The year was 1993. Bill Clinton in the White House, Super Mario Bros. hit theaters, Windows NT 3.1 debuted, and Debian was announced. We still counted bytes under MS-DOS, and the NES ruled the console world. At the time, a young person known only by their YouTube username "Triggeron" (and probably about my age now) experimented with a virtual reality prototype that combined a helmet, a glove, and a Sony Watchman as the main screen.
A Brief History of Virtual Reality
The first references to virtual reality date back to the 1930s, but its association with computers and computing in general began in the 60s. History tells us that Atari created a lab dedicated to virtual reality research in 1982, and its former employees founded VPL Research two years later. Some of VPL's creations were the Data Glove (input device in the form of gloves), the EyePhone (virtual helmet), and the Data Suit (a special suit full of sensors).
One of the biggest media exposures VR had was through the 1992 film The Lawnmower Man. However, the idea of having that technology at home was still years away, unless... someone built their own solution.
Virtual Reality at Home, 1993
And that's exactly what YouTube user "Triggeron" did in 1993. The system was based on an NES console, with a Sony Watchman as the main screen, a Fresnel lens, three speakers providing something like pseudo-surround sound, and a gardening glove with switches taken from a VCR that functioned as sensors. A series of cables and precise gestures activated the switches, sending the necessary commands to each game. For logical reasons (or better yet, the technical limitations of the time), we can't see the helmet in action, but the theory behind the design was pretty good.
Of course, Triggeron himself admits that the final experience was far inferior to what was expected. Basically, building the helmet was an excuse to feel like he was living in the future. The most critical weak point in his creation was the Fresnel lens, which caused dizziness, headaches, and as if that weren't enough, a couple of months later he needed glasses.
