New book reveals truth about Virtual Reality

Nov. 27, 2014 - PRLog -- Oakland, CA — Thanks to Facebook's recent purchase of display manufacturer Oculus, for two billion dollars, virtual reality (VR) is back in the news. But virtual reality’s roots go back to the 1960’s, when the first head-mounted display of 3D computer graphics was accomplished by Ivan Sutherland.

Virtual reality had its commercial takeoff in the 90s, with dozens of head-mounted displays, talk of virtual drug trips, excitement about cybersex, and the potential to change everything. How much of that promise has really been realized?

Thankfully, a new book is about to arrive on the bookshelves that will set the record straight. Titled Sex, Drugs and Tessellation: the Truth about Virtual Reality as revealed in the pages of CyberEdge Journal, this entertaining book of over 400 pages provides the history and the excitement of those times, and presents many of the applications, technology, and people who created virtual-reality in the 1990s.

Author Ben Delaney was the publisher and editor of CyberEdge Journal, considered the bible of virtual-reality during its six-year existence. CyberEdge Journal was famous for its no-hype reporting, and was read in more than 40 countries. Delaney was a frequent contributor at conferences as well as on television and radio, and was cited by publications around the world. He was recently featured extensively in an article on virtual reality published by The Verge (http://www.theverge.com/a/virtual-reality/oral_history). Now he has pulled together some of the best of CyberEdge Journal and put it into one book so that people around the world will once again get the “no VR hype” truth about virtual-reality.

Sex, Drugs and Tessellation starts with the first virtual-reality conference in San Francisco in 1990 and takes us through 1997 when CyberEdge Journal ended its publication run. Along the way we meet the people who made virtual-reality so exciting including Timothy Leary, the LSD guru. We hear Howard Rheingold talk about cybersex and the unlikeliness of it ever actually taking place. We see pictures of some of the early equipment and the people who invented it.

The book includes reprints of articles from CyberEdge Journal, more than 100 illustrations, two Zippy cartoons, contemporary commentary by many VR pioneers, and a full index.

Coming out just in time for Christmas shopping lists, Sex, Drugs and Tessellation makes an ideal gift for the technology fan, people inventing virtual-reality, world builders, and those who are curious about the history of technology. It's available on Amazon as an e-book or in large format paperback, as well as on Distribly as a full-format PDF (www.distribly.com/product/3486?aid=30977).

Sex Drugs and Tessellation
By Ben Delaney

Published by CyberEdge Information Services, Oakland, California

Introduction by Thomas Furness, Cofounder and Director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HITLab), University of Washington, Seattle

440 pages, illustrated, indexed
Paperback edition ISBN: ISBN: 978-1500893293
Kindle edition ISBN: 978-1634431941