At this time, the helmet was still very rudimentary.

Because the current main research direction is the use of VR technology, rather than the aesthetics of the equipment, so on the basis of usability, Andy has not made too many improvements to the helmet, he has been committed to how to make the new technology better displayed, and how to make the existing technology more perfect.

The helmet is worn on the head, and in front of you is a piece of black hole, and there is a slit near the bridge of the nose that allows one to see what is underneath.

This can't be helped, after all, there are a lot of other debris around, and if you don't reserve an opening for the next observation, it's easy to accidentally kick or touch something, and if you accidentally get hurt...... That would be too bad.

The inside of the helmet was pitch black, but as Andy turned on the device, a bright light appeared in front of Zhou Fangyuan, accompanied by pleasant music in his ears, there are headphones on the helmet, or the kind of ear-covering headphones, in fact, the helmet is not a complete helmet, the ear part can be opened, first put the helmet on, determine the position, and then close the part of the earphone, and then adjust the angle of the helmet a little, you can ensure that the ear can be covered by the earphone steadily.

The LOGO of Yuanfang Technology appeared in Zhou Fangyuan's sight, and with the music of Yue'er, an animated picture appeared.

After the LOGO, the clouds opened and the fog dispersed, and a large expanse of wilderness appeared in the picture.

Zhou Fangyuan took a breath slightly, from his point of view, at this moment, he was flying rapidly from a high altitude like using a glider, gliding at high speed against the ground, and then his line of sight rose, and in the sky, four big words "Distant Dream" appeared.

Then, the screen disappeared, and what appeared in front of Zhou Fangyuan again was an interface menu.

The title is pitch black, and there are several buttons on it that are all red.

"It's just a beginner version, and we'll optimize it next, Zhou, you can try it first, and you can control it through the grip in your hand, swing forward is up, swing backward is down, the button at the top of the handle is OK, and the button at the position of your index finger is backward. ”

Andy's voice came through the headphones.

In fact, directly in front of Zhou Fangyuan, there is a huge screen, and what is projected on it is the picture that Zhou Fangyuan is seeing now. Andy's microphone has been connected to Zhou Fangyuan's headphones, he can directly transmit the sound to Zhou Fangyuan's ears through the microphone, of course Zhou Fangyuan doesn't need microphone, at least not now, he just needs to say his thoughts, Andy can hear it directly.

Listening to Andy's explanation, Zhou Fang was far away, and he tried to start controlling the interface in front of him according to Andy's words.

The cursor began to jump, constantly traversing several buttons, and finally landed on the film and television column.

Zhou Fangyuan pressed the button at the top of the handle, and the secondary page appeared, but the content inside was very simple, with only three items: "Landscape", "Sports" and "Fantasy".

Zhou Fangyuan thought about it and clicked on the "Scenery" column.

Then a list appeared in front of him, there were obviously many video files on it, and he clicked on one at random, and Zhou Fangyuan suddenly felt that he had come to an island. Not only that, they also specially made a 360° shooting machine, which put six cameras in different positions to shoot all angles at the same time, and then went through computer synthesis and editing, and finally completed a video.

Not to mention anything else, these videos alone cost a lot of money to Yuanfang Technology, but there is no way, who makes Zhou Fangyuan willing to support them? Even if someone complains, it is in vain.

Of course, shooting video is not just as simple as camera equipment, unlike traditional video, VR video is shot in 360°. In order to provide a more realistic shooting environment, the camera can not capture the environment without people and things that are not related to the video, and even the director must stay away from the shooting scene or carry out appropriate camouflage to avoid goofs, so when shooting, it is best to place the camera position in the center, and the surrounding 360° is the actors or sets. The camera of the panoramic camera is fixed-focus, and there is no close-up and walking shift of traditional video shooting, so it is necessary to design the movement trajectory of the camera in advance to avoid goofs and facilitate post-production.

