The exact origins of this technology are still unknown but in the late 20th Century Morton Heilig who is a cinematographer applied his experience into making a device called the Sensorama.
(Virtualspeech.com, 2019)
In the 80s the term Virtual Reality came into use and it was popularized by Jaron Lanier founder of VPL Research. At that time VR devices were used mainly in the fields such as medicine, aviation, and military training.
In the early 90s, Sega announced the production of a headset for the use of arcade games. It used an LCD screen to display the content to the user and inertial sensors that allowed the system to track the movements of the user.
Some major recent developments of VR technology are, 1. In 2007 Google introduced its Google Street View, a service that shows the real-time panoramic snaps of world’s places.
2. Sony introduced their PlayStation VR in 2014 as a part of the PlayStation 4 console. Following that, Google introduced a user-friendly Cardboard VR Headset where users place their phone inside this cardboard.
3. HTC write their name in the history books as they marked the first release of VR headsets with sensor-based tracking which allows the users to move freely in a limited space.
(The Franklin Institute, 2019)
(Image.slidesharecdn.com, 2019)