The year is 2045, and virtual reality is everywhere. People don headsets to log in to a virtual world called “Oasis”. Oasis provides an escape from reality, which can be in the form of a virtual vacation to an exotic place, a cyber casino the size of a planet, or any virtual game imaginable. This is the setting of the award-winning book, Ready Player One, which is now adapted for screenplay by Steven Spielberg. The story follows Wade Watts under the alias Parzival as he plays the game set up by the creator of Oasis before he died. The objective of the game is to solve clues and gain keys to ultimately win the rights to Oasis. Whoever gets Oasis gets control of the whole world. With the help of his cyber friends, Art3mis, Aech, Daito and Sho, they solve the clues together while fighting the behemoth company, IOI, for Oasis.
The film is an action-packed, fantastic, and surreal visual ride. It feels as if you are also transported to a virtual reality and you are playing alongside Wade and his friends. The film also gives us a look at how virtual reality can change how our society operates. In the film, the reality is harsh with an array of problems like energy crisis, global warming, and overpopulation. People have become heavily dependent on Oasis as an escape from the harsh reality that some people are not able to clearly differentiate their real life from their virtual one. Majority of the jobs have also revolved around Oasis which the company IOI has exploited. The film showed two sides of virtual reality, and demonstrated that people still need to exist in the real world, no matter how amazing the virtual world may be.
The year is 2018, and we are now seeing big leaps in virtual reality. Big companies like Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Facebook and Google are making significant contributions to the virtual reality field. The race to build the best headsets, the best applications and the best games for virtual and augmented reality is on. Virtual reality is also spreading to other key areas such as education, sports, tourism, and healthcare. The level of virtual reality immersion as seen in Ready Player One may be true in our not-so-distant future.
THE MIXED REALITY PATENT LANDSCAPE
As part of the efforts in further advancing technologies related virtual and augmented reality, inventors and companies are seeking out to protect their intellectual property. The granted patents and filed patent applications give a glimpse of the direction virtual and augmented reality is heading. We conducted a research and analysis on thousands of patents and patent applications to map out the intellectual property landscape in the virtual and augmented reality field.
Our sample landscape report provides an analysis on the emerging trends and innovations, market segments, and top players in the virtual reality field.
PATENT LANDSCAPE REPORT
