According to foreign media reports, Jeremy Bailenson, a professor at Stanford University in the United States, has launched the first course in Stanford history that is entirely based on virtual reality - virtual people. This virtual reality (VR) course, numbered COMM 266/COMM 166, allows all students who choose this course to break through the space limits, put on a VR headset anywhere in the world, and appear in the same "classroom"...
With the release of science fiction movies such as "Ready Player One" and "Out of Control Player", the audience also felt the next Internet outlet predicted by Internet technology companies on the big screen - "Metaverse".
Recently, Facebook's renaming of Meta has pushed the concept of "metaverse" to a climax. In addition to Meta, global Internet companies have quietly laid out the "meta-universe" track, investing in and acquiring related technology and equipment companies. For example, ByteDance acquired VR equipment company Pico in 2021, Tencent invested in Roblox, the world's largest multiplayer online game creation platform, and Microsoft launched a mixed reality collaboration platform Microsoft Mesh this year...
VR equipment in Stanford University classrooms
What is the "metacosm" that is so sought after by Internet technology companies? What impact will the "metacosm" have on the future development of human society?
Red Star News interviewed Professor Jeremy Barrysen, founder and director of stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Laboratory (VHIL), and Anna Queiroz, a VHIL postdoctoral scholar focused on human behavior and VR technology, to explore the "metacosm" world of humanity's future.
Course "New Wine in Old Bottles" opened in 2003
As early as 2003, Professor Byreson had introduced the "Virtual Man" course. He told Red Star News that in his final year of graduate school, he read a novel called Neuromancer, "I was so interested in it that I started the virtual man course. This novel also became the first textbook I used when I started this course. ”
Neuromancer is a 1984 science fiction novel by science fiction writer William Gibson, in which he created a cyberspace (cyberspace) to see the world with a high-tech eye, and successfully foresaw the computer network world of the 1990s years later.
But previously, the course was mainly used by teaching assistants and some students to demonstrate how to use VR, and the number of people used at the same time and the scale of the VR space shared by multiple people were very limited. However, last year, the new crown epidemic suddenly struck, and Stanford University had to take the form of remote classes, which also brought opportunities for the development of this course.
According to Professor Barryson, more than 100 students took the course last summer semester. More than 300 students said they wanted to apply to the program this fall semester, "which is about 5 percent of all undergraduates at Stanford." "In the end, about 175 students successfully took the course.
Students wear devices and enter the virtual classroom together
Professor Barrison said that although the epidemic has prevented people from meeting in physical space, he can reconvenge students in a virtual classroom by studying VR technology for many years. Hundreds of students participate in the entire remote classroom through a VR headset, worn like a diving mask on their faces, paired with two controllers in their hands.
These "classrooms" could be in museums, labs, seabeds, or off the coast. Through immersive experiences, students can experience things that can only be felt in books in a new, virtual, and interactive environment.
Professor Byresen calls this "virtual person" classroom an internal "metacosm" in which each student's existence is presented in the form of an avatar.
"Metacosm": Humans become amphibian species in the real and virtual worlds
The term "metaverse" originated in the 1992 science fiction novel Avalanche by American writer Neil Stephenson. The novel depicts a vast virtual world parallel to the real world, the "Metaverse". People living in the real world have a virtual doppelganger in the Metaverse, and people control this virtual doppelganger through digitization, competing with each other in the virtual world and improving their status.
Infographic. The staff used the VR experience device to immerse themselves in the powerful functions of the South Breeding and Breeding Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
Professor Barreson believes that the "metacosm" is the collection of people, places and everything else formed through VR and AR (augmented reality). Broadly speaking, he said, VR refers to any synthetic sensory experience, including hallucinations, dreams, and immersive virtual environments after humans wear VR devices. "The 'metaverse' is a collection of all immersive virtual environments, and in the future it may be fully applied to human social life." Professor Byreson said.
Anna Queiroz directly uses the term "virtual world" to describe the "metacosm". "It's a whole new virtual world that humans can build," Anna explained to Red Star News, "and you can put on your device at any time and run with friends, watch movies, and work together in this new world." ”
Meta has tried to do this, in its remote work collaboration platform Horizon Workrooms, where users can access a 3D virtual "office" by wearing an Oculus VR device. Unlike video conferencing software such as Zoom, through this device, users can see the avatar of their colleagues in the "office", choose to wear it every day, or tap the virtual keyboard as if they were in reality. At the same time, spatial audio technology also allows users to hear voices from all corners of the "office", and even colleagues in the "office" are possible. This is also the most important "metacosmic" application launched by Meta.
Infographic. Facebook's renaming of Meta pushes the concept of a "metacosm" to a climax.
At present, there is no recognized definition of "metacosmity" in China's scientific and technological circles, but scholars generally believe that "metacosm" is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates virtual reality and reality produced by integrating a variety of new technologies, which contains great opportunities for social, content, games, office and other scene changes.
