You are a black technology boss, you didn't say it sooner!

This scene is actually very simple, a wide and clear river with forests on both sides, a small island in the center of the river, and a pavilion on the small island.

What shocked Lu Xiaochan was the authenticity of the picture.

The river water is clear and clear, with a little bit of microwave, the forest is vast and deep, covered with mist above, there are dense plants fluttering in the wind on the small island, the pavilions on the island are hidden in layers of light and shadow, and there are distant mountains and sunsets behind...

She was in it, only felt that the stimulation transmitted from the VR glasses to the optic nerve seemed to be able to infect other nerves, the coldness of the river, the itching of the water waves rushing to the skin, the moist water vapor from the mist, the wind passing through the forest, passing by She swept to the small island ahead again...

...is this really a cg scene?

It should be a real place on earth!

Lu Xiaochan couldn't wait to go ashore to have a closer look at those scenery, to see what they looked like, and why they appeared so realistic to her eyes.

She raised the handle, intending to move forward, but froze the moment she raised her hand.

In the field of vision, the character raised his hand at the same time as her movement.

……how is this possible?

She herself is a VR game developer and has written countless handle recognition programs.She thought to herself, did the program automatically add arm movements when it recognized that the handle was raised?

She put the handle down, only to find that the arm could still be raised.

When I was wondering, a line of prompts appeared in my field of vision: Please try to move your fingers.

Are characters and characters really in sync?Does the character move when you move it yourself?It can't be motion capture, can it?Lu Xiaochan felt absurd in her heart.

She took off the helmet, and sure enough, there was a small camera sandwiched above the computer. The appearance was no different from a normal camera.

She tried to spread her five fingers and then close them together, and the hands of the character in her vision made exactly the same movements.

Although the movement was a little stiff, there was no delay at all.

Lu Xiaochan moved her hands closer in disbelief, and the hands in the picture came to her eyes immediately. She raised her head again, holding her hands high in front of her eyes, spreading them out, turning them around, and making special gestures...

No matter what she does, the VR screen is always in sync instantly.

It's really motion capture -- camera-based motion capture.

This technology has not been seen before. Kinect is a relatively successful product for camera motion compensation. There is also a special effect plug-in for deep space, which can be used for motion compensation with ordinary cameras.

But it is extremely difficult to be accurate to every joint of the finger, from the heart to the hand to the eye, to think in the heart, to move the hand, and to receive visual feedback immediately without delay, as if you and the virtual character are completely overlapped.

Not only that, but the skin that came into view was even more surprising.

On the skin of the hands, the tiny hairs, pores, protrusions, fine lines, and faintly visible blood vessels... every detail is clearly visible.Everywhere is detail, and everywhere is texture.

It's a pity that the display technology of the helmet is not good, and the picture has serious graininess. Otherwise, what is the difference from observing your own hands in real life?

Lu Xiaochan thought to herself, when did the technology advance to this level, and VR can do so well?

Using cg to restore real skin texture, she has seen it in Hollywood movies.

Real-time motion capture, also seen.A huge, empty room covered with sensors all over the actor's body.

But the scene in front of her is not a movie, and her body is not covered with sensors. With only a computer and a camera, she has completed movie-level real-time rendering and high-precision motion compensation.

What's even more incredible is that the picture always maintains ultra-low latency and 60 frame refresh rate.

Rendering and motion compensation are still within the scope of understanding, but this delay, which is always kept below 20ms, makes Lu Xiaochan's scalp tingle with shock.

"Is this delay real?" She even began to doubt life, "I don't think I traveled to the future the moment I put on my glasses?"

She actually took off her glasses to check.

It's still the same exhibition hall as the Internet cafe, it's still at the SIGGRAPH conference site, and the time displayed on the computer is still July 2021.

She put her glasses back on, feeling like she might be dreaming.

Why does Lu Xiaochan know that the delay is always below 20ms——

Because from the beginning to the present, she has not felt dizzy during the whole process of entering this VR scene.

There are three major sources of VR vertigo, one is unreasonable hardware and content design; the other is motion sickness; the third is delay.

The unreasonable design can be improved a little bit. Not everyone has motion sickness, and Lu Xiaochan is the kind who hardly gets dizzy.

Only the delay is indistinguishable, the 20ms standard is unbreakable, exceeding it will inevitably lead to dizziness.

