Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: VR Industry White Paper – Full Text

Following a series of reports from major institutions, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology finally released the "Virtual Reality Industry Development White Paper 5.0" two days ago. It used more than 14,000 words to describe the current development status of China's virtual reality industry and proposed relevant policies. It fully affirmed the virtual reality industry at the national level and is worthy of careful study by VR practitioners.

Overview and Comments

The White Paper points out that the industry application of virtual reality is expected to be fully launched, cultural content will become increasingly prosperous, and the technical system and industrial structure will be initially formed. If my country's virtual reality industry is not laid out as soon as possible, it will fall behind and catch up with foreign countries again. In the future, we should plan and lay out the top-level design in advance, support the industrialization of virtual reality technology through special fiscal projects, achieve core technology breakthroughs, and strengthen cultural and brand building.

She Shuanglin, an analyst at Analysys International, said: "Although the white paper is mainly an overview of the industry's cognition and does not involve policy guidance, as an official document, it is sufficient to show that the country recognizes the value of the virtual reality industry. As the white paper points out, there are still many problems in the application of virtual reality. At present, there are two key points in the development of the VR industry, namely hardware and content. First, to become a consumer-level application, the hardware must meet the price requirements of consumers while ensuring a good user experience and being able to be used by consumers for a long time. Secondly, a content platform must be established to generate continuous attraction to consumers. At the same time, it is also necessary to ensure that VR content has profitable value so that consumers are willing to pay for the content, so as to promote the sustainable development of the content platform."

Preface

The information industry is a basic, strategic and leading industry in my country's national economy. It has important demonstration significance for my country's economic structural adjustment and is the main battlefield for stabilizing growth and promoting reform. my country is a world-leading information industry power. A number of innovative products with good market response and user experience, such as virtual reality, have promoted supply-side reform and become an important means to enhance the effective supply capacity of consumer electronic products.

Virtual reality technology originated in the 1960s. It refers to the use of computer systems and sensor technology to generate a three-dimensional environment, creating a new way of human-computer interaction, and mobilizing users' various senses (vision, hearing, touch, smell, etc.) to enjoy a more realistic and immersive experience. With the improvement of hardware performance and the significant reduction of costs, virtual reality products have been widely developed in recent years, especially at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in the United States, where virtual reality products became the absolute protagonist of the exhibition.

Under the guidance of the Electronic Information Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the China Electronics Technology Standardization Institute organized the compilation of the "Virtual Reality Industry Development White Paper". This white paper comprehensively explains the development status, technical characteristics, key technical links and main application areas of the virtual reality industry at home and abroad, analyzes the future improvement space, and gives corresponding policy recommendations. Finally, it lists some typical virtual reality products currently released at home and abroad.

The main drafters of this white paper are Liu Huayi, Wang Li, Shan Lei, Yang Zhen, Jia Bowen, Zhao Xiaoying, Zhang Subing, Sun Qifeng, Lu Cheng and Wang Cong.

Table of contents

1. Overview of the development of virtual reality 4

1. Development of my country’s virtual reality industry

(II) Development of the international virtual reality industry5

3. Virtual Reality Standardization

2. Features of Virtual Reality Technology 10

1. Technical Overview 10

(II) Virtual Reality Industry Chain12

3. Evolution direction of virtual reality technology 13

(IV) Bottlenecks in virtual reality technology and urgent problems to be solved16

III. Application in key areas19

19. Military Field

2. Gaming and entertainment sector19

(III) Medical field20

(IV) Industrial sector 20

(V) Education and Culture 21

4. my country's virtual reality has room for improvement

1. Hardware performance needs to be improved to support fast data processing

(II) The application ecological environment needs to be improved to expand the scope of application22

(III) Public services need to be strengthened to solve common problems in the industry23

V. Policy Recommendations 23

1. Plan ahead and make top-level design

(II) Promoting industrialization and industry applications25

(III) Strengthening culture and brand building27

Appendix: Some typical product representatives 29

1. Ant Vision (VR Helmet) 29

(II) Shenzhen 3Glasses (VR helmets and all-in-one machines) 33

(III) Lexiang Dapeng (all-in-one machine) 34

(IV) LeTV (mobile VR helmet) 35

(V) HTC (VR helmet) 36

(VI) Samsung (mobile VR helmet) 36

7. Sony Morpheus (VR helmet) 36

8. Microsoft HoloLens (AR helmet) 36

(IX) Oculus Rift (VR helmet) 36

1. Overview of the Development of Virtual Reality

Virtual reality technology is a computer simulation system that creates a new interactive system by simulating the three-dimensional world. It uses computers to generate a simulated environment, which is an interactive three-dimensional dynamic vision and entity behavior system simulation that integrates multi-source information and immerses users in the environment. In the industry, virtual reality is defined as three types of technology applications: virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality.

(MR, Mixed Reality). In fact, in the academic community, mixed reality technology is also divided into two categories: augmented reality and augmented virtual environment (AVE, Augmented Virtual Environment).

1. Development of my country’s virtual reality industry

According to the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006-2020), virtual reality technology is one of the three major technologies in the information technology part of cutting-edge technology. It focuses on the multidisciplinary integration of electronics, psychology, control, computer graphics, database design, real-time distributed systems and multimedia technology, and studies virtual reality technology and systems in multiple related fields such as medicine, entertainment, art and education, military and industrial manufacturing management.

my country began to pay attention to the research and application of virtual reality technology in the 1990s. Due to technical and cost limitations, the main application objects are military and high-end commercial use. Products suitable for ordinary consumers have gradually entered the market in recent years with the development of chips, displays, and human-computer interaction technologies.

