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A USA Today bestseller

The dramatic, larger-than-life true story behind the founding of Oculus, its quest for virtual reality, and its founder's contentious battle for political freedom against Facebook, from the bestselling author of Console Wars.

In The History of the Future, Harris once again deep-dives into a tech drama for the ages to expertly tell the larger-than-life true story of Oculus, the virtual reality company founded in 2012 that—less than two years later—would catch the attention of Mark Zuckerberg and wind up being bought by Facebook for over $2 billion dollars.

This incredible underdog story begins with inventor Palmer Luckey, then just a nineteen-year-old dreamer, living alone in a camper trailer in Long Beach, California. At the time, virtual reality—long-hailed as the ultimate technology—was so costly and experimental that it was unattainable outside of a few research labs and military training facilities. But with the founding of Oculus, and the belief that his tantalizing vision of the future could one day be more than science fiction, Luckey put everything he had into creating a device that would allow gamers like him to step into virtual worlds and, in doing so, hopefully kickstart a VR revolution. 

With the help of an industry legend, a serial entrepreneur, and a slew of colorful characters—including those behind gaming sensations like Doom, Words with Friends, and Guitar Hero—Luckey’s scrappy startup would finally deliver the dream of immersive and affordable virtual reality to consumers, leading geeks and gamers to be excited in a way that they hadn’t been in years, and tech firms and investors scrambling to get in on the action before it was too late.

Over the course of three years (and with unprecedented access from Oculus and Facebook), Harris conducted hundreds of interviews with key players in the VR revolution—including Luckey, his partners, and their cult of dreamers—to weave together a rich, cinematic narrative that captures the breakthroughs, breakdowns, and human drama of trying to change the world. The result is a supremely accessible, entertaining look at the birth of a new multi-billion-dollar industry; one full of heroes, villains, and twists at every corner. Take, for instance, Harris’ own discovery while writing this story. When he started this endeavor, he had no idea that this tale would somehow involve Donald Trump, billion-dollar lawsuits, illegal practices, and end with Luckey—eventually ousted from Facebook—as one of the most polarizing figures in Silicon Valley.

“If you want to understand the most immersive new communications medium to come along since cinema… I’d suggest starting with Mr. Bailenson’s [book].” ―Wall Street Journal

Virtual reality is able to effectively blur the line between reality and illusion, granting us access to any experience imaginable. These experiences, ones that the brain is convinced are real, will soon be available everywhere. In Experience on Demand, Jeremy Bailenson draws upon two decades spent researching the psychological effects of VR to help readers understand its upsides and possible downsides. He offers expert guidelines for interacting with VR, and describes the profound ways this technology can be put to use to hone our performance, help us recover from trauma, improve our learning, and even enhance our empathic and imaginative capacities so that we treat others and ourselves better.

Named one of the best books of 2017 by The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, & Vox

The father of virtual reality explains its dazzling possibilities by reflecting on his own lifelong relationship with technology

Bridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Dawn of the New Everything is a look at what it means to be human at a moment of unprecedented technological possibility.

Through a fascinating look back over his life in technology, Jaron Lanier, an interdisciplinary scientist and father of the term “virtual reality,” exposes VR’s ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species, and gives readers a new perspective on how the brain and body connect to the world. An inventive blend of autobiography, science writing, philosophy and advice, this book tells the wild story of his personal and professional life as a scientist, from his childhood in the UFO territory of New Mexico, to the loss of his mother, the founding of the first start-up, and finally becoming a world-renowned technological guru.

Understanding virtual reality as being both a scientific and cultural adventure, Lanier demonstrates it to be a humanistic setting for technology. While his previous books offered a more critical view of social media and other manifestations of technology, in this book he argues that virtual reality can actually make our lives richer and fuller.

A Wired senior editor and virtual reality expert presents a captivating, candid glimpse into the future "realities" of this emerging technology: how we will use it to form previously impossible relationships, explore new frontiers of intimacy, and how it will forever change human connection.

Heralded as the most significant technological innovation since the smartphone, virtual reality is poised to transform our very notions of life and humanity. Though this tech is still in its infancy, to those on the inside, it is the future. VR will change how we work, how we experience entertainment, how we feel pleasure and other emotions, how we see ourselves, and most importantly, how we relate to each other in the real world. And we will never be the same.

Peter Rubin, senior culture editor for Wired and the industry’s go-to authority on the subject, calls it an "intimacy engine." While once we needed another person to feel the sensations of closeness, trust, vulnerability, confidence, and titillation, VR will give us the ability to induce these sensations by ourselves for the first time in human history. This metamorphosis, Rubin argues, is going to have a powerful impact on relationships that will ripple throughout our society and our individual lives.

