This time, is VR really close to us?

[[161452]]

Human senses are divided into vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. VR technology is to take you into another world by deceiving these senses.

Imagine that you live alone in the middle of the night, with an eye mask on and headphones in your ears. All you can see is an abandoned old house. You turn around and look around, but you can't see anyone. Bats fly out from time to time, and you hear weird music and children crying. Do you dare to move forward? Yes, this is the scene in the popular VR game "affected" abroad. It is said that people who have experienced this game quickly get rid of being single because they are afraid of being alone at night.

At present, the application of VR in the field of games is extremely hot, but basically it is mostly experience and horror games, because it is easier to reflect the immersion and presence of VR games.

What is VR?

Let's first look at Wikipedia's definition of VR. Virtual Reality, referred to as VR technology, also known as artificial environment, is a three-dimensional virtual world created by computer simulation, which provides users with simulations of vision, hearing, touch and other senses, allowing users to observe things in three dimensions in real time and without restrictions as if they were actually there. When the user moves, the computer can immediately perform complex calculations and transmit accurate three-dimensional world videos back to create a sense of presence. This technology integrates the latest developments in computer graphics, computer simulation, artificial intelligence, sensing, display and network parallel processing, and is a high-tech simulation system generated with the assistance of computer technology.

Since Stanley G. Weinbaum's science fiction novel "Pygmalion's Spectacles" was considered the first science fiction work to explore virtual reality (the short story describes in detail the virtual reality system based on smell, touch and holographic goggles), virtual reality has experienced three booms, with representative events being:

In 1968, Ivan Sutherland, the father of computer graphics, developed the first computer graphics-driven helmet display HMD and head position tracking system;

[[161453]]

The emergence of the "Virtuality 1000CS" device in 1991 set off a short-lived wave of VR commercialization, and Sega, Sony, Nintendo and others followed suit;

In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus for US$20 billion, and the VR commercialization process began again.

[[161455]]

Proponents have long believed that VR is the next new medium after print, radio and television, but engineers have struggled with the technology. Until recently, advances in displays, chips and sensors have made VR possible — and commercially viable. Facebook's chief technology officer, Michael Schroepfer, calls VR "the technology I've personally spent the most time on in my life."

VR Industry Chain Distribution

The entire existing VR/AR industry chain mainly includes several parts: hardware equipment, software, content, channel platform, and products.

Hardware equipment: Microsoft, HTC, Sony, Samsung, Google, etc. There are also many VR equipment development companies in China, more than 90.

Software: This can be divided into tools and plug-ins. VR's main development tools: Unity, Unreal, CryEngine, EON, Metaio; plug-ins: Vuforia, Metaio;

Content: Currently, there are more than 900 VR-specific custom games in the world, including demos, but none of them have actually been released. The VR games on the market are all "fake" VR games.

Channel platform: Many companies in China have been trying this, and their main focus is still on hardware sales channels.

Classification by technology: optics, sensors, algorithms.

Domestic listed companies in optical technology include Lida Optoelectronics and Lianchuang Optoelectronics, sensors include Goertek and AAC Technologies, and algorithms mostly come from the designers themselves. Goertek is the exclusive OEM for hardware of OCULUS, SONY, and LeTV VR.

No matter which link you start from, you will see that whether it is BAT, Internet upstarts (such as Xiaomi, 360), video websites (such as iQiyi, LeTV) and other industry giants you can think of are all laying out VR upstream and downstream. At the launch conference of Fireworks Workshop, founder Lou Chi was not afraid of competing with giants such as Tencent. Coming from Tencent, he believes that it is not easy for a project to get a lot of support from the company's resources within a large company.

VR is becoming popular in the capital market

As we all know, the capital market has been on the move since Facebook acquired OCULUS for $2 billion in 2014. By the end of 2015, we saw a significant increase in investment cases in the VR field.

Even though there is still no consumer product launched, VRX has teams demonstrating their ability to solve big problems, and Google Ventures has made five investments in VR so far, including High Fidelity and EmergentVR. At the event, several companies said they have already started investing in VR, and some are in negotiations.

As a new consumer sector, VR is indeed a piece of cake. No matter how ordinary the technology is or how immature the products are, the current companies are just "occupying territory" to grab the first-mover advantage. However, investors are like ants on a hot pot, impatiently searching for the traces of unicorns. According to rough estimates, the total amount of financing for domestic VR companies is more than 1 billion yuan, which is about a few tens of times that of the United States.

