[2] In 1938, French avant-garde playwright Antonin Artaud described the illusory nature of characters and objects in the theatre as "la réalité virtuelle" in a collection of essays, Le Théâtre et son double.

AR systems layer virtual information over a camera live feed into a headset or smartglasses or through a mobile device giving the user the ability to view three-dimensional images.

He built a prototype of his vision dubbed the Sensorama in 1962, along with five short films to be displayed in it while engaging multiple senses (sight, sound, smell, and touch).

The spectator is given a complete sensation of reality, i.e. moving three dimensional images which may be in colour, with 100% peripheral vision, binaural sound, scents and air breezes.

"[10] In 1968, Harvard Professor Ivan Sutherland, with the help of his students including Bob Sproull, created what was widely considered to be the first head-mounted display system for use in immersive simulation applications, called The Sword of Damocles.

[17][18] The project leader Eric Gullichsen left in 1990 to found Sense8 Corporation and develop the WorldToolKit virtual reality SDK,[19] which offered the first real time graphics with Texture mapping on a PC, and was widely used throughout industry and academia.

[25][26] Antonio Medina, a MIT graduate and NASA scientist, designed a virtual reality system to "drive" Mars rovers from Earth in apparent real time despite the substantial delay of Mars-Earth-Mars signals.

That same year, Louis Rosenberg created the virtual fixtures system at the U.S. Air Force's Armstrong Labs using a full upper-body exoskeleton, enabling a physically realistic mixed reality in 3D.

[28][29] By July 1994, Sega had released the VR-1 motion simulator ride attraction in Joypolis indoor theme parks,[30] as well as the Dennou Senki Net Merc arcade game.

[34] A group in Seattle created public demonstrations of a "CAVE-like" 270 degree immersive projection room called the Virtual Environment Theater, produced by entrepreneurs Chet Dagit and Bob Jacobson.

Luckey eliminated distortion issues arising from the type of lens used to create the wide field of vision using software that pre-distorted the rendered image in real-time.

It shared major features with the consumer headsets including separate 1K displays per eye, low persistence, positional tracking over a large area, and Fresnel lenses.

The device, made by Loft Dynamics for rotorcraft pilots, enhances safety by opening up the possibility of practicing risky maneuvers in a virtual environment.

This device utilised a thinner, visor-like design that was not fully enclosed, and was the first headset by Meta to target mixed reality applications using high-resolution colour video passthrough.

The device includes inside-out tracking, eye-tracked foveated rendering, higher-resolution OLED displays, controllers with adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, 3D audio, and a wider field of view.

[80] WebVR is an experimental JavaScript application programming interface (API) that provides support for various virtual reality devices, such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard or OSVR, in a web browser.

Beginning in the 2010s, next-generation commercial tethered headsets were released by Oculus (Rift), HTC (Vive) and Sony (PlayStation VR), setting off a new wave of application development.

In the therapy, the user wears a headset and a virtual character provides psychological advice and guides them as they explore simulated environments (such as a cafe or a busy street).

Despite numerous studies conducted, good quality evidence of its efficacy compared to other rehabilitation methods without sophisticated and expensive equipment is lacking for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

[104][105] Immersive virtual reality technology with myoelectric and motion tracking control may represent a possible therapy option for treatment-resistant phantom limb pain.

Pain scale measurements were taken into account and an interactive 3-D kitchen environment was developed based on the principles of mirror therapy to allow for control of virtual hands while wearing a motion-tracked VR headset.

In the fast-paced and globalised business world, meetings in VR are used to create an environment in which interactions with other people (e.g. colleagues, customers, partners) can feel more natural than a phone call or video chat.

[108] Compared to traditional text-based CMC, Avatar-based interactions in 3D virtual environment lead to higher levels of consensus, satisfaction, and cohesion among group members.

[144] Starting in the early 2020s, virtual reality has also been discussed as a technological setting that may support people's grieving process, based on digital recreations of deceased individuals.

In 2021, this practice received substantial media attention following a South Korean TV documentary, which invited a grieving mother to interact with a virtual replica of her deceased daughter.

[146][147] Growing interest in the metaverse has resulted in organizational efforts to incorporate the many diverse applications of virtual reality into ecosystems like VIVERSE, reportedly offering connectivity between platforms for a wide range of uses.

[150] Based on data from research conducted from the University Hospitals Schleswig-Holstein and collaborators from other institutions, medical students and surgeons with years of experience, show marked performance boosts after practicing with LapSim VR technology.

[150] Another recent study at North Carolina University of Chapel Hill has shown that developing VR and Augmented Reality (AR) systems have allowed surgeons to keep their eyes on a patient while accessing CT scans.

[151] In July, Brendan Bradley released the free FutureStages web-based virtual reality venue for live events and concerts throughout the 2020 shutdown,[152] Justin Bieber performed on November 18, 2021 in WaveXR.

[54] Data from eye tracking sensors, which are projected to become a standard feature in virtual reality headsets,[182][183] may indirectly reveal information about a user's ethnicity, personality traits, fears, emotions, interests, skills, and physical and mental health conditions.