One player is experiencing driving simulation equipment
Lei Feng Network (Search "Lei Feng Net" public concern) : In the form of participation in various VR (virtual reality) boom, offline experience shop is considered to be one of the fastest commercial success models. However, the experience shop is a complex industry segmentation industry. Participants include the operator, the head, the content, the accessories, and the system integration. Immersion (micro-signal vrleiphone) is the launch of a series of reports on VR experience stores, trying to interpret the industry for everyone. This is the first one.
In the VR line experience shop, the most eye-catching, probably a variety of strange VR peripherals, tanks, cars, aircraft, bicycles, skateboards, looks very cool, attracting people around to stop watching. But just like VR is a newborn market, these devices do not always exist. So how did these devices come about? What kind of technology is used behind it and how does it combine hardware and software?
Motion Control: From Industrial Products to Consumer Entertainment ApplicationsNot all VR peripherals use motion control, but it is at the heart of a number of products, including those mentioned above. Motion control is a traditional industry that has existed for a long time. Start-up companies that make VR peripheral products see the interaction, and their founding members come from the motion control industry.
“In the last two years, the production manufacturing industry has been sluggish. By the end of 2014 , the business model of VR 2B entered China in early 15th and we have been providing motion control solutions to the industry.†Co-founder and CEO Wang Meijian expressed his sense of immersion.
Motion control has been used in the industrial field. As the name implies, it is related to sports that can be controlled. For example, the parallel robot used in the mobile phone manufacturing industry used to be hand-tightened by some components of the mobile phone. However, under the environment of Industry 4.0, the requirements for efficiency and precision have been greatly increased, and it is necessary to use it. The machine picks up an extremely small wafer on the conveyor belt and places it on the phone. What is used here is precise motion control technology.
When Facebook acquired Oculus, VR's 2B business model attracted people in China, and everyone began to think of applying their expertise in VR to their respective areas.
So how is this technology ported to VR? First of all, before the upsurge of this wave of VR became popular, there was an industry called military simulation. In fact, it has always been applied, but it is more important than consumption scenarios. First, the scene emphasizes simulation more than gameplay. Second, it is a large-scale, one-to-one simulation. Such as tank training, in order to allow the trainer to have an immersive feeling, the tank must be bumped like a real-world scenario. This requires the use of a parallel mechanism, just like the robot that was just mentioned.
Specifically, the motion of grabbing a mobile phone wafer mentioned earlier is related to the movements of up and down, left and right, and the rotation involves rotation. To apply these to VR, you need to reverse it and let the player wear heads to experience the movements of up, down, left and right plus rotation on the peripherals. This is the 6-DOF movement platform we often hear about.
VR sled simulation
The Enemy of VR Experience: VertigoThe motion control technology that is applied to the consumer field has its products uneven, and the problem encountered by many products is the enemy of the VR experience: dizziness. Many people experience vomiting for a few minutes and may decide not to play anymore. For example, egg chairs that were very popular last year were not good for many people.
However, the production of motion sickness is caused by a combination of factors. Early VR headshots often caused dizziness because of insufficient frames or insufficient gyro refresh rates. But later these problems were basically solved, and many people may find it still halo when playing with VR peripherals. This is usually not an obvious problem.
We all know that the movement of dizzy from the view screen is inconsistent with the movement of the body. For example, if your head rotates the screen but it hasn’t turned around, it usually results from delay. After the first problem is eliminated, it is necessary to find the cause from the peripherals. From the perspective of the underlying control, there are two main reasons:
The first is: when the picture has started to change, the information given to the picture is transferred to the vehicle (peripheral), and there is a delay in the middle.
The second is: if the information has been passed to the vehicle, the control mechanism of the vehicle needs to move the entire mechanical structure. If there is a delay, it will be a great source of halo.
Therefore, when doing peripherals, the data transmission needs to be done fast enough, and the mechanical response must be fast enough to avoid the vertigo problem. Let's discuss this issue in more detail below.
Experiencing Instant Interaction as an Individual Tank Demonstration Knight
Input, output and delayVR peripherals are interactive devices in the final analysis, while interactions are input and output, both of which involve delay issues. Let's talk about output first.
Output
The current game, whether it is based on Unreal or Unity, will have physics engine output, such as terrain, crawling, and so on. The physics engine information is output through a channel, and the peripheral six-DOF motion control platform needs to receive and implement this information in several steps.
First, to connect the communication is to receive this information;
Second, do a reverse solution, because the game will give a lot of data, and the platform needs only a few values, six degrees of freedom are also six values, up and down and left and right translation rotation. This step is to resolve these six values ​​from all the information output by the physics engine;
The third step, there is a need to have a wash out algorithm, which involves the sense of body. For example, when simulating the motion of an aircraft, the acceleration will go out, but the real aircraft will have continuous acceleration. At this time, a washing algorithm will be used to let the mechanical drive go out and slowly recover and then go out. Then there will be continuous. Acceleration.
The six-degree-of-freedom platform uses these somatosensory algorithms and servo controls to implement these things. When the information is collected, the servo control scheme needs to be transmitted to the six axes to complete the corresponding action.
enter
A peripheral device usually includes both output and input. For example, a real-time interactive VR spinning bike, where the bumps in the game and the movement are output on the bicycle, and the acceleration, deceleration, and turning in the bicycle are inputs. .