Wherever the user wearing the helmet looks, the program must immediately render the image there.The reaction time of the human eye is about 20ms. If the process of "looking somewhere-somewhere to display the picture" is longer than 20ms, the brain will have a sense of lag, which will cause dizziness.

That is to say, the hardware detects user actions, the GPU renders new images, and the display device images, these three processes, plus the time for data transmission back and forth, the total time must be compressed within 20ms.

Otherwise, the vertigo problem will never be solved.

The picture quality of VR is strictly limited by 20ms, so some VR games don’t even dare to make the picture quality too high, for fear that the player’s computer can’t keep up.

Lu Xiaochan has not felt dizzy since wearing the glasses, which means that the screen delay has been kept below 20ms.

Running ridiculous real-time rendering and motion compensation, but also having such low latency is incredible.

He hasn't really started to explore this world yet, just a simple gesture of raising his hand made Lu Xiaochan feel a huge shock.

She can't wait to control the handle to move forward, wanting to get on the island quickly, while moving while looking down, the character is taking steps in the shallow water beach. This is a systematic movement, so it seems relatively rigid.

Before she had time to see her reflection in the water clearly, she was again distracted by the stirred up waves.

Clear water droplets slapped on his body, soaking the hem of his clothes.She stretched out her hand in disbelief, and scooped up the air in front of her.

In the picture, her hand is just on the surface of the water, scooping up a handful of clear water.

Drops of water dripped down between her fingers, or merged into a trickle and slid down the character's skin. The clear water flow and meandering water traces made her feel that she was not in an interactive scene at all, but in an interactive scene. watch a movie.

"It can really hold water..."

"This fluid is absolutely perfect! This hem, this drenched effect...is this real..."

She pinched herself severely, then took off the headset suddenly and looked around.

excruciating pain.

And the big Internet cafes that are still familiar.

No dream, no time travel.

Except for the inhalation, exclamation, screaming... and other strange sounds in the venue, everything is normal.

Lu Xiaochan suffocated and put the headset back on.

Her mind was almost empty, and she was completely unwilling to think about what everything she saw meant.

Now, she just wants to put aside distracting thoughts and complete this wonderful journey without distraction.

"I can play in the water here for a year, really." She said to herself, and reluctantly left the shallow water beach and walked onto the island.

The character's walking is not a smooth movement, but a slight shaking effect, and the footsteps make a rustling sound on the grass, just like Lu Xiaochan is really walking.

She used the handle to control herself to turn around, trying to see her reflection in the water.

Sure enough, there was a shadow of a figure in the water, because the ripples that had just landed were still spreading, and the shadow was broken and reassembled round and round, making it very unclear, but the effect was extremely realistic.

"This is ray tracing." She murmured, "As expected of deep space, as expected of fire."

This VR scene is obviously rendered with ray tracing.

If it is raster rendering, there is absolutely no possibility of shadows in the water.Only ray tracing can complete such a realistic optical simulation, chasing every light that enters and exits, and presents the specular reflection so exquisitely.

The reflection in the water was a girl wearing an ancient Ru skirt. Lu Xiaochan found that the face of this character was somewhat similar to her own.

"Modeling for me on the spot?" She couldn't help touching her face.

Get up and continue to walk forward. There is a gravel path on the small island leading directly to the small building. The path is covered with beautiful wild flowers and weeds, swaying slowly with the breeze.

The veins of the grass and the pistils of the flowers are all clearly visible.Lu Xiaochan reached out to touch a small flower, and the flower swayed with her touch, even though it didn't feel tactile, she also found it cute.

At this time, another line of prompt popped up in the field of vision: Click the xx button to use the camera.

"No way, can you still take pictures?"

She picked up the handle, clicked on the camera page, and a viewfinder frame appeared in front of her eyes.

The menu bar next to it displays complex parameters, aperture, shutter, focus, exposure, white balance...

"You can play photography in VR!" Lu Xiaochan was dumbfounded, "This is too professional!"

I took a random scene, pressed the shutter, and output the photo with a click.

The photos taken are more realistic than the game scenes, and they are not much different from real photos.

Obviously, the program has optimized the photo for realism.If you don't watch the shooting process, I'm afraid no one would have thought that this is a photo taken in a VR scene.

Close the photo window, and the white text in the field of vision prompts: "The picture has been automatically saved on the computer desktop for you, and it can be sent to the mobile phone when the experience is over."

Lu Xiaochan took a few more photos, and the effect of each one made her wonder if she was taking a photo with a 5D4 in reality.

"Okay, not only playing with water, I can also play with this camera for a year."

Even so, she continued to walk forward, and when she reached the end of the path, a simple and quiet wooden pavilion came into view.

Lu Xiaochan stood at the door of the pavilion, looking back.

After such a short time, the sky turned dark.

The sunset hanging from the sky has already fallen into the embrace of the mountains a little bit.

The rocks are covered with moss, the soil is moist, and the forests on both sides of the bank are moving. The sound is not low, but it makes this world extremely quiet.In the evening, the floating light spreads down with the sunset and spreads all over the river. The river has no end in sight. When you raise your eyes, you want to see a thousand miles away, and when you lower your eyebrows, you are half river rustling and half river red.

Open sunsets, rolling mountains, endless rivers, vast forests... This is a piece of nature that has never been developed, and players with VR headsets are creatures that suddenly break into this place.

Lu Xiaochan suddenly remembered a sentence.

"Graphics is the technology of restoring nature in computers."

Narrow side of the chassis, a boundless piece of world.How small, yet how vast.

Put on the headset and change the world.

This is the most original and most moving charm of virtual reality.

……

Lu Xiaochan withdrew her gaze and looked at the ancient red door in front of her.

Obviously, this pavilion is the end of the trip.

At this moment, the shock, excitement, and astonishment in her heart... have all disappeared.Instead, there is only endless expectation.

She even pushed open the door with the mentality of a pilgrimage.

wow——

A ray of white light rushed towards her face, swaying across her whole body.When there was another picture in front of her eyes, she found that she had come indoors.

This is the interior of an ancient building, only two floors, not high, but very large.

She was sitting at the railing on the second floor, looking around, looking around, the corridor was full of Eight Immortals tables one after another.The first floor is full of scattered seats, and there is an exquisite big round platform in the center.

This turned out to be a multiplayer online scene.

There were already quite a few people sitting around, a bunch of foreigners with blond hair and blue eyes, all dressed in Hanfu, looking at themselves with their arms outstretched, looking very novel.

Because the motion capture only captures the upper body, the movements of the lower body are systematically arranged, whether walking, sitting or standing, they are very stiff, and there is no expression on their faces, so the appearance of their teeth and claws is particularly funny.

Everyone's face is also different, and each face was obviously modeled individually.

Compared with the natural nature of the scene, the characters still have a CG feeling that cannot be removed. Lu Xiaochan noticed that the skin and modeling details of the characters are not as good as what I saw just now. It should be because many people are on the same screen, the system automatically lowered the picture quality.

But it's also pretty amazing.

The voice of conversation came from the headset, it was not the person sitting next to Lu Xiaochan talking, but the person standing next to him in the VR scene talking.

The noise reduction effect of the earphones provided by the exhibition is against the sky. The sound of the scene is realistic and very textured. In reality, the sound is like a layer of cotton, which is muffled and hard to hear.

Lu Xiaochan took off the earphones and headset, and put them on again after a while.

Repeating this action repeatedly gave her a unique experience of changing the world every time.For a person who has already played all kinds of VR, this is too rare.

If it were someone else who had little exposure to VR, I'm afraid they would scream on the spot.

In fact, the screaming in the exhibition has never stopped, but the noise reduction effect of the headphones is so good that those sounds are turned into an inconspicuous background.

Lu Xiaochan tilted her head and searched among the crowd. After a long time, she finally found Lou Qingyan. He and Jiang Fu were sitting on the Eight Immortals table at the other end.

The people in the corridor were crowded together, and she managed to squeeze through with great difficulty. As soon as she got to the two of them, she heard Lou Qingyan say: "It's too crowded here. It shouldn't be forbidden to wear molds when we were doing it."

Jiang Fu said: "The multiplayer online scene is indeed a problem."

In the future application scenarios of VR, there will definitely be multiple people online. Whether it is a large-scale online game or a virtual shopping street, it is inevitable that characters will be densely crowded in one place.

Prohibiting mold penetration will greatly reduce the usable area of ​​the scene, and mold penetration will be very fake.

For example, if model piercing is prohibited, during a large-scale melee in an online game, people from one faction huddle together and line up, and the commander shouts "Melee!" Can't come out - you swung your teammate with a knife, because the mold penetration is prohibited, the system judged that an obstacle was encountered, and the skill release failed.

How embarrassing.

