With the popularity of the metaverse, VR (Virtual Reality, virtual reality) as the entrance to the virtual space, has once again ushered in a wave of development climax.
Do you think that figuring out VR is the tide of the times?
In fact, this thing has long experienced years of ups and downs, and many people who appear in textbooks that you may not have imagined at all have experienced VR in unexpected ways.
As early as 30 years ago, Qian Xuesen, the recipient of the Republic's Two Bombs and One Star Meritorious Service Medal, noticed VR technology and gave it a romantic Chinese name: "Spirit Realm".
"Virtual Reality, the Chinese translation of this word, can be 1. 2. Man-made scenes; Spirit realm. I especially like the 'spirit realm', which has a strong Chinese flavor. ”
In addition, In this letter to a friend, Elder Qian predicted that this technology would trigger a global technological revolution.
In 1998, the 87-year-old Qian Lao also wrote a short article entitled "Using the "Spiritual Realm" is Realistic." It reads: "Our traditional culture has exactly one word that expresses this situation: 'spiritual realm'; this is better than 'presence', because this realm is virtual, not real. ”
Elder Qian believes that the development of "spirit realm" technology will make the "deep integration" of people and computers possible in the future. Moreover, the "spiritual realm" can also be used to expand the perception of the human brain and bring human-machine integration to a new height.
"My interest in spiritual technology and multimedia is that it can greatly expand the perception of the human brain, thus enabling people to enter a new world that has never been seen before, and a new historical era is about to begin!"
Qian Lao was born in 1911, and VR technology began in 1932. At that time, Qian was 21 years old and had not yet graduated from Jiaotong University. It wasn't until Qian Lao was 80 years old that VR entered his field of vision.
At that time, most of the post-90s had not yet been born.
The development of general technology has almost developed after a round of hump curves. VR, on the other hand, has occasionally erupted after birth, but in general, it has been in a forgotten corner for a long time. It was not until the recent explosion of the metaverse that VR technology once again ushered in a new wave of climax.
Below, we will briefly review the hidden history of VR from its inception to the widespread knowledge.
Stage 1: Fantasy
In 1932, the famous British writer Adolphus Huxley, in his novel "Brave New World", fantasized about the life scenes of people in the future society against the background of the 26th century, which mentioned that "the headset can provide a series of real sensory experiences such as images, smells, sounds, etc., so that the audience can better immerse themselves in the world of cinema." ”
In 1935, Stanley Wiynbaum of the United States wrote a science fiction novel called "Pygmalion's Glasses" The book mentions that an elven professor invented a pair of glasses, and after wearing these glasses, you 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 depictions of the immersive experience of virtual reality, the magical device created by these most interesting minds, which today seems to be a VR headset.
Stage 2: Budding
In 1963, the American futurist Hugo Gensbach released his invention Teleyeglasses: a head-mounted television viewing device. The meaning of this artificial word is composed of TV + eyes + glasses, although it is still a little different from the VR technology mentioned today, but the seeds of VR have been planted.
In 1965, the American scientist Ivan Suzeran proposed a new theory of human-machine cooperation that senses and interacts with reality, and after that, the US Air Force began to use virtual reality technology to do flight simulation training.
In 1968, Ivan Suzeran developed a visually immersive helmet-mounted stereoscopic display and head position tracking system called the Sword of Damocles.
This head-mounted display was quite primitive and quite heavy, and had to be hung from the ceiling, but its morphology was close to the VR device we see now.
After the continuous efforts of these smart brains, VR is finally no longer the plot of science fiction, but has begun to sprout in reality.
Stage Three: Breaking ground
In 1982, director Steven Lisberger's feature film "Electronic World Battle" was released, which brought virtual reality to the public for the first time and had a profound impact on the later popularization of VR. Subsequently, throughout the 80s of the last century in the United States, the technology circle set off a VR fever.
In 1983, the U.S. Department of Defense and the Army developed a simulation networking program, and NASA began developing virtual environmental visual displays for Mars exploration. This virtual reality device is called VIVED VR, which can help astronauts enhance the sense of presence in space work during training.
In 1984, VPL Research, founded by Jarion Lanier, launched a series of VR products, including data gloves, VR headsets, surround sound, 3D engines, VR operating systems, etc.