At present, my country's virtual reality enterprises are mainly divided into two categories. One is that mature industries are penetrating into the field of virtual reality based on traditional software, hardware or content advantages. Among them, most smartphone and other hardware manufacturers are making hardware layouts. For example, Lenovo and Ant Vision jointly developed the portable device Lemon Ant Vision virtual reality glasses; Meizu cooperated with Tuosi Technology to launch a mobile virtual reality helmet. Most game and animation production manufacturers or video publishing platforms enter from the software and content level. In July 2015, iQiyi announced that it would release a non-commercial virtual reality application, and has already made preliminary adaptations with some virtual reality manufacturers. Gu Yongqiang, chairman and CEO of Youku Tudou Group, announced at the first Open Ecosystem Conference that it would officially start the production of virtual reality content. The second is new virtual reality industry companies, including ecological platform companies and start-up companies. This type of enterprise has made a series of layouts in the fields of hardware, platform, content, ecology, etc., with Internet manufacturers as the leader. Such as Tencent, Baofeng Technology, LeTV, etc.

According to iMedia Research, the market size of China's virtual reality industry was 1.54 billion yuan in 2015, and is expected to reach 5.66 billion yuan in 2016. The domestic market size is expected to exceed 55 billion yuan in 2020. my country's virtual reality industry is developing at a high speed.

2. Development of the International Virtual Reality Industry

As early as the 1990s, 3D games were already on the market, and virtual reality also attracted similar attention at the time. For example, in terms of games, there were Virtuality's virtual reality game system and Nintendo's Vortual Boy game console, in terms of movies, there were Lawnmower Man, Virtuosity, and Johnny Mnemonic, and in terms of books, there were Snow Crash and Disclosure. However, at the time, virtual reality technology did not keep up with the unrealistic imagination of the media. For example, 3D games had poor image quality, high prices, time delays, and insufficient computing power of devices. In the end, these products ended in failure because consumers were not satisfied with these technologies, and the first virtual reality boom subsided.

In 2014, after Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion, a similar VR fever hit again. In the past two years, there have been 225 venture capital investments in the VR/AR field, with an investment of $3.5 billion. According to Digi-Capital data (December 2015), the investment of companies in the AR/VR field in the past 12 months has exceeded $1 billion. According to CBInsights statistics, the venture capital financing of VR companies around the world in 2014 reached $775 million, an increase of more than 100% year-on-year, and the financing amount in the first half of 2015 was $248 million. Compared with the failures in the 1990s, the computing power of current computers is powerful enough to be used to render the VR world. At the same time, the performance of mobile phones has been greatly improved. In short, the current technology has solved many limitations of the 1990s. For this reason, some large technology companies are gradually getting involved.

Oculus chief scientist Michael Abrash said the company is still developing technologies in touch, visual display, audio and tracking. This means that the VR/AR products released in 2016 will begin to solve the above problems and will continue to improve in the next three to five years. The VR industry is still in its infancy, and the supply chain and supporting facilities are not yet fully developed.

It is mature, but its development prospects are fascinating, and the market potential is expected to be huge in the future. According to Digi-Capital's forecast, the market potential of virtual reality/augmented reality hardware and software will reach 150 billion US dollars, and the compound growth rate is expected to exceed 100% in the next five years. According to Superdata, a gaming industry analysis company, 70 million virtual reality headsets will be sold by the end of 2017, bringing in 8.8 billion US dollars in virtual reality hardware profits and 6.1 billion US dollars in virtual reality software profits. According to TrendForce's latest forecast, the total market value of virtual reality in 2016 will be close to 6.7 billion US dollars. By 2020, if Apple joins, its value may be as high as 70 billion US dollars. Judging from the forecast data of various consulting research institutions, virtual reality/augmented reality will achieve super-fast growth in the next five years.

3. Virtual Reality Standardization

The rapid and healthy development of the virtual reality industry requires the guidance of standards and specifications. Currently, standards are seriously lacking. The development of the entire industry chain is like dancing with chains. These chains are not suitable for some existing standards and specifications of virtual reality, because some technical requirements of virtual reality exceed the technical requirements of some existing supporting industries.

Although virtual reality technology and products are booming internationally, there are shortcomings in virtual reality content: virtual reality content is scarce, production costs are too high, content presentation methods are diverse, there is no unified standard for virtual reality content, and various virtual reality devices cannot be interconnected, which has become a key factor restricting the large-scale industrial application of virtual reality; at the same time, the amount of virtual reality content data is huge, bringing new challenges to real-time network transmission.

The issue of standards has attracted the attention of all parties in the world. Currently, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24 (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 24: Computer Graphics, Image Processing and Environmental Data Representation) and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29 (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission Joint Technical Committee 1, Subcommittee 29: Audio, Image, Multimedia and Hypermedia Information) have carried out relevant standardization activities. SC 24 and SC 29 have established a joint working mechanism to jointly promote the standards related to the augmented reality continuum concept and reference model (ARC).

In addition, there are also some unofficial organizations considering the standardization of virtual reality. According to Advanced Television, Rich, CEO of DTG (Digital TV Group), a UK digital media technology innovation cooperation center, said that the organization will consider promoting the standardization of virtual reality. Lindsay-Davies saw the rise of virtual reality technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. He said at the Westminster Media Forum's keynote speech seminar on television convergence that 30 senior industry executives have expressed their eagerness to start the standardization of virtual reality technology. DTG has previously published a white paper on virtual reality and plans to conduct further research in 2016.

