March 8, 2011 - This posting at BLDGBLOG
points to a paper by Philippe Codognet who mentions a 600 year old
precursor to a virtual reality CAVE. This castellum
umbrarum or castle of shadows was described in a volume by
Venetian engineer Giovanni Fontana from 1420. Codognet writes
that this is:
a room with walls made of folded
translucent parchments lighted from behind, creating therefore an
environment of moving images. Fontana also designed some kind
of magic latnern to project on walls life-size images of devils or
beasts.
Static immersive environments can be traced back to at least the
Romans; see for instance
Livia's Villa showing a garden scene that surrounds the visitor
and dating back to the first century BCE. But this well may
be the first visually dynamic immersive environment created via
magic lantern techniques, but proposed two centuries before Athanasius
Kircher's description of the magic lantern.
However perhaps nothing pre-Renaissance can beat the central
dining hall in Nero's Domus Aurea (Golden Palace) which was discovered
recently. Contemporary historian Suetonius wrote about
the room that -- shades of future planetaria -- rotated to simulate
a diurnal cycle, with showers of water that poured from openings in
the ceiling to simulate rain.
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