The entire VR industry is looking forward to tomorrow's Apple conference.

As of now in 2023, VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), MR (Mixed Reality), and XR (Extended Reality) are no longer a new concept.

AR, MR, and VR devices are all a type of XR.

It is even said that this concept is old and somewhat outdated - everyone’s eyes are all on AIGC, who still cares about these old things?

Relying on AI infrastructure to move toward trillions of NVIDIA

Although the annual shipment volume of virtual headsets is not low, the growth rate is mediocre, and everyone's attention to them is also tepid.

In fact, for the vast majority of XR practitioners, everyone is basically waiting to see if there will be any miracles.

What they regard as an "industry turning point" is actually Apple. I believe you have received a lot of information recently. At the WWDC held on June 6, Apple is likely to release an MR headset.

Apple MR guess picture, @9to5mac

When I was chatting with the manufacturers of all-in-one VR machines before, everyone often joked:

"If Apple can't do this thing (MR), then I'd better go home and grow sweet potatoes."

So, what is the bottleneck of current virtual headsets? What are the difficulties within the industry?

Is Apple really capable of being the “savior”?

>/ Don’t go gently into

that death spiral To be honest, in the past ten years,

VR

, the progress of equipment is actually not small at all. From the traditional Fresnel lens to the pancake structure,

the thickness is directly reduced by half

, making it more comfortable for everyone to wear.

The "visible" parameters such as the resolution of the binocular display and the viewing angle are constantly improving, which makes the "screen door effect" continue to weaken and the user's visual experience gradually becomes better.

Screen door effect caused by insufficient resolution

The earliest cases of requiring additional “positioning” like HTC’s have gradually decreased, and now the machines can basically be used directly as soon as they are worn on the head.

But despite the efforts of manufacturers, the current mainstream VR equipment and other XR equipment are not as perfect as imagined.

There are many reasons for this,

There are software weaknesses and hardware

constraints. Under the constraints of these two issues, every XR device developer can be said to be dancing with shackles.

Let’s talk about software issues first:

Part of the reason why XR is easy to get dusty is that it is difficult for people to have a scene to form a

dependence on it.

Why can mobile phones sell so well? It’s because now everyone can find a solution to anything they do on their mobile phone.

Novel, playing games, chatting - various scenarios require you to pick up your phone frequently. So almost everyone has a mobile phone, and the frequency of use is very high.

Like a computer, although it is weaker than a mobile phone,

but it has very strong office attributes

, resulting in everyone who needs to work must have it and use it frequently during working hours. Currently, most XR application scenarios are limited to entertainment. Most of them probably still play games and watch movies. Once you've done this, you probably won't use it again.

So the current status of devices such as XR is more similar to consoles and handheld devices such as Xbox, PS, and Switch that specialize in games.

If there is a popular game, it will arouse everyone's desire to buy and the frequency of device use. But if there is no such product, then the host will easily become ashes.

Embarrassingly, as an entertainment starter, taking VR as an example, the content ecology of VR is far less popular than that of consoles. The last VR game that left the mainstream was "Half-Life: Alyx" in 2019.

Looking at Switch, "Animal Crossing", "Fitness Ring", and "Tears of the Kingdom", each one can stand on its own, so there are more and more Switch users.

It can also be seen from the Baidu Index that switch is more popular than VR

It is true that VR manufacturers are already working hard to find ways to increase the richness of the experience. For example, you can use VR to fish, exercise, race cars, or do some confrontation sports, such as tennis and table tennis.

To be fair, I have experienced all of these applications and they are all very good, but none of them can be called a hit that can go out of the circle. Naturally, it is difficult to attract a large number of outsiders to actively buy VR.

Also, for new users, the graphics of VR games are indeed stunning at first glance, but if only the graphics are excellent, they may lose interest after playing for more than ten hours.

So richer content in form is also crucial.

Unfortunately, the cost for game companies to develop VR games has always been high, which has also led to the prosperity of VR content being relatively sluggish.

Coupled with the problem of VR’s small audience, game manufacturers have no incentive to spend a lot of money and manpower to produce VR content. Sometimes equipment manufacturers even need to take the initiative to promote the production of VR ecology. If the industry is not specialized in the technology, the effect will be Of course it’s hard to say.

This is the first death cycle.

And this death loop is not just a software problem, there are also similar problems in hardware.

The most important chips for mainstream flagship VR devices are currently produced by Qualcomm, although Qualcomm’s iteration speed is faster. . . It’s simply incomparable to a mobile phone.

Although the new Qualcomm XR2 Gen1 was just released last year, if you take a closer look, you will find that the previous generation XR2 was a product in 2019 and was released at the same time as the Xiaolong 865. . .

Your mobile phone chip has one major iteration every year and one minor iteration every half year. It iterated from the fire dragon to the ice dragon in time, but the VR chip can only be slow to keep up with the times.

Obviously VR has higher requirements for image processing and computing power of chips, and also has a stronger demand for various specialized sensor chips, but it can only follow the advice of others behind the mobile phone.

Some parameters of XR2 Gen1:

How do you think this experience compares? If the foundation is not solid, how can we create a good product experience?

So, the lack of product experience leads to a decrease in user appeal. The decrease in user appeal leads to an increase in manufacturer development costs. The increase in manufacturer development costs results in insufficient supply chain budgets, which ultimately leads to insufficient product strength and insufficient product experience. . .

Yes, The second death spiral is coming.

Besides these two death loops, are there any other problems?

Yes, for example, the human-computer interaction is not smart enough, and the appearance is not elegant and portable enough. . .

But these are just minor problems. Nothing can be solved until the death cycle is broken.

>/ Breaking the cycle It’s not that easy

So, is there a way to break this vicious cycle?

