Industry Q & A: 8 major issues in the development of VR industry in 2016

Now in 2017, looking back at the various problems encountered in the development of virtual reality last year, I finally have the answer. This article lists the questions and answers for the eight questions in the development of VR industry in 2016. Please see below!

What scale will the VR market develop in a year?

This question is not yet very good to answer. A year ago, I estimated that by the end of 2016, there will be about 10 million active users. I can't remember my definition of "active users" at the time - maybe it's the use of people who have used VR at least a few times a month - but even if I defined this group of people very specific at the time, I don't have it now. Ways to get reliable data from VR active users.

VR

SuperData Research is a research company in New York. I got some reliable data on helmet sales from here. They released their 2016 sales forecast in November. It is predicted that Samsung's Gear VR helmet will reach 2.3 million, Sony's PSVR helmet will reach 745,000, Oculus Rift's CV1 helmet will be 350,000, HTC's Vive helmet will be 420,000, and Google's Daydream helmet will be 260,000. The total sales of helmets is 4 million. They also estimate that by the end of 2016, VR users will reach approximately 16 million, which means that these people must be using basic helmets like Google Cardboard.

We can discuss whether a very basic helmet like Cardboard should be counted, but if I honestly say that VR users will reach 10 million by the end of 2016, I have not counted those who use Cardboard helmets. How is it counted? I estimate that by the end of the year, Gear VR users will reach 30,000-50,000, PSVR users will reach 3 million, Oculus Rift1 users will reach 10,000 and HTC Vive will be 50,000-100,000. This is not far from the predictions made by analyst Piper Jaffray in 2015 (I have graphed these numbers and the numbers I got in SuperData).

Then the problem has arisen. Samsung announced at CES earlier this week that they have sold a total of 5 million Gear VR helmets, a figure that far exceeds SuperData's estimates. There has also been a suspicion about the accuracy of other helmet sales, but I don't think anyone thinks the Rift or Vive sales are close to the Piper Jaffray forecast.

We are still in the early stages of VR development - in an article I wrote a year ago, I compared the iPhone market with the previous year's smartphone market -- so it doesn't matter if the helmet sales are lower than some analysts' forecasts. But one big difference between smartphones and VR is that even before the iPhone was released, most observers seemed to think that smartphones would be everywhere. The question is not whether it will be popularized, but when and how it will be popularized. Whether VR will remain relatively niche or find a wider audience is still an open question. In the early days of VR development, sales were not a decisive factor, but they gave us some suggestive directions. In 2017, I will have more questions about VR.

“Will the helmet become a commodity or a source of competitive advantage?

It's still too early to talk about this, but at least Oculus's fully integrated model looks like a conflict with Microsoft and Google and original equipment manufacturers to create cheap helmets. But only when people can buy a high-quality helmet for a few hundred dollars, with room-scale location tracking (allowing you to physically move in a virtual space, with a more immersive experience), we can only Said VR definitely entered the mainstream industry.

"What is the hardware relationship between high-end and low-end VR?

There is not much evidence that someone who bought a Gear VR or Daydream helmet will buy a Rift or Vive (or upgrade a PC to apply), but in 2016 Oculus ridiculed "Santa Cruz", a stand-alone helmet. With location tracking from the inside out. This could be a helmet between the low end (linked to the helmet via a smartphone) and the high end (providing the best immersive experience, but also requires a powerful PC with a dedicated GPU). Intel released an earlier version of the helmet Project Alloy (shown above), and it is rumored that Google is also developing the project. It is likely that many people will use this product in the future to experience real room-scale virtual reality.

“Do ordinary people create and share VR content? Can you talk about specific methods of operation if you can?”

Even though Facebook and YouTube have started to support VR content, few people share VR (really we are talking about 360) photos and videos online. (I published some of my own photos when I used 360 cameras to record my trip last year. view). Part of the reason is that you need a dedicated 360 camera to create VR content (which works poorly on smartphone apps), and partly because even if you share something, your friends or family are unlikely There is just a helmet that you can use to see the shared content you shot with 360.

I found that some startups built platforms to share 360 ​​photos and videos, but eventually put the plan on hold. Part of the reason is because the market is still small, in part because Facebook, YouTube and Instagram have already launched this feature of sharing and destroying photos and videos, so they are worried that these giants will launch many of these activities. Here I emphasize my own point of view, Vrideo is building a YouTube-for-360 video, but it was closed at the end of last year (betaworks is an investor, although this project was started before I joined). They managed to gather the most widely used users of VR so far, and they still can't find a way to create an ideal video platform. Believe me, they have done their best. I like some great things in this field, but there are many obstacles to the development of this field.

“Is there an application that drives mainstream apps?

In 2016, no. But if you are building this, be sure to come to me. Even so, the development of VR apps in the past year's iOS App Store is also very fast, which may mean that many ordinary consumers will receive the basic "link phone" helmet as a gift and start trying VR.

“What is the definition paradigm for defining VR users?

This is not easy to say, but we did see a lot of experiments, especially in terms of games. Related to this, in the past year, developers of social VR products and games have had to face the thorny problem of harassing in a virtual environment. This is not a problem that can be easily solved, and there is still a long way to go. I am beginning to see some developers launching solutions to try and solve this problem.

"What will Microsoft finally do?

Well, from the announcement of Windows Holographic and the VR helmet cable that partners are building for it, we have the answer in mind, at least to some extent, but we still know how VR fits into

The "Project Scorpio" Xbox, which is pending before the end of the year, knows very little about it.

"What will Apple finally do?

I am very skeptical that Apple is creating a clear iPhone 7 for AR and VR, but apart from this rumor, we have no strong feeling about the VR trend of CuperTIno. We know that a few months ago Apple CEO Tim Cook said he was skeptical about VR and said, "It won't be so good compared to AR, so it's entirely possible that they will continue to march." The market, on the contrary, they will launch something related to AR in a year or two (or possibly longer).

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