Domestically, the AVS standard working group has started the research and development of virtual reality audio and video coding and decoding technology, and is expected to launch the AVS virtual reality standard with my country's independent intellectual property rights. Based on the current development status of virtual reality technology and industry needs, the AVS standard working group has started the formulation of virtual reality technology standards, and has attracted scientific research institutions such as Peking University, Tsinghua University, and the University of Science and Technology of China, as well as well-known companies such as Huawei, Tencent, LeTV, iQiyi, and Baofeng to participate. The AVS working group will take the lead in organizing all member units to jointly discuss key technologies such as virtual reality content representation, virtual reality content generation and production, virtual reality content coding, virtual reality interaction, virtual reality content storage, virtual reality content distribution, and virtual reality display, in order to formulate advanced and efficient AVS virtual reality content coding technology standards for the industry. Relevant experts said that the formulation and application of AVS virtual reality standards can continue the influence of the AVS series of standards, bring huge economic and social benefits to my country, and fully promote the growth and strength of my country's audio and video industry.

In terms of virtual reality terminal equipment, whether it is augmented reality, virtual reality or mixed reality, although there are nearly 100 companies focusing on this field in my country, most of the teams are technical entrepreneurial teams, and they have not formed their thinking on the industry's business model and application solutions, and their productization capabilities are stretched. Compared with foreign countries, there is still a big gap in the field of high-performance sensors, and the technology in GPU underlying development is also relatively weak. The software is mainly in the field of image stitching and players. There is still a big gap. These gaps require a lot of investment and human resources to catch up. At the same time, excessive speculation has also become the main reason hindering the development of augmented reality/virtual reality. Many products are eager to be released even if there are obvious defects. In an environment where large manufacturers are obviously hyping concepts, it is difficult to expect small manufacturers to do research and development steadily. Therefore, relevant domestic companies call for the start of virtual reality standardization research as soon as possible, the establishment of a virtual reality technology standard system, and the regulation of industry development.

2. Characteristics of Virtual Reality Technology

(I) Technical Overview

Virtual reality is based on multiple core technologies such as dynamic environment modeling technology, stereoscopic display and sensor technology, system development tool application technology, real-time three-dimensional graphics generation technology, and system integration technology. It mainly focuses on the accuracy of virtual environment representation, the authenticity of virtual environment perception information synthesis, the naturalness of human-virtual environment interaction, real-time display, graphics generation, and intelligent technology. The solution enables users to perceive the virtual environment in an immersive way, thereby achieving the purpose of exploring and understanding objective things. Virtual reality has the following three important characteristics, often referred to as the 3i characteristics of virtual reality:

1. Imagination. It means that the virtual environment is imagined by people, and this imagination reflects the corresponding ideas of the designer, so it can be used to achieve certain goals. Therefore, virtual reality technology is not only a medium or an advanced user interface, but also an application software designed by developers to solve problems in engineering, medicine, military and other fields. The application of virtual reality technology provides a new method and means for human beings to understand the world, which can enable human beings to transcend time and space to experience and experience events that have already happened or have not happened in the world; it can enable human beings to break through physiological limitations and enter the macroscopic or microscopic world for research and exploration; it can also simulate things that are difficult to achieve due to conditions and other reasons.

2. Immersion. It means that the user feels surrounded by the virtual world, as if he is completely in the virtual world. The most important technical feature of virtual reality technology is to make users feel that they are part of the virtual world created by the computer system, so that users can change from observers to participants, immerse themselves in it and participate in the activities of the virtual world. Immersion comes from the multi-sensory perception of the virtual world. In addition to the common visual perception, there are also auditory perception, force perception, tactile perception, motion perception, taste perception, olfactory perception, etc. In theory, the virtual reality system should have all the perceptual functions that people have in the real world, but in view of the limitations of current technology, in the current research and application of virtual reality systems, the more mature or relatively mature ones are mainly visual immersion, auditory immersion, and tactile immersion technologies, while the perception technology related to taste and smell is under research and is still very immature.

3. Real-time interactivity. It refers to the degree to which users can manipulate objects in the simulated environment and the degree to which they can get natural feedback from the environment. Interactivity is mainly achieved with the help of special hardware devices in the virtual reality system (such as data gloves, force feedback devices, etc.), which enable users to have the same feeling as in the real world in a natural way. The virtual reality system emphasizes the natural interaction between people and the virtual world. Another aspect of interactivity is the real-time nature of the interaction.

2. Virtual Reality Industry Chain

Virtual reality has a long industry chain and a high industry-driven ratio, involving many industries, including virtual reality tools and equipment, content production, distribution platforms, industry applications and related services in military, civilian and scientific research applications. At present, a good development situation has been formed in China, with major universities, research institutes and high-tech companies such as Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Tsinghua University, the Electronic Industry Standardization Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and Zhejiang University jointly researching, developing and producing, and closely combining industry, academia and research.

