The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality with Will Gee ’89
“You can trace most of what I’m doing today to the planetarium in some way or another,” said tech innovator Will Gee ’89 as he began his talk on the past, present, and future of virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR).
Although virtual reality is almost 200 years old, the ’90s brought the all-time most popular use of AR with the introduction of the yellow first-down line in football. “This is something that anyone who has watched a sporting event has seen, and it’s the idea again of mixing reality with computer graphics in a convincing way that creates a helpful output.” A little Baltimore trivia, the first use of this Sportvision system was at a Ravens game. “Back in 1998, it took two tractor-trailers filled with equipment to draw this simple line and probably had less computing power than is in an apple watch today.”
Will is the co-founder of creative studio Balti Virtual. He has designed AR and VR experiences for clients including Under Armour, PayPal, Stanley Black and Decker, Sagamore Development, and NBCUniversal.