sector –. Today, gaming is considered the big door opener for VR on the consumer market. Ironically, it was the video game crash of 1983 that laid the foundation for modern virtual reality. Without the closure of the ATARI research labs, Lanier and Zimmerman might have never come together, and VPL Research would never have been able to do the necessary pioneering work for today's developments with their research. Incidentally, NASA still uses virtual reality for astronaut training today. VR goggles from Meta are used, which retail for around 500 euros and no longer even require a computer to operate.
(joe)
