What is VR? How does VR stand in the air?
01
- Speaking from the "brain in the tank"
A long time ago, a philosopher proposed an experiment like this:
Suppose a crazy scientist, super-intelligent robot or other alien creature takes a brain out of the body and puts it in a tank filled with nutrient solution to maintain its physiological activity. The supercomputer transmits the same nerve to the brain through the nerve endings. The neural signals of various senses, and the signal sent by the brain gives the same signal feedback as peacetime. The world that the brain experiences is actually a virtual reality made by computer. Can the brain realize that it lives in virtual reality? In the middle?
Because of the various sensory inputs and corresponding feedback given to the brain, the brain is convinced that it is rowing. In other words, as long as the input and feedback to the brain is sufficiently comprehensive and true, the virtual environment can also bring a real experience. It can be said that everything in the world is a void.
This bold idea is indeed too crazy, and there is currently no technical or ethical condition to do this experiment. But his thoughts coincide with the technology that is getting more and more popular now: VR.
What is VR? To put it bluntly, it is the abbreviation of English Virtual Reality, which means "virtual reality" in Chinese. It is through a series of technical means to create virtual scenes, and simulate various sensory inputs to deceive the brain to create an immersive real feeling. Can immerse people and interact with the virtual world.
02
- What is VR?
First of all, let's take the example of the hot VR application on the Mobile World Congress (MWC) held in Barcelona, ​​Spain in early 2018 as an example.
This application is called "Flying Eagle Canyon". It simulates flying in a hot air balloon at high altitude, enjoying the wonders of African canyons, bustling cities and tropical rainforests.
There is a real 1:1 hot air balloon cockpit and a control system that allows the experiencer to actually operate the hot air balloon. Everything touched is true, from seat to fuel. But only these infrastructures are real. After that, what you see, hear, and feel, the feeling of overweight when accelerating ascending and losing weight when landing is virtual.
Think about it, when you press the start button, the hot air balloon starts to ignite and accelerates. You can see the burning flame on the balloon propeller, you can feel the warmth of the flame and the hot air blowing, 720° without any angle from all angles Admire the wonders of the canyon, the blue sky and white clouds above your head, the hustle and bustle of the passengers next to you, and the other balloons that are not far away.
At this time, although you are just sitting in a simulated hot air balloon cockpit in the exhibition hall, what you see, hear, and feel is all the beauty that you admire in the high-altitude hot air balloon. Your brain has completely surrendered. Immerse yourself in this virtual world and believe that everything is real!
What you see and hear is like this:
In fact, you are just standing on the hot air balloon simulation cockpit in the VR showroom, wearing a VR helmet, and immersing yourself in the virtual world. Bystanders may feel silly, but the children are not the fish.
Well, through the above example, everyone should have an intuitive understanding of VR, but how does the industry define the characteristics of VR?
Simply put, VR is called VR. There are three main characteristics. The industry is also called "3I": Immersive, Interaction, and Imagination.
Immersive
The source of immersion is that the machine deceives the brain by simulating the input of various senses, letting the brain believe what it sees, what it hears, and all that is felt is true, so the whole person devoted himself to this virtual Go in the world.
Generally speaking, we feel the world through the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and body organs. Correspondingly, there are visual, auditory, olfactory, taste, touch, perception and other main sensory inputs, combined with hot and cold feelings, pain The more complex and advanced senses of balance, dynamics, acceleration, etc. work together to accurately perceive the outside world.
In these sensory inputs, visual and auditory inputs account for more than 90%. As the saying goes, it’s not as good as seeing it, listening to it as a false sight, that is, hearing is very important, but vision is of paramount importance.
Therefore, VR equipment mainly works on both visual and auditory, creating horizontal and vertical planes, three-dimensional 720° visual input, and three-dimensional stereo input, the virtual world can basically make the brain believe it.
Interaction
I feel immersed, but if the virtual world can only be seen and can't touch, and the whole world can't interact, the brain will still come back to realize that all this is only an illusion. In the end, people will feel the play, which will affect the immersion. The fun of virtual reality is greatly reduced.
Therefore, virtual reality must provide a variety of input devices, tracking the fine movements of the human hand, body running, jumping and other actions, and feedback in virtual reality.
For example, if you raise your pistol and aim at the zombie, the zombie in the picture will fall to the ground with flesh and blood. If you pick up a stone, you should be able to feel the hardness and heavyness of the stone. You should touch the face of the virtual girlfriend and you should be able to Feel the delicate softness of the skin and the warmth of the body.
With these interactions, the virtual world will be more real and more imaginative, making virtual reality more fun.
