Analysis of virtual reality Alpha year from 7 dimensions

　　Hardware   is designed to face the hardcore gamer Oculus, relying on the powerful computing power of gaming PC, the VR products into the consumer's vision. Major game content and game hardware vendors, like Sony,valve and razor, are rapidly launching their own PC-based VR products. Microsoft is ambitious to showcase the HoloLens concept machine, integrating the Windows 10 platform and the full development environment, and is determined to build the VR industry ecosystem standards. Google launched the cheap, to promote the concept of VR cardboard, also spent $500 million to invest in AR company Magic Leap.   Look at the mobile side, Samsung first in the Mobile VR field, so that more consumers understand that VR products are not so touch, and further promote the concept of VR. Oculus soon announced plans to move into mobile VR, where Valve made HTC, the maker of his mobile phone, to produce its own Vive, which was reminiscent of its intentions, Usens, a Silicon Valley start-up company, has also received a lot of attention in this year's GDC exhibition and Kickstarter, with mobile VR products incorporating gesture operating systems.   has experienced the explosive growth of smartphones and mobile internet, entering the stage of slowing growth and falling profits, it is no exception that mobile VR is the next technology explosion point. Hardcore Gamer Of course is an important market, but the PC platform is not unified hardware standards, will greatly affect the VR experience, compared to the host platform in the guarantee of user experience is also more advantageous. The huge number of smartphone users are potential VR consumers, so the future of Mobile VR is the main battlefield of competition.   Mobile system support   Google in the past few years in the mobile market competition unfortunately failed to seize the initiative, although the Android platform is still successful, but the fragmentation of serious problems caused by the profit margin is not comparable with iOS. Not long ago, Google announced that it would specialize in developing Android systems specifically optimized for VR applications. Google intends to invest more in system support, looking to gain an edge through Android in a new round of mobile VR competition.   compared to the VR running on the PC, the biggest problem of mobile VR is how to use computing resources efficiently. PC-side has sufficient computing resources, not to worry about the power problem. Also, VR requires a higher refresh rate and requires at least 60fps to protect the user experience. This is because VR must keep track of possible changes in the viewing angle, and the eyes closer to the screen make the details more sensitive. The logical layering of   Android paves the way for general development, but in VR applications, excessive layering results in reduced efficiency, slow screen rendering speed, power consumptionIncrease in volume. Samsung's Gearvr has done as much optimization as possible on the Android top, but if Google can optimize the system from a lower level, it will certainly be much better than the application layer's code tuning to provide a set of APIs that directly communicate with the underlying graphics rendering for VR applications.   VR OS   When you get a call when you're watching 3D movies while experiencing gearvr, you've got to be busy tearing down your helmet to get a cell phone. This is a frustrating thing to do, and this non-fluent operation will have a great impact on the Mobile VR user experience. The next big technology companies want to get human-machine interaction technology, is no need to rely on peripherals, the most natural gesture interaction technology. The ultimate goal is that users can precisely manipulate the phone by simply pointing a finger, plus the function of gesture recognition, and do not need to remove the phone to complete the operation of the mobile phone. and AR technology with the promotion of VR into people's vision, through the AR Way to carry out human-computer interaction is also in the exploration, which will greatly improve the mobile VR helmet user experience.   is currently more advanced in gesture interaction technology with leapmotion and usens two companies: LeapMotion and Oculus have launched some interactive demos with the VR environment. While Usens's advantage is the ability to achieve 60fps-millimeter gesture manipulation on the mobile platform. Interacting with the VR environment by hand is no longer a dream to be unreachable.   Game development platform   this year's small series to visit the GDC exhibition, to my deepest feelings in addition to the popularity of the VR topic, is an increasingly open game engine. Unity 3D announced that it is free for developers with annual revenue of $10w, and unreal followed by a free policy for developers, who immediately opened the source code after Oculus acquired Raknet last year. At the show, Oculus also featured VR content made with CryEngine. The increasingly open game development platform is of great significance to the developer community of VR game content.   