Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 418: First Experience with Universal Virtual Equipment

After inspecting the robot production line and VR glasses production line at the headquarters base of Weiku Industrial and experiencing the second-generation VR glasses on the way, Xu Shenxue became more interested in virtual devices.

At least at the display level, he felt that the initial requirements had been met.

After all, he didn't want to make one of those online novels where you can feel the touch and smell, or play a so-called 100% real virtual game... With the current level of technology, things of this level are not science, but metaphysics, and are completely impossible to do.

But what Xu Shenxue wants to do is to provide people with a more immersive virtual space experience by relying on a head-mounted display and virtual equipment such as motion capture, body sensing, and omnidirectional running, similar to Ready Player One.

However, this kind of thing is possible based on the current scientific theory.

Especially for many key technical issues, when combined with artificial intelligence technology, advanced sensor equipment will become more possible.

With this thought in mind, Xu Shenxue did not go out the next day, but went to the virtual equipment project team at the group headquarters.

The virtual device project team is no longer a secret within Zhiyun Group or even outside, and many people know about it.

This is one of Zhiyun Group’s many black technology research and development projects...but not many people pay attention to it.

After arriving at the project team, several people from the technical committee and the head of the business introduced to Xu Shenxue some of the current research and development progress of the virtual equipment project team.

The person in charge of the introduction was Qu Xuewen, the group's executive vice president, who has a technical background.

As executive vice president, Qu Xuewen is in charge of quite a few businesses, including virtual devices and other related equipment.

Qu Xuewen said: "At present, we are taking two routes in the research and development of virtual devices. One of them is the future-oriented brain-computer interface route. This technical route is technically difficult and high-risk. There is no feasible product route yet!"

"The second route is the direction of virtual device peripherals, which achieves the purpose of immersive experience by integrating head-mounted displays, universal treadmills, motion capture, and somatosensory systems!"

"Because system integration is difficult, the R&D cycle is long, and the investment is large, in order to commercialize it as soon as possible and recover certain costs, we have also commercialized some of the sub-projects."

"For example, our head-mounted display project has integrated the direction of smart terminals and produced the current VR glasses. The second generation has been launched to the market!"

"At present, the total sales of our Zhiyun VR glasses have reached 80,000 units. With the launch of the second-generation VR glasses, we are expected to hit the sales of 100,000 units!"

"We have also tried to commercialize our 3D motion capture system and launched it to the market. It is mainly used in the production of special effects for film and television dramas and games. Because of its leading technology, it has not only occupied the domestic market, but also a considerable part of the foreign market!"

"We can even say that our equipment has already occupied about 80 percent of the market for motion capture technology in the field of game production and film and television production, and it is mainly in the mid-to-high-end market!"

"Of course, the overall market is relatively small, so the sales volume of our equipment is still relatively low. Last year, our revenue was $210 million."

"However, we predict that with the continued development of film and television dramas, especially animated films, special effects live-action films, and the gaming industry, the revenue of our 3D motion capture equipment is expected to continue to see an annual compound growth rate of about or even percentage points, and there is a lot to look forward to in the future."

Xu Shenxue said: "It is a very good idea to use some of the new technologies that have been developed to try commercial applications in other fields in the early stage!"

"Your virtual equipment project team has done a great job in this regard!"

Qu Xuewen said: "Although the commercial application of these subsystems is not very successful at present, it has reduced the research and development costs of virtual equipment for us to a certain extent!"

"We have recently made a major technological breakthrough in the field of universal treadmills. Mr. Xu, please take a look. This is our latest universal treadmill!"

"We boldly adopted a big data model for the entire system, collecting massive amounts of data on various human motion postures. After training, we were able to allow the system to adapt to the universal treadmill in advance based on human movements."

"Of course, this also requires our 3D motion capture equipment, including pressure sensors in the somatosensory suit, gravity sensors, external laser radar and other comprehensive sensors to collect data."

"So this is a complete integrated system. The system collects various sports data of users, processes them through big data models, and then sends instructions to the omnidirectional treadmill, allowing the omnidirectional treadmill to adapt to the user's movements, allowing the user to walk or even run in different directions, and even change direction at high frequencies!"

