Neo & Trinity

The days when we see virtual reality packages on www.Direct.tv might not be too far off. Virtual reality is already finding its way into the fine arts in the works of Maurice Benayoun, Char Davies, Brenda Laurel, and others. Technically speaking, The Matrix is a form of simulated reality, since the individuals living inside it are unaware that they actually are in a simulation. While some philosophers have theorized that humans may actually be living in such a reality, simulated reality is still mainly just that: a philosophical argument. Virtual reality, on the other hand, has had a much more concrete history in the “real world.”In virtual reality, individuals are aware that they are in a different reality. This can be seen in the first film when Neo trains with Morpheus. Non-digital virtual reality can be seen in the panoramic murals that appeared in the 1860s, and devices in the 1920s simulated the experience of riding in a vehicle. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Morton Heilig tried to advance virtual reality with a device called the Sensorama. This was Heilig’s attempt to make “The Cinema of the Future,” as he described in a 1955 paper. The Sensorama played short films while engaging the senses in never-before-seen ways, all without the benefit of computers. However, filmmaking for the device was so expensive that the Sensorama never took off (so to speak).The first true virtual reality device was the imposing Sword of Damocles, created by Ivan Sutherland and Bob Sproull in 1968. When wearing the headset (which was so heavy that it hung from the ceiling like the mythical sword), users could navigate through wireframe rooms and change perspective by moving their head. Less than 10 years later, scientists at MIT created the Aspen Movie Map, which allowed users to virtually travel through Aspen, Colorado.Virtual reality began appearing in popular science fiction stories in the 1950s and 1960s (although Stanley Weinbaum’s 1935 story Pygmalion’s Spectacles was also an early example). Daniel F. Galouye’s 1964 novel Simulacron-3 described a virtual reality city created for marketing. However, it also included elements of simulated reality (in a shocking plot twist), directly anticipating The Matrix 35 years later.The technology continues to grow today, and is especially being looked at as a means of treating different phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder, physical therapy, and rehabilitation.