![SEE AND BE SEEN An electronic helmet and a large joystick during a demonstration of "Reality +" at the Virtual Reality Systems 93 show in New York on March 16, 1993.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/virtual-reality-cropped.jpg?quality=85&w=2400)
By TIME Photo
![Prototype of a Mars Rover Andrew Mishkin wearing a 3-D virtual display helmet that is connected to a six-wheeled roving vehicle. The rover was meant to explore the surface of Mars and send back information.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/07-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![SEE AND BE SEEN "Reality +" at the Virtual Reality Systems 93 show was described as a next generation, multi-player virtual reality entertainment system that gave a high sense of movement in a computer-generated world revealed in a head-mounted display.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/14-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Virtual Reality The 3-player Budweiser virtual reality mask at the Food Marketing Institute's International Supermarket Industry Convention and Educational Expostion in Chicago.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/12-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Virtual Reality A Virtual Reality contraption at the Sci Fi Channel booth at The National Cable Television Association annual convention, in San Francisco.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/11-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Soldier being training using virtual rea Soldier training using a virtual reality-simulated 3-D shootout at an Army facility.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/21-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![A visitor to the G7 Information Society Showcase taking place at the European Parliament checks out .. A visitor checking out a virtual reality head-set at the G7 Information Society Showcase taking place at the European Parliament. The head-set was linked to a camera elsewhere in the building which the visitor could control through head movements.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/05-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Hiroaki Yano, a researcher of the Tokyo University A researcher at Tokyo University's Intelligent Modeling Laboratory wearing 3-D glasses, extending his hands to touch carbon atoms in the microscopic world at the laboratory's virtual reality room.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/20-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Visitors enjoy virtual reality driving with the 3- Visitors enjoy virtual reality driving with 3-D goggles and driving simulators for the presentation of Japan's automaker Nissan at the Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/19-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![A visitor to the " Ars Electronica in a dish installation " Humphrey II" , which allowed virtual free flight through a 3D reconstruction of the city of Linz.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/13-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![A Japanese girl wears a full color head A girl wore a full color head mounted display with a built-in camera as Japan's machinery maker Hitachi Zosen and Shimadzu unveiled a wearable computer, consisting of the HMD and a palm sized Windows XP PC with a pointing device at a virtual reality exhibition in Tokyo.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/18-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![WHEAT RIDGE, CO (07-20-2006) -- Lt. David Shipley of the Adams County Sherrif's Department watched an interactive video that replicates the experiences of a schizophrenic patient having auditory and visual hallucinations while attempting to refill a presc Lt. David Shipley of the Adams County Sheriff's Department watched an interactive video that replicated the experiences of a schizophrenic patient having auditory and visual hallucinations while attempting to refill a prescription at a pharmacy.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/02-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![SWEDEN BODY SWAPPING Valeria Petkova, right, and student Andrew Ketterer, left, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, tested the 'body-swap' illusion, a method whereby people can experience the illusion that either a mannequin or another person's body is their own body.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/10-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![FRANCE-INTERNET-TECHNOLOGY-LEWEB12 Raphael Pirker from Switzerland, founder of Team BlackSheep used virtual reality goggles to simulate the sensation of flight in the real world during a demonstration, flying from the perspective of a model aircraft, during a session of LeWeb'12 in Saint-Denis, near Paris.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/15-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY PIERRE-ANTOINE D A man seeking a job was equipped with 3D spectacles with sensors as he trained in Clermont-Ferrand, central France with avatars (background) in a virtual reality cube, at business incubator Pascalis.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/16-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY Peter Kenny
Jan Peter Kenny Jan Torpus, director of Lifeclipper project, tested the immersive augmented reality equipment in St Johanns Park in Basel, Switzerland.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/17-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Professor Oldhafer poses before liver surgery with support of tablet computer at Asklepios Hospital Hamburg-Barmbek Professor Karl Oldhafer, chief physician of general and visceral surgery at the Asklepios Hospital Hamburg-Barmbek, before liver surgery. Oldhafer used augmented reality, which allowed the liver to be filmed with an iPad and overlaid during the operation with virtual 3D models reconstructed from the real organ. This procedure helped locate critical structures such as tumors and vessels and was expected to improve the quality of transferring pre-operational resection plans into actual surgery.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/06-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Germany Gadget Show Samsung British television presenter Rachel Riley showed a virtual-reality headset called Gear VR during a Samsung event ahead of the consumer electronic fair IFA in Berlin.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/03-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Kairos Global Summit 2014 Tim Draper, Founder and Managing partner of 'Draper Fisher Jurvetson', tried out the latest in virtual reality technology the 2014 Kairos Global Summit at Ritz-Carlton Laguna Nigel in Dana Point, California.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/04-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![International Games Week Berlin A man played a game with the virtual reality head-mounted display 'Oculus Rift' at International Games Week in Berlin. The display transfers the eye movements to the game in real time.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/09-virtual-reality-headsets.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
![Digital Life Review Microsoft Holograms Microsoft's Lorraine Bardeen demonstrates HoloLens headset during an event at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Wash. on Jan. 21, 2015.](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/hololens.jpg?quality=75&w=2400)
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