1067 A Living World!
Chen Yushan lay on the chair quietly and listened to Lu Zhou’s instructions. She cleared her mind of any thoughts and worries.
Slowly, she began to feel tired.
She couldn’t help but yawn and wonder if she was falling asleep when she felt a tingling sensation on the back of her neck.
Then, something unexpected happened.
The darkness that surrounded her was crushed by fragmented colors.
Chen Yushan was shocked by what she was seeing.
Gradually, she saw a patch of blue gra.s.s in front of her.
Yes, the gra.s.s was blue.
While the sky was orange-red.
As Chen Yushan stood in this strange world, she raised her hand and touched her cheek.
She couldn’t feel anything.
But she knew the hand was on her face.
“Where’s the helmet?”
It’s gone?!
Chen Yushan was stunned, and she muttered, “Am I asleep?”
She was about to slap her face to wake herself up when she heard a familiar voice by her ear.
“It actually is almost like you’re asleep. The mechanism of this device is similar to how we dream. It’s like an imaginary world actively stimulated by nerve electrical signals… Forget about it, just pretend like you’re dreaming.”
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Chen Yushan looked around and stomped on the ground.
As expected, she couldn’t hear anything nor could she feel her feet on the ground.
This was a strange feeling, like she was in an out of body experience. She couldn’t interact with the world, she could only observe…
She couldn’t remember whether she could feel pain when she dreamed.
Most people wouldn’t pay attention to things like that.
The only proprioception she felt was the feeling of her tongue and lips.
She opened her mouth and spoke.
“Can you see what is going on?”
“Of course I can. I can even see you lying on the chair talking. When the brain data output is received by the neural demodulator, I also received a corresponding message on the outside world. The message is then processed by a graphics card. But I can only see pixels, and it’s not as high def as what you’re seeing.”
“Yeah… The details are so realistic.”
Chen Yushan squatted down and looked at the tiny blue gra.s.s.
She could even see the blue texture on the individual gra.s.s.
This wasn’t just a realistic simulation.
Calling it a simulation was an insult.
This was like an entirely new world.
A living, breathing world!
…
“How are you feeling?”
Lu Zhou looked at Chen Yushan, who just took off the helmet. He handed her a cup of warm water.
“… That was incredible, I can’t even describe what I’m feeling. That was amazing. You must have tried it yourself before, I’m sure you know what I mean.”
Chen Yushan thought back to the ridiculous world she was in and felt a little fazed.
She continued to speak, “I’ve always wanted to travel around the world… With this thing, I can go everywhere, I can even go to imaginary places.”
Just like Lu Zhou, she gave up many things by choosing a high-stress, high-intensity career. Before this, she had the luxury of packing her bags and going wherever she wanted. But now, that sounded like a fantasy.
Now, she just didn’t have the time.
Not to mention that she was the CEO of Star Sky Technology, she was in contact with commercial secrets, making it unsafe for her to travel alone.
Thus, she was quite attracted to this technology.
Lu Zhou smiled.
“I’m afraid that’s a bit difficult. Most of the virtual world actually borrows concepts from your own memory… The brain fills in the gaps. The more complex the world, the more difficult it is to build. For just a patch of gra.s.s, I only need to set a few limited parameters such as its color, shape, etc. But if you want to be in Beijing in the virtual reality world… We might have to develop specialized modeling tools to fully realize the potential of this technology.”
Basically, if the machine was equivalent to a PC, the neuro demodulator played a role similar to the CPU, while the part of the brain that generated images was the graphics card.
This was where the problem was. The image processing section of the human brain and the computer graphics card were based on two completely different principles.
The biggest difference was that the graphics card used logic operations, so the data processing was precise and linear. While the brain used fuzzy logic, with inaccurate and non-linear operations.
And this was why the graphical compilation for the human brain and computer chips were two different mechanisms.
For example, if he wanted to build a virtual reality world, he did not need to draw every detail with a paintbrush. He only needed to set the parameters, the color of the gra.s.s, and the height of the gra.s.s. This “world” could be easily comprehended by the brain.
