Crabs are delicious but their legs are hard to break. Can the story of VR continue?

The story began two years ago, when a $2 billion collision between two dropout teenagers, Palmer Luckey and Mark Zuckerberg, brought VR into the technology circle and has been unstoppable ever since.

Nowadays, if a technology company says that it has no VR layout, it will probably be hard to hold its head up in front of its peers. But is the road ahead for this shining protagonist really bright?

Lack of high-quality product market and difficult technical problems

There are endless types and brands of VR products on the market, such as mobile phone boxes, consoles/PC helmets, and all-in-one machines, and along with them come various problems such as motion sickness, poor image quality, and weak interaction. Even the so-called three major head-mounted displays, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PSVR, cannot deliver a satisfactory answer.

Although some manufacturers have been able to provide better solutions in terms of screen resolution, frame rate, sensor sensitivity, etc., most companies are still confused about position tracking and control devices, which are crucial to the VR experience, especially in mid- and low-end products.

Although the prospect of the "next generation computing platform" looks good, it cannot change the fact that VR is facing severe technical challenges at this stage. Even more unfortunately, due to the constraints of objective conditions such as technology cycles and occurrence principles, these problems are difficult to solve in a short period of time.

For example, vertigo.

A few days ago, a US military expert said that VR technology may never have a future because it is an "anti-human" concept. Fundamentally speaking, it is related to the cooperation mechanism between the human brain and the body's sensory system, and it cannot be solved by improving parameters. Later, someone broke the news that the expert cited old materials from the last century. This is a different time, but in the end, no one dared to stand up and make this "future-like" conclusion.

The bitterness of device manufacturers and the lost path of content development

Practitioners in the VR industry are well aware of these problems, which is why VR software is now mainly based on experience and demonstration, and rarely lasts more than an hour. Just for this problem, manufacturers have racked their brains. For example, instead of allowing players to move, they use teleportation; instead of using controllers to control the perspective, only the player's head controls it; avoiding acceleration in all directions, and using static or uniform motion; designing fixed reference objects in the game; blurring the background and reducing the resolution; or simply using a third-person perspective without reducing the sense of immersion.

These methods limit the performance of the game in other aspects to a certain extent. Similar problems also occur at other content levels. The resolution of the currently popular VR panoramic short films is generally not high. Even if it is as high as 1080p, after stretching to a huge spherical field of view, the resolution is really pitifully low. Moreover, a large amount of redundant information is obtained in exchange for a large sacrifice of resolution.

So, VR is going to die before it even becomes popular?

Not necessarily. In the chaotic VR market, there are still some rays of light. Google's Daydream provides a platform for more developers and consumers; the VR project launched by Six Flags in Georgia, USA, has received good reviews from players. If we want to continue to tell the story of VR, we need the joint efforts of all industry participants.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.