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What is VR?
First of all, let's take a look at the explanation given by Baidu Encyclopedia: VR technology is a technology that comprehensively uses computer graphics system and various interface devices such as reality and control to provide immersive experience in a computer-generated interactive three-dimensional environment. Ok, here are two key words.
interactivity
Immersion
. The following is the author's personal understanding of VR, that is, using computers to simulate a three-dimensional virtual world for users. If your brain is deceived and you don't think you are a passer-by looking at this virtual world like watching a play, then such a VR experience is successful.
If you want to trick your brain into thinking that you have entered a virtual world, the first thing is to block the perception of the real world. The simplest and rudest way is to cover your eyes and plug your ears. So VR products are glasses or helmets, and then a pair of headphones. With the help of sensors such as three-axis gyroscope and gravity sensor in VR products, the picture can follow the movement of the wearer's head and make corresponding feedback to achieve the visual effect of entering the virtual space.
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How many kinds of VR glasses are there? What is the difference?
VR glasses are divided into external headphones, integrated headphones and glasses cases. External headphones have the best experience and the strongest immersion; The experience of glasses box is the worst but cheapest way to experience VR compared with the other two; The integrated earphone is in the middle.
At present, the most common mobile VR is the glasses case, and the prototype is Google's Cardboard, which is an experimental gadget launched by Google at the 20 14 I/O conference. Simple to make, supporting Android phones and iPhone. Ultra-low cost allows you to experience virtual reality. Due to the surprisingly good response, at the I/O conference on 20 15, Google launched version 2.0, which directly disclosed the DIY tutorial of Cardboard. You only need cardboard, lenses, magnets, velcro and rubber bands to make a glasses case, and then you can put your mobile phone in it and make your own virtual reality helmet. For glasses cases with different faces, there will be different degrees of light leakage, which directly reduces the immersion when using.
▲ Google cardboard
Therefore, many mobile VR products are improved versions of Cardboard. By redesigning the industrial design, the light leakage phenomenon is reduced, the wearing comfort is improved, and the face value of the whole machine is improved. In addition, the improvement of physical optics makes the object distance and pupil distance of glasses adjustable to meet different people's vision, increase the viewing angle, enhance immersion, reduce delay and dizziness, such as Storm Mirror 4 and LeTV VR Cool 1.
▲HTC VIVE external headphones are also equivalent to headphone monitors with independent screens. The product structure is complex and the technology content is high. It needs an external computer or game machine to run. Due to the powerful processing power of the computer, the pictures in the external headphones are more realistic. However, there is a disadvantage. Due to the large amount of VR content data, external headphones must be connected to the computer through multiple cables, which is very limited. At present, the hottest Oculus Rift, HTC VIVE and Sony PS VR are all such products.
Integrated headphones are equivalent to directly building a system for computing and simulating virtual reality into headphones. At present, there are few such devices. Of course, a powerful hardware configuration like a computer is bound to be stuck in the earphone, so the experience effect is worse than that of an external earphone. At CES 20 16, we also saw an integrated VR device equipped with Xiaolong 820 chip.
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VR glasses ≠3D glasses
▲ VR glasses broken in a treasure, whenever a new thing that the public doesn't know much about comes out, such as VR, will of course be broken by many manufacturers. Now as long as you search for "VR" on Taobao, all kinds of products will appear. Mobile VR ranges from as low as 50 yuan to 2000 yuan (except the simple paper shell version), and most of them are based on mobile phones to 3D personal cinemas. It's ok to use Google for appearance modification for tens of dollars. However, it is too much to say that an integrated VR costs thousands of dollars, but it is actually just a TV box made of 3D glasses to watch movies. I don't know if you still remember the two keywords you drew before, which can be interactive and immersive. If you just watch 3D movies, there is no interaction and you can't immerse yourself in them, then you are just playing 3D glasses left over from a few years ago, not VR.
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What do I need to prepare for playing VR?
First of all, we are divided into two categories: early adopter experience and advanced players. For the experience of early adopters, we still recommend simple glasses cases or headphones that may be more integrated in the future. For advanced players, it is recommended to use external headphones, mainly because advanced players have unique advantages in external hardware. In addition to external computers, most headphones can support external XBOX entertainment, and PS VR can also be external to PS4. Therefore, there is really no need to reconfigure the computer for VR, because the graphics card alone may cost at least 2000 RMB.
1, early user experience
If you just want to experience the simplest glasses case VR, you need a mobile phone with a screen resolution of at least 2 K. When you experience VR with glasses case, the picture quality you watch is directly related to the screen resolution of the mobile phone you use. When the resolution is low, the picture will have a serious graininess, which is also a reduction of the experience. First of all, you can't deceive the brain visually. How can you ask for immersion? To get a better experience, the screen resolution of the mobile phone should be at least 2K (it turns out that my uncle is so careful, no wonder the screen resolution of Sony Z5 exclusive edition is directly 4K).
2, advanced players
To get the best VR experience, you must use external headphones. However, this thing has extremely high requirements for PC graphics cards. So if you want to play VR, you need a computer with higher configuration, or you are just interested in VR games, so get your XBOX or PS4 ready. The following are the minimum hardware standards of Oculus Rift CV 1, which are just published by Oculus at CES 20 16 to adapt to VR head display:
Graphics card: NVIDIA GTX970/AMD290 or above.
CPU: Intel i5-4590 or higher.
Memory: At least 8GB of memory.
System: Windows 7 SP 1 or higher.
Output: compatible with HDMI 1.3 video output.
