My second article of the VR series. This episode says about america and thier contribution in Virtual Reality.

It was America Who started the game. It was them who ever thought a world can be made around you which is not actually existing but you will feel like being in a real world. It was them who was behind the evolution of Virtual Reality. They made it popular. Even they can be called the father of this technology. It would be even justified if I would have named the article as History of VR. Because american’s are all over it.

Around a century ago, in 1935, An American fiction writer Stanley Weinbaum published a short story called ‘Pygmalion’s Spectacles’. He presented a goggles in his story. You wear that and you can see things happening around you. You can have the noise, the smell, the touch around you. This was probably the very first thought of virtual reality that came across of any mind. Stanley might have thought that without knowing its possibility but American are known for making the mere thought into reality.

Stanley’s mere thought got the first light of reality on it, when an american filmmaker Morton Heilig, in search of making something new, eventually made a big machine for having virtual reality experience. It was called Sensoroma. It used to give the viewer a complete feel of having the pictured atmosphere around with stereoscopic color display, fans, odor emitters, stereo‐sound system, and a motional chair.

But it was quite tough to maintain that giant machine and it was not really able to provide that real feeling. It should have been something which do not confine you to a sitting position and let you roam around. An American Computer scientist came up with an idea of a Head mounted device and presented a vision of ultimate display. The concept was of a virtual world viewed through an HMD which replicated reality so well that the user would not be able to differentiate from actual reality. This included the user being able to interact with objects.

So it was just a virtual view which you can see. You can not interact with the view. Myron kruger, An american computer scientist, made a krugyer’s videoplace, which is an interactive video platform. It used computer graphics, projectors, video cameras, video displays and position-sensing technology and it didn’t use goggles or gloves. VIDEOPLACE consisted of dark rooms with large video screens to surround the user in “VR”.

Let’s jump a bit to today’s age. If you want to have a VR experience now, the first thing you will need is a headset. And Oculus is one of the top selling VR headsets manufactured by a company named oculus, which is an american company itself.

But it doesn’t end here. To succeed, you will need something that will give you a good business aspect. Almighty blessed that to america with VR whole heartedly. America is still on the top of VR market. China might have a better growth rate than america, but america is still on the top. In 2018, the average revenue per user (ARPU) in the United States and Canada was ten times higher than that of the Asia-Pacific region.

American have adopted VR so nicely. It’s not a rocket-science concept for them anymore. They use VR so effortlessly in their works. A study by Yeti LLC says, 85% of the project developers at US companies are assigned to VR projects. This proves how seriously they have taken this.

The US is using VR in different aspects and sector. Retail, tourism, architecture, healthcare, gaming and what not. Even recently United States Department of Education is using virtual reality to help students with autism and learning disabilities in schools, across the country. In 2018, the Office of Special Education and Programs announced an investment of USD 2.5 million towards a new program that will use VR to nurture social skills in students with disabilities.

While reading the history of VR industry, all the big names you will be seeing all around is of America. So it will not be wrong if we call Americans the father nation of VR. But i like to call them the ancient giant of VR industry.

America-The ancient player of the game was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.