The technology involved in the input is logic control. Through the principle of single-chip microcomputer (actually, this is also the technology of the traditional industry), the analog information, that is, the information operated by the human, such as the speed, the turn, etc., is converted into a game through the control panel. The digital information becomes the motion of the picture.
delay
The delays generated by peripherals are mainly communication and mechanical transmissions. The traditional communication technology uses industrial-level pulses, which are relatively slow. Now, manufacturers use Ethernet (also known as network cable) for faster transmission, and its transmission delay can basically not be discovered.
The delay in the mechanical part is often overlooked. This is not a big problem in terms of the input, because the current sensors are very sensitive and the technology is very mature, as long as the transmission delay is solved. Usually the problem will be in the output part, depending on the speed of the platform response.
For the six-degree-of-freedom platform, the response speed of this platform depends more on a component called a cross coupling. A good cross coupling is cut out one at a time using a lathe. It is very sleek, and the price is on the order of a thousand dollars. But now there are many cheap cross-links in the industry. There are even one to buy one. The cheap cross-link is not cut out at one time, but cut out, it will be uneven, so even if the signal is very fast To give it, if it is not smooth in the process of transmission, there will be two problems, one is slow, and the other is inaccurate, resulting in the situation of motion.
We talked about the technology behind VR peripherals. However, the products brought by these technologies are very strange. Therefore, the path from technology to products is not finished. There is an important step to decide what kind of equipment is produced. For this immersive sensibility, we interviewed us immediately and asked them to talk about why they would make these products.
Wang Meijian stated that there are two aspects of their product considerations and priorities. The first is based on the development of the industry, he believes that the current development of the VR industry is like the computer into China, first enter the Internet cafes, vertical areas, and slowly transition to the family. Therefore, the products they are currently doing are mainly aimed at commercial venues such as offline experience stores, and there are also peripheral products that are similar to spinning bicycles to families.
In addition to the general direction, we must also consider the needs of operators under the line and what the industry’s pain points are. For example, many products may be dizzy, or passive, users are not high in viscosity and cannot maintain customer resources. These problems need to be resolved. Taking the individual soldier tank as an example, Wang Meijian considers two pain points. One is on-line. It joins the networking function and the two can be networked. The other is a large-space activity where the user wants to play a large map. However, current solutions such as VR treadmills and large-scale spatial positioning have not been widely used. Although individual tanks cannot transmit users and are not spatially positioned, they can make you feel that the tanks are carrying you to check.
Manufacturers will generate ideas for a peripheral through brainstorming, combining user pain points, etc., but the idea needs to be supported by the content side. Usually they do not implement the idea of ​​the peripheral first without the cooperation of the content. In fact, cooperation with content vendors is crucial to the success or failure of a VR peripheral.
Interactive interactive spinning bike
Device manufacturers and game manufacturers, who dominate? According to Wang Meijian, the process they used to create a product was to generate a device idea through brainstorming, and then to take the result to talk with the game player to see whether the two sides could wipe out sparks. In the end, it should be the hardware side and the game party. Agreement, together decided to make a product, you do the game I do hardware.
This method is not traditional. There are two traditional modes of cooperation. One is to do games first and then ask people to do hardware. There are many ideas under the industry's heavy content and light equipment. Everyone thinks that the game is cattle and the equipment is Passive; the other is the device-led, directly to a developer fee to do content, this is tantamount to buy out the content, but the cost and risk will be borne by the equipment. Both modes are project systems.
Wang Meijian does not deny the traditional model, but he believes that more emphasis should now be placed on the parties to go together and form a strategic partnership. This is not a one-hit sale or a bad check. Their approach is to first give each other a plan, including various data; then to give a literary guarantee; the third will give the game player an interest in the early period (pay a fee); later will give a relatively high Divided into.
Under this mode of cooperation, both parties are more equal in terms of risk sharing and revenue sharing. In addition, at this stage, as the interaction does not intend to open the SDK, but a one-on-one separate cooperation.
Special effectsIn addition to motion control and games, to truly immerse users in the VR experience, they also need to create changes in wind, rain, and temperature, which are called special effects by peripheral manufacturers.
Special effects need to be combined with the motion control platform and game scenes. For example, riding a bicycle will bring wind blowing, and the faster the ride, the greater the wind. In addition, there should be greater riding resistance when going uphill. That is, the visual interaction method is to add a fan in front of the spinning bike, and then control it through the special effect controller, and the special effect controller and the motion controller are combined to give the analog amount to the machine. And for the damping of bicycles they already have solutions and will soon be added.
In addition to environmental special effects, touch is also very important, Wang Meijian said that in cooperation with the body-sense vest, allowing users to have a tactile experience during the game.
future development Motion control is not a field with a high technical threshold. It has already been applied in the industrial field, but there are still many areas for improvement in the consumer industry.
Wang Meijian thinks there are four main points for improvement:
First, from the cost point of view to remove some of the things that VR does not use, such as the servo control program is used in the industrial field, some functions are not used in the game, then you can take it off, into a dedicated game Program;
Second, the transmission, the current transmission mode of motion control is chaotic, and it will surely be made wireless in the future;
Third, remote monitoring, but also for home application layout, can monitor the operation of the equipment;
Fourth, integration, now to open the six degrees of freedom platform offline experience shop equipment, you will find a lot of modules between the wiring, in the future it can be made into a black box, using only a line.
Finally, as the industry is still in its early stages of development, each one is doing its own thing and has not formed a unified standard. In Wang Meijian's view, "If you want to form a standard, you need a big and strong manufacturer to lead. With the current situation, it is not yet possible to form in the short term."
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