Is the wind or tragedy VR tide behind the cottage is becoming wind

As the world's largest and most influential two electronic technology exhibitions, CES and MWC have always been the vane of investment and entrepreneurship. The hottest projects and technology trends at the show will at least lead the next one to two years.

This year's CES and MWC's popular fried chicken "VR" is no exception. Following the first year of smart hardware in 2014, 2016 was also honored as the title of VR in the first year. Large companies actively deployed, and the establishment of hardware, content, and applications was also blown out.

In a prosperous situation, the domestic VR entrepreneurial fireworks workshop CEO Dianchichi admitted to Sina Technology that he was concerned that VR would follow the trail of intelligent hardware and that the industry was ignorant. Consumers were harmed by “bad money” and gimmicks, which eventually led to rapid development of the entire industry. Silent.

"VR is still in a state of rooting. But because the concept is normalizing, so is a listed company, or a startup company. Whether or not there is technology or understanding VR, it is forcing people to forge. When smart hardware is fired, Everyone loves to add intelligence, and now VR is the same,” said Dianchi.

In his view, there are already too many amateurs in this circle, and it has become a trend in the mountains, falsification of the parameters, and technology fraud. Many of them hold the attitude of deceiving investors and consumers to take a sum of money. I am afraid that by the end of this year, there will be a wave of deaths, and there will only be about 5 companies that have survived in the industry as a whole.

Worried about repeating the smart hardware tragedy

At the end of 2015, before the Fireworks Workshop launched its mobile VR total solution and VR glasses case, Sina Technology once had an in-depth dialogue with Dianchi Lake. At that time, he told Sina Technology that the outbreak speed of VR and the popularity of VR exceeded the most optimistic predictions. The future competition will become increasingly fierce, but the fireworks workshop is happy to see this state because they are emboldened. There is also courage.

However, after the New Year in 2016, when he saw Dianchi again, he once held the idea of ​​"not afraid of death and was afraid of slowness." But he began to worry.

“Now the industry is not really fast, but it really messed up.” He said that during the year, he was pulled into a lot of new VR entrepreneurs WeChat group, and then saw the rapid expansion of WeChat in a short period of time, some VR Entrepreneurs don't even know what VR is. Many large companies that come to work together do not care about quality, but only care about speed. They only care about whether they can hurry up with VR.

This made Dianchi think of the smart hardware industry two years ago.

In 2014, known as the first year of smart hardware, large companies basically launched their own smart hardware products or ecological chain planning. Startup companies enthusiastically expanded their opportunities in various segments. Most of the cottage mobile phone manufacturers in Shenzhen have also transformed their intelligence. hardware.

However, this fiery heat lasted only over a year, and it almost fell to the bottom in the second half of 2015.

“In fact, the VR industry and the smart hardware have a lot in common. The threshold for entrepreneurship seems to be low, and there are hardware production experiences that can be transformed, but in fact, the entrepreneurs are demanding. Emerging industries and concepts and the direction of the combination of software and hardware Not only does it require technical requirements, but it also requires entrepreneurs to have a deep understanding of the industry and pre-judgment capabilities. It is by no means a smart module. A cottage can be successful."

To his dismay, the cottage manufacturers who once swarmed into smart hardware are now starting to flock to VR hardware.

“There are a lot of new vendors coming in. They don’t even understand the algorithm and they don’t understand VR. For them, it’s about copying the form, copying the sdk, and then making a split-screen app. Finally, deceived a sum of money, and then wait for the next wave of capital fever to transform again.” Dianchi said.

In an emerging industry that is still laying the groundwork and technology is still immature, if consumers first come into contact with such a product with very poor experience, the concept of VR will be splashed with ink and will be heavy on the industry. Hit.

This is Dianchi's biggest worry about juvenile VR. At that time, smart hardware might seem hot, but most of them were wifi modules and an APP on traditional hardware, which hurt consumer experience and perceptions of the industry. The final outcome is a lesson from the past.

So at the MWC, when Samsung used VR conference and VR experience hall to promote Gear VR, he specifically sent a WeChat circle of friends and said that Samsung had done a good job and let the media experience the benchmarking products of mobile VR. After a good VR, my heart can have a ruler.

Cottage rampage rampage

VR hardware output devices, that is, head-mounted display devices, are basically divided into two types: PC-side VR head-display devices and mobile-side VR head-display devices. The former benchmark is Oculus, and the latter is Samsung's Gear VR. After MWC, the PC-side VR head-display device also added an HTC Vive.

Chinese VR entrepreneurs are basically following the Oculus or Gear VR. However, many chaos have appeared so far.

“The entrepreneurs who don’t understand anything at all are copying and then rigidly plugging in the Oculus or Gear VR SDKs. This is the most terrible thing. Stronger ones usually steal Oculus or Gear VR code.”

Dianchi said that they have seen some VR company code that claims its own algorithm and found that there are devices that can directly run Gear VR SDK compiled applications, some of which modify the Gear VR SDK, and even openly crack Gear VR applications. Gear VR has not been open source.

“Compared to mobile VR devices, Oculus, which was once open source, made the PC-side VR head-display devices even more of a disaster area. It is quite exaggerating that some of them can find Facebook in the code. There is also a particularly bad practice. On the PC-side VR heads up device, steal virtual out of gear VR.

For the disadvantages of Shanzhai, Dianchi explained that this involves not only moral and legal issues, but also a problem that will directly affect consumer interests. The SDK of Oculus or Gear VR is compatible with their hardware. The optical scheme, cooling system, and interactive wait are all matched and debugged. The cottage is like putting your feet on inappropriate shoes. The experience is of course bad.

This is why the fireworks workshop chose to write its own algorithm.

"VR only passes and fails two options, there are core algorithms, hardware matching is the pass line directly. There is no core algorithm, the use of rewriting someone else's algorithm, naturally does not match, later want to rely on iterative to solve, very difficult and long He explained.

In addition to the fraudulent use of the cottage, the imaginary parameters and pseudo-concepts are also representatives of domestic VR chaos.

“The parameters of delay and field of vision are especially easy to be falsified, so it is very difficult to fake and prove it, so many companies just say it themselves. In addition, for the sake of financing, entrepreneurs in this circle also like to create concepts, such as describing AR as a holographic VR. Even the pavilion project and the water screen in the exhibition hall have turned into VR concepts."

Dianchi said that he encountered the most exaggerated virtual standard, is a domestic VR glasses box enterprises, actually dared to claim that the delay reached 11 milliseconds, which is ridiculous, and the mobile phone's ordinary LCD screen simply can not do. Even an all-in-one device such as Oculus, to reach 16 milliseconds, has to have a very high refresh rate.

This is also one of the important reasons why the domestic VR investment market is very chaotic. Investors know very little about VR technology. Coupled with these unpredictable tricks, investment institutions will be very cautious about investing. U.S. dollar funds do not even invest in domestic VR hardware startups. VR hardware project is often a number of small funds and incubators, or a stock listed companies that need to fry concept, but more catalyzed the VR entrepreneurial exaggeration.

According to Dianchi, there were more than 200 VR hardware companies in 2014, and 80% of them died in 2015. Currently, there are about 50-60 companies. I am afraid that this year will usher in another death toll. In the end, we will be able to survive at 5 or so. Mobile and PCs will each have 2-3. At present, there are nearly 100 startup companies that do VR content in China, and those who fight VR e-commerce and VR social gimmicks will be eliminated first. The semi-finished products of 3D games during the upsurge of hand-raising will also be very dangerous if they are temporarily changed to VR-finished products.

The following is a list of successful VR hardware projects: