I once wrote an article titled " The Road to VR ". In the year and a half since then, several things have happened:
- Facebook bought Oculus for a big price ($2 billion) .
- There are endless short reviews about VR, and they all say, “As long as you wear such a VR device on your head, the world you see will be completely different. What a revolutionary, subversive and ecstatic experience... "
I still agree with the former a little bit, even though my idols John Carmack and Michael Abrash turned into Facebook employees a bit unpleasant. However, the latter is even more uncomfortable. It's never ending! For example, this:
I will share with you my happy time immersed in a three-dimensional world full of light, fire, leaves and rainbows. I feel like the real version of Star Trek. Describing VR is like fictional sex-unbelievable, and can never be done!
If you really want to understand how fascinating VR is, you have to give it a try. I promise you will. In the next few years, many of your friends will use VR. One day, one of them will insist on letting you experience it, just like someone asked you to experience the keyboard or touch screen for the first time. It is no exaggeration to say that it is a revolutionary experience!
Here, I do not want to point out who the author of the above paragraph is. I can find many similar articles at any time, and they all show us an amazing VR wonderland, which makes people breathless. The level of this hype has gone too far. If you haven't tried it yet, brother, you won't understand! That is unexplainable, you must experience it yourself! Some people even firmly believe that in five years, no one will develop non-VR games.
Well, I have experienced the trendy VR. Not a lot. I tried Oculus’s DK1 and DK2, as well as a Survios device, which is on the back with a controller and can play 360 degrees. It looks like this: http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rth776bl.html
Based on my personal experience, I cannot agree with the hype of those articles. It's not like that at all! For now, I would not recommend VR to a player who is obsessed with games, let alone light players.
Frankly speaking, when I tried DK1 and DK2, after hours of demonstration and exploration, I couldn't help taking off the headset. Not because I have motion sickness-I have never had this disease-but because I am bored. I am a little frustrated with the limitations of the operation. It is not the kind of revolutionary and subversive thing at all.
By the way, let me show you how it was when I experienced it. You can really feel the excitement when I play games.
If you think it's boring to watch me experience the virtual world (though you have no reason to think so), I think you will like the scene I see on the screen:
The chromaticity is shifted, and the picture has a three-dimensional effect, like a fisheye-this is VR...
From Atari 2600 to Kinect, I am always the first in my life circle to try new things, and then I introduce the awesome and revolutionary gaming experience to everyone. I mean, I am that kind of person. Is not it? For new things, I maintain a geek spirit-I own a Vectrex and thought that vector graphics is the best; I also became the first player to buy "Guitar Hero" in 2005, and I have been talking about it. . Speaking of that, I still remember that about 1993, I took my little friend to a VR store in Boulder City (Colorado), and then we played "Dactyl Nightmare" (a Virtual war game). From the standpoint of a geek, I must say: Today's VR has a long way to go if it wants to achieve the acceptance of smartphones, and it is not as close as many media commentators have said.
Translator's Note: Vectrex is a simulated game console application. It was first released in 1982 and sold for US$199. There were many players in European and American countries at the time, and many players compiled ROMs for many games based on this console platform.
I'm sorry, but my opinion is a bit negative. I really haven't tried the latest VR headsets. It is said that they will be more amazing, will be released soon, and will be completely changed. When they are on the market, I will definitely experience them. What I want to say again is that the technical challenges related to VR are deep, arduous, and fascinating . I would like to have some of our best programmers of our time participate in overcoming those difficulties. But based on what I have seen and experienced so far, it is unlikely that VR will become mainstream within 5 years. Frankly speaking, I doubt it will happen in 10-20 years. However, a smart person is always vague when trying to predict the future.
I think that there are still quite a few basic physical problems that need to be solved before today's VR (or the product form of tying one or two beautiful smartphones on the head) becomes mainstream.
VR should be as convenient as wearing glasses
No one likes to tie a two-pound thing to their head unless they are in a hazardous environment. When people are riding bicycles, it is still difficult for us to make them wear helmets. Will they obediently put this clumsy and mysterious VR device on their heads? VR headsets on the market will make people sweat after 30 minutes of use. If you have to wear glasses before wearing VR, it will be even more troublesome. Wearing a heavy, stuffy, sweaty, uncomfortable thing for a long time, playing games for hours at a time, which makes people uninterested-and this person is playing 6 hours of games with headphones Not surprisingly.
If VR is to become popular quickly, the headset must be made as small as possible, so small that it is basically invisible—just like wearing a pair of cool sunglasses: http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rth74kul.html .
