Timelines of Virtual and Augmented Reality

Below you find:

A Timeline of Virtual and Augmented Reality
Virtual Worlds in Literature and Cinema 1980s-2000s
New Media Art 1980-2010
VR/AR in Literature and Cinema 2010-2020
Notable VR/AR Installations 1990-2020

A Timeline of Virtual and Augmented Reality
1960: Manfred Clynes coins the word "cyborg" to refer to an emerging hybrid of man and machine
1961: Charles Comeau's and James Bryan's Headsight
1962: Morton Heilig's "Sensorama Machine", a machine for full-sensory immersion
1969: Ivan Sutherland's head-mounted display
1972: General Electric's computerised flight simulator
1975: Myron Krueger's Videoplace
1978: Roy Trubshaw's MUD
1979: Eric Howlett in Boston invents an extreme wide-angle stereoscopic photographic technology, LEEP (Large Expanse Extra Perspective)
1979: McDonnell-Douglas' eye-tracking VITAL helmet
1979: Eric Howlett's LEEP (Large Expanse Extra Perspective)
1979: The Aspen Movie Map at MIT
1980: StereoGraphics' stereo vision glasses
1981: Thomas Furness' Visually Coupled Airborne Systems Simulator at NASA
1982: Thomas Zimmerman invents the data glove
1984: Steve Mann's see-through glasses EyeTap
1985: Jaron Lanier's VPL Research
1985: Scott Fisher's VIEW at NASA
1986: Thomas Furness' virtual cockpit
1986: Michael McGreevy's VIVED at NASA
1986: Kazuo Yoshinaka of Nippon Electric invents the virtual retinal display
1986: Lucasfilm's graphical MUD Habitat by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar
1987: Jaron Lanier coins the term "virtual reality"
1989: Nintendo's Power Glove
1990: Tom Caudell coins the term "augmented reality"
1990: Jonathan Waldern's VR arcade machine Virtuality
1990: LambdaMOO by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC
1991: SIGGRAPH inaugurates the "Tomorrow Realities" section
1991: Tim Berners-Lee invents the WorldWide Web
1991: Brenda Laurel's book "Computers as Theatre"
1992: CAVE at the University of Illinois
1992: Louis Rosenberg's "Virtual Fixtures"
1993: Paul Milgram's ARGOS (Augmented Reality through Graphic Overlays on Stereovideo)
1993: IEEE's Virtual Reality Annual International Symposium
1993: Pattie Maes' ALIVE (Artificial Life Interactive Video Environment)
1993: VictorMaxx's head-mounted display Stuntmaster
1994: Julie Martin's augmented reality theatrical play "Dancing In Cyberspace"
1994: Forte's head-mounted display VFX1
1995: Nintendo's Virtual Boy console
1995: Virtual I/O's head-mounted display iGlasses
1996: The first MMORPGs, "Baramue Nara" and "Meridian 59"
1996 augmented-reality conferencing systems Studierstube and Transvision
1997: Richard Garriott coins the term "MMORPG"
1998: Francisco Delgado's "virtual cockpit window" at NASA
1998: The first IEEE International Symposium on Augmented Reality
1998: Henry Fuchs' team at University of North Carolina develops "spatial augmented reality"
1999: Hirokazu Kato's and Mark Billinghurst's ARToolKit at the University of Washington
1999: ARToolKit by Hirokazu Kato and Mark Billinghurst
2000: The first augmented-reality videogame, AR Quake
2006: Nintendo's game console Wii with motion-tracking
2007: Image Metrics creates a 3D hologram of a dead actor
2008: Lumus' see-through head-mounted display PD-18
2008: Augmented reality on CNN
2009: Eyepet AR toy for the Sony Playstation
2009: ARToolkit ported to Adobe Flash by Tomohiko Koyama
2009: Esquire magazine's special augmented-reality edition
2010: Microsoft's Kinect for 3D motion capture
2011: Blippar smartphone
2011: Epson' see-through head-mounted display BT-100
2012: The Oculus Rift
2013: Google's see-through glasses Glass
2013: Nvidia's "near-eye light-field" display
2013: Leap Motion's hand-tracking device
2013: Canon's mixed-reality headset MREAL
2014: Meta's see-through glasses
2014: Facebook acquires Oculus
2014: Google's Cardboard
2014: Google's augmented-reality platform Project Tango for Android
2015: HTC Vive
2015: Samsung Gear VR
2015: Microsoft's Hololens
2015: Constantinos Miltiadis, a student at ETH Zurich, develops "Project Anywhere" for multiuser VR games
2015: Evening Standard's blippable Queen selfie
2016: Intel's RealSense and Project Alloy
2016: Niantic's videogame PokemonGo
2016: GoPro's six-camera Omni VR
2016: Sony's PlayStation VR
2016: The Guardian's virtual solitary confinement
2017: Microsoft's Xbox One X
2017: Apple's augmented-reality platform ARKit for the iPhone
2017: VR games "Virtual Virtual Reality" and "Accounting+"
2017: Nvidia's Holodeck for collaborative design
2018: Facebook, Lenovo and HTC launch untethered headsets
2018: Google's augmented-reality platform ARCore
2018: Apple's ARKit2
2018: Magic Leap's One
2018: ThirdEye's augmented reality glasses X1 and DreamWorld's tethered headset Dream Glass
2019: Nreal's augmented-reality smartglasses
2019: North's augmented-reality smartglasses that look like regular glasses
2019: Apple's ARKit3
2019: Facebook's Oculus Quest
2019: Rokid's mixed-reality headset Glass
2019: Varjo's mixed reality headset XR-1
2020: Nreal's augmented-reality smartglasses for the consumer market
2020: UC Berkeley holds its graduation ceremony on Minecraft
2021: Facebook announces plans for its own metaverse
2021: Facebook and Ray-Ban launch the augmented-reality smartglasses Stories
2021: Snapchat's augmented-reality smartglasses Spectacles-4

