Text | Programming Prodigal Son
Source | Intelligent Relativity (aixdlun)
Huawei and Apple met on the AR track.
On July 13, Huawei's AR glasses patent was exposed. Prior to this, it has been revealed that Foxconn’s translucent lens for the Apple AR project has entered the trial production stage, and has applied for new patented technologies such as eyeball control, and will release an AR/VR headset in 2023.
It is not only Huawei and Apple that frequently act in the AR field. Recently, Facebook has also registered a grating for VR displays and a sound separation technology for microphones; Google acquired Focals with a very impressive acquisition condition of 180 million.
Obviously, the giants are actively deploying, and the financing and mergers and acquisitions of related technology companies are also in full swing. In the most difficult April this year, the AR contact lens company Mojo Vision received US$51 million in financing in April.
Strategy Analytics' latest report "The Impact of COVID-19 on the AR and VR Market" predicts that after the AR industry is affected by the epidemic in 2020, the global AR market will experience a strong recovery in 2021.
In terms of industry, UNITY's report believes that industrial AR has gradually moved out of the scope of teaching scenarios and has begun to enter more applicable industrial scenarios.
AR has clearly entered the fast lane in the post-epidemic era. So when the two world-class giants, Huawei and Apple, meet in this field, as the U.S. sanctions on Huawei are becoming more and more pressing, the two sides compete in any new field. The company’s business prospects will have the same long-term impact as key local battles.
Apple and Huawei are working together, one AR and two directions
Cook has clearly mentioned that AR is Apple's next good business.
As early as 2017, Apple launched its own AR development kit, allowing developers to develop AR applications based on the camera of Apple devices. Earlier this month, Bloomberg gave a detailed introduction to Apple's process of developing AR wearable devices.
In Apple's AR device plan, there are two sets of devices, one is a lightweight AR glasses code-named N421, and the other is an AR+VR head-mounted display device code-named N301. The design of the latter is clearly in line with the production of Face book. Oculus Quest, Apple President Cook finally stood on the side of the N301 development team.
Huawei released the AR technology Cyberverse in August 2019, which can be used for 3D navigation, virtual signage, and spatially can be used in shopping malls, scenic spots, airports, museums and other spaces. In the hardware field, Huawei seems to have no further moves.
From the perspective of product direction, the current information from Apple is obviously that it wants to turn AR glasses into a popular electronic trendy product similar to the Apple Watch.
Huawei's strategy falls more on professional scenarios, such as supporting tourism, driving, industrial design and military applications.
It is not only Huawei that is trying to apply AR in the industrial field, but also Sony, which already has a very deep layout and investment in the VR entertainment field. On July 22, LG Electronics and NTT Dcomo, a major Japanese telecommunications operator, cooperated to develop augmented reality glasses, and the products will be available next year.
In general, the industry is currently not optimistic about AR videos and games, which is mainly determined by the characteristics of AR products. The first is the limitation of the viewing angle (FOV), which makes the AR video experience relatively low. In the face of users who have been spoiled by 4K60 frames, the weak performance of AR is obviously only of early adopter value, not of use value.
In terms of AR games, only AR+LBS games represented by Pokémon GO have been recognized by users. Since the release of Pokémon, the number of AR games with relatively online quality and experience has been extremely rare in recent years.
From this perspective, before the synergy brought by major breakthroughs in the content and technology of AR civilian products, professional AR products seem to be more promising. The only regret is that Huawei does not currently have more information about AR. Hardware prototypes and detailed solutions such as interaction, voice, display, power supply, etc. appeared.
Only in August last year, Huawei registered two names "AR Glass" and "VR Glass" in the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) and the UK IPO (Intellectual Property Office). The current information shows that the glasses may be equipped with a voice assistant. , Can make calls, can be waterproof and dustproof lamp conventional product features, more details available for experience may have to wait patiently, this time node is likely to be in the way of "middle door to snipe", product launch and Apple's AR/VR headsets are released at a similar time.
Why AR instead of VR
AR and VR are two parallel development tracks, but since HoloLens was a short-lived in 2015, there are basically no new trends in commercial mass-produced civilian-grade AR products.
Therefore, various manufacturers have turned their attention to AR applications based on mobile phones. In 2016, Nintendo, which insisted not to release mobile games, released its first mobile AR game "Pokemon GO", which can be regarded as the world's first AR mobile game masterpiece.
In the early days of the game’s release, the game not only enthusiastically sought after global players, but also inspired practitioners in the AR industry to a certain extent, not necessarily starting from hardware such as glasses, at least judging from the current technological prospects. It may take several rounds of "technical explosions" for civilian-grade AR products to actually land, including materials, batteries, and network transmission speeds.
Compared with the ambiguity of AR, VR has the characteristics of entertainment products. People's love for the unreal world makes the game industry one of the most important industries in the post-epidemic era. With the development of Valve's VR game "Alice" half a year ago The release, the immersion that VR games can provide has made the gaming industry very excited, and the current headset experience of VR is also evolving rapidly. The only thing that needs to be waited for is the overall reduction in the cost of the headset and the launch of more benchmark VR games. , The outbreak of VR is on the eve.
