Related references and references in this article: singularityhub

The hype of new technology is easy for people to get used to. It is not easy to find new technologies that change the advantages of our lives and work.

(Yinwei.com, May 23, 2017) It seems that everyone has been developing VR applications in the recent period of time. From VR concerts to design kitchens, brands and independent developers around the world have expended great efforts to ensure that their VR applications will become the next epoch-making product.

Unfortunately, most VR applications are not that good. VR has the potential to reshape the role of technology in our lives, but to ensure that the VR revolution succeeds, we need to understand what really makes VR worthwhile.

The problem is that most business professionals do not know the advantages of VR, so it is not clear what problem VR is suitable for solving. We obviously have a long way to go beyond VR in word processing over traditional computers, but for specific applications, the role of VR is superb.

Over the past four years, I (Matthias McCoy-Thompson) have worked with some of the best-known brands to help them develop VR applications. I developed a unique set of guidelines and eventually brought a high quality VR experience. These are the factors that current VR is superior to traditional computers and even better than real life. For convenience, we only need to remember this rule: A good VR feels like SCI-FI (including science fiction).

The so-called SCI-FI is: Scale, Communication, Immersion, Flexibility, and Interaction.

1.Scale

One of the most interesting VR experiences I've ever tried is "Giant Cop." It sounds like you are a giant policeman in a small city and throw prisoners on the street into prison. This illustrates one of VR's most powerful forces: making large objects very small, making small objects very large, and VR can scale objects freely.

For objects in the real world, it is almost impossible for us to change their shape and size. Of course, we have telescopes and magnifiers, but in most cases we are limited to immutable proportions. Although the size of the object can be easily adjusted via the computer, we lose the intimacy and power when dealing with real-world objects.

In VR, you can walk in one atom, or place the earth in your palm. More practically, VR is ideal for browsing the scale models of houses and machinery. Not only can you view the entire model through a 500-foot view, you can also narrow down to eye-height height, or even smaller.

This will become even more interesting when scaling is used to convey information. It's one thing to see that one data is higher than the other in the bar chart, and it's another when you're on the bar chart. In an exponentially changing world, the ability to visualize data in any proportion is a prerequisite for understanding the world around us.

2.Communication

Social VR, or the ability to communicate with other people in virtual reality, is still in its infancy. However, VR has shown great promise as a communication platform. That's because, unlike video conferencing, social VR makes you feel like you're really in the same room as other people.

Most social VR systems now give 3D renderings of virtual avatars or users. Current virtual avatars are usually not like a person, but a series of techniques can persuade the brain to think that he is communicating with another person in real life.

The first is 3D audio. In social VR, audio sounds like it is coming directly from the mouth of a virtual avatar. This will lead the brain to notice that person as if he were a real person talking.

The second is moving arrests. Most social VR platforms will at least capture the heading and map it to the head of the avatar. Our brain is more likely to see natural movements. When the brain recognizes that the virtual avatars have the same natural movement, they will recognize it as another living human being.

The social VR platform has been used for business meetings and gatherings with friends, but social VR is best used when social networking is built on clear activities or tasks. Social VR games such as Rec Room and Elite Dangerous are a great way to spend time with friends around the world.

As social VR develops, they will be able to capture movements including facial and hand movements, and eventually the entire body. When the virtual avatar becomes the same as the human category, VR will become the ultimate communication platform. The virtual meeting will no longer feel like a floating avatar dialogue with a 2D screen, but rather face-to-face interaction with colleagues.

3.Immersion (immersion)

When people talk about VR, the first word they think of is often immersive. After wearing virtual reality heads, you feel like you are in another world. This is due to the presence of power, or high-quality virtual reality heads that persuaded your brain.

This has had a profound effect on how we interact with the virtual environment. Basically, everything in the experience feels like real. This means that we can interact with these objects and characters like real life. Immersion makes virtual reality very suitable for training simulations. Because the brain thinks that the experience is real, we can simulate complex or dangerous training and get a “hands-on experience” training effect in a safe environment.

But the power of immersion is not limited to this. Because personal experience is the best way to learn, immersive learning experiences often result in higher retention of knowledge than text, audiovisual materials, or even interactive learning tools.

The laboratory has extended its research to empathy, persuasion, and behavior modification. The Stanford virtual human-computer interaction laboratory research shows that virtual reality can affect people's behavior in real life, such as reducing paper consumption, increasing charitable donations, and even reducing drug addiction.

Marketers have discovered the immersive power of virtual reality. Travel agency Thomas Cook found that promoting travel through VR helped them increase their revenue by 190%. In addition, 51% of Marriott VR users said they prefer to stay at the Marriott. The immersive experience creates a strong brand connection that encourages genuine user engagement.

4.Flexibility

In "The Matrix", when Murphy brought Nio into virtual reality for the first time, they first entered a blank room. Things such as televisions and tables began to appear, and then the entire environment began to become the "real world" of post-apocalyptic era. Neo realized that he had only lived in digital reality. As Nico began to receive a series of training, the environment changed again. The rules of the physical world no longer apply to VR. We can arrange simulations as we like.

The current VR experience cannot yet achieve the simulation in the Matrix. But this scenario illustrates one of VR's most powerful points. Virtual reality can be used as a blank canvas and then created and modified according to the needs of the user.

When working in virtual reality, tools and scenes can be instantly changed with just one click. Users are free to add new objects, change tools, change the environment, and even adjust your own image. Virtual reality does not even need to follow the laws of physics.

Unlike the real world, the virtual reality experience can be completely changed according to your mind. This makes VR well-suited for rapid modeling and content development that requires multiple tools.

In VR, we can easily replace furniture, equipment, tools, walls, backgrounds, and even people. IKEA has started to allow consumers to design the ideal room in virtual reality, and each item can be purchased at the IKEA store.

5.Interaction

If you have ever tried 3D modeling, you should pay tribute to the animators and game designers. It's not always easy to rotate, move, and scale models, let alone handle clunky, inconsistent user interfaces. In virtual reality, interacting with 3D models is much easier, as if it were interacting with objects in the real world.

In virtual reality, you can pick up objects, move around, add or remove elements. This makes the interaction in virtual reality much better than 2D desktop. This is ideal for 3D modelers, but also for real-world product designs such as keychains or houses. In addition, virtual reality makes it easier to share and modify models.

But this does not necessarily need to be a 3D model or a 3D object. VR is also suitable for the interaction of 3D data sets. 3D data visualization is often difficult to achieve in computers, but also very difficult to understand. In virtual reality, visual visualization becomes easy and you can understand it from any angle. You can not only visualize the data, but also interact with it. Virtual reality has the potential to be the ultimate tool in the design field.

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Each of the above points brings real value to the VR project, but the best results can only be achieved when everything is integrated. An immersive Mars experience is very suitable for education, but if you can interact with it, it will bring better learning results. The ability to zoom houses is useful for architects, but the ability to instantly add walls or balconies can greatly optimize their workflow.

The more points that virtual reality can achieve, the more powerful the virtual experience becomes. 2D computers can achieve plasticity, and the real world can bring excellent 3D interactions, but only virtual reality can take into account both.

As companies begin to test water virtual reality, it is important to realize that the advantages of VR will become more important. The hype of new technology is easy for people to get used to. It is not easy to find new technologies that change the advantages of our lives and work. Keeping this simple framework in mind, we will be able to make virtual reality as powerful as science fiction.

Source: https://yivian.com/news/31283.html