In the virtual reality industry chain, tools and equipment can be subdivided into input devices, output devices, display devices, shooting equipment, and related software, etc.; content production can be subdivided into film and television, games, etc.; distribution platforms can be subdivided into application stores, social theaters, physical experience stores, online stores, players, etc.; industry applications can be subdivided into industrial, military, medical, education, real estate, tourism, exhibitions, etc.; related services can be subdivided into platforms, media, and incubators, etc. Since the virtual reality industry involves many military and civilian fields from basic hardware production, software development, core component manufacturing, physical and network distribution platforms, marketing and services, it is necessary to achieve healthy and sustainable development of the industry under the unified coordination and management of the state through the support of technical standards system and the formulation of key standards, standard compliance testing and corresponding quality verification systems.

3. Evolution of virtual reality technology

The essence of virtual reality technology is to build an artificial "world" that can interact freely with it, in which participants can explore or move objects in real time. Immersive virtual reality is the most ideal goal to pursue. The main way to achieve it is to wear a special helmet display, data gloves and body tracking devices, and experience it in the virtual scene through hearing, touch and vision. It can be predicted that in the short term, game players can wear helmets, special game clothes and gloves to truly experience the immersive "virtual reality" game space. Its appearance will eliminate various existing large-scale games and promote the development of science and technology. Looking at the development history of virtual reality, the research on virtual reality technology in the future will continue the principle of "low cost, high performance", and will be carried out from the two aspects of software and hardware. The development direction is mainly summarized as follows:

1. Low-cost rapid modeling technology. The establishment of a virtual environment is virtual reality

The core content of the technology, dynamic environment modeling technology aims to obtain the three-dimensional data of the actual environment and establish the corresponding virtual environment model as needed. Content production is the shortcoming of the virtual reality industry. The current content production cost is high, the cycle is long, and the requirements for production personnel are also high, which limits the development of virtual reality applications. How to achieve low-cost rapid modeling will be the key to the large-scale promotion of virtual reality in the industry.

2. Real-time 3D graphics generation and display technology. 3D graphics generation technology

The technology is relatively mature, but the key is how to "generate in real time". How to increase the refresh rate without reducing the quality and complexity of the graphics will be an important research topic in the future. In addition, virtual reality also depends on the development of stereoscopic display and sensor technology. The existing virtual equipment cannot meet the needs of the system. It is necessary to develop new 3D graphics generation and display technology.

3. Development of new interactive devices. Virtual reality technology enables people to

By interacting with virtual world objects, it is as if you are actually there, and the input and output devices used mainly include helmet displays, data gloves, data clothes, three-dimensional position sensors, and three-dimensional sound generators. Therefore, new, cheap, and robust data gloves and data clothes will become an important direction for future research.

4. Intelligent and natural virtual reality modeling. Virtual reality modeling is a

This is a relatively complicated process that requires a lot of time and energy. If virtual reality technology is combined with natural interaction, speech recognition and other technologies, this problem can be solved well. The description of the attributes, methods and general characteristics of the model is converted into the data required for modeling through natural interaction, speech recognition and other technologies, and then the computer's graphics processing technology and artificial intelligence technology are used for design, navigation and evaluation. The model is represented by an object, and various basic models are statically or dynamically connected to finally form a system model. Artificial intelligence is also very useful in the virtual world. A good artificial intelligence system has a very positive effect on reducing tedious manual labor.

5. Distributed virtual reality technology.

Virtual Reality Environment (DVE) is an important direction for the development of virtual reality technology in the future. With the emergence of many DVE development tools and their systems, the application of DVE itself has also penetrated into various industries, including medicine, engineering, training and teaching, and collaborative design. Simulation training and teaching training are another important application field of DVE, including virtual battlefields, auxiliary teaching, etc. In addition, researchers also use DVE systems to support collaborative design work. In recent years, with the popularization of Internet applications, some Internet-oriented DVE applications have enabled multiple users around the world to work together. Connecting scattered virtual reality systems or simulators through the network, using coordinated structures, standards, protocols and databases, to form a virtual synthetic environment that is coupled in time and space, and participants can interact freely. In particular, the application value in aerospace is extremely obvious, because the participating countries of the International Space Station are distributed in different regions of the world, and the distributed virtual reality training environment does not need to rebuild the simulation system in each country, which not only reduces the development cost and equipment cost, but also reduces the cost of personnel travel and the discomfort of living in a different place. For example, the Holoportation remote immersive interactive demonstration recently released by Microsoft has been unanimously favored by the industry.

4. Bottlenecks in virtual reality technology and urgent problems to be solved

Virtual reality technology is a young science and technology. Although its practical application in many fields is quite mature, it is still in its early development stage in general, and there are still many problems to be solved. One of the reasons why virtual reality technology has been able to develop is that it makes full use of the mature scientific and technological achievements. For example, computers provide it with a real-time hardware platform, display devices utilize the display technology of televisions and cameras, and the software of virtual reality technology is based on CAD and computer graphics technology. Therefore, virtual reality technology has developed rapidly, but it also depends on the development of other related technologies. It is precisely because of the current level of scientific and technological development that the development of virtual reality technology is still far from the goal pursued in people's minds, and further improvement and perfection are needed in terms of immersion and interactivity. The application of virtual reality technology in reality has great limitations, which are mainly manifested in the following aspects:

1. Limitations of software and hardware technologies

From the perspective of the hardware and software technology of the virtual reality system, firstly, the related equipment is generally inconvenient to use and has poor effects, which makes it difficult to meet the requirements of the virtual reality system. For example, the processing speed of computers cannot meet the real-time needs of processing huge amounts of data in the virtual world. The data storage capacity is also insufficient. For example, the total amount of data stored by my country's first female virtual person has reached 149.7GB so far.