This was why Chen Yushan could even see individual blades of gra.s.s.
After all, most people knew what gra.s.s looked like. Even if they hadn’t seen gra.s.s in the real world, they had seen it more or less in film and television, or pictures on the Internet.
However, if there was also a house in this world, he would have to describe what the house looked like, whether it was a mansion or a small hut, how many windows and how many doors, etc. He couldn’t use a general description such as “Professor Lu’s Zhongshan International mansion”.
After all, everyone had seen gra.s.s before, but only Lu Zhou and his family members had been inside his house.
This was the most interesting thing about this technology. Which was that, the same input could be “blurred” by people’s brains and create subtle differences.
However, this also created a problem.
Which was how to use computer code to describe something someone had never even seen before, as well as how to minimize the accuracy.
After all, the Internet was made for the exchange of information.
If everyone knew about everything, then there was no point for the Internet to exist.
Not to mention, this technology could only then be used as entertainment.
Chen Yushan: “So, I can only go to places I have been before?”
Lu Zhou: “Not necessarily, the information stored in your memory is probably much larger than you think. Even if you haven’t seen something before, it can be simulated through specific inputs… But, this is extremely difficult. Just like how if I describe someone’s face to you without giving you a picture, you wouldn’t be able to recognize them on the street only by my description.”
Chen Yushan looked shocked.
“Oh, I see… That’s a shame.”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “Yeah, well, this is only a prototype.
“Also, I haven’t been able to simulate other sensations such as hearing, smell, taste, touch, etc. I’m sure you have noticed that after entering the world, the sounds you heard are from the outside world. When you spoke in the virtual world, you spoke in the real world as well.”
Chen Yushan nodded.
“No wonder I had no proprioception when I was in the virtual world.”
“This is the difficult part of this technology.” Lu Zhou nodded and continued, “For the time being, I can only simulate visual signals. The sound has to come from the headset. There’s no way to simulate the sense of touch yet. The neural demodulator architecture and many other things have not been perfected yet. That will take time.”
Even though there were many shortcomings, the device was already miles ahead of traditional VR headsets.
At least there was no motion sickness anymore.
From the image quality perspective, it was way more efficient to send the image directly to the brain than displaying it to the human eye through a screen, which then pa.s.sed it to the brain through the retina and the optic nerve.
Ideally, the user could forget about their body in the real world. They wouldn’t have to worry about what their hands were doing. As if they were fully immersed in the virtual world, which was similar to a dream, they only had to focus on what was in front of them.
The ideal hardware for creating a new reality was not an external headset, but something like a “computer chip in the brain”.
“Forget about these technical issues.” Lu Zhou paused for a moment. He then said with a smile, “What do you think?”
Chen Yushan said, “Actually… I take back my words. This is really an amazing technology. I think it will change VR as people know it. It will even change people’s perception of the Internet.”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “I agree.”
The world would soon enter the 5G era. The network speed would increase by an order of magnitude. This meant a surge in people’s downlink and uplink speeds.
People would rely on the Internet more and more often. They could even connect their toilet to WiFi. Breakthroughs in virtual reality technology would disrupt the entire Internet ecosystem.
Chen Yushan looked excited as she spoke.
“Do you need me to do anything?”
Lu Zhou thought for a second and said, “Actually… not really.”
Chen Yushan: “…”
Lu Zhou looked at her with an awkward smile.
He didn’t want to tell her that he dragged her all the way here to show off, so he coughed and spoke.
“The technology isn’t perfect… If you want to help, you can try finding me a few test subjects. Or I don’t mind announcing this technology to the public. After all, I need people to test this machine.”
Of course, this machine was not cheap. Lu Zhou wasn’t sure how many people could afford to buy one.
Therefore, he preferred having a select few test subjects.
If people willingly became his laboratory mice, his research would be much easier.
Chen Yushan immediately said, “How much is the entire equipment?”
Lu Zhou said, “Not sure, but this one… is around 100,000 yuan.”
Chen Yushan gasped.
Not because it was too expensive.
But because…
“I am certain that if this is only 100,000 yuan… It will sell out instantly.”