Putting on one of the new virtual reality headsets is like stepping into Alice’s looking glass Wonderland. It’s a color-drenched new world with 360-degree perspectives. People can watch their hands reach out to grab objects that aren’t even there. The mind knows that what it is seeing is not real, but it’s fooled into a sense of being and moving through this other space.

This new generation of VR is science fiction turned science fact. Cyberpunk fans will recognize shades of William Gibson’s prophetic 1984 novel, “Neuromancer,” where characters neurally connect to cyberspace through electrodes, or the collective reality called the Metaverse in Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash.” Mr. Stephenson now works as a consultant, his official title is “chief futurist,” for Florida-based augmented reality developer Magic Leap.

Virtual reality is literally a game changer: The technology has evolved to a high level, rendering convincing 3-D environments that are poised to take game-playing to new levels. The headsets that will be on the market soon — the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive — are expected to usher VR gaming into the home. That’s at least among early adopters and gamers, who also led the charge when personal computers first started invading homes back in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

The development of VR parallels the history of television, said Jesse Schell, founder and CEO of Pittsburgh-based Schell Games.

“When people think back, they feel like television just popped up in the late ’40s, but television was actively worked on for the whole first half of the 20th century. What happened was the technology finally got good enough that it could work in mass production,” he said. “We’re seeing exactly the same thing now” with VR.

When Mr. Schell was working for The Walt Disney Co. in the mid ’90s, it had VR systems that cost between $500,000 and $600,000 — about 1,000 times the price of today’s high-end VR gaming systems. “So it’s very exciting that this powerful experience is finally going to come to such a broad number of people,” Mr. Schell said.

“Four or five years ago, if you had asked me if virtual reality was coming back I probably would have said no,” said Drew Davidson, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center. “It’s an interesting surprise. Technology and capabilities have caught up to make it much more immersive. The technology has improved so much in terms of processor speed, sensor accuracy, and the frame rate’s really seamless. All of that’s really coming together at a fruitful time for this.”

A slow emergence

Although virtual reality has been around since the ’90s, its initial impact on gaming was underwhelming. The headsets were bulky and cumbersome, the graphics resolution was too low, and the accompanying motion sickness and nausea turned people off. Nintendo’s early attempt — the Virtual Boy — was dropped after less than a year. VR as a consumer product went dormant, although research and interest continued.

Nobody wants to throw up while playing a game. Preventing motion sickness has been one of the biggest challenges for developers. They’ve succeeded by increasing the number of pictures per second the eye and brain can process: TV uses about 30 pictures per second. Good VR systems need between 60 to 90.

“But a bigger piece of it is just creating the illusion that you’re really in a place. The most important technologies have been the tracking technologies — our ability to sense our position in three-dimensional space,” Mr. Schell said.

Fast forward to 2012. Palmer Luckey raised money through a Kickstarter campaign to launch VR headset maker Oculus. Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014. The Oculus Rift ($599) headset will deliver a full, rich virtual reality experience. Pre-ordered Rifts begin shipping Monday, and new orders are expected to be filled starting this summer. The HTC Vive ($799) comes out April 5. Sony will release the PlayStation VR ($399) in October.

The headsets are pricey, and the Rift and Vive have high requirements in terms of graphics and processing power, so most people will need to upgrade to more powerful PCs to run the games. Those who opt for PlayStation VR will have an easier time of it, since it works with the existing PlayStation 4 platform.

There are less expensive options already on the market for people who want to test the VR waters, although the experience won’t be as high definition and immersive. Some headsets work simply by sliding a smartphone into them. Samsung’s Gear VR headset ($99), which is powered by Oculus, works with Samsung Galaxy smartphones. Google Cardboard basic headsets start at $15. People can build their own with cardboard, lenses, magnets, Velcro and a rubber band. Google offers instructions on how to do this. Even View-Master, the popular stereoscopic viewer that has entertained generations, is on board with a new VR model 9 ($29.99).

There’s plenty of VR research and activity in the Pittsburgh area. In January, Oculus announced that it will open a research facility in Oakland this spring.

Founded in 2004, Schell Games is in the forefront of VR game development. The company is housed in Station Square and employs about 100 people in five departments — art, tech, design, production and operations. Company founder Jesse Schell has always been interested in how games work.

“What makes a good game versus a better game?” he said. “It always seemed to me like a kind of magic that you can just figure out a set of rules and suddenly people are having a really good time.”

The company focuses on what it calls “transformational games.” Part of that is the development of creative educational games, along with “games that change people in all kinds of ways,” Mr. Schell said. “It can change your habits or your outlook or perspective. It’s such a key question: What kind of change am I trying to bring about in the player?”

Intimate social play

VR is transforming the gaming experience, Mr. Schell said. One of its most important aspects is the social element, when players miles apart can interact in a virtual space.

“This is the first medium where you can actually make eye contact with another person who’s not there. I can’t make eye contact when I play a console game. It’s going to be one of the most intimate kinds of communications medium we’ve ever had. That’s going to be very powerful in the gameplay context, because it’s going to let people connect within their games in a way that they’re not expecting and that we haven’t seen before.”

CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center has been exploring VR and virtual worlds for almost two decades. ETC offers a multidisciplinary graduate program in entertainment technology and game design that grew out of the popular Building Virtual Worlds courses taught by the late CMU computer scientist Randy Pausch. “One of Randy Pausch’s passions was virtual reality and the Building Virtual Worlds Show,” Mr. Davidson said.

ETC students have developed a variety of VR applications, and more are in progress. They’re also working with augmented reality — a different technology that overlays virtual 3-D images onto the real world.

“Injustice” is an interactive experience created by ETC’s Kalpana project team that puts participants on the front lines of a racial profiling encounter. They witness an incident where police stop a young black man on the street, and their reactions and interactions with the virtual characters shape how the situation unfolds. “Injustice” will be an installation at Games for Change’s Games Media and Summit at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.

This semester, a team of ETC students is working with Legendary Entertainment on Phantasm, a project that will demonstrate storytelling techniques in film that are unique to or enhanced by VR. The team is working on a short VR experience.

“We’re hoping it functions more as an interesting demo for them to see what techniques are available to storytellers in VR,” said Stephanie Fawaz, a second-year ETC student and producer/​writer on the six-person Phantasm team, which includes artists, designers and programmers.

“Everyone in the industry is quickly realizing that simply transferring films into a VR space is not what the medium wants or can do inherently well,” Ms. Fawaz said. “When film became a new medium, creators had to understand that it wasn’t theater, and thinking of it just as a big screen to show a theater performance on was doing the medium a disservice. There’s an incredible amount that movies can do that live acting can’t, and so it is the way with virtual reality now.”

Ms. Fawaz is looking beyond the hype and speculation on how VR is going to transform the entertainment and gaming worlds.

“The idea that we’re sitting on the edge of history is really incredible and pretty intoxicating,” she said. “We’ll only really be able to recognize in hindsight the moment that VR really changes everything.”

Adrian McCoy: amccoy@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1865.

First Published: March 25, 2016, 4:00 p.m.