Games   to say that last year Oculus launched a series of VR content can only be called demo, now VR game has precipitous peak dew! In this year's E3 exhibition, in addition to the big eye-catching 3A games and their continuation, VR game is definitely one of the hottest topics! Small series but lined up for four hours to experience the Oculus consumer version and matching Game said, but this four hours of waiting is definitely worth it. Not to mention the Oculus consumer version of further hardware upgrades and design improvements, the most impressive is the VR game.   Small knitting experience is a third person called Chronos ARPG game, Good, is the third person! Small series The reason to try this game is directed at third-person view and ARPG。 The preconceived idea is that VR should be designed to play first-person games. But after trying this game, I think it's totally biased. The first person's sense of generation is really the advantage of VR, but the effect of VR on the environment is equally touching. Full 3D picture of the exquisite degree and environment of the sense of generation, are 2D incomparable, small series as a loyal ARPG player, play up can not be separated from the chair. Think about the future there may be "Elder Scrolls: VR", "Wizards: VR" and "Black Soul: VR", I am excited.   Chronos This game uses the Xbox handle operation, the picture does not have the grain feeling and the delay feeling, is very smooth. Although the combat system is not rich, it can be predicted that after enriching the combat system, equipping the system and adding a variety of weapons, magical effects, the effect is absolutely stunning. Believe that in the next two years, the major game manufacturers will join the VR support, Mature VR game is not far from the market, we are ready to upgrade the PC!   Movies   Hollywood movie makers have been eager to make the movie VR, and they are full of curiosity about the new technology of VR. One of them, when chatting with me, said, "I am full of expectations for the coming change, and honestly, I don't know how it's going to change, but it's absolutely exciting!" ”。 Their biggest concern is how to use VR technology to showcase movies, MTV, and even live concerts. Imagine the future, after the concert, the location of your choice, under the table uncomfortable? Let's stand up to the lead singer!   DreamWorks Animation Lab is re-first view, dedicated to render a VR version of the "Dragon Trainer" fragment, you can bring the VR helmet with the non-tooth Aberdeen flying in the sky of the blog island!   To make VR movies, you can shoot a 360-degree camera (the flattened picture is cylindrical) is not enough, we need a dome camera (flattened image is a closed ball). Silicon Valley company Jaunt is very active in this area, and is constantly showcasing their latest demos at VR shows. Use Jaunt shooting screen all the way without dead angle (only at the bottom of the place to place the stent there is a small blind area), such as when you look down to see the tripod, as if dangling, very real.   Live live events such as sporting events and concerts, the technical difficulty is still very large, and in addition to providing 3D visual VR technology, we also need to provide 3D sound technology, so that when you turn the angle of view, double binaural effect also change, in order to imitate the realistic live experience. Due to the difficulty of real-time technology, the VR entertainment content that will be visible in the near future should be the non-real-time content such as movies and MTV.   Lightweight content   Current VR applications are mainly games and videos, and the volume of these content is very large. You must download a large installation package in order to enjoy a few minutes of VR experience, this bottleneck will inevitablyHinder the widespread popularization of VR. Therefore, the online VR communication platform is also an important link in the VR industry chain.   YouTube has successfully launched a 360-degree video that allows users to select and switch viewing angles at any time. Google, of course, will be the first to launch VR video content on YouTube, so that users do not need to download a large amount of VR video content locally, but through the online video services such as YouTube to obtain VR content, Google has been aggressively promoting the VP9 compression standards should also be able to provide video quality help. To do this, you can think of the method is in the browser constantly send to the video server VR helmet IMU information, video server by computing IMU information to get user perspective information, return to the current frame of view, to ensure that more than 60fps. Vrideo, a start-up company based in Los Angeles, has made a prototype of a VR video-sharing platform that supports Chrome and Firefox, and it's good to work with Oculus after installing the browser plugin, but for now it's hard to shake YouTube's position in the video market.   Epilogue   Hardware--Mobile VR operating system--VR game engine/VR photographic equipment--content (film, games, MTV)--content communication platform, which constitutes the VR industry should have the basic elements. This year is the period of vigorous development of each link, which can be called the Alpha year of VR. Alpha is almost half done, beta and release are not far away!

Analysis of virtual reality Alpha year from 7 dimensions