Soviet VR headsets of the 70s

Images by Midjourney, text by GPT-J by textsynth.com. 

Prompt for images: 1976_soviet_researcher_wearing_VR_headset

Prompt for text in bold. All names but the first generated by AI.

It is a little known fact that the USSR had a very advanced VR industry in the seventies. In this article, we will analyze some of the most famous VR headsets of that time:

MOSKVA BK1 (1974):

This is the first Soviet virtual reality headset. It was designed by Anatoly Solonin (head of the VR department of the GosNIIRAN) in the Leningrad-Petrovskoe Institute of Science and Technology, a joint project with the KVN (a military research institute).

It works with a stereoscopic system and its screen was a black glass plate, like a TV screen, in which the image was being shown. Solonin later developed other headsets for the same purposes and also used similar equipment for the VR rooms of his Institute. The BK1 headset could be used with a television receiver or a personal computer.

SOVIET-MOSKVA BK-2 (1976)

The Soviet-MOSKVA BK-2 was a small, light VR headset, used for research purposes. It could not be used in real time because of its size and it only had two channels, so you had to wear two separate ones. This was the main reason why it was not used by companies and public.

STALIN-MOSKVA BK-3 (1978)

This headset, invented by Viktor Ivanov and Boris Yershov, was meant to be used by the Soviet leader and government. It has a front plate made of black glass, a pair of light-colored glasses in the top of the headset, and there is a small screen in the rear of the head.

The device was used for meetings with high-ranking politicians, and for training and education. Although the system worked with two separate VR devices, it was supposed to work with a single headset in the future.

TODOR (1977):

Todor was a Soviet VR headset developed by Sergey Lebedev, the founder of ROKA (Russian Ophthalmic Design), a company which used the Todor headset to produce its own VR headsets. It was a VR headset with a head tracking system using a sensor mounted in a glass frame covering the eyes (picture to the left). The system relied on a set of two screens called VEPR (Verbalkanie) which projected images and text using a rotating disk at a fixed distance from the viewer.

The Todor had three major limitations:

• The screen is located in a fixed position: this means that the user can move its head but not the screen, making it difficult to watch movies or watch TV.
• The fixed location of the screen means that there is a gap between the screen and the eyes, making it difficult to comfortably watch movies or TV in a closed environment
• The two small screens were not designed for 3D viewing and were not stereoscopic

KARAKU-1 (1973): 

This was the most advanced virtual reality head mounted display and had the greatest number of applications. It was manufactured by the Moscow Institute of Applied Physics, and used a rotating polyhedron structure that allowed two people to have a synchronized view of reality. This design used a stereoscopic television camera and a laser scanning beam, this was done to allow for multiple views at once. It was developed in 1972 and was ready for mass production in 1974. The first demonstration of the device was conducted in October 1974, and it was shown to the public in October 1975. The first test applications used an image from a television camera mounted on a carousel. Other applications used the head mounted display for applications such as underwater navigation and medicine. This invention became the basis of another design called VISORS.

VISORS (1978):

This was the next advanced virtual reality headset produced in the Soviet Union, this headset was based on the KARAKU-1, this design used a polyhedron shape that combined with a liquid crystal display for each eye. It allowed each user to view the scene at their own pace, and the display was very compact and lightweight. It was designed to display three-dimensional views and was first demonstrated in 1979. The first major applications were for use in space, and it was used by the cosmonauts of the Soyuz 11 mission. In 1980, the first flight tests were conducted on aircraft. This headset has had two major commercial ventures, and one of them, VEONEX, uses this design for many of its headsets.

ALUSKY PULSE (1975)

The first portable and low-cost wearable display (in a cylindrical shape).

This article will contain technical aspects, so we suggest you read it in conjunction with the Soviet Encyclopedia, as that has much more information about the Russian VR hardware back then.

ALUSKY PULSE is basically a simple optical-electro system comprising a low-power CRT and simple optics. The head mounted VR unit can be used for training and simulation purposes (such as flight simulators, where the pilot is able to see what his/her instruments would look like in the actual flight situation), and also for medical simulations, as the low-cost, easy to mass-produce technology was perfectly suited to the USSR’s healthcare industry (which back then was one of the largest in the world).

Although VR was in its early days, ALUSKY PULSE was in its late stages of development (a fact evidenced by the fact that a prototype was never even presented to the public, due to the fact it was still quite bulky).

Preliminary research and development was conducted at the Soviet State Institute of Optics (where the research was headed by Sergey Popov, as is evident by the fact that Popov is featured on the back side of the headset). The design was eventually chosen, and the research, as well as its manufacture, was then outsourced to the Krasnoyarsk Krasny Motors factory, as this was the most likely plant to be able to mass-produce the device.

The first units were shipped in the spring of 1975, and they were officially released to the general public in August of the same year.

MOSFAT (1978)

The Soviet MOSFAT was an early VR headset. It was invented by Yevgeny Novikov and Dmitry Ustinov, and it was the first full virtual reality headset developed by the Soviet military.

It is based on the STALIN-MOSKVA AR-3, but it has two small screens (for each eye) and headphones. It also has a single motion tracking unit. This system was not intended for the public and was used for military purposes.

VULCAN V2 (1984):

The Vulcan was the last VR headset to be developed in the Soviet Union. It used a helmet design that is similar to the one that the Americans will soon be using for their HMD. The design has a large screen with high-resolution liquid crystal displays, similar to the ones that were being used in Japan. The design used a polyhedron that is designed to help eliminate the presence of any visual noise, this is done through the use of a light diffusion screen. It was first used on the Soyuz TM-14 mission, and it was used in a commercial venture, VEONEX.

These were the first VR headsets that were to use the “headphones” model, where the user could use the headset as if they were using headphones. In this headset, a high-resolution television camera is used and the headset was used to overlay the video from the camera. This is the most used model in the US market today. However, we will be looking at how other countries, such as Russia and China, tried to innovate the VR headsets. We will also look at how these innovations helped to change VR.