A journey into this uncertain future and a glimpse at the cultural implications and promises of a new reality, Future Presence explores a host of complex questions about what makes us human, what connects us, and what is real. Offering a glimpse into the mind-blowing things happening in universities, labs, and tech companies around the world, Rubin leads readers on an entertaining tour of the weirdest, wildest corners of this fascinating new universe. Describing this book as "half travelogue and half crystal ball", Rubin will:

• Introduce readers to the creators and consumers of VR technology
• Show readers what an experience is like inside the current VR devices
• Explain how this technology will upend everything we know about human connection in the future

At once the incredible, inevitable story of virtual reality’s rise and a look towards the future of our fantasies, Future Presence is a deeply personal examination of what connects us, and an analysis of what relationships, empathy, and sex could look like—sooner than we think.

An easy-to-understand primer on Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are driving the next technological revolution. If you want to get in on the action, this book helps you understand what these technologies are, their history, how they’re being used, and how they’ll affect consumers both personally and professionally in the very near future.

With VR and AR poised to become mainstream within the next few years, an accessible book to bring users up to speed on the subject is sorely needed—and that’s where this handy reference comes in! Rather than focusing on a specific piece of hardware (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, iOS ARKit) or software (Unity, Unreal Engine), Virtual & Augmented Reality For Dummies offers a broad look at both VR and AR, giving you a bird’s eye view of what you can expect as they continue to take the world by storm.

* Keeps you up-to-date on the pulse of this fast-changing technology

* Explores the many ways AR/VR are being used in fields such as healthcare, education, and entertainment

* Includes interviews with designers, developers, and technologists currently working in the fields of VR and AR

Perfect for both potential content creators and content consumers, this book will change the way you approach and contribute to these emerging technologies. 

Explore the latest features of Unity 2018 to create immersive VR projects for Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Daydream and Gear VR

Key Features

• A project-based guide to teach you how to develop immersive and fun VR applications using Unity 3D
• Build experiences with interactable objects, physics, UI, animations, C# scripting, and other Unity features
• Explore the world of VR by building experiences such as diorama, first-person characters, 360-degree projections, social VR, audio fireball game, and VR storytelling

Book Description

Unity has become the leading platform for building virtual reality games, applications, and experiences for this new generation of consumer VR devices.

Unity Virtual Reality Projects walks you through a series of hands-on tutorials and in-depth discussions on using the Unity game engine. With its practical and project-based approach, this book will get you up to speed with the specifics of Virtual Reality development in Unity. You will learn how to use Unity to develop VR applications that can be experienced with devices such as Oculus, Daydream, and Vive. Among the many topics and projects, you will explore gaze-based versus hand controller input, world space UI canvases, locomotion and teleportation, software design patterns, 360-degree media, timeline animation, and multiplayer networking. You will learn the Unity 3D game engine via the interactive Unity Editor as well as C# programming. By the end of the book, you will be fully equipped to develop rich, interactive virtual reality experiences using Unity.

What you will learn

• Create 3D scenes with Unity and other 3D tools while learning about world space and scale
• Build and run VR applications for specific headsets, including Oculus, Vive, and Daydream
• Interact with virtual objects using eye gaze, hand controllers, and user input events
• Move around your VR scenes using locomotion and teleportation
• Implement an audio fireball game using physics and particle systems
• Implement an art gallery tour with teleportation and data info
• Design and build a VR storytelling animation with a soundtrack and timelines
• Create social VR experiences with Unity networking

Who This Book Is For

If you're a non-programmer unfamiliar with 3D computer graphics, or experienced in both but new to virtual reality, and are interested in building your own VR games or applications, then this book is for you. Any experience in Unity is an advantage.

Table of Contents

1. Virtually Everything for Everyone
2. Content, Objects, and Scale
3. VR Build and Run
4. Gaze-based Control
5. Handy Interactables
6. World Space UI
7. Locomotion and Comfort
8. Playing with Physics and Fire
9. Exploring Interactive Spaces
10. Using All 360 Degrees
11. Animation and VR Storytelling
12. Social VR Metaverse
13. Optimizing for Performance and Comfort

Storytelling for Virtual Reality serves as a bridge between students of new media and professionals working between the emerging world of VR technology and the art form of classical storytelling. Rather than examining purely the technical, the text focuses on the narrative and how stories can best be structured, created, and then told in virtual immersive spaces. Author John Bucher examines the timeless principles of storytelling and how they are being applied, transformed, and transcended in Virtual Reality. Interviews, conversations, and case studies with both pioneers and innovators in VR storytelling are featured, including  industry leaders at LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox, Oculus, Insomniac Games, and Google.

For more information about story, Virtual Reality, this book, and its author, please visit StorytellingforVR.com