According to the "2021 Meta-universe Development Report" released by the New Media Research Center of Tsinghua University, 2020 is the tipping point of human social virtualization, and 2021 can be called "the first year of the meta-universe". The integration of offline and online embodied in the "meta-universe" occurs in various fields, logistics, finance, medical care, environment and daily life, which will profoundly change the operation of the existing society, and human beings will become amphibian species living in reality and digital network world.
Anna Queiroz pointed out that this does not mean that people will completely rely on the virtual world in the future, human society already has a lot of technology that can achieve remote interaction, but human beings have real social attributes, and social activities in the real world will not be replaced by the virtual world. "People still go to the park, walk, party, and eat together in the real world. The happiness that humans get in the real world cannot be achieved in the virtual world. ”
She analyzed that in the first few years before the concept of "metaverse" first appeared, people may feel curious and excited. But over time, people will slowly calm down and begin to look for a balance between the virtual world and the real world. "Most importantly, people should know what can be done in real life and what can be done in the virtual world." Anna said that everyone is looking for a different balance and the time required is different.
Immersive Experience: Influencing the thoughts and actions of the human real world
In addition to changing the way humans live in the real world, Professor Byreson believes that the behavior in the "metacosm" can also change human thinking in real life, and there will be a broad space for application in education, environmental protection, anti-racial discrimination and other matters. "Experiments have shown that immersive experiences in the virtual world can influence human thought and behavior in the real world," he said. ”
Infographic. At the 4th CIIE, visitors experienced immersive VR skiing.
Anna Queiroz has been conducting research on the impact of VR technology on human behavior. She said experiments have shown that human thoughts and behaviors in the virtual world can be translated into real life. In one experiment, she used VR technology to have one group of subjects experience first-hand the process of trees being cut down, and then see if they would reduce the amount of paper they used. "In the forests of the virtual world, they can control the cutting of trees with joysticks," she says, "and they have to cut down a certain amount of trees as required." The final experimental results showed that because of the "personal" cutting of trees, the amount of paper used by this group of experimental subjects was reduced by nearly 20%.
In another experiment she worked on, subjects were asked to put on VR devices and be in a virtual coastal area. "The people who participated in the experiment could choose what to look like in their area in 5, 10, 20, or even 30 years, and they could see first-hand what a terrible thing sea level rise is." She said that through the immersive experience, people can intuitively experience the impact of climate change, which also greatly improves people's environmental awareness.
In addition to environmental protection, according to reports, immersive experiences can even help alleviate racial tensions. VHIL has launched an immersive experiential class. In this "classroom," students can experience first-hand the racial discrimination suffered by some people. "By immersing yourself in the virtual world of the misfortunes of others, you can enhance the empathy of the participants and make them more willing to help those in need in the real world," Professor Bayleyson emphasizes. ”
The next Internet era to succeed the mobile Internet?
Technology desires new breakthroughs, users want new experiences, and capital expects new exports. At present, the development of the Internet is internalized, and there is a long-term lack of breakthroughs in communication carriers, content dissemination methods, and interactive participation involved, resulting in the Internet industry showing "growth without development". The concept of "metaverse" may realize the iteration and update of Internet technology. Some reports have analyzed that the metaverse may be the next Internet era to succeed the mobile Internet.
Infographic. The concept of "metaverse" may be proposed to realize the iteration and update of Internet technology.
Professor Barryson said that after the epidemic, the use of remote interaction software such as Zoom has made people believe that the research on VR is meaningful. "Over the next decade, a lot of what can be done in the real world can be realized in the virtual world." He said that with the current research results, moving real-world activities into the virtual world will become a future trend.
"Major Internet technology companies have invested a lot of money and resources in research, making VR headsets less out of reach. In the past, people wanted to enter the virtual world, they needed to go through a million-dollar laboratory and more than 40,000 U.S. dollars (about 250,000 yuan) of headsets. Now it only takes $400 (about 2500 yuan) to install a VR system at home. Professor Byresen said that in the past few years, the research of VR devices by major technology companies has made VR devices an affordable thing for everyone, which has also made hardware preparations for the future of the "metaverse".
Still, Anna says that for most people, vr devices are currently expensive. "This is one of the challenges we have to face right now," she told Red Star News, "and only after the price problem is resolved can we implement large-scale VR adoption." ”
In addition to hardware, the content of VR and the scenes presented are also the directions that future researchers need to work on. Anna says that experiencing it in an environment is definitely the best way to learn. "In the future world, more people will be able to experience scenes that have never been experienced before through VR." She further explained that because of the high price and harsh environment, in the real world, only a very small number of people can go to the Arctic to see glaciers and go down to the sea to see coral reefs. "But in the future, in the metaverse, more people can experience this magical universe in the virtual world through VR technology."
Professor Barrison believes that VR content creators need to create more content suitable for the virtual world to cope with the surging "metaverse".
Red Star News reporter Fan Xu Intern reporter Li Jinrui
Edited by Zhang Xun
(Download Red Star News, there are prizes for the newspaper!) ）