"Next, Mr. Xu, you can take a look at the technical demonstration of our universal treadmill!"

Soon, an experimenter wearing a rather strange black suit with a lot of cables connected to it came up and walked onto a small gray circular platform surrounded by several upright poles.

Qu Xuewen said: "We have installed a large number of micro pressure sensors and gravity sensors in the somatosensory suit. In particular, the matching gloves have a very, very precise pressure sensor array that can capture very slight movements!"

"We have deployed multiple lidars on the body of the omnidirectional treadmill, such as the poles around it, which can build a 3D image of the entire human body in real time. In addition, there are many other sensors such as cameras and pressure sensors."

“Number of sensors are enough to collect all the user’s motion data in real time!”

"Then the big data model will analyze and predict the movement direction and speed of the tray in the universal treadmill based on this data."

At this time, the experimenter put on a head-mounted display and began walking on the omnidirectional treadmill.

The pace looks very smooth, and then the testers can be seen jogging, running quickly, and performing various actions such as stopping, starting, turning, etc.

It looks like there is no difference between the postures of people walking and running on flat ground.

Then Xu Shenxue looked at the monitor next to him, which was showing the contents on the head-mounted display of the experimenter.

Xu Shenxue was very familiar with this scene, it was the scene of the 3A-level shooting game developed by Yihai Technology... This game has been in the works for several years, but it has not yet been launched on the market.

Because the technical content is too high, it is a bit difficult to give birth.

However, it is rumored that Yihai Technology can no longer endure such a long and endless research and development cycle, and plans to release a PC and console version first.

Because the picture quality of this game is very good, the virtual device project team likes to use the internal beta version of this game for testing when developing head-mounted displays, including the derivative VR glasses.

At this time, the demonstration was paused, and the test personnel took a test device firearm and then conducted various tests.

At this time, it can be clearly seen that the test personnel's movements are more flexible and more daily, and they will also pick up equipment and firearms to perform various shooting actions.

The game screen can also be seen on the side screen, where the game characters are engaging in various shooting battles with the enemy.

When Xu Shenxue saw this scene, his eyes lit up: "This thing is good!"

Putting aside other things, if it is only used for playing this kind of shooting game, it seems quite reliable!
It didn't take long for the experimenters to finish the test, and Xu Shenxue also became interested and went to test it himself.

When the ultra-high-definition screen in the head-mounted display projected the image into his eyes, Xu Shenxue felt as if he was really in a virtual world... Of course, if you look closely, you can still tell that the current game screen, even with all kinds of black technology, still cannot reach the real level.

It looks amazing at first glance, but not so good upon closer inspection.

Then he tried to walk a few steps... and he could actually walk!

Then I tried running and some other movements, and I felt there was no obvious difference from reality.

You can even jump.

Then I experienced the shooting experience again... At this time I could feel the unreality.

This gun has no recoil, just some vibration!
There is no other way. It is difficult to simulate recoil with firearms equipment, so we can only simulate vibration.

However, even so, Xu Shenxue was greatly shocked.

This system combined with Yihai Technology's game seems promising. Can we try to carry out early commercialization?
However, after Xu Shenxue finished his experience, Qu Xuewen's words made him give up this idea.

"Although the overall effect of our current system is good, the overall cost is too high. Just to maintain the operation of this system, we use a server unit to enable the entire system to smoothly cooperate with various user actions!"

"This server unit uses the group's internal AI5000 chip. The internal hardware cost of this server alone is more than two million. Only such a server unit can process such a large amount of data so quickly and provide real-time feedback and adjustments."

"At the same time, because the amount of data is too large, if the data is transmitted to our GPU supercomputing center for processing, the speed is too slow and the delay is too large, which makes it impossible to use the method of providing computing power remotely."

“And all the other hardware costs are very expensive!”

"Not counting our R&D investment and software costs, just manufacturing such a system would cost more than five million!"

"This is also the biggest obstacle to the commercialization of our project. It is too expensive and cannot be used!"