The other thing is to add interactivity to the video. VR video is to subvert our perception of video in the past, usually we watch video on a horizontal plane, passively receiving the information provided to us by the screen. However, VR video gives the audience an opportunity to interact and explore the shooting environment in a 360° way, looking up to see the sky, looking down to see the ground, and looking around. And because the audience actively looks for the surrounding scenes, it is very likely that they will miss what the photographer wants to present to the audience, so it is necessary to set up some scenes to guide the audience to interact with the main story line, and when interacting, other elements in the scene can be relatively static. This requires the photographer to have the heart of a game designer, and to design the interaction between NPCs and players in advance, just like game design. Of course, this refers to some requirements for users, as far as the basic requirements are concerned, at least to ensure that users can see all the surrounding scenery when watching at will, and there can be no loopholes.

Finally, in fact, the most difficult part of making VR videos is the post-production stitching and production. Because the panoramic camera has multiple cameras, each panoramic video will produce multiple video materials, and the images captured by each camera need to be combined together through post-production software to produce a complete panoramic video. In fact, the video shot in this way cannot be called a VR video in the true sense, but can only be said to be a 360° panoramic video. Just like what Zhou Fangyuan saw now, the so-called 360° panoramic video is actually a fixed point to observe the surrounding environment in an all-round way, and this fixed point is the location of the panoramic camera. What does a real VR video look like? It's simple, at least you can move anywhere in space to see your surroundings in all directions.

But this is very difficult, even before Zhou Fangyuan's rebirth, there is no real VR video, so now what Zhou Fangyuan sees, and what he saw before his rebirth, are basically "pseudo-VR videos", and the nominal VR videos on major video websites are basically 360° panoramic videos. These "pseudo-VR videos" may only reach about 10% of the real VR experience, and cannot be more. But I have to admit that compared to 3D video, this is already a different experience. Moreover, in the future, real VR video production may get some inspiration from these panoramic video shooting, breaking through the bottleneck of VR video development.

Zhou Fangyuan stood in place, looking at the changes in the surrounding environment, I have to say that the effect is still good, and because it is a covered headphone, the sound fidelity is very high, and there is no noise. He could hear the wind, he could hear the water, of course, he didn't feel anything on his skin, but it was still very good, and he was very satisfied.

After watching several videos, Zhou Fangyuan took off his helmet.

"Zhou, how do you feel?"

Andy stepped forward and asked.

"Very good, Andy, really, exceeded my expectations, but ......"

Zhou Fangyuan hesitated, "There are still a lot of questions, how long do you think it will take to try to put it on the market?"

Zhou Fangyuan actually doesn't know much about this, but he also knows that VR technology cannot mature in a short period of time, and if it wants to be really used in the market, it is definitely not just talking.

He remembers very well that in 2014, when Facebook bought the VR start-up OculusVR for $2 billion. Brendan Ereb, CEO of Oculus, enthused: "This is a twist and an innovative technology that can make the world experience the impossible, and this is just the beginning. ”

At that time, investors from all over the world were attracted, and the market was instantly hyped. In fact, even domestic capital players will not be absent from the scientific and technological outlets of this era. The "no man's land" of VR was soon crowded with domestic "gold diggers". Almost all of them are convinced that they are entering a "gold mine" that has just been discovered, and that one step earlier means one step ahead of the fortune of the future. In 2015, the scale of domestic VR investment rose from 270 million to 2.4 billion, an eightfold increase in one year. In 2015, the VR entrepreneur who was regarded as a technology scammer didn't even have time to meet with investors in 2015: "What we do every day is not to ask investors, but how to refuse investors to come to the company, telling them 'don't come, I don't have time to see you, we still have to do something'!"

A year later, the domestic VR industry ushered in the "first year".

At that time, when the whole market was just starting to boil, whether it was domestic or foreign, there was hot money everywhere, and there were all kinds of pursuit of VR technology everywhere. However, even the most calm practitioners could not have imagined that just after the first year, the industry in 2017 suddenly cooled down: this year, only in China, the investment in the VR industry became only 59, with a total of less than 1.4 billion soft girl coins, a decrease of 70%, and in 2018, it dropped from 59 investments in the previous year to 34, shrinking by 5% again. Before the practitioners have finished enjoying the first year, they will experience a "cold winter".