If this is a one-on-one competition, choose a narrow map, and dare not move casually in close combat.The weapon hits the wall, what if it loses durability again?

"However, if you can wear the model casually, everyone will become a ghost in Harry Potter." Lou Qingyan smiled, "Look, I will pass through your body now."

Then he bumped his head into Jiang Fu's chest.

Jiang Fu raised his hand and touched the back of his head, the effect of visual feedback is so magical, even though he was actually just touching the air, he still felt a strange sense of satisfaction.

Lu Xiaochan discovered something that shocked her mother.

"You two, you two..." She pointed at them, speechless.

"What's the matter with us?" Lou Qingyan realized that she had arrived.

Recalling his speech, he thought that Lu Xiaochan's piercing eyes had seen through his identity.

"Why do you two have expressions!"

Lu Xiaochan was shocked!

Everyone is cg-faced, why do you two have expressions!

"This," Lou Qingyan touched his face, "This is an expression capture system that is still in internal testing, look."

He covered half of his face with his hands, and that half suddenly became as paralyzed as everyone else's. There was a strange dividing line between half agile and half stiff on his face.

"Is this a captured expression??" Lu Xiaochan was taken aback, "You said this was a captured expression???"

"Yes." Lou Qingyan took his hand away.

"How is this possible? How is it possible to make facial expressions so flexible? Not to mention real-time capture, even those who are manually adjusted in post-production can't get rid of the stiffness. Have you ever watched movies and TV shows that capture facial expressions?"

"Don't worry, you'll know when the press conference starts." Lou Qingyan laughed.

His smile was simply intoxicating, because he was so special, he was the only person in the audience with an expression!

——Jiang Fu's expression was basically negligible.

"You are so cool," Lu Xiaochan was intoxicated, "Is this the privilege of being a family member?"

"Oh..." She accidentally said what was in her heart, and hurriedly said, "No, no, that's not what I meant."

Although the two have been ridiculed all the time, they haven't said it clearly after all, what if they are not?She finds it slightly offensive to make such jokes in person.

Lou Qingyan smiled again, but said nothing.

Lu Xiaochan said anxiously: "I just said it casually, I don't use CP... Oh, I didn't mean that... Wait, the press conference???"

She suddenly recalled the details of what Lou Qingyan said just now, "What did you say? What press conference??"

"..." Lou Qingyan said, "Your delay is a bit too high."

"Wow...it can't be that Fire is going to hold a press conference here, right? A project launch event? A product launch event?" Lu Xiaochan said, "Using VR to develop a press conference, what does he think!"

Lou Qingyan said: "What do you think of this VR experience? It's okay."

Lu Xiaochan suddenly calmed down.

The successive shocks along the way caused her to lose track of her thinking, so that her mind went blank, and she didn't even have time to think about the most core issues.

——What exactly does this VR experience mean?

"Such a high motion compensation accuracy, such a low delay, and the content design is quite reasonable, so that I haven't felt dizzy until now... I won't talk about these."

"The most important thing," she said word by word, "is the sense of reality."

"Whether it's modeling accuracy, physics simulation, global illumination, or animation naturalness..."

"Almost all of them are 95% realistic."

"If I'm really not dreaming, and I haven't traveled through..."

She suddenly felt a shock of enlightenment, and an uncontrollable trembling felt in her chest. It was a kind of magnificence coming from a new world—the third VR boom may be coming soon.

The first time was a mindless follow-up, and the second time was an early investment in 5G, all of which eventually became a fantasy.

But this time, probably, really, it's no longer a bubble.

Not only Lu Xiaochan, but countless people in the field had the same enlightenment.

Virtual reality, a concept that has been picked up time and time again, has been punctured time and time again.

Will it turn a page in history today?

It is different from several pieces of software, a set of animation industrial processes, and a graphics engine... It is the future terminal existence form that will replace mobile phones and computers. Its importance is no less than that of artificial intelligence. It will make the future, which is already unpredictable, even more confusing.

Just looking at the content of this VR experience so far: strong interaction, strong immersion, super-real picture presentation, and the vertigo problem seems to have been solved... This is just an appetizer, and the content of the conference should be more than that?

Before the thoughts were clear, darkness suddenly fell.

The author has something to say:

Lu Xiaochan: Don't get me wrong, I don't drink CP!

Jiang Fu: ...

Jiang Fu: Nibbling is fine.

—— "Selling Amway"