Text/Li Jiashi
From October 19th to 20th, the Cloud Summit of the 2021 World VR Industry Conference, co-sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the People's Government of Jiangxi Province, was held in Nanchang. At the opening ceremony held on the morning of October 19, Wang Jian, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and founder of Alibaba Cloud, delivered a wonderful speech entitled "Urban Digitalization and Technological Innovation - Re-understanding Virtual Reality after 30 Years". Wang Jian said that the invention of electricity changed the world in the twentieth century, and a series of subsequent inventions are inseparable from electricity, today's digitalization is electrification 100 years ago, and AR/VR is another technological revolution after the computer revolution. We need to look at and understand the virtual reality technology revolution from the perspective of the century-old scientific and technological changes, and only in this way can we create technologies that truly represent the future.
Digitalization was electrified 100 years ago
Wang Jian first said that the city is one of the greatest inventions of mankind, not one, and then he talked about electricity. "The American Academy of Engineering selected the 20 greatest engineering technologies of the twentieth century in 2000, of which electrification ranked first, and there were telephones, television, the Internet, computers, etc. on the table, and if there was no invention of electricity, the next series of inventions would not exist." Wang Jian believes that the invention of electricity is not a single invention, it gave birth to an era, in the 20th century we entered the era of electrification, our cities have also been changed, and cities have also given birth to technology inventions based on electricity.
And today's digitalization is 100 years ago electrification, it is not a simple technical continuation, or a single technology, I believe that in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years or even 100 years, we will go back to digitalization as we talked about electrification. Wang Jian talked about Nanchang's real active construction of the city brain, and there were two things that impressed him deeply.
First, Nanchang is the first city in China to have been restricted for more than 10 years and then abolished, no city in the world has done this, it benefits from urban digitalization, and in 10 years and 20 years, it will still be of symbolic significance. The second is about rural road traffic accidents. Data show that in China's traffic mortality rate is the highest is the rural road, Nanchang relevant departments have a vision, hope that through the digitization of rural roads, significantly reduce the mortality rate, improve people's living standards is the most basic goal of digitalization.
The next century-old technological revolution is the "spirit realm" technology
Today, we have fully felt the great changes brought by digitalization to today, and Wang Jian believes that virtual reality is the next technological revolution after digitalization.
To this end, Wang Jian talked about a letter written by Qian Xuesen to Dai Ruwei, Wang Chengcheng, and Qian Xuemin in 1994. In his letter, Qian Lao translated the virtual reality engineering into spiritual technology and believed that "spiritual technology is another revolutionary technology after the computer revolution." It will trigger a series of changes that will shock the world. It must be a major event in human history. “
Wang Jian said that after 30 years to see this matter, thinking back to what he has done, he feels that there are two things that are very impressive: First, virtual reality is a new technological revolution, not a continuation of computer technology. This new technological revolution is not something that can be simply encompassed by today's technological framework, and what this technological revolution will bring and how deeply it will affect us needs to be rethought. Second, AR/VR and CR (Cinematic reality) are one and the same. Mr. Qian Xuesen translated it as "spirit realm", it is not a simple translation problem, virtual reality technology has many sayings: some say AR, some say VR, some people talk about film reality, image reality (CR), so far this technology has not been unified, why do these three words appear? Reflecting that we have not yet unified understanding, looking back today, whether it is AR, VR or film reality (CR), it is a whole. Elder Qian hoped to use one word to express this incident.
Wang Jian also revealed that his work at the beginning of his doctoral graduation was related to virtual reality, and his VR-related work ended in 1998 and then moved on to other fields. Wang Jian's book has a text introduction, about the virtual Forbidden City, about the 1996 National 863 Decade Achievements Exhibition, exhibited the latest scientific research achievements of the Department of Psychology of Hangzhou University - "Forbidden City", as long as you wear a special helmet, ride a special bicycle, you can look forward and backward in the virtual Forbidden City, back and forth, as if immersed in the scene. This is the first VR system made by Wang Jian, and in the 5-day exhibition, more than 3,000 people experienced this system. The software of the Forbidden City System is self-developed, and the hardware system is made by SGI Computer Systems. SGI is one of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley, but today change has been acquired as a very small part of HP, "this era is changing very fast, things are still being done, but the company is no longer there." Wang Jian said.
Wang Jian said that in 1993, the national 863 plan had set up a virtual reality technology project, and he himself had the honor to enter the 973 project team responsible for Dai Ru for academicians, and Wang became an academician responsible for the 863 project team. "Today we can hold this meeting in Nanchang, and today we want to accelerate the development of the virtual reality industry, thanks to these predecessors for providing us with a very good starting point." Wang Jian said.
Psychology is the physics of virtual reality
The core of the century-old great change is the great change of science and technology, virtual reality is the next in the hundred years of technological change, the understanding and vision of virtual reality technology should be grander and more far-reaching, so Wang Jian shared this information in his speech.
On October 12, 2021, the Astrophysics Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology released a VIRUP system that can use data from 50 million galaxies, as well as data from 300 million celestial bodies, including a database containing 1.5 billion light sources, which comes from more than three thousand satellites. Wang Jian said that although there have been astrophysical research work more than 20 years ago, the celestial bodies seen today are far different from the celestial bodies seen 20 years ago, which means that the reality we see with our eyes today is not a real reality.
We need to see more real realities and need breakthrough technologies. "The light field display based on retinal imaging technology is a new beginning for virtual reality displays, Nanchang has a foundation in this regard, and I hope that virtual reality breakthrough display technology will be born in Nanchang." Wang Jian said.
To create revolutionary technologies that support the great changes of the past century, we need to pay attention to the origin of things and make breakthroughs in basic theory. "We are sitting on high-speed rail today, engaging in recyclable rockets, the most basic truth, the most basic principle, are reflected in physics." Virtual reality to break through, but also need the support of 'physics', I personally think that the physics of virtual reality is 'psychology'. Wang Jian further stated that virtual reality opens up a new world for people, and its most basic truth is reflected in psychology, because psychology is a discipline that studies human behavior and psychological activities, and its two cores are "mind" and "behavior", and people's minds can be analyzed and studied through behavior. In fact, the reason why today's virtual reality technology still makes people feel a lot of discomfort, including vertigo, etc., is that they have not yet found the technology that can really approach the way people perceive, and perhaps the way that human beings map and present the world is not the retina, and there are further things that need more fundamental research.