Perhaps today's VR headsets are like Big Brothers in the 1990s. The question is, how long will it take them to complete the development process of mobile phones from 1990 to 2007?
VR should be wireless
Everything in today's world has unswervingly turned to wireless, but in this regard, VR headsets are doing a gorgeous retro to the science fiction movies of the 1970s. The VR headset and all other things on it are physically connected to a powerful computer in a variety of ways. Lines, lines, lines-lines are everywhere, everywhere!
Even relatively inexpensive VR headsets—the kind that can be used with a high-end smartphone to achieve a limited VR experience—must be wired to a power source, because the phone’s battery cannot withstand the continuity required by VR High-intensity CPU and GPU rendering. Overheating is also a very real problem.
Wireless video is also a big challenge, especially with a resolution of 1440p, which is already the minimum requirement for VR that can meet practical requirements. Most importantly, a good VR requires a much higher frame rate (120fps is best). That kind of extremely low-latency, ultra-high-resolution video is transmitted wirelessly. To achieve this, there is still a long way to go!
VR should have 4k resolution
Since the VR device you are staring at is only a few inches away from your eyes, the resolution of the screen is divided into two, with both eyes looking at half each—compared to using a whole screen, there are several new ones. VR headsets use two smartphones instead-this requires extremely high screen resolution to achieve good visual effects, and this effect is outdated by modern computer standards.
The resolution of Oculus DK1 (720p) is very low. I think this is the bottom line, no matter how low it is, it can't be used, even if it's just for demonstration. I guess it also feels like the resolution of Doom (320 x 240).
Oculus DK2 (1080p) is slightly better, but its pixelation and flicker issues are quite bad, distracting players and unable to immerse themselves in the game. It feels like the resolution of Quake (640 x 480).
I know that many upcoming VR devices support 1440p (2560 x 1440). In fact, I deeply doubt it. They feel like a resolution of 1024 x 768-just a mild improvement.
I am used to the resolution of modern games and modern graphics cards. Wearing VR shouldn't be like giving someone a one-way ticket to a world of rough and chaotic graphics—I have not seen this situation since 1999. The upcoming 4k smartphones may be able to solve this problem, but the energy problems that drive them (I mean CPU, GPU and battery power) are far from being easily solved.
(Have I said this: For the best VR experience, the minimum frame rate requirement is 60fps, preferably 120fps? I'm pretty sure I mentioned it.)
Nevertheless, based on the current hardware development trajectory, the 4k resolution problem may be the fastest to be effectively solved in 5 years, even if it relies on very high-end hardware instead of common smartphones-this leads me to the following points:
VR should not require a high-end gaming PC or a new generation of game consoles
VR has a lot of CPU and GPU system requirements, which is a bit beyond the hardware configuration you need to play the latest video games at 4k resolution. This means that cutting-edge VR was obviously developed along with high-end Windows PCs, and the best experience can only be obtained on such a PC.
It is conceivable that venture capitalists who invested in Oculus may have only used Mac computers a long time ago. They are trying to save a gaming PC in order to interview on it the crazy new VR gadget they just invested in. That was some kind of culture shock!
It’s okay to run (mostly) 1080p games on modern game consoles (such as Xbox One and PS4)—at least on PS4—unfortunately, in terms of GPU and CPU power, they VR is not qualified. If you expect VR to become the mainstream on these new game consoles in the next 5 to 8 years, and hope that the game console market will be promoted, it is not reliable!
VR on modern game consoles will be a slow, incomplete, low-resolution experience, at best the level of OculusDK2. In order to get a good VR experience, you have to count on the next generation of game consoles, and you will have to wait a long time...
Must support hands (gloves?)
The lack of control methods in Oculus DK1 and DK2 made me extremely discouraged. I can only walk around in this beautiful VR world. When I do something, I have to hit a key on the keyboard, or move and click the mouse. In other words, I cannot immerse myself in VR. For the upcoming new Rift, they will bind the Xbox controller, but this is not much better. Relying on the mouse to experience VR is like relying on the controller to play "Guitar Hero."
I also tried Survios’ demo equipment. The most impressive thing about it is that I can use my hands to manipulate things in the VR world. It is enlightening to add your hands to VR, and frankly, it is also one of the things I have been fascinated with in the VR experience so far. I can reach out and grab things, turn things around in my hands, hold them close to my eyes, take a closer look, hold a gun, hold it up with two hands, and so on. The role of the hand is wonderful! The main controller you should need in VR is something you are born with-your hands.
