The dawn of virtual reality technology

Note: Sasha Marinkovic (Sasa Marinlovic) is the head of software marketing for AMD computing and graphic group.

Not long ago, we all experienced a world without color: a computational world without color. Personal Computer graphics processing technology came in 30 ago, changing the monochrome, grayscale display, led to the application of computer-based graphics, games and entertainment revolution.

Today, the revolution continues because of the tremendous development of computer processing capabilities, graphics, video and display technology. Such progress has fundamentally changed personal computing, giving users surreal visual possibilities, 20 or 30 years ago, only a science fiction writer could have imagined such a world.

The quality of the TV and PC images is steadily improving. At present, the retina display, Gorilla Glass, and ultra-high resolution 4K screen show users incredible details and vivid images. The current almost all electronic devices, whether large or small, the price is expensive or cheap, portability, are equipped with high-quality color display. Soon, next-generation devices, whether "smart appliances" or "car entertainment systems", will follow the current pace of smartphone and tablet development.

These are great achievements, but technology is just the starting point for the human dream. Our next phase of development will lead us to areas we have never imagined.

Virtual reality: Outside the head-wearing equipment

Today's most popular virtual display devices are the first-wear devices that gamers use to experience and participate in virtual activities, such as controlling and manipulating objects or characters through a mouse, keyboard, voice, and gesture.

The combination of these technologies can play a very good effect, but requires the user to maintain a certain posture in front of the computer. Please imagine us breaking these restrictions. Replace the head-worn device, mouse, and keyboard with natural input, such as gestures, touch, and voice.

Use user perception to influence high-fidelity surround sound systems. Use the interconnected array of large and high-resolution displays in the room to change the user's perception of reality. Virtual reality is gradually bringing about a real-life experience similar to the "Holodeck" in Star Trek.

However, we have not yet achieved such a dream.

Completely immersive virtual reality

The next step in virtual reality is full immersion in home entertainment.

Imagine sitting down with a group of friends and watching a movie or playing a game. Instead of using a remote control to search for a disc or content on an entertainment device, you can use voice commands to tell your network to play a movie or start a game. With your favorite characters, racing and fighting, you'll be part of the virtual scene.

Of course, this is not a new idea. The current "Smart TV" ads have been doing similar propaganda. However, virtual reality technology is making the experience more and more accurate, the real feeling of interaction is more and more intense, thus brings the entertainment way which does not have the big difference with the reality. The future of entertainment will bring an all-encompassing world in which users can interact like real life. They will be part of the story, sharing the same experiences with virtual characters and behaving differently. It can be believed that this will look like reality.

So what's missing at the moment?

Creating such an experience will be a huge challenge, and we must first develop powerful devices that can achieve this virtual reality. The good news is that the underlying technologies that bring this kind of entertainment experience may now exist.

The brains of current computing devices, microprocessors, are becoming smaller, more powerful, and more energy-efficient. In fact, the latest processors will be an indispensable foundation for future virtual computing, which integrates the CPU's "efficiency" processing and the "visualization" processing of the graphics processor.

Today, such technologies have been used for almost everything from personal computers to game consoles, cloud servers, aircraft engine room displays, medical imaging devices and digital signage. However, the large-scale application does not mean that such technology must be successful.

In order to develop in the future, the industry needs to set up the hardware standard, bring the basic reference to the software developer, make the software development simpler. Developers can write a program that can run on any operating system and any device. These devices must take full advantage of processor performance to deliver more robust performance with very low power consumption.

We have not yet created such an environment, but more than 50 leading High-tech companies and universities are cooperating in this effort. They try to define and promote a royalty-free standard that addresses what is called an "inhomogeneous system architecture".

The future is in front of us.

We are surrounded by billions of screens, and the figure continues to grow. Revolutionary technologies will follow and make the screens less important. But until then, these screens will be an essential user interface.

The screen is becoming a commonplace part of our lives. We get up in the morning and look at the weather, we read before we go to bed, or we look at the scores of the latest matches. Perhaps we cannot discern the technical differences between one display and another, but the visual content on the screen and the way we interact with these elements may have the greatest impact on our experience of the world around us in the future.

The era of "wrap-around computing" is coming. In such a world, intelligent, energy-saving technology will connect us with the world full of images and information. Compared to the past, our experience of this world will be interactive, similar to real life. However, achieving that goal requires further development of innovative technologies, software and entertainment content. If this process continues, we will be able to achieve "remote delivery" of ourselves, at least in the virtual world. In the near future, we will be able to see exciting adventures to achieve unimaginable dreams.