Imagination
In addition to the first two points, another important feature of virtual reality is the conception.
Virtual reality completely breaks through the simulation of reality. It can completely simulate the scenes that do not exist in reality, the non-existent things and the laws of operation, so that the brain can be manipulated in a completely different way from reality, creating more magical application.
03
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How does VR stand in the air?
Every pig that flies up in the wind has been waiting in the forgotten corner for a long time. The same is true for VR, whose history is much longer than you and I imagine.
The first stage: fantasy
In 1932, the famous British writer Adolf Huxley in the novel "Beautiful New World", with the background of the 26th century, fantasizing the life scenes of people in the future society, mentioning that "head-mounted devices can provide images. , a scent, sound and a series of real sensory experiences, so that the audience can better immerse themselves in the world of movies."
In 1935, Stanley Weinbaum of the United States wrote a science fiction novel called "Pygmalion's Glasses." The book mentions that an elf professor invented a pair of glasses. After wearing this pair of glasses, he can enter the movie and see, hear, taste, smell and touch various things and become the protagonist of the story. And can communicate with the characters in the story.
These two novels are the original description of the immersive experience brought about by virtual reality. The magical equipment created by these most interesting minds is undoubtedly the VR helmet today.
The second stage: budding
In 1963, the American futurist Hugo Gensback released his invention, Teleyeglasses: a head-mounted TV viewing device. The meaning of this artificial word consists of TV + eyes + glasses. Although the difference between VR technology and today is still a little big, the seeds of VR have been buried.
In 1965, the American scientist Ivan Suzelan proposed a new theory of human-machine cooperation that felt and interacted with reality. After that, the US Air Force began to use virtual reality technology to do flight simulation training.
In 1968, Ivan Suzelan developed a visually immersive helmet-mounted stereo display and head position tracking system called the sword of Damocles.
This head-mounted display is quite primitive and heavy, and has to be hung on the ceiling, but its form is close to the VR equipment we are seeing now.
Through the constant efforts of these smart brains, VR is no longer the plot in science fiction, and it has begun to sprout in reality.
The third stage: breaking ground
In 1982, directed by Steven Lisberger, a feature film "Electronic World Hegemony" was released, bringing virtual reality to the public for the first time, which had a profound impact on the popularity of VR. Subsequently, in the entire 1980s of the United States in the last century, the technology circle set off a VR fever.
In 1983, the US Department of Defense and the Army jointly developed a simulation networking plan, and then NASA began developing a virtual environment visual display for Mars exploration. This virtual reality device is called VIVED VR, which helps astronauts enhance the sense of space work during training.
In 1984, VPL Research, founded by Jarion Lanier, launched a series of VR products, including data gloves, VR head-mounted, surround sound, 3D engine, VR operating system and so on.
Although these products are very expensive and far from the lives of ordinary people, Jarrein Lanier is the first person to push VR devices to the civilian market, so he is the father of "virtual reality." The name is in the history books.
Fourth stage: growth
In the 1990s, VR opened the world's first wave of enthusiasm and ushered in the short-lived VR arcade game. At the same time, technology companies have also laid out VR.
In 1994, virtual reality modeling language and modeling language appeared, laying the foundation for network transmission and interaction of graphic data.
In 1995, Nintendo launched Virtual Boy, one of the most well-known gaming peripherals at the time, but this revolutionary product was too much avant-garde to gain market recognition.
In 1998, Sony also launched a virtual reality device, which is extremely cool.
The movie "The Matrix", released in 1999, is called the most comprehensive VR scene movie. It shows a new world. The extraordinary shocking Superman performance and realistic world have always been the dreams of the virtual reality industry.
Throughout the 1990s, the basic technology companies were all in VR, but they all ended in failure. The main reason was that the technology was not mature enough and the cost of the product was extremely high.
However, through the efforts of this generation of pioneers, it laid a solid foundation for the accumulation and expansion of VR. At the same time, virtual reality has been further promoted around the world, although it has not been recognized by the market, but the technical theory in this field is quietly improved.
The fifth stage: crouching
In the first decade of this century, the development of smart phones, virtual reality seems to be forgotten. Despite being less optimistic about market attempts, people have never stopped researching and exploring in the VR field.
As VR technology has been fully expanded in the technology circle, the scientific and academic circles have paid more and more attention to it. VR has begun to gain in-depth application research in the medical, flight, manufacturing and military fields.
In 2006, the US Department of Defense spent more than 20 million US dollars to establish a virtual world "city decision-making" training program, on the one hand to improve everyone's ability to cope with urban crisis, on the other hand test the level of technology.