In fact, the first and second levels of death spirals have the same antidote - Significant increase in equipment shipments.

Of course, everyone will definitely not suddenly flock to buy VR. There needs to be an opportunity here.

Looking back at the first level of the death spiral, I think some people will ask, if a hit game appears, can it break the cycle?

In this regard, the negative reviewer believes that hot products can only break through for a while, but not for a lifetime.

Back then, "Rhythm of Lightsaber" could be said to have made a big splash. The bad reviewer still remembers that it was at that time that Xiao Hei Fat spent a huge amount of money to invest in Oculus Quest - and he bought it from overseas.

But this cannot stop the fate of subsequent Quest being underused.

I asked Xiao Hei Fatty’s reason, and Xiao Hei Fatty’s possible reasons are:

I actually still play Quest, but by far my favorite is using the lightsaber. For other games, I basically just have a taste for something new. Let me tell you, sometimes I find it a bit inconvenient to play VR. I need to pick up the device from the table, put it on my head, adjust the tightness of the headband, and then open the game. But when my phone rang while I was wearing a headset while playing, I had to take it off to answer the call, and then put it on again, which was a little troublesome. To put it bluntly, I find it a bit fragmented and cumbersome to use, so I don’t use it very often, but I don’t regret buying VR. ”

To be honest, I don’t think everyone can’t accept the price of 3,000 or 4,000 yuan for XR equipment, but everyone can’t accept buying it back for 3,000 or 4,000 yuan and leaving the XR in the dust.

If you want to rely on popular items to break this embarrassing situation, unless there are continuous popular items. . .

But it is so easy to make a hit. The emergence of inspiration requires an opportunity.

Judging from the market situation in the past few years, it is difficult for manufacturers to do this alone.

So I think what can really break the cycle permanently is to create a strong dependence scenario so that people will not feel inconvenienced when using XR, but will feel that they cannot do without XR.

Just like life is to mobile phones, and office is to computers, wireless listening to music has also created the TWS market, and health monitoring has made wearable devices popular.

If such a positioning can be found, then VR and even other XR devices will definitely be able to sit back and relax.

Now various VR and AR manufacturers are currently looking for this killer scenario, and have tried gaming, office, training, education, etc...

But it can be applied to everyone, and it also makes everyone feel that it subverts the experience, and there has been no scenario where you can’t go back after using it.

So, everyone is turning their attention to Apple again.

>/ If you want to climb over the hill you still need to look at June 6th?

Why does everyone look at Apple? Can't others do this?

Hey, I’m not bragging about Apple. Let’s simply analyze it piece by piece based on the current situation and see what the advantages of Brother Guozi are:

Qualcomm doesn’t care enough about chips? It’s okay, I have a self-developed chip.

Is the software ecosystem not rich enough? It’s okay. What I’m best at is working with developers on joint research and development. It only took me two years to switch my computer from Intel to ARM.

As for the aspect of human-computer interaction that has been criticized? Apple’s system polishing skills are still very good. iOS, iPadOS, watchOS and other systems have created a generation of interactive models. On this basis, it is not too much to expect Apple’s performance.

As for how to get out of the circle and get more attention? Apple itself is at the top of the technology circle. You can see how many people around the world are focusing on this unreleased product.

Some rumored Apple headset features:

As for why everyone is looking forward to Apple, in fact, for the VR market that has been silent for a long time, Apple is the "circle breaker".

It has single-handedly driven changes in the smartphone, tablet, watch, and TWS markets. It has accumulated so many successful examples that every product practitioner has an "Apple superstition."

Apple is good at finding killer scenes, and through its own efforts, everyone can enjoy this scene. Once you use it, you can't go back.

What makes everyone more confident about it is that Apple’s entry into this track will not happen overnight.

According to a supply chain source who told us, "Apple already had a corresponding prototype two years ago, and the technology used did not exceed the capabilities of the supply chain. However, Apple has not released it. It should be It’s about polishing the ecosystem and software. ”

"The bottom layer of ARkit, the software, has been launched at WWDC 2017. How long did they plan it out?"

Practitioners expect Apple to use its influence to make the entire XR head-mounted display market bigger, with more consumers buying in, more practitioners entering, and software and hardware rolled up, so that XR comes to everyone.

In this way, even though your market share may be smaller, because more people are paying attention, at the end of the day, the total income will still increase.

For example, CICC believes that after Apple releases the headset, it will drive the growth of the entire VR market shipments

Of course, these speculations are all based on the success of Apple's MR. Despite everything said today, another situation may arise——:

That’s because the bad reviewer guessed wrong. After the release of WWDC, the market response was mediocre. The high selling price makes everyone daunted. VR The industry continues to be uneventful.

When I chatted with supply chain partners before, they also expressed similar concerns.

They are both worried that Apple will not do well and the technical reserves they invested in the early stage will be in vain.

But if I don’t delve into related technologies, I’m nervous that if Apple does well, will I be able to continue to enjoy the fruit chain? In short, it is a dilemma.

Facing the price of 3,000 knives, some people are worried

Now, the day of the lottery draw is finally coming. No matter how good Apple’s results are, everyone’s wait has been finally settled.

Tomorrow night, that is, at 00:30 on the 6th, the negative review public account will broadcast the entire WWDC live and connect with colleagues attending the conference in the United States. Interested friends can make an appointment.

By the way, our article tomorrow night should also be published in the morning of the 6th. Then friends can just get up and read the content ~

Writer: Xiao Chen Editor: Enchantment Cover:Xuanxuan

Pictures and data sources:

Forget The Apple Watch – Here Comes The Apple Smart Ring – MyMac.com

https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/24/apple-reality-pro-headset-trend-like-apple-watch-or-homepod/

https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/wwdc/

https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/31/reality-pro-headset-design-concept/

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