Xu Shenxue didn't care: "This is a good thing. The high cost of hardware is not a problem. After all, the current hardware development speed is very fast. It's five million now, but it may be fifty thousand in a few years. I still have confidence in your project!"

Xu Shenxue thought that with the current speed of technological advancement, the cost of this equipment would inevitably drop significantly in a few years.

Especially the core computing chips, lidar, and the large number of sensors in the body sensing suit... these are the bulk of the cost.

However, these things are also products whose costs are falling very quickly.

In a few years, it is entirely possible to control these hardware costs within an acceptable range.

After seeing this virtual device system, Xu Shenxue was in a good mood, and he also went to see some other black technologies and cutting-edge technology projects in the group headquarters.

There are so many black technologies and cutting-edge technology projects in Zhiyun Group that Xu Shenxue himself doesn’t know how many there are.

For example, the brain-computer project team... is developing direct communication between humans and machines. Many technical routes are being tried, and the invasive route has even begun animal testing, and has achieved certain results... but overall the technology is still very primitive, and it is too difficult to put it into practical use. Some news have been released before, and people were excited for a while, but then there was no follow-up.

There is also the intelligent transportation system that Zhiyun Group has been promoting. It was very popular in the early days, but now no one is discussing it. Zhiyun Group's unmanned vehicle project team has even merged with Hailan Automobile, and the unmanned vehicle project has been transferred to Hailan Automobile for subsequent research and development. There are also a lot of things that look more sci-fi, such as the liquid metal project, which aims to develop a liquid metal that can be combined at will and easily transform between liquid and solid... Yes, the liquid metal used in the liquid metal robot Terminator 1000 robot in the sci-fi movie.

Then there are nanorobots, or more precisely, molecular robots that can be controlled at the nanoscale... To put it simply, they are super small robots.

This sounds like a super sci-fi and unrealistic project, but in fact Zhiyun Group is really developing this kind of thing... Not only Zhiyun Group, but there are actually many companies or research institutions that are also developing this kind of ultra-small robot, and each has its own progress... and the domestic technology in this field is leading.

If it can be really made, then the application potential in the microscopic field is enormous, including the application prospects in the fields of medicine and ultra-precision machining are very broad.

Then there are a lot of various cutting-edge technologies, such as all-electric propulsion (plasma propulsion or Hall propulsion) technology. This thing is not even considered black technology. Zhiyun Group used this thing on Zhiyun Satellite last year... Many of the newly launched large satellites have already used all-electric propulsion. Zhiyun Satellite's super-large synchronous communication satellite is a typical product using this technology.

Then things like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, superconductivity...are not even considered black technologies in Zhiyun Group. They can only be said to be cutting-edge technologies...because they already exist.

The combination of artificial intelligence, superconductivity and quantum computing has also created quantum computers that can be commercialized... These are not theoretical research products with dozens of quantum bits that are available today, but commercial products that can achieve tens of thousands of quantum bits, and may even reach hundreds of thousands of quantum bits in the next few years, and can be used commercially on a large scale.

Zhiyun Group is currently using MMK34 room-temperature and normal-pressure superconducting materials to design and develop the next generation of superconducting quantum computers. It is currently designing quantum chips and expects to have the first generation of room-temperature superconducting quantum computers using MMK34 materials by early next year. The design index has reached quantum bits, far exceeding the quantum computer model released by Zhiyun Group at the beginning of the year.

Zhiyun Group released an early experimental quantum computer in the first half of the year. It has only more than 300 quantum bits. Although its performance exceeds that of other quantum computers at home and abroad, it still does not have the potential for large-scale commercialization... It can only be used in a few specific fields.

So there was a little discussion in the scientific community at the beginning, but soon no one paid attention to it, and ordinary people paid even less attention to it.

However, the performance of computers with hundreds of qubits, tens of thousands of qubits, or even the planned hundreds of thousands of qubits is vastly different and cannot be compared.

The former is just an experimental model for demonstrating technology, and can at best be used for complex calculations in very few special fields.

As for the latter, it is aimed at large-scale commercial use. The quantum computer project team of Zhiyun Group is already developing the underlying core system architecture used by quantum computers, so that quantum computers can be used for various complex calculations just like electronic computers.

