The first gun of the domestic VR: the virtual reality hidden in the glasses box

Editor's note: This part of the view from the home and Vrplay jointly hosted the "Letstalk virtual reality industry salon" share.

In June this year, Google posted a cardboard on Google I/O. Google Cardboard does not have a formal manufacturer or distributor, its accessories, parameters and assembly process are published in detail on the official website.

September 1, the storm released plastic virtual reality helmet Storm Mirror, home guests June that day to get the prototype, random also equipped with a small Bluetooth handle.

September 3, Samsung during the IFA released Gear vr--and Oculus Joint build, with note 4 better effect (in fact, only with note 4).

Interspersed between the Google Cardboard and Gear VR intervals, from June to November, the domestic large and small teams are also developing and selling similar cardboard products. Some people tube this kind of product is called plastic version cardboard, some call the cell phone glasses box (for convenience, the following tenants June collectively referred to as glasses box).

If the glasses box is plastic shell and lens, what is the difference with the mobile phone shell?

In fact, in the existing team to do glasses box, there are a lot of mobile phone accessories to do the routine. Taobao search "Mobile virtual reality" can find 500+ results.

With the mobile phone VR glasses box of the extremely Rui Software CEO Yang Tianrui that do glasses box, the core is software, do is content and interaction. Their product flagship "cinema experience", users in addition to watching video, they also set up a virtual assistant image (mm) in the scene, the user can and this MM voice dialogue to complete some operations.

Storm Mirror Market Department students tell Curtilage guest June, Magic Mirror Now the Sunrise volume will be nearly 2K, monthly shipments will be nearly 5W units. This is related to the huge user base of the storm itself, which is the most abundant video content in the existing VR team. Two sources tell us that the storm is now doing some game development based on magic mirrors with some gaming companies. And storm insiders tell us that in addition to game development they are likely to open the Magic Mirror SDK this year, and are looking for new ways to enrich the game, video and other content.

New players brought in glasses box

The new players in the glasses box actually have a high degree of overlap with the Oculus developers. And developers are willing to come here because the glasses box sales slowly bring the user size. And the lack of Oculus on the content is because there is no user, can not be changed.

The above players are the first hardware players, glasses box is not complicated will not repeat. The second is the platform players, including media and distribution channels, the media such as Lei Feng Network and more subdivision of the vertical media, distribution channels such as 87870.com and the above mentioned extremely Rui software in the "Dream Assistant." In fact, VR is still at this stage, there is no interest in the various links, the developer forum, media and application market often combined.

Finally, the content player. 87870.com CEO Trihaiqing also revealed that a small number of hand-travel companies are already starting to make phone VR games, such as the perfect world. Content contributors outside the game also have a team that studies panoramic video shots, such as precision looking around, such as VR8. It says the storm is looking for new content, such as live through panoramic concerts.

New players and new thresholds

One of the questions that has been mentioned in the Vrplay and the salon is how virtual reality interacts, and the problem is more specific on the eyeglasses box. Because as a "see" experience, the touch-based smartphone interaction has been completely inapplicable, voice is a more natural instinct for the solution, in addition to eye control. Finally, everyone agreed that the most mature and stable solution is still the handle control.

The storm mentioned the application of panoramic filming in live concert, and the founder of precision surveying Li Qiang mentioned two questions: one is the bandwidth of the picture transmission, the other is the rendering ability required by the real-time screen. This is the same in live concert, live game, panoramic image is the traditional video of n times, video content alone is more troublesome than before.

But technical optimists think the first is the development of interactive technology, followed by hardware iterations and Moore's law to solve the problem in a year or two. There are not many companies in the past willing to invest in consumer-grade VR, because there must be input and no output. But with the Storm mirror sales, the December Samsung Gear VR online and the domestic VR and eyeglasses box products started to sell, Trihaiqing told us, including them, the game-led VR content has started to move.

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)