Replay: The History of Video Games by Tristan Donovan

Author:Tristan Donovan [Donovan, Tristan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Popular Culture, Social Science, vl-nfcompvg
ISBN: 9780956507204
Google: _lrSSAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0956507204
Publisher: Yellow Ant
Published: 2010-04-20T00:00:00+00:00

Merchants of Doom: (left to right) John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall and Jay Wilbur. Courtesy of John Romero 20. The Ultimate Display

In 1965 computer graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland laid down an ambitious chal enge to the computer scientists at the annual International Federation for Information Processing Congress. He outlined an elaborate vision of the future, a time when computers would create “the ultimate display”. The computer display of tomorrow, he ventured, would not just look like the real world, it would feel, respond and sound like reality too. Creating that virtual reality, he argued, is what computer researchers should see as their ultimate goal.

Sutherland’s bold vision fired the imagination of computer scientists.[1] They threw themselves enthusiastical y into trying to create “the ultimate display”. They built head-mounted displays, helmets with computer screens for each eye that consumed the wearers’ field of vision like a pair of hi-tech binoculars. They figured out how to construct virtual objects out of coloured polygon shapes, usual y triangles, to create an il usion of 3D on 2D computer screens.[2] They built electronic gloves to let people interact with these 3D worlds using their hands and designed haptic feedback devices that conveyed the sensation of touch with their vibrations.

Although some of these breakthroughs seeped out of the research labs in the form of the flight simulators for pilot training, for the first two decades fol owing Sutherland’s landmark speech the work of virtual reality researchers went, for the most part, unnoticed.

But as the 1990s began the wider world final y latched onto the idea of virtual reality, partly as a result of talk about the development of internet and the connected world it would usher in. The virtual realities these researchers sought to create provided an easily understandable and visual representation of the global network the internet promised. “Virtual reality was a great symbol of how the internet would take over our lives,” said Jonathan Waldren, the founder of British virtual reality research company W. Industries, which later renamed itself Virtuality. “There was a lot of hype, people were being told by analysts that the internet was going to be a paradigm shift for everything in life and for a lot of people that was real y bewildering.”

Virtual reality may have been a separate idea from the internet, but for a world trying to get its head around the abstract idea of what a networked world would be like, it brought the concept to life. After 20 years of being ignored, virtual reality became one of the most talked about areas of computer research. Investors pumped mil ions of dol ars into research projects and virtual reality start-ups hoping to cash in on the new world. Journalists flocked to see the latest developments before returning with reports about how in the future we could be spending as much time in the virtual world as in the real world. TV documentaries excitedly discussed the possibility of cybersex in the virtual reality worlds that, at the time, seemed to be just around the corner.

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