Virtual Worlds in Literature and Cinema 1980s-2000s
Steven Lisberger's film "Tron" (1982)
James Cameron's film "The Terminator" (1984)
William Gibson's dystopian novel "Neuromancer" (1984)
Robert Zemeckis' film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" (1988)
Paul Verhoeven's film "Total Recall" (1990)
George Martin's novel "A Game of Thrones" (1991)
Brett Leonard's film "The Lawnmower Man" (1992)
Neal Stephenson: "Snow Crash" (1992)
Julie Martin's augmented-reality theatrical play "Dancing In Cyberspace" (1994)
William Gibson's novel "Virtual Light" (1994)
Robert Longo's film "Johnny Mnemonic" (1995)
Peter Weir's film "The Truman Show" (1998)
Katherine Hayles's book "How We Became Posthuman" (1999)
Larry & Andy Wachowski's film "The Matrix" (1999)
Mamoru Oshii's film "Avalon" (2001)
Steven Spielberg's film "Minority Report" (2002)
Reki Kawahara's web-only novels "Sword Art Online" (2002)

New Media Art 1980-2010
1981: Samuel Beckett's "Quad", an algorithmic play
1984: Fredric Jameson publishes "Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism"
1985: The Nintendo Entertainment System is introduced
1985: Warren Robinett, Scott Fisher and Michael McGreevy of NASA Ames build the "Virtual Environment Workstation" for virtual-reality research
1985: Donna Haraway's essay "A Cyborg Manifesto"
Digital technology follows in the tradition of 20th-century anti-art (Peter Weibel)
1988: The First International Symposium on Electronic Arts (FISEA) is held in the Netherlands
1989: Heinrich Klotz founds the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe and ZKM organizes the first "Multimediale" festival in Germany
1990: The Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts (ISEA) is founded in the Netherlands
1990: The Burning Man festival is held at Black Rock Desert
1991: Wolfgang Staehle founds the bulletin board The Thing
1991: Tim Berners-Lee invents the WorldWide Web
1991: Brenda Laurel's book "Computers as Theatre"
1992: The Electronic Visualization Lab in Chicago creates a "CAVE" ("Cave Automatic Virtual Environment")
1992: The Banff Centre starts the Art and Virtual Environment Project
1992: The School of Visual Arts in New York launches the "New York Digital Salon"
1994: Benjamin Weil starts AdaWeb, a curated website for online art
1994: Vuk Cosic launches the net.art movement
1994: Eastern European artists including Vuk Cosic found the "net.art" movement of artists active on the World Wide Web
1994: Susan Conde and Henri-Francois Debailleux organize the fractalist exhibition in France
1994: Critical Art Ensemble's essay "The Technology of Uselessness"
1995: The Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab) in Slovenia
1995: Pit Schultz and Geert Lovink establish the Nettime e-mailing list for new media art
1996: Nicolas Bourriaud coins "relational aesthetics"
1996: Itsuo Sakane founds the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Japan
1996: Arthur Kroker and Marilouise Kroker found the e-magazine Ctheory
1996: "Manifesta 1", the first European biennale of contemporary art, in the Netherlands
1996: Mark Tribe founds "Rhizome"
1996: The first DVD player is introduced by Toshiba
1997: NTT's InterCommunication Center in Tokyo
1997: Frank Popper publishes "Art of the Electronic Age"
1998: Anton Vidokle founds the curatorial platform e-flux
1999: Mark Tribe starts the Rhizome online archive of new media art
1999: Peter Weibel curates the "net_condition" show at ZKM in Karlsruhe
2001: Pierre Levy publishes "Cyberculture"
2001: Lev Manovich's book "The Language of New Media"
2003: Oliver Grau's book "Virtual Art"
2003: Linden Lab launches the virtual world "Second Life"
2004: Margot Lovejoy publishes "Digital Currents - Art in the Electronic Age"
2005: YouTube debuts on the World-wide Web
2005: The Letterman Digital Arts Center opens in San Francisco
2007: The Sundance Film Festival's "New Frontier" exhibition
2008: Marisa Olson coins the expression "Post-Internet Art"
2009: Rick DeVos establishes the "ArtPrize", an art competition that takes place in multiple cities
2010: Edinburgh's Fringe Festival
2010: Rafael Rozendaal founds the open-source exhibition "Bring Your Own Beamer"