Second, the variety of hardware equipment needs to be further expanded. While improving existing equipment, the research and development of new equipment should be accelerated. At the same time, special hardware equipment that can meet application requirements should be developed for different fields.

Third, the price of related equipment for virtual reality system applications is also relatively expensive and has great limitations. For example, the investment in building a CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) system is more than one million, and the cost of a helmet-mounted display plus a host is generally tens of thousands of yuan. In some professional fields, such as military aerospace, the high price is affordable, but for the general consumer market, it is still daunting.

Fourth, most current virtual reality software generally has problems such as strong language specialization, poor versatility, and poor usability. At the same time, due to the many limitations of hardware equipment, the cost of software development is also very huge, and the effects that the software can achieve are greatly affected by time and space. Many algorithms and many related theories are also immature, such as new sensing and perception mechanisms, new methods of geometric and physical modeling, related theories and technologies based on smell and taste, high-performance computing, especially high-speed graphics and image processing, as well as artificial intelligence, psychology, sociology, etc. There are many challenging problems to be solved.

Fifth, the cumbersome 3D modeling technology needs further breakthroughs. The first problem to be solved in the virtual environment of graphics is 3D modeling. While graphics rendering technology is making great strides in achieving realism, the process of generating accurate 3D models is still relatively difficult, and the technology needs further breakthroughs. Even though the advancement of 3D laser scanning technology has simplified the model building process, these automated model acquisition methods cannot meet all our needs. Most models still require high-level professionals to draw manually, which not only prolongs the production cycle, but also causes the cost to rise sharply.

Sixth, big data fusion processing needs to be further integrated. If virtual reality wants to develop greatly, it needs to be further integrated with the Internet. At present, the amount of data used in virtual reality applications is very huge, while the speed of the overall network is relatively slow and the distribution is uneven, which greatly reduces the effect. We need to consider the issue of data compression in the virtual reality system. This issue cannot be avoided and will attract people's high attention.

2. Application limitations

In terms of application, at present, virtual reality technology is mainly used in the military field and university scientific research. Its application in the fields of education and industry is far from enough and needs to be further strengthened. Future development should strive to develop in the direction of civilian use and play a role in different industries.

3. Limitations of the effect

The credibility of a virtual environment means that the created virtual environment must be consistent with human understanding and experience, including physical reality, time reality, behavioral reality, etc. It is specifically manifested in the following aspects:

First, the representation of the virtual world focuses on geometric representation and lacks realistic physical and behavioral models.

Second, in terms of perception of the virtual world, there are more studies on visual synthesis, less attention paid to hearing and touch (force perception), lack of authenticity and real-time performance, and devices based on smell and taste are not yet mature and commercialized.

Third, in the interaction with the virtual world, natural interactivity is insufficient, and the results in artificial intelligence such as speech recognition are far from satisfactory.

3. Application in key areas

1. Military field

Military simulation training and drills are one of the most important application areas of virtual reality technology, and it is also the earliest and most widely used field of virtual reality technology. The U.S. Department of Defense lists virtual reality technology as one of the seven key technologies to ensure the U.S. military's dominant position in the 21st century, and applies it to military drills, which has brought about changes in the concepts and methods of military drills and promoted the development of military drills.

Military simulation exercises are also an early application field of virtual reality in my country. Since 1996, with the support of the "863" plan, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics has been the system integration unit, and has cooperated with many domestic units to continuously carry out the research and development of the distributed virtual environment DVENET, and has achieved certain results. DVENET is mainly composed of an environmental system and a series of development tools. In order to verify the support capability of DVENET and test its reliability and stability, a military exercise concept demonstration system "Hurricane 2000" based on DVENET was developed. "Hurricane 2000" includes submarine naval battles, ship landings, and tank company offensive battles. At present, the military field is still one of the fields where virtual reality technology is most urgently applied and the application system is developed the most.

2. Gaming and entertainment

Virtual reality games are not only one of the important application directions of virtual reality technology, but also play a huge role in the demand for the rapid development of virtual reality technology. Despite the existence of many technical difficulties, virtual reality technology has gained popularity in the fiercely competitive game market.

It has received more and more attention and application in the field. It can be said that computer games have been developing in the direction of virtual reality since their inception, and the ultimate goal of the development of virtual reality technology has become the lofty pursuit of 3D game workers. From the initial text MUD games, to 2D games, 3D games, and then to online 3D games, while maintaining their real-time and interactivity, the realism and immersion of the games are being improved and strengthened step by step. With the rapid development of virtual reality technology and the continuous advancement of software and hardware technology, virtual reality games will surely make new and greater contributions to human entertainment, education and economic development.

3. Medical field

The medical field has a huge demand for the application of virtual reality technology, which provides a strong driving force for the development of virtual reality technology, but also poses severe challenges to virtual reality research. Due to the huge amount of geometric, physical, physiological and biochemical data of the human body, various tissues and organs have elastic and plastic characteristics, and various interactive operations such as cutting, suturing, and removal also require changes in the topological structure of the human body. Therefore, it is difficult to construct a real-time, immersive and interactive medical virtual reality system. At present, virtual reality technology has been initially applied to virtual surgery training, remote consultation, surgical planning and navigation, remote collaborative surgery, etc. Some applications have become irreplaceable important means and links in the medical process.

