China plans to strengthen development of the booming virtual reality industry to adopt key industrial VR applications by 2020, the top industry regulator said yesterday.
The industry, including VR, augmented reality and mixed reality, offers users virtual scenes and methods to explore the world.
It has several high-tech features including multimedia, sensors, new-tech display and artificial intelligence.
It brings new products and services to economics, science, culture, the military and lifestyle, and is expected to become a new growth engine for the economy, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a statement on its website.
The VR industry in China still faces problems such as a lack of key technologies, limited content, imperfect innovation support systems and an imperfect application ecology, the ministry said.
To solve the problems, the blueprint sets out six projects to break through core technologies, enrich the supply of products, promote the application of key industries, build public service platforms, build industry standards and enhance security capabilities. Global sales of AR and VR headsets are expected to total 4.2 million units in 2018, up 31 percent from 2017.
That is expected to increase to 53.1 million units in 2022, fueled mainly by gaming applications, says researcher IDC. The blueprint also aims to push the integration of VR and eduction, culture, health care and commerce.
