2015 still awkward virtual reality

In the April 2015, after the March GDC (game Developers Conference) and F8 (the Facebook Developers Conference), VR (virtual reality) continues to be controversial in the tech world. Computer department professors some nine to the sea, recruitment platform on the VR position springing up, young talent (cool kids) VR startups continue to be firm.

Young and promising (to peer pressure) Luckey Palmer leader Oculus Rift, the founder of the PC gaming, the Magic Boy of the Year (whiz kid) John Carmack, and his early inspiration Michael Abrash (Computer graphics God, the author of the game Graphics Black Book), coupled with Samsung's hardware cooperation, unity game engine to join the strong, Facebook behind the platform, the momentum of the high.

Google in the cardboard, and LG Strong Alliance, also not to be outdone.

PC Gaming mobile Valve and HTC Alliance, want to develop the standard of VR in PC platform. (Off-topic, at the session of Valve GDC, announcing the status of OpenGL Next's graphic Api-khronos, which leads the graphics field with no cover), the products Vive is known as the VR product of the best experience of the present.

Sony's VR product Morpheus (named after the Greek mythology dream God, which will be mentioned later), relying on the host platform, with other Sony product lines (such as move), will also be in the existing consumer market in Sony to consolidate territory. (Microsoft is naturally not behind, also publicly announced the secret development of the years of AR system-hololens, not here to discuss.) ）

If you listen to John Carmack in GDC's gushing brain dump, John himself is completely oblivious to the concerns of the market sector, not the unhappiness of Samsung's hearing, and the embarrassment of the Facebook relations department. In short, John's consideration is probably:

1. This thing is not coming out in a short time. At least 35 years. A truly immersive experience will take decades. Oculus continue to do, the software interface is basically fixed, the future of a short time is only hardware upgrades.

2. Samsung does not do the development Kit (SDK), blindly want to launch products, although they can always finish the goal on schedule. Innovator Edition can now be bought on the market, but the number of people who really do development is very small. Plus a bunch of nasty UI problems and the OS optimizer and battery problems of the mobile platform, making the Android experience a mess.

3. The input system is not uniform. Everyone for the virtual reality of the application and expectations are different, at present, it is difficult to achieve a unified handle, gloves, rocker system, from the product point of view, binding together to sell a lot of people may not need, and not a physical input device a lot of things do not do, the situation slightly embarrassed.

4. Motion recognition is not a simple topic, the human body's receptors grew up with humans to accept external things, electronic technology is difficult to fool them. And when they're confused, it's a human halo 3D phenomenon (motion sick). They have devoted this part to the field experts (who have previously acquired a group of small startups and have invited a group of university professors).

Back to the name of Morpheus, a friend who has seen the hacker empire must be familiar with it. He gave away in the hacker Empire: "What's real?" How does you define ' real '? If you ' re talking on what can feel, what can smell, what can taste and see, then ' real ' is simply Electrica L signals interpreted by your brain. "(There are many areas where science is converging, cognitive science, Neuroscience, computer vision/graphics, philosophy and ethics, etc.). ）

On the F8, Michael used more than half time to elaborate on the optical illusion of human beings (optical illusion), such as the upright stool is longer than the horizontal look, blue pill red pills are actually gray pills, in the black-and-white checkerboard each square dots affect the human curve cognition and so on. Through these he is explaining a problem:

All reality are virtual.

Our so-called reality, in fact, their own sensory organs on the surrounding limited interpretation, translation and virtual. Our brains make us aware of the world we think we are. He went on and said,

Virtual reality, done right, truly is reality.

Virtual do the right, is true reality! A good word of joy, 22 world Killing network (domineering port translation) is around the corner! But after the applause, how is "done"? The subtle subtleties of the neural field are still beyond the reach of technology [3]:

For example, the problem of automatic zoom in the eyes of the human eye, when you look near objects and distant objects, the pupil will have a series of adjustments and focus. And as the current VR, are put a flat in front of people, although there are the scene, but these are projection algorithm rasterization on the 2D screen above. For example, the human body of the perception of space displacement, specific in the game your vision tells you to move 5 meters, the mechanical sensor said only moved half a meter, this time will feel uncomfortable, I believe that many people play counter-strike okay, play thunder God Hammer Halo is the speed difference and your common sense has a perverse (ride a car too smooth dizzy, A bouncing car bumps instead of dizzy and similar).

To do virtual reality, or to indefinitely simulate the cognitive pattern of approaching human sensory organs-this is still a heavy task at present. Unless we can undo a series of cognitive models built by human beings through production, or--let the baby wear Oculus Rift from birth, put on headphones, wear gloves, so there is no reality, there is no virtual, virtual = reality!

References

[1] John Carmack GDC, Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNAmAxT7-qs

[2] Michael Abrash F8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDu-cnXI8E8

[3] Http://gizmodo.com/the-neuroscience-of-why-vr-still-sucks-1691909123

2015 still awkward virtual reality