(IV) Industrial sector

In the industrial field, virtual reality technology is mostly used for product demonstration, design, assembly, ergonomics and performance evaluation. Representative applications, such as simulation training and virtual prototype technology, have been valued by many industrial sectors. In the 1990s, the Johnson Space Center in the United States used virtual reality technology to conduct maintenance training for the Hubble Telescope, and Boeing used virtual reality technology to assist in the pipeline design of the Boeing 777, which is a typical successful example. The DEPTH system developed by the Armstrong Laboratory of the US Air Force uses visualization and virtual reality technology to perform maintainability and supportability analysis, allowing designers to understand whether the maintenance task is feasible while designing, and to discover potential supportability issues before the aircraft design is finalized.

5. Education and Culture

Education and culture are also important application areas of virtual reality technology. Now virtual reality has become the core supporting technology for application systems such as digital museums/science museums, rehearsal simulations for opening and closing ceremonies of large-scale events, and immersive interactive games. In digital museums/science museums, virtual reality technology can be used to digitize and display various cultural relics such as documents, manuscripts, photos, recordings, films, and collections. The high-precision modeling of these cultural relics exhibits has also continuously put forward higher requirements for virtual reality modeling methods and data acquisition equipment, promoting the development of virtual reality. Many countries have actively carried out work in this area. For example, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum, the Hermitage Museum in Russia, and the Louvre in France have all established their own digital museums. my country has also developed and established university digital museums, digital science and technology museums, virtual Dunhuang, and virtual Forbidden City.

4. Room for improvement of virtual reality in my country

1. Hardware performance needs to be improved to support fast data processing

To realize the simulation of the real world, virtual reality technology requires a large amount of real-time sensing data and modeling, new display devices such as ultra-high definition, and to improve system performance and reduce the generation of dizziness. First, we must improve sensor performance, improve visual sensing, somatosensory recognition, eye tracking, haptic feedback and other technologies, realize the balance of sensor volume and performance, enhance data acquisition capabilities, so as to accurately and accurately position and quickly feedback the surrounding environment. Second, we must accelerate the performance level of data processing units such as CPU and GPU. Virtual reality technology needs to realize large-scale data model reconstruction in user movement, requiring hardware to process relatively large parallel video data, so that the real world can synchronize in virtual reality display in real time, and improve user experience. At present, my country's CPU and GPU processing capabilities are temporarily difficult to meet virtual reality application scenarios.

(II) It is necessary to improve the application ecological environment to expand the scope of application

The development of the virtual reality industry requires strengthening the performance of hardware products, and building a complete ecosystem in application software, content, services, etc. to promote the development of the domestic virtual reality industry. First, in terms of application software, since virtual reality products have just emerged, application software adapted to virtual reality is seriously insufficient. While promoting the sales of hardware products, application developers should be encouraged to develop virtual reality application software. Second, in terms of content, the large-scale popularization of virtual reality applications requires the support of various content such as film and television, games, online experience, etc., to expand the application field of virtual reality products and enrich application scenarios. At present, my country has seriously insufficient content supply capacity in the field of virtual reality, and content generation services that are adapted to multiple forms and multiple scenarios still need to be further strengthened.

(III) Public services need to be strengthened to solve common problems in the industry

As a new terminal form and product service, the large-scale popularization and application of virtual reality technology still needs to solve common problems in the industry. First, it is urgent to establish a standardized top-level design. The investment in standardization research on virtual reality technology is insufficient, and the standardization results in key technical links and application fields are not enough to support the large-scale application of the industry. Second, the industry's technical forces are scattered. After decades of development of virtual reality technology, various manufacturers have applied for some patents based on research foundation, but they are still scattered among various manufacturers themselves, and there is a lack of platforms and channels for patent cooperation. Due to the relatively scattered patents, domestic manufacturers' patents are still difficult to cope with the patent layout of international manufacturers, and the subsequent development of the virtual reality industry has great hidden dangers. Third, the order of healthy market development has not yet been established. Some virtual reality products are still in the stage of concept hype and overdraft industry development, and user experience is difficult to meet consumer needs. Low-quality and high-overlapping products have had adverse effects on market development.

V. Policy recommendations

Virtual reality is on the eve of the outbreak of the industry and is about to enter a window period of continuous rapid development. It can be foreseen that in the next six months to one year, the virtual reality consumer market will explode rapidly, industry applications are expected to be fully launched, cultural content will become increasingly prosperous, and the technical system and industrial structure will also be initially formed. If my country's virtual reality industry is not laid out as soon as possible, it will once again fall into a situation of lagging behind and catching up with foreign countries. The era of virtual reality is coming, which is not only a rare opportunity for the development of my country's information industry, but also an important opportunity to drive the consumption of information products and prosper the cultural market. Strengthen strategic planning and top-level design, occupy the market by promoting industrialization at the industrial level, promote industry applications, improve user experience and equipment specifications at the standard level, and ensure the healthy and orderly market. In order to promote the development of my country's virtual reality industry, it is recommended to carry out work from the following aspects.

(I) Plan ahead and do a good job in top-level design

1. Accelerate the formulation of an industrial development roadmap and coordinate the planning of the development of the virtual reality industry

Taking the broad prospects brought by virtual reality technology in the fields of industry, culture, education, entertainment and medical care, it is recommended that industry authorities clarify the direction of industrial policy support, design a roadmap for the integration of virtual reality with various fields at the top level, clarify ideas for industrial development and provide policy guidance, coordinate relevant resources, give full play to the role of virtual reality in the transformation and support of various industries, create new opportunities and new vitality for development in various industries through integrated innovation, so that various industries can break the constraints in space and time, and promote a leapfrog improvement in the development level of various industries.