The question is , why both Apple and Huawei use AR as their main force instead of investing in the relatively mature VR?
1. VR product form requires supporting content production
The VR field and the AR field seem to be similar, but in fact the technical means and business paths are completely different.
The VR field has strong penetration capabilities mainly in games and immersive videos, and is very good at creating a fully virtual immersive space. AR is based on the real space, and the product features that provide more virtual information supplements have strong applicability. VR isolates the real space, while AR enhances the understanding and cognition of the real space.
Both Apple and Huawei are investing in the AR field, and abandoning VR to a certain extent. The fundamental reason is the technology and industry accumulation of the two companies. Both sides lack the accumulation of resources in games and audiovisual VR. This is why Sony, Valve and Facebook can quickly launch mass-produced commercial-level VR products.
2. The application of AR has higher marginal utility
During the epidemic, the fastest-growing flooring retailer in the UK used AR technology to allow consumers to intuitively feel the effects of the flooring at home. The developer of this technology is Room mvo, a room visualization tool developed by Canadian company leap tools. As long as you select the floor you like, you can use your smartphone or tablet to see the effect of your home.
This is an excellent case of AR application, which reflects the outstanding capabilities of AR products in terms of design and safety operations. According to a recent Grad Raister survey report, 56% of manufacturers indicated that they have used some form of AR technology in the past 12 months. 35% of manufacturers are considering applying similar technologies, and 27% of respondents said they have deployed night AR applications.
The reason why AR is so popular in the manufacturing industry, 29% of respondents believe that the technology increases productivity. Up to 62% of the respondents said they saved production costs through AR technology. The power of AR technology in manufacturing is evident.
More importantly, if the existing AR products are practical, their costs are unacceptable to ordinary consumers, and they have no daily use value, and the manufacturing industry has the ability to bear such costs. In general, the marginal utility of AR applications in the industrial field is higher than that of civilian use.
The short-term future of AR: Industrial-grade AR is more promising than civilian-grade
According to IDC data, China’s AR/VR market will account for 38.3% of the global share in 2020, and it is the country with the largest amount of expenditure. The largest scale is still the consumer industry, accounting for about 50%. The report predicts that commercial spending will grow Slow down.
The main application of professional AR is spatial computing, which are in the fields of industrial product design, visual digital model, and worker training and military. In terms of specific industries, in addition to consumers, my country mainly focuses on distribution services, and the public sector and manufacturing and resource industries spend basically the same amount of money.
Although both Huawei and Apple have begun to take frequent actions in the AR field, judging from the commercialization and technological progress of civilian-grade products, there is still a long way to go.
Google interaction designer Wu Shengzhi, he has participated in almost all mainstream AR projects including HoloLens, Magic Leap, Meta 2, Google Glass, HoloKit, Oculus, Vive, Bose AR, Leap Motion, etc.
He wrote an article "Why Don’t I Be Optimistic about VR Glasses" and expressed similar views. He believes that AR lacks competitiveness with existing electronic products in commonly used consumer-level scenes. In streaming media scenes, AR is due to different perspectives and resolutions. Limitations, the experience is particularly poor.
Director Keiichi Matsuda released a short film describing the near future in 2016. The film shows the scene where VR makes the real world highly informative. Our daily lives are already experiencing an information explosion. An AR device that continues to output content to people in the real world may be even more unbearable.
For ordinary people, reality does not need to be augmented, and reality is enough to make people exhausted.
And although the technical difficulty is not high, the long time the camera is turned on in real time and the processing chip continues to run, under the limitations of existing battery technology, the use time of the device will not last.
In this case, industrial and educational AR that gives people more space to visualize based on specific scenarios is more in line with people's needs.
Last month, the U.S. military disclosed the development progress of their AR combat system IVAS. The development engineer clearly pointed out that the development team received more than 23,000 hours of feedback from soldiers. The ultimate goal of this product is to create a product that improves their training and For lethal products on the battlefield, in October, the products will undergo a new round of product testing.
What worries "Intelligent Relativity" is that this product has entered the stage of actual testing by soldiers. As the United States has more and more aggressive containment strategies against China, the risk of Sino-US hot friction is also higher and higher. If relevant domestic technologies If it is not developed and applied in time, this product that "improves the lethality of American soldiers" may be used in our country's soldiers.
The latest IVAS prototype based on HoloLens2, pattern: Courtney Bacon
It is foreseeable that in the next three or four years, AR products are likely to differentiate into two specific branches. On the one hand, AR equipment used in specialized scenarios will be costly, and the technical threshold and professionalism will be higher.
The other is civilian-grade AR equipment. The concept of this type of equipment is greater than practicality and will not become mainstream in the short term. Only after an industrial evolution process like Big Brother to Nokia, can the civilian-grade commercial value of AR be completely possible. Landing.
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