No one expected that this climax would end so quickly.

In 2017, the total scale and number of rounds of investment in VR fell sharply by 7%, venture capital was less than half of the heyday, and most of them flowed to AR, the average price of top hardware equipment was reduced by about 200 yuan, and the monthly sales volume of some VR stores shrank from 90,000 to 10,000.

To be precise, the days of VR have been "worse" since the second half of 2016.

In October 2016, Storm Mirror, the leader of VR hardware start-ups, made mass layoffs, reducing the team of 500 people to 300 people. Just 10 months ago, Storm Magic Mirror just received a 240 million Series B financing led by CITIC Capital, and its market valuation once reached 1.43 billion. At the press conference at the end of the year, Feng Xin, CEO of Storm, was proud of the fact that Storm Magic Mirror earned 20 million in 2016. But in 2017, Feng Xin may not be so happy. In the first half of the year, CITIC Capital withdrew its capital ahead of schedule, and in order not to have a negative impact on the listed company, Feng Xin invested in the repurchase of 80 million shares of Storm Magic Mirror, and because he could not take out the remaining 40 million, Feng Xin's shares were frozen by the judiciary. At the same time, Baofeng's stock price also began to fall all the way, from mid-July to early August 2016, the stock price halved from 200 yuan to below 100 yuan in just half a month, in August 2017, Baofeng's stock price fell to 20 yuan, and in November this year, Baofeng's stock price was only 10 yuan.

And this cliff-like decline is actually very revealing, and investors at that time have lost confidence in VR.

Let's put it this way, it's not that VR is bad, it's not that the technology doesn't have a future.

The future is there, and it is indeed good, but in terms of the environment at that time, it was still difficult to make VR technology truly mature, let alone now.

In addition, investors are short-sighted, not all, but most of them are like this, domestic investors often want to make quick money, lack of long-term mentality. Of course, most investors, including foreign ones, always prefer to make quick money. This requires that VR developers must have sufficient foundation. In the absence of more investment, they have to have the ability to stick with it, otherwise the so-called VR is a joke and not worth mentioning at all.

At that time, the VR market faced several biggest problems, first of all, as mentioned before, about the user's use, nausea, dizziness and other phenomena, this situation is common, although the better the physical fitness, the stronger the resistance. But there is also a limit, not that if you have good physical fitness, you won't get dizzy at all. And the price remains high, as an emerging technology industry, VR technology is too trendy, the result of the new trend is high cost, users buy VR equipment, as long as it is about the same, the start has to be thousands, this is still a low-end product, really high-end, are tens of thousands of starts, the average person really can't afford to enjoy.

In addition, at that time, VR, content was also a problem, there was no excellent content, and if you bought the equipment home, you could only simply enjoy a few games, or watch a few short films and videos...... There's no need to spend that big price at all.

The main thing is that it's not worth it.

The equipment is too expensive, but the content is not rich enough, and users will not spend money to buy it if they feel that it is not worth it.

This situation is even more serious now, but Zhou Fangyuan is willing to spend money to support scientific research and insist on development. This is paving the way for the future, his prophetic ability will almost come to an end in 2018, and after that, he doesn't know what the future will look like. But he can't wait until 2018 to retire, he still has to continue, so he must lay out in advance, put what he knows, may be of great value in the future into the research and development process, and wait for the results to appear, only in this way can we ensure that in the future completely unknown era, Yuanfang Group can also ensure good competitiveness.

So he will definitely stick to it, but now I ask Andy this way, I just want to hear Andy's opinion.

Andy shook his head when he heard this, "It's difficult, Zhou, you should know, if you want me to give you an accurate answer, it's difficult, because I'm not sure when it will actually be applied to the market, I can only guarantee that I will speed it up as much as possible." ”

"Don't worry, man, take your time, I'm just asking, I trust your judgment and your ability, don't worry, I will keep supporting. So next, let me take a look at your AR devices. ”

Zhou Fangyuan smiled and said.

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