At the same time, Zhiyun Group has been planning to use this superconducting quantum computer to build a quantum supercomputer.

There are numerous black technology projects in Zhiyun Group, including a large number of projects that are no longer considered black technology but are still cutting-edge technology projects. There are also a large number of theoretical and basic scientific research projects. The Group also seeks sponsorship everywhere and cooperates with universities and research and development institutions to carry out basic research and development.

Otherwise, Zhiyun Group would not spend such a huge amount of research and development funds every year!

Up to now, even Xu Shenxue himself doesn’t know how many R&D projects there are in Zhiyun Group. There are too many to keep track of.

Apart from some large, core projects, Xu Shenxue didn’t know how many other projects were added and how many were cut every year!
That’s right, Zhiyun Group adds a large number of new projects every year, but also cuts a large number of R&D projects.

Don’t think that Zhiyun Group will not cut R&D projects just because it is a large company... In fact, Zhiyun Group adds many new R&D projects every year, but also cuts many R&D projects.

If a project fails, generally speaking the technical staff can just switch to another project to continue research and development. Anyway, there are innumerable R&D projects in the group and they can be arranged in any way. If they are senior technical staff, they can even initiate new R&D projects themselves.

If there is a slightly acceptable reason and a good resume, the technical committee generally will not block the R&D projects of senior technicians!

Unless there are special circumstances, we usually only cut projects and not fire people!

The reason is very simple. Those who can join Zhiyun Group and engage in the research and development of various cutting-edge technologies are generally high-level technicians. Such people are actually very difficult to recruit...

Well, you can understand it by looking at some data.

985 universities admit about to new students every year. This is the total number of new students in both liberal arts and science, and only a small number of them are science talents.

Among some science students, even fewer are able to obtain master's or doctoral degrees.

Every year, Zhiyun Group's human resources department keeps an eye on potential and high-quality talents in various universities. For outstanding talents, they are often recruited to sign third-party agreements before they graduate.

Looking across the country, there are actually not many technical talents who can engage in cutting-edge technology research and development... The shortage of top talents has forced Zhiyun Group to cooperate with various universities, investing money and effort to jointly establish cooperative departments, or to set up joint research and development centers, and invest money and effort to help cultivate high-quality talents together.

Top talents are very scarce. It is not easy to recruit them, so how can we fire them casually? If the other party resigns, Zhiyun will do everything possible to retain them.

It doesn’t matter if the project fails, I can start a new project for you... Just tell me what project you want.

If the salary is not good, I will talk to the HR department again. I guarantee that you will be given the top salary in the industry.

The scarcity and shortage of top talents has led to Zhiyun Group's very preferential treatment of senior technical talents, with both treatment and respect. If a project fails, they can just switch to another one... Zhiyun has plenty of money and does not lack his R&D funds... As for salaries and the like, they are even less worth mentioning.

Hundreds of millions, or even hundreds of millions of R&D funds have been given, so your annual salary of tens or hundreds of thousands will not be a big deal.

Therefore, there are actually a lot of R&D projects in Zhiyun Group that have been going on for many years without any commercial results. However, there are still many scientific researchers working in R&D, and there are also a lot of scientists engaged in mathematics, theoretical physics and other basic disciplines.

This is actually hard to see in other companies... because no matter how you look at it, this is a definite money-losing product. This kind of situation is usually done by the government or universities, and very few companies do it themselves.

It’s not that the company is short-sighted, but it will really lose all its money!
But Zhiyun did it!

why?
Because Xu Shenxue needs top scientists in basic disciplines to make breakthroughs in basic theory to help him pave the way forward... At the same time, he also has a scientific system that can greatly improve the scientific level of these top scientists.

If they are not recruited, this scientific system will not be able to use these top scientists.

So in recent years, Zhiyun Group has been particularly fond of attracting young and promising professors from universities to work part-time in the research institutes under Zhiyun Group...to make it easier for Xu Shenxue to get them a place in the scientific research system.

At the same time, the company also encourages its full-time top talents to take up positions as honorary professors, visiting professors, etc. in nearby efficient part-time institutions in order to cultivate more outstanding top talents.