In 2008, clinical psychologists at the University of Southern California used virtual reality to treat post-traumatic stress disorder by developing a “virtual Iraq†treatment game to help military patients returning from Iraq.
These examples all prove that although this time, VR is obviously not open, the root system has begun to penetrate into various fields, constantly absorbing nutrients, constantly accumulating strength, waiting for the moment of eruption.
Stage 6: Outbreak
In 2014, VR equipment startup Oculus was acquired by Internet giant Facebook for $2 billion. The incident strongly stimulated the technology circle and the capital market. The virtual reality that had been so quiet for so many years finally ushered in an explosion.
Thanks to the rapid development of smartphones in recent years, the price of sensors, LCD screens and other components required for VR equipment has been reduced, and the problems of mass production and cost have been solved. VR is getting closer and closer to the popularity, and VR entrepreneurs around the world are rapidly Surging.
In the same year, major companies began to launch their own VR products, Google launched a cheap and easy to use Cardboard, Samsung launched Gear VR, etc., consumer-grade VR began to emerge in large numbers.
At the end of 2015, a Goldman Sachs forecast report detonated the VR industry. The mainstream technology media once again took the 2016 VR to the position of the first year, and the virtual reality officially became the “windowâ€, which opened up a vigorous VR entrepreneurial craze.
At the 2018 MWC show in Barcelona not long ago, Huawei demonstrated its cloud VR solution. Under this architecture, all VR applications are running in the cloud, using the powerful computing power and rendering capabilities of the cloud to realize the processing results of VR applications. The images and sounds processed by the cloud are sent to the VR device via a 5G network with ultra-low latency.
The solution removes the shackles of the cable and greatly reduces the hardware threshold for the VR terminal, which is very beneficial to the popularity of VR.
From budding to eruption, after more than half a century of VR crouching, now riding a 5G sail, VR has already fluttered.
04
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What can VR do?
Two core needs
The game is always a powerful driving force for cutting-edge technology. Young people of every era are thriving in the company of the game. From small bullies to large online games to the rise of mobile games, this is the magic of the game.
In the past, the development of video games was mainly switched from one screen to another. The mode of the game changed little. They all stared at the computer or mobile phone screen, and operated with a keyboard or a touch screen. The VR game was completely different.
Take this European medieval style melee wrestling game called Warrior, for example, you will be completely in the middle of the battle, surrounded by enemies, you can naturally turn around to observe the surrounding enemy situation 360°, you can also go around Walk around, the inductive handle on your hand, the avatar in the hands of the game character, you can swing your arms and stab the enemy in the battlefield.
This is a completely different experience, and multidimensional sensory interactions will create a strong sense of immersion. Of course, the virtual world is infinite, your room is not so big, plus VR games also need special equipment to feedback your movement, so the scope of actual sports is limited. Therefore, when playing the VR game of zombie playing Resident Evil, it is basically the same as the picture below.
It seems to be a bit silly, but, while doing a running exercise, I also got the thrill of being like a real gun in the game, how can I get a "cool" word.
Of course, there is another kind of "cool" that is more direct and more original. You should have already guessed it, that is the VR version of adult content. This is a stronger driving force than the game because it caters to the bottom of the masses.
According to statistics, the traffic of pornographic websites exceeds one-third of the global network. The world’s largest pornographic website has 4.4 billion monthly visits. This number is the official website of CNN, or the traffic of ESPN TV network which is dedicated to sports programs for 24 hours. Three times as much, its huge amount of traffic and data traffic even dwarfs YouTube.
With the popularity of virtual reality devices, according to data from Google Trends Data in July 2016, Google’s search growth rate for keywords such as “VR porn†has reached an astonishing 9900 in the past 17 months. %.
Currently VR videos and games have become standard content for porn sites. The richness of content drives the advancement of technology and the popularity of hardware. The advancement of technology and the popularity of hardware in turn drive the content to prosper further. This cycle has a huge impetus to the development of the VR industry chain.
In addition to the above two driving forces, what other areas can consumer grade VR be used for?
Entertainment & Live Events
From live concerts and sports events, VR will be a way to experience your immersive experience. With the 360° camera, you can take pictures of the surrounding scene at once and make VR video content. Simultaneously broadcast live to every corner of the globe.
Take the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics as an example. Even if you are not at the scene, you can experience a better-looking viewing experience with a VR helmet.
Shopping & advertising
Under the blessing of VR, the form of online shopping may also change. Instead of clicking the mouse, you can see the real thing in the virtual store without any dead ends, and even touch the texture of things.
