The VR hardware outlet has blown up but where is the content?

Nowadays, the concept of VR (virtual reality) is already flooding in the technology circle. Investors and entrepreneurs are madly influx, and more and more application scenarios have been created for VR+ real estate, medical care, shopping, education, and tourism. The other side of the coin is the low-end equipment, technical shortages, incomplete content, investors do not understand, industry fraud, lack of talent and so on.

Whether China's VR industry will be as short-lived as 3D TVs of the past or will continue the development path of smart phones as the next generation of personal terminals will remain a problem.

“The VR/AR industry is still in its early embryonic stage and the overall growth is continuing, but it will not break out at the moment. The 2016 VR is similar to the smart phone industry from 2006 to 2007, and the commercialization of AR is even more "Long Wan," said Wan Haoji, founding partner of Jingwei China at the 2016 GTICVR/AR summit, told the reporter of the "First Financial Daily".

It has to be said that the current virtual reality device experience looks like a madman wearing a helmet in the hands of the viewer. There are still many challenges in helmet hardware such as ease of use, dizziness, viewing angle, screen resolution, and interactive mode. .

One of the most important issues affecting the experience of virtual reality is vertigo. Since the VR picture seen by the eye does not match the sense of balance of the cochlea, the burden on the brain is increased and the sensation of dizziness is easily generated. Even the current top VR products are More or less this problem exists.

"As the response speed is fast, the authenticity of the image must be restored, so users are very sensitive to the delay of the product." said Lin Yaonan, product director of NVIDIA's Asia Pacific GPU.

The picture delay depends to a large extent on the refresh rate of the display. It is understood that the world's most advanced virtual reality device has a refresh rate of 75Hz. 75Hz means that the rendering is completed until it is displayed on the screen. It needs at least 13.3ms at a time, including the safety insurance time, which is generally a 19.3ms delay. This delay speed has not been implemented on many VR devices.

Second, in the virtual reality experience, the screen resolution directly affects the terminal experience. As far as the current situation is concerned, the mainstream mobile phone screen resolution is generally 720P or 1080P. After being enlarged by the VR device, the pixel points become obvious. "Taking a smartphone-based VR as an example, although Samsung has released its own S7, Huawei has released a helmet based on the P9, but since most mobile phone screen resolution is still at 2K and below, in fact, a good VR experience is at least Need 4K screen resolution and higher refresh rate, will also have a huge impact on the power consumption of the mobile phone." You Jie senior vice president of potatoes Tu Jie told reporters.

At the same time, there are serious problems such as the fragmentation of terminal playback devices such as mobile phones, card frames, all-in-ones, and mainframes on the playback platform, and different interaction methods between different players. "To this point in time today, there has been no hardware that can really solve the immersive, dead-endless, non-dragging images that VR has promoted, and the screen-free ban experience will not appear," added Li Jie.

In addition, the “singularity” underlying technologies such as holographic modeling and detail capture, sensory feedback, and sound localization are also technical indicators that will require long-term breakthroughs to create VR presence experience. "The real VR is like Apple or Android. It will take at least nine years or even longer," Li Jie told the China Business News.

Whether from the point of view of entrepreneurship or investment, the VR content industry lags behind the research and development of hardware devices. According to the data of China VR industry financing issued by iResearch, from January 2014 to January 2016, the total financing of VR hardware developers accounted for 51.9% of the entire VR industry in each sub-industry. People are most concerned about and the most competitive sector. Only 11.4% were in the content maker area, and 9.6% were shooting and tracking capture technology.

“This data is very challenging. Everyone knows that building an ecological core is the level of content aggregation across the entire platform and similar levels of openness and readiness for the SDK and API. Now, we can only think of the entire VR industry as a lead period, The investment and talents are concentrated in the hardware field, and the real user experience and the provision of quality content still lack more resources.” Li Jie told the “First Financial Daily” reporter.

"Although most manufacturers focus their research and development on games, VR games still have no mature model, lacking killer works, and film and television, and the production team including Hollywood is in an exploratory period." Mango TVCTO Huang Dong proposed the same The problem.

At present, Mango TV is making attempts in VR production. For example, the content of the fourth season of "I am a singer" is converted into VR content, and the "I am a singer" VR area is opened, and VR is used to broadcast the "Super Girl" conference. “We have done VR shooting several times, but at present the entire production model is very vague. No real production method can be found. We use multiple GoPro binding methods to shoot. There is no way to export content in large scale, but also in production and production. It will generate a lot of data, and it will require extremely large computing time and production cycle, and will involve a lot of manpower. At present, the time it takes to produce VR video is 4 to 5 times that of ordinary video content, Huang said.

As the core force for the entire VR industry to increase user stickiness and user appeal, the pace of iterations for VR hardware will gradually slow down, and the startup and investment for content teams will increase significantly.

In Li Jie's view, VR live broadcast is the first wave of content. Games and live entertainment, live broadcasts, and panoramic videos within 15 minutes will rise from 2016 to the second half of 2017. The second wave is 15 minutes to an hour. Documentaries, panoramas, and microfilms. Limited by the current shooting and special effects production technology has no way to support the emergence of large-scale feature films, two years to two and a half years later will appear real full-length feature films, such as movies, TV shows and so on.

"Hardware investment outlets have passed and unicorns are hard to come by. The content's professional budding startup company is the best investment point at present, and the current platform type of startup companies is relatively lacking, from the production of content to the user's screen, how to distribute How to interact, opportunities in this area are still there.” Wan Haoji said.