With the popularity of the concept of "cloud universe", another closely related concept "virtual reality" has once again ignited a wave of enthusiasm. A piece of news that Qian Xuesen named virtual reality technology as' spiritual realm' 30 years ago made the public see the romance of scientists in China.

The virtual reality in Spirit World is a way of human-computer interaction. To understand virtual reality, we should put it in the development of human-computer interaction technology. Only by understanding the history of human-computer interaction can we understand how virtual reality came from, where virtual reality is in this chain-when will there be a "spiritual realm"?

The earliest interaction between human beings and machines can be traced back to punching machines. The explosion of the first hydrogen bomb and the launch of the first satellite are inseparable from this bulky machine, which can punch one black spot after another on the paper tape. However, due to the extremely harsh environmental requirements and conditions, human-computer interaction at this stage is limited to aerospace, military and other fields. The invention of keyboard is another revolution of man-machine interaction. This kind of human-computer interaction equipment is relatively small, which lowers the threshold of human-computer interaction, and human-computer interaction has also expanded to commercial, industrial design, industrial production and other fields.

But at this time, human-computer interaction has not been popularized among the public. If ordinary people want to interact with computers, they must input string instructions, which requires special learning, and this threshold will shut most ordinary people out of human-computer interaction. What changed this situation was the appearance of computer graphical interface in 1980s. Ordinary people can interact with computers through simpler operations. This epoch-making change in human-computer interaction has made computers truly enter thousands of households and the public. The Internet and big data, which were popularized in the 1990s, appeared on the basis of this graphical interface.

2 1 century, a new way of human-computer interaction-multi-touch technology was born. Multi-touch technology has brought the revolution of mobile Internet. Today. Smart phones have gradually become an indispensable "plug-in organ" for everyone, which is a way of human-computer interaction that has been playing a role so far.

So what will the next generation of human-computer interaction look like? In other words, where will the change point of human-computer interaction be next? Virtual reality is probably one of the options. Today, the change of man-machine interaction mode has been showing the trend of "miniaturization" and "simplification" of machines. The machine that interacts with the human brain is getting lighter and lighter, and the threshold for people to operate the machine is getting lower and lower. However, at present, all human-computer interaction methods still need to rely on physical machines. Virtual reality allows the public to interact directly with the virtual world without direct contact with physical machines, so that the information in the virtual world can be more naturally and deeply integrated into individual life. From the perspective of "abandoning machines", virtual reality is not only a revolution in human-computer interaction, but also a revolution in human-computer interaction. Since 20 16, the technology of virtual reality has gradually become popular, so 20 16 is also called "the first year of virtual reality".

Virtual reality is not only a revolution of abandoning machines, but also a cognitive revolution. Among the cognitive tools of human history, the earliest murals and books helped people to recognize simple and primary information, and later cameras helped people to recognize light and shadow information closer to the real world. At present, computers can help people identify more refined and rich information. Virtual reality is the next generation cognitive tool, which enables people to understand and even create things information in the virtual environment through various wearable devices. The information that is as close to the real world as possible can not only be seen, but also be easily created, which is a major qualitative change in the cognition of virtual reality information.

At present, the most familiar application field of virtual reality is the game field. In fact, more than that, we ordinary people have unconsciously used virtual reality in our daily life. For example, VR interior decoration-building a virtual room through the model base, individuals can enter the virtual room by wearing a virtual helmet for observation and "immersive" experience. Virtual reality has also entered the social field, e-commerce field and live broadcast field. Nowadays, people can observe the shopping environment of many shopping malls without leaving home, and they can also observe the 360-degree live broadcast of concerts.

In the future, virtual reality will be applied to the field of education on a large scale, which is also regarded as one of the fields where virtual reality can give full play to its talents. Nowadays, some systems applying virtual reality technology have begun to appear in the field of education, such as desktop virtual reality (PCVR) system which can simulate experimental environment, immersive virtual reality system which is helpful for experiential teaching, enhanced virtual reality system which combines real environment with virtual environment, distributed virtual reality system which promotes distributed teaching by using remote network, etc. We have every reason to believe that the above system will be extended to the front line of teaching in the near future and used by teachers.

Virtual reality, a concept that originated from science fiction more than 80 years ago, is gradually becoming a reality. This "spiritual realm" is an important change in the way of human-computer interaction-but will it be the end of the journey of human-computer interaction change? This is a question mark worth remembering.