Although these products are very expensive and still far from the lives of ordinary people, after all, Jarion Lanier was the first person to introduce VR devices to the civilian market, so he was recorded in history as the "father of virtual reality".
Stage Four: Growth
In the 1990s, VR started the world's first boom and ushered in a brief boom in VR arcade games. At the same time, technology companies have also laid out VR.
In 1994, the virtual reality modeling language and modeling language appeared, laying the foundation for the network transmission and interaction of graphic data.
In 1995, Nintendo launched the Virtual Boy, one of the most well-known gaming peripheral devices at the time, but this revolutionary product was too avant-garde to be recognized by the market.
In 1998, Sony also launched a virtual reality device, which is extremely cool.
Released in 1999, the film "The Matrix", known as the most comprehensive presentation of VR scenes, shows a whole new world, and the extremely shocking superhuman performance and realistic world have always been the scenes that the virtual reality industry has dreamed of achieving.
Throughout the 1990s, basically the technology companies at that time were in VR, but they all failed, mainly because the technology was not mature enough and the cost of the product was extremely high.
But through the efforts of this generation of pioneers, it has laid a solid foundation for the accumulation and expansion of VR in the future. At the same time, virtual reality has been further promoted around the world, although it is still not recognized by the market, but the technical theory in the field is quietly improving.
Stage Five: Dormancy
In the first decade of this century, smartphones exploded, and virtual reality seemed to be forgotten. Although not very optimistic in terms of market attempts, people have never stopped researching and exploring in the VR field.
As VR technology has been fully expanded in the science and technology circles, the scientific community and academia have paid more and more attention to it, and VR has begun to be deeply applied in the medical, flight, manufacturing and military fields.
In 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense spent more than $20 million to establish a virtual world "City Decision" training program, on the one hand, to improve everyone's ability to respond to urban crises, on the other hand, to test the level of technology.
In 2008, clinical psychologists at the University of Southern California used virtual reality to treat PTSD by developing a "virtual Iraq" treatment game to help military patients returning from Iraq.
These examples are all proof that although VR has not obviously branched and scattered during this time, its root system has begun to penetrate into various fields, constantly absorbing nutrients, constantly accumulating strength, waiting for the moment of outbreak.
Stage Six: Awakening
In 2014, VR device startup Oculus was acquired by Internet giant Facebook for $2 billion, an event that strongly stimulated the tech community and capital markets, and virtual reality, which had been dormant for so many years, finally ushered in an outbreak.
Thanks to the rapid development of smart phones in recent years, the price of sensors, LCD screens and other parts required for VR equipment has been reduced, and the problem of mass production and cost has been solved, VR is getting closer and closer to popularization, and vr entrepreneurs around the world have rapidly exploded.
In the same year, major companies began to launch their own VR products, Google launched a cheap and easy-to-use Cardboard, Samsung launched The Gear VR, etc., consumer-grade VR began to emerge in large numbers.
In late 2015, a Goldman Sachs forecast report blew the VR industry. The mainstream technology media once again helped VR in 2016 to the position of the first year, and virtual reality officially became the "outlet", which opened a vigorous VR entrepreneurial boom.
In 2018, at the World Communications Conference in Barcelona, Huawei demonstrated its cloud VR solution, under which all VR applications run in the cloud, using the powerful computing power and rendering power of the cloud to process the results of VR application operations, and sending the screen and sound processed in the cloud to the VR device through the ultra-low latency 5G network.
5G, with its ultra-high download rate and ultra-low latency, lifts the shackles of cables, greatly reduces the hardware threshold for VR terminals, and is very conducive to the popularization of VR. Riding on the sails of 5G, VR seems to have flapped its wings.
Stage Seven: Outbreak
However, VR has not soared with the scale of the 5G network, it has become a mantra-like 5G vase, repeated demonstrations and experiences on various platforms.
Aside from attracting eyeballs, VR doesn't seem to have any other uses. The VR industry seems to have entered a low tide again. However, the dark tide surging under the solid ice was no longer easy to hold.
The "Spirit Realm" has been waiting for an opportunity to break the situation.
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Does not represent the position of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences
The original text has been partially modified
Source: Wireless deep sea
Edit: Fun Superman