This is Xu Shenxue’s starting point, but to outsiders, even those within the company, it seems like: We are not short of money, I am willing to support these top scientific researchers and then cast a wide net to catch fish!
Zhiyun Group’s senior technical staff, especially the dozen or so technical leaders in the technical committee, are actually quite anxious.

Because many of the company's R&D projects are already at the forefront of contemporary technology, it is extremely difficult to move forward.

Many projects even lack theoretical support. The existing basic theories have reached their limit. If they want to move forward, they don’t even have theoretical support!

Many core scientists in cutting-edge technology project teams feel as if there is nothing in front of them but darkness all around, and they keep rushing into the darkness, only to get lost in it again... This makes people feel very painful and uncomfortable, and even some people who cannot endure psychologically will feel very desperate.

The difficulty is not scary, what is scary is the lack of direction... and now, many of Zhiyun Group's cutting-edge technology projects have no direction.

As a result, many people have developed psychological problems, making the psychological counselors in Zhiyun Group very busy.

In order to achieve technological breakthroughs and obtain more basic theoretical support, Zhiyun Group began to carry out research and development in a sparsely populated manner, and at the same time began to support the research and development of basic disciplines on a large scale...

They need something new, even if it's just an occasional new discovery, they also need brand new basic theories to guide the way forward!
They need a light far away in the darkness!

These are the views and practices of senior technical personnel within Zhiyun Group.

In the end, Xu Shenxue and the senior technical personnel in Zhiyun Group reached a consensus: cast a wide net to catch fish!

It’s no wonder that this model works really well. Zhiyun Group’s artificial intelligence research and development, quantum computer projects, and even the latest room-temperature and pressure superconducting material MMK34 are all the results of this system.

The MMK34 material alone is worth all the scatter-net-fishing scientific research investment made by Shangzhiyun Group over the years, and it can make a thousand or even ten thousand times the profit!
Zhiyun Group, which engages in a scatter-net approach to research and development, has an unlimited demand for top talent... and its tolerance for top talent is also very high.

As long as you don't do anything reckless, or blatantly commit occupational embezzlement, corruption, or other violations of discipline, you can do whatever you want.

Of course...this kind of treatment is only limited to some senior technical talents, not everyone can get it.

If they are just ordinary technical talents who can be replaced, then they will naturally follow the market and layoffs will be made... Zhiyun Group lays off employees every year due to business adjustments, layoffs and recruitment, and other reasons.

The main thing is to lay off some incompetent technical or clerical staff to make room for newly recruited personnel.

It’s just that Zhiyun Group has too many employees, with more than 600,000 employees worldwide. Once the numbers are added up, the number of layoffs each year seems very large.

Therefore, there are often news reports about how many people Zhiyun Group has laid off.

But this is normal personnel flow in large enterprises, and other large enterprises at home and abroad basically do the same.

Zhiyun Group’s layoffs were reported a lot in the news, purely because Zhiyun has high traffic and the media likes to report on Zhiyun.

Xu Shenxue took a quick look at the various black technology projects in the company. He didn't look at all of them, but just a few of the more popular ones that Xu Shenxue himself paid more attention to.

As for some basic research and some seemingly abstract projects, Xu Shenxue did not look at them.

After taking a quick look at it, Xu Shenxue continued to ponder the virtual device system he saw at the beginning.

This thing feels pretty good, it would be a bit of a waste to just leave it like this... It would be great even if it could just be used for playing games.

He also thinks that this system can also be used for other purposes, such as training.

After thinking for a while, Xu Shenxue picked up his phone and made a call. After the call was connected, he said, "It's me, Xiao Xu!"

"It's nothing serious, I just wanted to say hello. Oh, look at what you said, why don't I come to Sanbaodian for nothing on weekdays? I often come to chat with you when I have nothing to do on weekdays!"

"It's okay, it's really okay. I got a virtual device here, and I think it might be helpful in training the soldiers."

"There's no need to worry about the money. It's only a few million per set anyway. I'll bring a few dozen sets over for them to try. If they find them useful, they can buy them!"

(End of this chapter)