Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

With the popularity of meta-universe, VR (Virtual Reality, virtual reality), as the entrance to the virtual space, once again ushered in the most exciting part of a wave of development.

Do you think that if you understand VR, you are the wave rider of the times?

In fact, this thing has experienced ups and downs for many years, and many people who appear in textbooks that you may not even imagine have experienced VR in unexpected ways.

More than 30 years ago, Qian Xuesen, a recipient of the Republic's two-bomb and one-Star Merit Medal, noticed VR technology and gave it a romantic Chinese name: "Spirit".

"Virtual Reality, the Chinese translation of the word, can be 1. Man-made scenery; 2. Spirituality. I especially like 'spirituality', which has a strong Chinese flavor."

In addition, Qian also predicted in this letter to his friends that this technology will trigger a global technological revolution.

In 1998, the 87-year-old Qian also wrote a short article entitled "using the spiritual realm is practical and realistic". It says: "in our traditional culture, there happens to be a word to express this situation: 'spiritual realm'; this is better than 'frontier', because it is virtual, not real."

Qian believes that the development of "spirituality" technology will make the "deep combination" of people and computers possible in the future. In addition, "spirituality" can also be used to expand the perception of the human brain, so that the combination of man and machine to a new height.

"my interest in spirituality technology and multimedia is that it can greatly expand the perception of the human brain, thus bringing people into an unprecedented new world, and a new historical era is about to begin!"

Qian Lao was born in 1911, while VR technology was born in 1932. Qian was 21 years old at that time and had not yet graduated from Jiaotong University. It was not until Qian was 80 years old that VR came into his sight.

At that time, most of the post-90s had not yet been born.

The development of general technology is almost developed after a round of hump curve. On the other hand, VR broke out occasionally after birth, but on the whole it has been forgotten for a long time. It wasn't until the recent explosion of meta-universe that VR technology ushered in the best part of a new wave.

Next, let's briefly review the secret history of VR from its inception to its well-known history.

The first stage: fantasy 1932, the famous British writer Aldous Huxley fantasized about the life scenes of people in the future society in the novel Beautiful New World in the 26th century, which mentioned that "headsets can provide images, smells, sounds and other 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. It is mentioned in the book that an elven professor invented a pair of glasses. After wearing these glasses, he can enter the movie, see, hear, taste, smell and touch all kinds of things, become the protagonist of the story, and communicate with the characters in the story.

These two novels are the first description of the immersive experience brought about by virtual reality, and the magical devices created by the most interesting minds are undoubtedly VR helmets today.

The second stage: budding in 1963, American futurist Hugo Gensbach released his invention, Teleyeglasses: a head-mounted television viewing device. The meaning of this artificial word is made up of TV + eyes + glasses. Although it is still a little different from today's VR technology, the seeds of VR have been planted.

In 1965, American scientist Ivan Suzelan put forward a new theory of man-machine cooperation with real feeling and interaction. 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 stereoscopic display and a head position tracking system called the Sword of Damocles.

This kind of head-mounted display is so primitive and heavy that it has to be suspended from the ceiling, but it is similar in shape to the VR device we see today.

After the continuous efforts of these smart brains, VR is no longer a plot in science fiction, but has begun to sprout in reality.

The third stage: breaking the ground in 1982, a feature film "the Battle of the Electronic World" directed by director Steven Lisbergill was released, which brought virtual reality to the public for the first time and had a far-reaching impact on the popularity of later VR. Subsequently, throughout the 1980s in the United States, there was a VR craze in the science and technology circle.

In 1983, the United States Department of Defense and the Army jointly developed a simulation network plan, and then NASA began to develop virtual environment visual displays for Mars exploration. The virtual reality device, called VIVED VR, can help astronauts enhance their sense of presence in space work during training.

In 1984, VPL Research, founded by Jarian Ranil, launched a series of VR products, including data gloves, VR head display, surround sound, 3D engine, VR operating system and so on.

Although these products are very expensive and are still a long way from ordinary people's lives, Jarian Ranil was the first person to bring VR devices to the civilian market, so he went down in history as the "father of virtual reality."

The fourth stage: growth in the 1990s, VR opened the first wave of global craze, and ushered in the brief prosperity of VR arcade games. At the same time, technology companies are also laying out VR.

In 1994, virtual reality modeling language and modeling language appeared, which laid the foundation for the network transmission and interaction of graphic data.

In 1995, Nintendo launched one of the best-known game peripherals at the time, the Virtual Boy, but this revolutionary product was too avant-garde to be recognized by the market.

In 1998, Sony also launched a virtual reality-like device that is extremely cool.