Input: 2 USB 3.0 interfaces
In addition, I asked the staff when I experienced HTC VIVE some time ago, and learned that the minimum requirement of HTC VIVE for graphics cards is NVIDIA GTX970, otherwise the picture will be stuck. In addition, HTC VIVE players can move in a certain space, and they are more immersed in it, so if you want to play HTC VIVE, you have to have a comfortable and spacious space at home.
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About buying
"Glasses box
▲ Samsung Gear VR has the most mixed glasses cases, tens to hundreds, because the threshold is low. However, most cheap cottage VR glasses only sell hardware, and the homogenization is serious. I feel that this scene is somewhat familiar ... For the current VR glasses box, there is not much technical difference. What matters is the experience, product details, optical performance and software content. Therefore, for friends who want to play VR glasses box early, I recommend Samsung Gear VR first, because
Samsung Gear VR is launched in cooperation with Oculus***, a strong manufacturer in VR field, and only supports four flagship mobile phones (Samsung S6, Samsung S6 edge, Samsung Note 5 and Samsung S6 edge+) in 20 15 years.
The underlying technology of Gear VR comes from Oculus. At the same time, in order to achieve a good virtual reality experience, Samsung has conducted in-depth cooperation with Oculus this time and made some customization on the hardware. Therefore, Gear VR can provide users with a high-quality mobile VR virtual reality experience similar to the Oculus Rift. At present, Gear VR has not been listed in China, and it needs to be self-scoured. The price is 99 US dollars (about 653 yuan).
▲ LeTV VR Cool 1 Next recommended are Storm Mirror 4 and LeTV VR Cool 1. First of all, there is no need to worry about the hardware quality of the two. The most important thing is that its own resources are strong, and the follow-up VR content will be faster. However, it should be noted that LeTV VR Cool 1 only supports 5.5-inch LeTV mobile phones, while Storm Mirror 4 can fully meet the size of all current smart phones, and has a customized version for iPhone.
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Letv VR coolpad 1:
Support LeTV super mobile phone 1 and LeTV super mobile phone 1Pro 149 yuan.
Click to view details.
"Storm Mirror 4:
Support full-size mobile phones 199 yuan Click to view details.
"external headphones
1, economical spot
▲3Glasses D2 Pioneer Edition
On CES 20 16, HTC VIVE only released the second generation version of HTC VIVE PRE, not the consumer version! Uncle PS VR didn't mention a word about Sony, only put a photo at the end of the conference! For VR game lovers, if they want to experience VR as soon as possible, at present, two relatively strong VR helmet brands in China, Da Peng VR helmet E2 or 3Glasses D2 Pioneer Edition, are good choices. Da Peng VR helmet E2 can be compatible with massive and high-quality content of Oculus DK 1 and Oculus DK2, the two strongest VR devices. Samsung Super AMLED display is adopted, and the price is 1699 yuan. 3Glasses D2 Pioneer Edition is the world's first mass-produced 2K-screen virtual reality helmet and the lightest one. The resources are also compatible with Oculus DK 1, and the price is 2 199 yuan. In addition, these two domestic VR helmets have relatively less strict requirements on the hardware configuration of the computer.
"Dapeng VR helmet E2 and 3 glasses D2 Pioneer Edition.
"Adjust the computer.
minimum
Hardware Configuration Parameter Table Product Name
"Da Peng VR helmet E2.
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3 glasses D2 Pioneer Edition
system
Windows7、8
Windows7、8
processor
Above 2.0GHz
Intel i3-530
internal storage
2GB
4GB
display card
NVIDIA GTX 760
NVIDIA GTX 660
Purchase address
Click to view details.
Click to view details.
2, fever waiting for futures type
▲Oculus Rift CV 1
However, for serious VR patients, geeks, developers and buy buy buyers, it is estimated that Oculus Rift CV 1, HTC VIVE or Sony's PS VR is your ultimate goal. I thought there would be consumer information on CES 20 16, but! And! And! Don't! Yes! The only Oculus Rift CV 1 with news can accept the reservation, but there is no starter or Chinese mainland! Therefore, if there is a demand to buy the Oculus Rift CV 1 with a price of 599 dollars, you need to find Haitao to transport it back, but the high image quality, super experience effect and high-quality VR content of Oculus Rift CV 1 are quite worthwhile for enthusiasts.
In addition, although the price of HTC VIVE has not yet been announced, the consumer version of HTC VIVE will be booked in February and officially listed in April. As for Sony's PS VR, this time only a picture was put at the end of the conference to stay in suspense. It is estimated that Sony will hold a separate press conference for PS VR to announce relevant news.
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One more thing.
▲HTC VIVE PRE
It's a mess If you read it patiently, I'll put something here at the end of the article that I don't know if it's an egg. That is to say, HTC VIVE has held many public experience activities before, including the experience activities at the CES exhibition in JD.COM yesterday, but all of them are the first-generation developer versions. The second generation version of HTC VIVE PRE, the latest developer, has just been released at CES, and will finally be exhibited in a series of VR offline activities in China in the near future.
exist
20 16 13- 15 National Internet Festival held in Beijing National Convention Center.
As an invited exhibitor, HTC will bring HTC VIVE PRE to the CT05 booth, and there will be three sets of equipment for the public to experience at the same time. For this kind of futures that can't be bought home, it's good to have this kind of experience activity to experience it in advance. However, friends who go to play should be prepared for long queues in advance. Previously, HTC VIVE provided 8 sets of equipment for the public to experience, and still needed to queue up for 1.5 hours.