What's the history of the metaverse.
Today the metaverse is used to describe this
more immersive Internet,
where we use augmented and virtual reality to
make this whole experience more immersive,
we can project things into our room using
augmented reality,
where we can walk into environments using our
avatars,
the thing is that this is not new so I want to
look back at some of the key historic milestones that have led to where we are
today,
it all started back in 1838,
when scientist sir charles wheatstone outlined the concept of binocular vision,
where you combine 2 images one for each eye to
make a single ThreeD image,
and this led to the development of stereoscopes,
where you use those two images to create this
illusion of depth,
the same concept i used today in modern vr
headsets,
Now we jump to 1935 when american science
fiction writer stanley winebone published Pygmalion spectacles in which the
main character explores the fictional world using a pair of goggles,
so this is when the idea started in 1956 morton
heiling created the first vr machine combining a 3d video with audio smells and
vibrating chairs to immerse the viewer in a movie,
heilig also went on to patent the first head
mounted display combining stereoscopic 3d images with stereo sound and this happened.
In 1960 between 1960s and 1970s we also saw the
first use of augmented reality in the military in the army with headsets for
pilots for example.
In the 1970s mit created aspen movie map,
which is a computer generated tour of the
streets of aspen,
and this i guess is the first time we could use
vr to transport users to another place.
In 1982 the term metaverse was first used in neil
stevenson's novel snow crash,
where it was a place where people went to escape
the deery totalitarian reality of the real world they live in.
In the early 1990s we saw vr arcade machines
like the sega vr1 motion simulators and they were used in lots of arcades.
In 1998 sports vision broadcast the first live
nfl game with a yellow yacht maker,
so the idea of overlaying graphics onto our tv
screens which very quickly spread to other sports broadcasting.
In 2010 18 year old palmer lucky created the
prototype for the oculus rift vr headset,
that had a 90 degree field of vision and used
computer processing power,
which really revolutionized the the headset
market and reignited interest in vr.
in 2011 we saw the release of the book ready
player 1,
which then became a movie directed by steven Spielberg,
which again gives us this idea of the metaverse being
this completely immersive world that we enter to escape from reality.
in 2014 facebook then acquired oculus vr for
around 2 billion,
also in 2014 sony and samsung announced they
were creating their own vr headsets,
& google released its 1st cardboard device a
low-cost cardboard vr viewer,
where you stick your phone in and it gives you
the vr experience,
as well as google glass was released the ar
glasses from google.
in 2016 microsoft released its hololens headset
which gave us mixed reality.
so we could create a holographic image in front
of us that we could then put into the real world and manipulate,
also 2016 saw the release of pokemon go which
means everyone was running around with their smartphones trying to find the
little pokemons in the real world,
and ikea released the place app which was
the first innovative way of using augmented
reality where you can place furniture into your house and see what it looks
like,
in 2020 we saw the introduction of lidar in
iphones and ipads,
which meant it can detect depth much better and
augmented reality will become more realistic,
in 2021 facebook changed its name to meta which
signaled its focus on the metaverse,
hdc launched the vive flow which is a a really
portable virtual reality headset that looks like sunglasses and ray-ban again
in collaboration with facebook or meta created their stories smart glasses,
and i believe we'll see more of these immersive
interfaces appearing,
for example apple is working on headsets that could potentially replace our smartphones as the interface into the metaverse in the future.
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