A brief, completely personal history of VR and why I think that matters now.

1. Tony Parisi
September 2015
VRML
or,
There and Back Again:
A brief, completely personal
history of VR and why I think
that matters now

2. 1. Genesis

3. “…at the first annual World Wide Web Conference in Geneva,
Switzerland. Tim Berners-Lee and Dave Raggett organized a Birds-of-
a-Feather (BOF) session to discuss Virtual Reality interfaces to the
World Wide Web…. Attendees agreed on the need for these tools to
have a common language for specifying 3D scene
description and WWW hyperlinks -- an analog of
HTML for virtual reality. ”
-- original VRML specification, http://www.martinreddy.net/gfx/3d/VRML.spec
The Year was 1994.

5. Shape {
geometry Box {}
}
(It’s that simple.)

6. 1997
(We got pretty far.
60Mhz “Pentium”…
14.4Kb modems…
Think about it.)

7. 2. Exodus

8. X3D
VRML + XML
<Shape>
<Box/>
</Shape>
It’s now 2004.
(And it’s still that simple.)

9. 2007
Now we’re talking. 3D chips, broadband, and a virtual
world in a browser! (Some plug-in assembly required.)

10. 3. Numbers

11. Your browser does 3D
3B seats.
Q.E.D.
WebGL is on all
desktop and
mobile browsers
2009…2014

12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io5snCcQ0ss
http://ogreen.special-t.com/en/
http://cityofdrones.io/
http://riskeverything.nike.com/
branding
games
ads
art and
architecture

13. 4. Revelation

14. The Promised Land

15.  WebVR API
– Head-Tracking
and Fullscreen
VR Support
Now in Nightly
Browser
Builds!!!
– No Big App
Downloads
and Installs!!!
http://mozvr.github.io/webvr-
spec/webvr.html
Quake 3 WebVR demo, developed by Brandon
Jones of Google
http://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/
Your browser also does VR
2015

16. The Web eats everything in its path.
#ihaveadream
In the future, creating VR will be as easy as
making web pages, sharing VR will be as
simple as sending a link, and experiencing
VR happens
at the touch of a button.
No apps stores; no tolls; no barriers.
I like this future. Much better than an app store.

17. Tony Parisi
September 2015
VRML
or,
There and Back Again:
A brief, completely personal
history of VR and why I think
that matters now