The film Matrix, released in 1999, is known as the film with the most comprehensive VR scene. It shows a new world. The shocking Superman performance and lifelike world have always been the dream of the virtual reality industry.

Throughout the 1990s, almost all technology companies at that time were in VR, but all of them failed, mainly because the technology was not mature enough and the cost of products was extremely high.

However, through the efforts of this generation of pioneers, it has laid a solid foundation for the accumulation and expansion of VR. At the same time, virtual reality has been further promoted all over the world, although it has not been recognized by the market, but the technical theory in this field is quietly improving.

The fifth stage: dormant in the first decade of this century, smartphone blowout development, virtual reality seems to be forgotten. Although they are not optimistic about the market attempt, people never stop their research and exploration in the field of VR.

As the VR technology has been fully expanded in the scientific and technological circle, and the scientific and academic circles pay more and more attention to it, VR has been deeply applied and studied in the medical, flight, manufacturing and military fields.

In 2006, the US Department of Defense spent more than $20 million to set up a virtual world "urban decision-making" training program to improve people's ability to deal with urban crisis on the one hand and test the level of technology on the other.

In 2008, clinical psychologists at the University of Southern California used virtual reality to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and developed a "virtual Iraq" treatment game to help military patients returning from Iraq.

These examples prove that although VR has not obviously opened its branches and leaves during this period, its roots have begun to infiltrate into various fields, constantly absorbing nutrients, constantly accumulating strength, and waiting for the moment of outbreak.

Phase 6: wake up in 2014, VR device startup Oculus was acquired by Internet giant Facebook for $2 billion, which strongly stimulated the technology circle and capital markets, and finally ushered in the outbreak of virtual reality after so many years of silence.

Thanks to the rapid development of smart phones in recent years, the prices of sensors, LCD screens and other parts needed by VR devices have been reduced to solve the problems of mass production and cost. VR is getting closer and closer to popularity, and the number of VR entrepreneurs around the world has soared.

In the same year, major companies began to launch their own VR products, Google launched cheap and easy-to-use Cardboard, Samsung launched Gear VR and so on, consumer-grade VR began to emerge in large numbers.

In late 2015, a Goldman Sachs forecast set off the VR industry. Mainstream technology media once again helped 2016 VR to the position of the first year, virtual reality has officially become a "tuyere", which opened a vigorous upsurge of VR entrepreneurship.

In 2018, at the World Communications Congress held in Barcelona, Huawei demonstrated its cloud VR solution, under which all VR applications run on the cloud, making use of the powerful computing and rendering power of the cloud to process the running results of VR applications, and send cloud-processed images and sounds to VR devices through an ultra-low-latency 5G network.

5G, with its ultra-high download rate and ultra-low delay, unfetters the cable and greatly reduces the hardware threshold for VR terminals, which is very conducive to the popularity of VR. Riding on the 5G sail, VR seems to be ready to fly.

Phase 7: explosion however, VR has not skyrocketed with the scale of the 5G network, it has become a mantra 5G vase, repeated demonstrations and experiences on a variety of platforms.

Apart from attracting attention, VR seems to have no other use of force. The VR industry seems to have entered a low ebb again. However, the surging tide under the hard ice could no longer be suppressed.

"Spirit" has been waiting for an opportunity to break the situation.

Shares of Roblox, a gaming company, rose 54.4% on its first day of listing on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021, with a market capitalization of more than $40 billion. This is the first company in the world to write the concept of meta-universe into the IPO prospectus, which is called "the first share of meta-universe".

In September, byte jump spent 9 billion yuan to buy Pico, a company specializing in VR, and began to lay out meta-universe, which is by far the largest acquisition in China's VR industry.

In October, Facebook changed its name to Meta and made a full bet on meta-universe. At the same time, it also pushed VR, the entrance to meta-universe, to the forefront of the wind and waves.

Zuckerberg announced that in order to get as many people as possible to use XR devices (including VR, AR, MR, etc.) in the next 10 years, he is willing to adopt a money-for-market model similar to that of the mainframe industry, with early subsidies to reduce or give up hardware sales profits, and then through subsidies to reduce or give up sales profits, and then through software sales and the surrounding economy around the market to make up. Such as games, application sales, advertising and so on.

If the boss bows himself into the game with such a firm determination, it will certainly bring a strong herding effect to the industry. VR industry, with meta-universe together, when the wind light strength, into the sky in one fell swoop.

In the next 10 years, let's put on the VR equipment that is armed to the teeth and travel in the meta-universe together.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: wireless Deep Sea (ID:wuxian_shenhai), author: mayfly acquisition

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.