(Chinese Version)

Editor's Note:

On May 20th, the so-called “I Love You Day” in Chinese pronunciation, TMTPost teamed up with The New York Times and co-hosted the 2016 T-EDGE VR Summit, during which more than twenty Chinese and American VR A-listers communicated from 9AM to 6PM. The conference hall was packed with more than one thousand audiences. The experts shared not only in-depth understandings and amazing experience, but also tremendous valuable information.

T-EDGE is an important platform of TMTPost in China for innovators from around the world to meet and communicate. A series of T-EDGE events have already established the unique characteristic and image of TMTPost. The VR Summit will also present the same value and principle.

The amazing VR experience at the summit

An audience, @Peiying Chen, said:

I just experienced the VR experience of diving in the deep ocean and riding on a roller coaster. I stood on the deserted deck of a giant ship, watching the whale blinking at me and touching me with its tail, and there were lots of fish swimming around me. It was amazing! And the roller coaster, I barely dare to ride, but this time I experienced it through VR. The roller coaster went around, went up near the cliff and then dived down. It was so scary that I screamed! It was so much fun.

Of course, apart from these exciting VR experience, the summit had more top-notch contents that just showed. Here are some of the freshest highlights from the summit:

Highlight 1

Kevin Geiger,the Executive Director of Beijing Film Academy’s International Animation & Virtual Reality Research Center

Kevin Geiger has over 25 years’ experience in the arts & entertainment circle, including 15 years with Disney. Regarding the blueprint of VR, he predicted:

Firstly, VR will transform everything and all industries, including the traditional ones;

Secondly, VR will change from sharing information to sharing experience.

Thirdly, the language of VR will develop rapidly.

Fourthly, VR eco-system, including hardware, software, and contents, will be full of complicated moral, legal, and political challenges.

According to Kevin Geiger, the VR eco-system will be full of complicated moral, legal, and political challenges. VR will monitor us. What we see are being monitored, saved, and recorded. He believes that the VR era will begin in the year of 2020.

Highlight 2

Wang Congqing, general manager of HTC VR China

Wang Congqing, general Manager of HTC VR China, said that reviewing the revolutions in the tech industry, PC industry experienced its boom and bust within thirsty years, and from 2007, smartphones developed to its peak within 9 years. However, VR covers more scenarios and industries, and the era of VR will go beyond any other tech revolutions.

2016 is definitely the first year of VR in China. For the first time, China owns the cutting-edge technology that keeps abreast with the United States, and that is VR.

Highlight 3

Nick Fortugno is a game designer and entrepreneur of digital and real-world games based in the New York City, and a founder of Playmatics, a game development company.

Nick Fortugno is one of those people who know about computer games the most in the United States. 

In his opinion, for now there is no major development for the application of computer games in VR. On the one hand, it is a technical problem; on the other hand, it is necessary to avoid making user feel sick while using VR. Other than those, there is little room for today’s computer game industry to produce low-end games.

In the United States, there is a Void Cinema, where you can touch the film screen wall in reality, and the wall is movable, which provides an immersive experience. But these are not perfect. In the future, game developers should make game contents of high quality as well as the figures and interface enjoyed by users to create a complete ecosystem.

Highlight 4

Chen Lei, the Co-CEO of Thunder and CEO of Net Heart Technology

Chen Lei can be seen as a new player in the VR field. From his point of view, there are two obstacles that are holding today’s VR industry back:

1. Poor user experience. VR requires higher content definition and frame number, therefore using VR will create pauses easily. What’s more, the acceleration speed in VR immersive experience is not in accordance with the body perception, so it is easy to produce vertigo;

2. Limited business form. It is hard to meet the requirement for bandwidth and transmission.

Highlight 5

Graham and Toni discussed the impact of VR on journalism

Graham is a Pulitzer award winner, leader of the impressive digital project “Snow Fall” of The New York Times, and the lead editor of The New York Times’ VR initiative

For example, the way how photographers process photos can help bring readers closer to the news stories. The leaders of the VR team at The New York Times, Graham and Toni, said that the existing technology can make the contents more appealing through location and sound tracks. The New York Times distributes VR contents through MVP, as well as distributes the paper newspaper with terminal VR glasses to users

Graham said that it is possible for media to develop to big companies through doing VR, but now it may be too early. Through writing, photography, and graphics, we hope that we can let the readers understand events better, and objectively. We hope to achieve this through better technology, and VR is the better technology. However, we are now in a stage of exploration.