2. Establish and improve relevant standard systems to ensure healthy and orderly market

Form a standard system for virtual reality technology in my country, consolidate the position of independent technology layout, and improve the industry's independent voice. Through standards, spread the concept of virtual reality product to consumers, promote the consumption of information products, and eliminate confusion of concepts and low-quality products in the market to ensure the healthy development of the industry. Through equipment standards, clear requirements are made on the perspective, brightness, response time of virtual reality products, and other technical indicators closely related to consumer experience, to ensure the minimum experience requirements of consumers, and to promote reasonable competition in products and healthy and orderly development of the market.

3. Strengthen the management of citizen information data and ensure information security

Faced with the explosive growth of data volume brought by virtual reality products, standards have been formulated to clearly limit the data collection and use of information technology products, including virtual reality equipment. Provisions are made on data and application scenarios collected by augmented reality and other products, and an information data management system is established to ensure that massive data about Chinese citizens and industries can be controlled and controlled, and to protect the security of public data in our society. The data flow and scope of use of video images collected by virtual reality equipment are clarified through standards, and personal privacy or state secrets are protected from leakage.

(II) Promote industrialization and industry application

1. Through special financial support for the industrialization of virtual reality technology, guide the industry to become bigger and stronger

Promote the industrialization of virtual reality technology through fiscal funds, support the application of virtual reality technology for key industries such as industry, culture, and education, strengthen coordination with relevant "13th Five-Year Plan", integrate technology, products, and market resources, do a good job in the research and organization and implementation of virtual reality innovation and development plans, guide and strengthen upstream and downstream cooperation of the virtual reality industry chain, collaborate on major technological research and application integration innovation, industrialize the research results in my country's virtual reality field as soon as possible, form an independent and controllable industrial chain, and enhance my country's industrial status. Research and establish an industrial public service platform integrating technology research, demonstration applications, case display, promotion and exchange and other functions.

2. Support core technology breakthroughs in the field of virtual reality and improve the industry's independent and controllable capabilities

Focusing on the key links of the virtual reality industry chain, we will strengthen industry-university-research cooperation, actively guide more enterprises and scientific research institutions to invest in virtual reality research, carry out in-depth cooperation in common and key technologies, concentrate resources, and support the research and development of basic technologies such as core devices and development platforms through national project funds, produce more products and advanced technologies with independent intellectual property rights and brands, form a relatively complete virtual reality technology system, improve the independent technology level of key enterprises in my country, and avoid being marginalized in the new round of science and technology waves and becoming the end of the industrial chain. Secondly, guide the widespread attention of scientific researchers in the whole society, and combine my country's "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" strategy, incubate and cultivate a group of high-quality growth virtual reality technology start-ups with independent intellectual property results through various financing methods. Third, support domestic enterprises to acquire overseas core technology enterprises, quickly make up for technical shortcomings, and improve the industrial ecology.

3. Strengthen application demonstration in key areas and continuously improve the application needs of virtual reality

In combination with the implementation of my country's Manufacturing 2025 and the "Internet +" action plan, games and animation content production and smart wearable devices will be used as breakthroughs for virtual reality application promotion, support software and hardware performance improvement, support service innovation and model innovation, and promote the application of virtual reality in various aspects such as game development, enhanced experience, competitive sports, game entertainment. In the next 3-5 years, gradually promote the application of virtual reality technology, further promote the application of virtual reality technology in the life, public safety, industrial design, medicine, planning, transportation and cultural education industries and fields. Support virtual reality innovation enterprises to be recognized as national technological innovation demonstration enterprises, set up industrial innovation centers and application demonstration zones, encourage the introduction of supporting policies according to local conditions, strengthen policy coordination and cooperation, solve problems in industrial development and application promotion, and achieve industry agglomeration and development.

(III) Strengthen cultural and brand building

1. Vigorously develop new cultural communication methods and promote social themes

The new cultural communication method formed through virtual reality will drive huge consumer demand in cultural industries such as film and television, entertainment, as well as education industries such as teaching and training. The ideas and public opinion of virtual space are also important positions for the construction of socialist spiritual civilization, and should not become a place for the breeding of decadent ideas and culture and the spread of bad ideas and speech. my country should occupy this new propaganda position as soon as possible, spread mainstream values, actively cultivate and improve the virtual space cultural market, vigorously support healthy cultural products, advocate cultural and entertainment activities in a virtual environment suitable for the consumption level of the general public, and enhance the appeal and influence of the Party and the government. By vigorously developing virtual reality cultural works based on immersive viewing, they will become an important carrier of Chinese cultural propaganda and help Chinese culture spread overseas.

2. Improve the industrial development environment and strengthen the brand building of key products

Research test and evaluation technologies that are adapted to key virtual reality technologies, increase the quality evaluation of virtual reality products, and establish a fair and just industrial development environment through various methods such as quality spot checks and market supervision. Cultivate leading and backbone enterprises in virtual reality, increase support for excellent brands, use leading enterprises to drive the development of the virtual reality industry, improve the recognition of the consumer market, and drive the growth of information consumption. Establish an expert advisory committee to conduct consultations on the development strategy of the virtual reality industry, top-level design, major policies, major projects, major issues, etc., and provide consulting and technical support for industrial development. Attach importance to intellectual property strategy research, and support key enterprises and scientific research institutions to carry out high-level patent layout around the world.