It is passive and disappointing to experience the virtual world with only your head, just like watching a movie or driving on a railroad track. However, once you add your hands, you instantly blend in, because you can now deeply interact with that virtual world through a human way (touch). If I can manipulate things with my hands, observe, open, flip, and check in my hands, I want to play exploration games in VR (such as "Homecoming"). This is incredible! Exerting the functions of the hands in that world will make that world much more real.
The good news is that there are some such solutions on the market, such as Oculus Touch. The bad news is that it is not equipped by default, but it should be. This equipment can track the position of the hand, as well as the rotation of the hand, and there are several buttons for interaction. In fact, a better solution is that you can wear gloves that can directly sense each finger-but sometimes you do need a button, because if you hold a gun (or a flashlight) in your hand, you need Sending instructions to shoot (or turn on the flashlight), this kind of task simply tracking the movement of the fingers is quite dangerous.
VR and hand control are promising for symbiosis development, and I am optimistic about its success. Otherwise, we limit ourselves to a passive "look around" mode, which makes VR very lame, and it ends up being just another form of IMAX 3D movie.
VR must compete with mature 2D entertainment
Some people think that the air is full of VR, and all of the other experiences are not worth mentioning unless they are presented in radiant 3D. I feel very discouraged when talking to these people.
As early as when the quality of LCD shutter glasses was still inferior, I tried stereoscopic 3D on a computer. As we all know, the whole world has experienced the enthusiasm for 3D TV... What happened in the end? Things backfired and everyone turned.
Feeling 3D, whether it's immersive or 3D itself, is not that attractive. Otherwise, people will all install 3D TVs, not watch non-3D movies, and not play non-3D video games on their PCs and game consoles. The technology is readily available, and has been tested in a real environment, and is completely mature. The reason I say this is because I saw the 3D version of Captain EO as early as 1985 in Disney Future World- 3D was already amazing 30 years ago. Please go to iqiyi to watch the video: http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rtijdaf5.html .
Translator’s Note: Disney Future World is the Epcot Center , Disney’s high-tech pavilion, you can visit, Space Earth Pavilion, Power World, Earth Journey, Undersea Wonders, Life Exploration, Energy Pavilion, Earth Pavilion, full three-dimensional touch of color and fragrance Wait.
Translator's Note: " Captain EO " is a 17- minute short film starring Jackson . At that time, Disney invited the director of "Star Wars" George Lucas as the producer, making the film full of "Star Wars" features. In the film, Jackson led a group of dumb aliens to confront the queen played by Anjelica Houston, and finally won everything with music and dance. This short film made with 3D technology was one of the most expensive movies at the time, costing $ 1 million per minute .
I recently watched the IMAX 3D version of "Gravity". I like it very much. However, it will not allow me to change my viewing experience, or even stop watching boring 2D flat movies ever since.
People have gained a lot of wonderful social experiences on ordinary 2D screens. Watching movies, watching TV shows, watching someone play games. These are very basic shared human experiences full of joy . It is possible to combine these with VR, but it is also difficult because:
- You need to properly show what the VR user sees on the 2D plane;
- That 2D presentation must be broadcast to mainstream display devices.
VR is already extremely resource intensive, so it is not easy to render a scene at a reasonable frame rate (for example, a constant 60fps). It will also increase costs.
Most importantly, VR users are likely to wear headsets, hold a pair of handles, and see nothing, so they cannot interact well with people who are right next to them in the physical world.
I have accumulated an incredible gaming experience on the 2D screen. I’m currently playing Alien: Isolation-I like to call it "Pants Shit Simulator 3000"-I think this is the most beautiful, immersive, and frightening I have played in the past few years One of the games. I am the protagonist in the survival horror movie-it makes me feel like I exist in every scene of that world. The video is here: http://www.iqiyi.com/w_19rtijdep9.html .
I don't think "it would be better to show it in 3D". In many ways, it can only get worse.
My goodness, you will die if you say a few words?
Sorry! Regarding VR, I just told my heart. Stop here.
If this article looks negative, I apologize again. After writing this article, I am actually a little bit more excited about VR. I can see how far VR has to go in order to realize its potential, because the technical problems it exposes are quite difficult-those are also the most interesting problems that need to be overcome.
I guess, I might be the only person on this planet who says something like this: "Hey, I have experienced VR, it's okay." I think VR should be a much better "hell"-if you want to really To become popular, it must be!