VPL EyePhone & DataGlove

VPL stood for “Virtual Programming Languages.” The company was founded in Palo Alto by Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman after they left Atari; early funding came in part from Marvin Minsky. VPL filed for bankruptcy in 1990, and its patents were bought by Sun Microsystems in 1998/1999.

Zimmerman invented the optical-fiber glove. It used 6502 microcontrollers and fiber-optic bundles along the fingers to track hand posture and orientation, letting users manipulate virtual objects. VPL later licensed the technology to Mattel, which turned it into the Nintendo Power Glove (1989), a US$90 holiday hit that sold roughly 1.3 million units.

Released in June 1989, the EyePhone was a head-mounted display with Fresnel lenses that tracked head orientation. Because 1980s graphics hardware could manage only about five to six frames per second, the experience was crude, and a full EyePhone system cost upwards of US$250,000, keeping it firmly in research and trade-show territory.

The DataSuit extended full-body motion capture. “Reality Built for Two” (RB2) let two people share a virtual world, making it an early commercial networked-VR system.

In a 1988 description Lanier imagined a “Home Reality Engine” that plugged into the phone jack; users could choose to inhabit a cat, a mountain range, a galaxy, or even a piano. The DataGlove’s affordable consumer descendant, the Power Glove, became “one of the hottest gift items of the 1989 holiday season” but disappointed gamers because it lacked supported software.

VPL’s products defined the visual vocabulary of 1990s VR, influenced films such as The Lawnmower Man, and laid the commercial groundwork for today’s HMDs and hand-tracking controllers.