But you can read about when and how it DID start in this exciting book.

VR, which we now call xR, was first imagined and demonstrated in the 1960’s by Ivan Sutherland and Mort Heilig, pioneers who envisioned an artificial environment that would enable people to do things only seen in dreams. Their efforts were crude and awkward by modern standards. But they created the hardware that led to today’s amazing VR and AR systems, and to the Metaverse.

 Virtual reality had its commercial takeoff in the '90s, with dozens of head-mounted displays, talk of virtual drug trips, excitement about cybersex, and the potential to change everything from the way we vacation to the way we educate our children. How much of that promise has actually been realized?

Much of what we're hearing in today’s conversations about virtual-reality is not much different from what was heard 30 years ago. There's the same excitement, the same incredible promises, the same questions about the philosophy of virtual worlds, and many of the same technical difficulties that existed in the 90s. It seems that today's VR pioneers don’t know the history of virtual-reality, and therefore, as Santyana predicted, are repeating it. You can avoid that hardship.

This book is more than 400 pages of the history and excitement of those times, and presents many of the applications, technology, and people who created virtual-reality in the 1990s. It includes more than 80 images and is fully indexed.

Those who know history hold the key to powerful futures. This book can be your key.