The return of virtual reality: 'this is as big an opportunity as the internet'

Twenty years ago the man who pioneered commercial VR saw his market shrink to zero. Now he's excited again - and so are Microsoft, Google and Facebook "

Dr Jonathan Waldern is standing in a meeting room in Silicon Valley, wearing a lab coat and grinning from ear to ear. "There will be people crying in this, people falling in love, people falling over. For all sorts of reasons, this strikes at the core of being a human being. It's so compelling " this is as big an opportunity as the internet."

He's talking about virtual reality (VR), the immersive systems that cover your eyes (and ideally ears) and fool your brain into thinking you're somewhere, or even someone, else. Waldern, 54, is a veteran of the business: in the 90s, his company Virtuality was a pioneer in commercial VR, offering an arcade game experience in which a bulky headset transformed the room into a prehistoric scene in which pterodactyls swooped over and around you, and you tried to shoot them with your gun.

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