Imagine that at the auto show, in addition to the sexy car model, you can also test the VR, change the model and road conditions as you like, break the time and space constraints, and get a complete test drive experience in a limited space.
Travel & Exploration
Virtual tourism will be a thing that many people can expect. You can enjoy the European style, Hawaiian beaches, wild Africa, etc. You can even try deep diving on the sea floor, roaming the earth, Mars exploration and other things that are not possible in the real world.
Whether it's a live 360° video or a computer-generated virtual scene, the VR headshow allows you to temporarily get out of the real world's troubles and embarrassment to your favorite destination. One day, you will be able to play around the world without leaving your home.
Education & Simulation
In any field of education, such as medical, physics, astronomy, geography, etc., VR can visually construct a world in an amazing way, allowing you to enter, learn and expand.
Students can learn about the development of the universe through VR, the construction of the pyramids of ancient Egypt, or a virtual operation without risk. The VR teaching mode allows anyone to do all kinds of learning and exercise at very low cost.
05
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Want to buy a set of VR equipment to taste early?
Having said that, what is the current development status of VR? Is it appropriate to buy a set of equipment to try it?
In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus's stimulus to the market. In 2016, it was called the first year of VR. Everyone expects VR to erupt in the next one to two years.
However, VR seems to have moved from the previous outbreak to the bottom of a new round of spiraling. In 2017, the VR industry has maintained its stance of development, and it is expected to experience at least three to five years of stagnation.
In the final analysis, it is because hardware is currently subject to slower cost and technology popularization, content is subject to huge costs and the profit model is not clear enough, and high-quality phenomena-level content is not enough. In short, the development of VR is still in its early stages.
The current VR devices are roughly classified into three categories: mobile VR, host VR, and VR all-in-one.
Mobile VR
Mobile VR is a low-cost entry-level VR device that puts the phone into the VR device as a display, cooperates with the lens inside the VR device, and the APP installed in the phone to achieve the VR effect.
The originator of mobile VR is Google's VR carton Cardboard. Although this thing is made of paper paste, with the display of the mobile phone, you can still lead you into the virtual world.
This kind of mobile VR hardware with mobile phones is also called VR glasses. Due to the low cost, the software and content have been blooming everywhere.
The hardware has Samsung's Gear VR, Storm Mirror, and Xiaomi's VR glasses, etc. There are many VR video apps on the content of the current big video website, so the dead house spends dozens to hundreds of dollars. It is good to buy a VR glasses as a "watching artifact".
Host VR
The host VR is the VR helmet for display and motion tracking and feedback. The calculation and rendering of the content are performed by separate computers. In this way, the helmet and the main unit can achieve the highest configuration and performance, providing the most immersive experience.
The effect is good, the price is expensive. Take the most famous HTC VIVE on the market as an example. This VR device includes a head display, two control handles, and two locators. The current price is 5488 yuan, which is the price after the price reduction of 1400 yuan.
This device is not used at all, because it has strict requirements on the graphics card and CPU. It must be equipped with a high-performance computer to enjoy it. At present, such computers are also in the market at 5000~10000. between.
Therefore, to enjoy the ultimate VR gaming experience, you need to spend 10,000 to 15,000 yuan, which is not a small number, only the game enthusiasts will be willing to such a blood.
VR machine
The VR all-in-one is integrated into the display and content processing in a small VR helmet, similar to the combination of the VR host and the head display.
But the helmet can't be too big and too heavy after all, so the VR all-in-one is worse than the host VR in terms of use effect, but it is much better than the VR glasses that rely on mobile phones, and has the advantage of being portable.
In addition to experience and portability, the price of the VR all-in-one is relatively more advantageous. At present, iQiyi's 4K HD VR all-in-one price is in the early 3000s. Facebook's Oculus Go is priced in the early 1000s, and it is getting closer to the general public.
At the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in January 2018, Xiaomi announced that the Xiaomi VR all-in-one with Oculus will be launched this year.
According to the usual practice, the price of Xiaomi will be more attractive, and the huge fan base of enthusiasts will promote the popularity of VR in China.
06
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to sum up
VR, also known as virtual reality, can provide an immersive video or gaming experience, and VR is characterized by immersion-interaction-concept.
The origin of VR is very early. From the initial conception to the present, it has been more than 80 years, and it is still in the stage of popularization of equipment and content.
VR has a wide range of applications, and is closely related to individuals: entertainment, live events, shopping and advertising, travel and exploration, education and simulation. Games and videos are the biggest drivers.
VR personal devices are mainly divided into mobile VR, host VR, and VR all-in-one. Curious to try to buy mobile VR, game enthusiasts buy host VR, the average user can try VR machine.
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