3. Improve the industry's public service capabilities and enhance the level of industry coordinated development

Establish an industrial operation information platform, give full play to the role of industry associations, industry alliances, and research institutes in data statistics and information services, track domestic and foreign technical paths and industrial development trends, strengthen industry operation monitoring and analysis, and provide support services for industrial development. Strengthen product quality construction, build a virtual reality hardware product quality supervision information platform, use the Internet, big data and other means to strengthen product quality supervision, carry out online release of quality credit information, online exposure of quality blacklists, and quality safety network warning, gradually establish an online display and attorney system for emerging intelligent hardware product standards, and guide enterprises to carry out brand innovation construction. Promote the "Internet +" artificial intelligence-virtual reality innovation and entrepreneurship competition to provide continuous intellectual resource support for the development of the virtual reality industry.

Six attachments: Some typical product representatives

(1) Oculus Rift (VR helmet)

Oculus Rift is a pioneer and weather vane in the virtual reality industry. The consumer version of Oculus Rift CV1 has been officially pre-sale. The product has improved hardware: first, the resolution of the display is further improved, with 1,200*1080 pixels per glass, and is made of OLED material, making the display more outstanding; second, the body size is lighter than the previous generation of products, and it also has a detachable headset that can be fixed to the display; third, the system supports a six-axis motion system and has an upright external camera to monitor and capture user movement. In addition, the product also comes with an Xbox One handle, Oculus remote control, Oculus sensor and microphone. It also comes with a new controller, supports natural gesture control, and supports Unreal Engine 4 and a unified platform.

(2) HTC (VR helmet)

HTC, a Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer in China, released the Vive virtual reality helmet and laid out the virtual reality market. HTC showed off the second generation of virtual reality version VIVE Pre at the 2016 CES exhibition. This product has made many improvements based on HTC VIVE and is one of the best devices in the entire virtual reality industry.

(3) Samsung (mobile phone VR helmet)

Samsung launched the new Gear VR in December last year. The consumer version of the Gear VR with Oculus VR headset can be used with 4 models of Samsung phones - Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 Edge, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy S6 edge+, which has achieved enough mobile phone support. At the CES press conference, Samsung also equipped it with a 360-degree panoramic VR camera Project Beyond, which has 18 cameras in 8 directions, which can capture full-view images, and the captured images can be transmitted to Gear VR in real time.

(4) Microsoft HoloLens (AR helmet)

At Microsoft Build 2016, Microsoft officially announced the launch of the augmented reality helmet HoloLens. During the E3 conference, the scene of playing the sandbox game "Minecraft" on HoloLens was shown. At the same time, the uniqueness of HoloLens is that it is a standalone computer itself, with its own CPU, GPU and holographic processing unit. According to the demonstration on E3, HoloLens should be close to the stage of preparing for the market.

(5) Sony Morpheus (VR helmet)

Sony launched Morpheus in March 2015 and will be available in the second half of 2016. The product has a 5.7-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1920×1080, a 100Hz refresh rate and a 100-degree visual range. This VR device can be used with PS Move, but the device is more like a virtual VR headset designed for PS4 players.

(6) Ant Vision (VR Helmet)

The Cyclop of the second generation of the Antsight VR helmet was released at the 2016 CES exhibition. The Cyclop of the Antsight II helmet prototype is equipped with a 2K screen, with a single-eye resolution of 1280*1440, and has a high-quality imaging effect. The field of view reaches 110 degrees and the screen refresh rate is 90HZ. It can effectively control distortion and achieve distortion-free imaging at a larger perspective. It is equipped with an independent position tracking system, which can infinitely expand the space for position tracking without being restricted by range. In addition, the Antsight and Lenovo will jointly release the dual-brand product - Lemeng Antsight VR glasses, which will also be launched in the second half of the year.

(7) Shenzhen 3Glasses (VR helmet and all-in-one machine)

After the 3Glasses Developer Edition and 3Glasses D2 Trailblazer Edition, Shenzhen company 3Glasses officially released the Blue Platinum series of cutting-edge VR technology at this year's CES exhibition, including the addition of the PC-type wired version of Blue Platinum S1 and a wireless version (all-in-one) Blue Platinum W1. As a VR manufacturer that has won Epic Games content cooperation after Oculus, SONY, and HTC, 3Glasses not only brings a new next-generation product display, but also prepares more than a dozen VR content. It is worth noting that the "Here VR" held by 3Glasses in Shenzhen on March 31 this year may be able to fully demonstrate its product performance.

(8) Le Xiang Dapeng (all-in-one machine)

At the CES2016 exhibition, Lexiang Dapeng VR launched the VR all-in-one M2. The M2 uses Samsung's OLED screen with a resolution of 2K. The pixel conversion time of M2 will be controlled within 1ms. Dapeng has also completed SDK innovation to achieve multi-platform compatibility, solving many problems that restrict VR developers' applications, including asynchronous time curl, distortion correction, gyroscope drift correction and other technical problems.

(9) LeTV (mobile VR helmet)

In 2016, LeTV reached cooperation intentions with several companies in foreign and Hong Kong in VR content production, including Happy Finish in the UK, Hiverlab in Singapore, Salon Film in Hong Kong, Digital Magic in Hong Kong and Mooovr in South Korea. LeTV also showed off its first terminal hardware product released not long ago - the mobile VR helmet LeVR COOL1, equipped with the unique EUI VR version operating system, and is also equipped with LeTV super mobile phones, and is used with LeTV's VR content application in mobile phones.