Highlight 6

Charming Huang, the CEO of Hypereal: VR is the next basic platform after smartphone

Charming Huang said that if VR is a big platform, then it must have an APP for it. When we talk about APP, the idea of UGC inevitably appears. And Sina and Yahoo also send out contents to users. What people are doing now is what a 1.0 version APP does, and the professionals send out mainly contents of games, because videos do not attract people. When it is interactive, it is good.

It feels like that you can live without virtual reality, but you cannot live without WeChat.

However, what he worried very much is that if they do a thing in today’s way, the production is more of the 1.0 era, which is already outdated and it does not agree with the idea of young people. Now what is more mentioned for now is a more decentralized era. He talked about “me” as the center: I want to get involved and to create contents. VR can help people do a better job in this area.

Highlight 7

Hao Tian, the LKKBrand Design executive and general manager in Shenzhen

According to Hao Tian, the LKKBrand design executive, today's VR may be in a very primitive state. Although many investors and technology experts favor it very much, the reason why people chase it is probability to hold its place in the market, and people want to heat up this market. From users' point of view, VR is still very primitive, and now it is even completely out of the daily life of the general public, and it is immobile and coarse.

Highlight 8

Huaiyu Li, the Co-founder and CEO of Whaley Technology

Huaiyu Li said that China Media Capital was very hesitant about investing Jaunt (American VR filmmaking technology service provider) , because the company has burned $100 million but had no income, but they ultimately decided to invest, because they believe the VR industry is rising . Huaiyu Li also mentioned that many entertainment shows, such as “the voice of China” and “the Unparalleled Hero” etc, will cooperate with Whaley Technology to make VR contents.

On June 3, Whaley Technology will also try VR live for Chinese football game nationwide for the first time .

Highlight 9

Molly Swenson, a member of the founding team at RYOT, one of the most prolific virtual reality production studios.

She is the most prolific VR filmmaker that is below thirty years old, and also a rising star ranked top 40 in American Idol.

Molly said that RYOT is Hindi. How to prevent riots happening? With compassion. We often hear of virtual reality as a tool to create, and the media can be used as a platform to create for the sympathy of the world, making our influence more important. But at the same time, we are going to create empathy. This is to bring people much closer to stories. As media, we all know that, over the years, we all want to get close to the story.

What is more exciting is that Molly also sang a song at the scene, want to listen? Please stay tuned with TMTPost, we may show her performance very soon.

Highlight 10

Eric Hanson, the CEO of xRez Studio and the Associate Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Eric enjoys high reputation in Hollywood, and he is also the producer of many great science fiction movies, like “the day after tomorrow”, "cast away" , and “the Martian”.

Eric Hanson said that the University of Southern California had established a lot of new laboratories for VR technology. These laboratories explore VR technology starting from the film industry. He thought that the film production technology before are out of date. VR is to reinvent the world, and it will change our perception of films. VR film has a good effect on people’s emotional perception, yet it is still immature and far from people’s expectation. As for unknown areas, he is most interested in education and natural areas because there is no tradition or precedent.

On that day, the biggest surprise was the official release of the most insightful, and the most authoritative report on Chinese VR business ecosystem and investment tendency, written by TMTPost with six-month thorough research. For more conference highlights, TMTPost will share them soon.

(Like our Facebook page and follow us now on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, Medium @TMTpost and on Instagram @tmtpost_english.)

[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Han Pei, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.