VR/AR in Literature and Cinema 2010-2020
2011: Ernest Cline's novel "Ready Player One"
2012: Nonny de la Pena's VR documentary "Hunger in Los Angeles"
2014: Nonny de la Pena's VR documentary "Project Syria"
2014: Chris Crescitelli launches the VR Fest
2015: Keram Malicki-Sanchez launches the Festival of International Virtual & Augmented Reality Stories (FIVARS), in Toronto
2015: The Tribeca Film Festival's "Storyscapes" exhibition
2015: Chris Milk's VR documentary "Clouds over Sidra"
2015: Penrose Studios's VR film "The Rose And I"
2017: The Venice Festival's virtual-reality competition
2017: VR game "Virtual Virtual Reality"
2017: Oculus' VR film "Dear Angelica"
2017: Penrose Studios's VR film "Arden's Wake"
2018: VR game "Beat Saber"
2018: Darren Aronofsky's VR film "Spheres"
2019: Fable Studio's VR film "Wolves in the Walls"
2020: The BFI London Film Festival adds an "Expanded" section for virtual, agumented reality
2021: Porter Robinson's Secret Sky, a music festival in virtual reality

Notable VR/AR Installations 1990-2020
Lynn Hershman: "Deep Contact" (1989), a navigable dataverse
Jeffrey Shaw: "Virtual Museum" (1991)
Nicole Stenger: "Angels" (1992), the first immersive movie
Monika Fleischmann & Wolfgang Strauss: "Home of the Brain" (1992)
Brenda Laurel and Rachel Strickland: "Placeholder" (1992)
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: "Inherent Rights, Vision Rights" (1992)
Kazuhiko Hachiya: "Inter Dis-communication Machine" (1993),
Peter d'Agostino: "VR/RV - A Recreational Vehicle in Virtual Reality" (1994)
Diane Gromala & Yacov Sharir: "Dancing with the Virtual Dervish - Virtual Bodies" (1994), dancing in VR
Michael Naimark: "Be Here Now" (1995)
Masaki Fujihata: "Global Interior Project" (1995)
Char Davies: "Ephemere" (1995)
Agnes Hegedus: Virtual world "Memory Theater" (1997)
Maurice Benayoun: "World Skin" (1997)
Rebecca Allen: "Emergence - Bush Soul" (1998)
Charlotte Davies: "Osmose" (1998)
Simon Penny: "Traces" (1999)
John Klima: "Go" (2000)
Rachel Rossin: "I Came and Went as a Ghost Hand" (2015)
Jennifer Steinkamp: "You" (2016)
Tamiko Thiel: Gardens of the Anthropocene (2016)
Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang: Chalkroom (2017)
Alejandro Inarritu: Carne y Arena (2017),
Kathryn Bigelow: "Protectors: Walk in the Ranger's Shoes" (2017)
Hayoun Kwon: "The Bird Lady" (2017)
Mel Chin: "Wake and Unmoored" (2018)

Virtual Worlds/ Metaverses
1994 AlphaWorld (Boston)
1995 The Palace (California)
2001 Habbo (Finland)
2003 Second Life (Bay Area)
2006 Roblox (Bay Area)
2008 Solipsis (France)
2008 Bitcoin and the blockchain
2014 The Sandbox (Britain)
2017 Decentraland (Argentina)
2017 Epic Games' Fortnite
2017 Somnium Space (Britain)
2018 Zepeto (South Korea)
2018 Upland (Silicon Valley)
2018 CryptoVoxels (New Zealand)
Sep 2021: Charles Hoskinson's Cardano-based metaverse Pavia
Mar 2022: Christian Zhang's Solana-based metaverse Solice

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