Real problems facing VR

Computer hardware support is not up to par: The president of graphics card giant Nvidia said that if you want to fully support VR, you need powerful hardware support. Currently, less than 1% of computers in the world support VR. For example, graphics cards require 7 times the processing power.

According to NVIDIA's estimates, in 2016, only 13 million PCs in the world can provide the graphics processing power required for VR devices, and these ultra-high-end PCs account for less than 1% of the world's 1.43 billion PC users. Consumer-grade headsets are about to be shipped in large numbers, but the number of PCs in the world with hardware performance that can fully support Oculus Rift CV1 or other headsets is ***. To achieve realistic VR effects, extremely high-density hardware performance is required, and most PCs are difficult to meet the needs of VR.

Mobile phone hardware can't keep up: The principle of VR imaging is to divide the mobile phone screen into two parts, and then transmit it to the eyes through the lens. The video clarity is related to the video file on the one hand, and the PPI of the mobile phone screen on the other hand. For example, the common 1920*1080P resolution is 960*540 when divided into two screens. Even the 2K resolution of high-end mobile phones (such as Samsung S6) is 720P standard definition when used in VR. After trying it out, the reporter of Lieyun.com found that the screen had obvious jagged edges. Therefore, if the mobile phone is equipped with a VR headset, a large screen of 4K or 8K is required. From Google's Cardboard, you can see that the headset devices on the market that cost tens or hundreds of yuan are not high-tech, but just convex lenses and plastic shells.

Inconsistent access platforms: The interfaces of head-mounted display products from various merchants cannot be unified, which makes content providers hesitant when choosing platforms and increases the technical difficulty of multi-platform access.

VR technology market looks broad

At present, CEOs of major companies that have joined the VR concept have endorsed the VR concept on various occasions. Let us briefly list a few areas.

VR games: currently a hot market application, as you can see from the heavy investments made by gaming giants.

VR Social: Philip Rosedale, founder of Second Life and former founder/CEO of High Fidelity, said that although Second Life has only 1 million users, it has created an economic scale of nearly $500 million in annual revenue. According to industry insiders, the top companies in the field of social VR will become the next generation of giants. We may see billions of dollars of mergers and acquisitions in the field of social VR, and these companies will be larger than today's social media companies. In other words, there are still many hardware and software problems in this field that need to be solved urgently, and problems at the psychological level also need to be solved, otherwise all this is just imagination.

VR video live broadcast: Users only need to set up an OZO (a VR camera launched by Nokia) or a GOPRO panoramic camera to enjoy the atmosphere of a live music show or a football match at home. 360 previously used VR live broadcast at its press conference, but the experience was really nothing special except for poor image quality and lag.

VR movies: In the combination of video websites and VR technology, the original video content does not have a particularly good look and feel on current devices, which requires a completely new shooting method. It may just give you a 3D effect.

Currently, movies such as "Little Door Gods" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2" have released synchronized VR experience short films before their release, using this concept to promote the movies.

VR News: The New York Times has specially developed a VR news video APP.

VR Healthcare: California Health Sciences Western University (Pomona) has opened a virtual reality learning center that features four VR technologies, zSpace displays, Anatomage virtual dissection tables, Oculus Rift, and Stanford University anatomical models on iPads to help students use VR to learn about dentistry, orthopedics, veterinary medicine, physical therapy, and nursing.

Research organization RnR Market Research recently released a virtual reality medical service market research report, which pointed out that the compound growth rate of the global VR medical service market will reach 19.37% between 2014 and 2019. In addition to training, VR models are also flourishing in other medical fields.

The third time, can VR be fully commercialized?

In the current reality, it is still difficult to create a highly realistic virtual reality environment with equipment worth hundreds of yuan. This is mainly due to technical limitations, which come from computer processing power, image resolution and communication bandwidth. However, as time goes by, processors, images and data communication technologies become more powerful and cost-effective, these limitations may be overcome.

A large number of top-level VR products will appear in 2016. In foreign countries, Samsung's Gear VR has already started pre-sale, Oculus has recently been able to pre-order the consumer version on its official website, and Sony's PS VR, Microsoft's AR product HoloLens, and HTC Vive will also launch their own products in 2016. Judging from Apple's frequent acquisitions in the field of VR technology and rumors that the iPhone 7 will be replaced with an OLED screen, Apple is planning its own VR product.

Oculus has long said that it is only a matter of time before someone is scared to death in VR. So, if you love someone, take them to play VR, and if you hate someone, take them to play VR. I just hope that this third wave of VR will not repeat the short-lived success of the previous ones.