Author |Mangosteen.
Produced by |Zinc Industry (**xinchanye2021).
CES 2024 is in full swing, but Apple is stealing again.
Apple has always been a technology giant that CES can't invite, but it can often influence the entire show invisibly by itself.
Mark Gurman, a well-known American technology journalist, began to break the news frequently last week.
First broke the news that Apple's Vision Pro will be released in the United States on January 27.
Subsequently, last Sunday (January 7) broke the news again that Vision Pro has been sent to warehouses across the United States in small batches and will be distributed to Apple retail stores around the country.
The reason for this series of actions, he believes, is that "Apple may announce some news about the Vision Pro next week to steal the limelight from CES." ”
Sure enough, on the eve of the opening of CES 2024, Apple officially announced that the Vision Pro will be available for pre-order on January 19It will be released in the U.S. on February 2
And with that, there isThe pilot film is launched and the xcode is updatedand many other news about Apple's MR.
In fact, even without these news, the upcoming release of Apple's Vision Pro has already made the entire AR VR industry restless again.
When Apple released MR glasses, other VR manufacturers were most anxious to find a high-computing power chip as soon as possible.
It's not too early for Apple to jump the prophet in 2023, and there are even many people who believe that Apple is not ready to come up with an MR product that satisfies them.
However, perhaps the AR VR industry has been too unsatisfactory over the years, or perhaps the "Apple Magnetic Field" has once again exerted its magic.
After the release of Vision Pro, a number of top technology bloggers who have experienced Vision Pro on site said that they were good, and most of the industry people who saw this product offline were also full of praise and expectation.
Judging from the display effect at the press conference, Vision ProAlmost all the functions that the original VR had have have been taken a small step forwardMore importantly, its main VST function defines a new interaction mode for the next MR devices.
The new 3D photography function allows Vision Pro to achieve "self-production and self-use" in terms of content.
An industry KOL once commented on Apple's press conference that the best thing about Apple's products is itThe actual product experience can be highly consistent with the effect of the functional demonstration at the press conference
The degree to which this kind of product experience restores the functional demonstration of the conference is another magic of Apple.
In order to perfectly realize these functions demonstrated by the Vision Pro at the press conference, it has to rely on the powerful computing power provided by Apple's self-developed processor for this device, the M2 chip.
Apple's closed ecological play determines that it will eventually move towards self-developed chips.
When the M2 chip, which was originally developed for high-end notebooks, was used in Apple's MR glasses, coupled with another coprocessor R1, it not only supported these high-performance functions, but even synchronized the internal and external screen images (Eyesight).The latency is reduced to 12ms
There is only one Apple in the world, and there is only one such closed ecology in the field of consumer electronics.
Other AR VR manufacturers don't have such good luck, and if they want to follow Apple, they need to find a chip that can provide such powerful computing power.
Unsurprisingly, this heavy responsibility fell on Qualcomm's shoulders.
Qualcomm officially released the first XR-specific chip in 2018, which is the Snapdragon XR1.
Unlike the mobile phone industry with a large volume and high update frequency, the AR VR industry has not yet formed a large scale, you know, the research and development cost of a chip is generally tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars.
This led to that, those years, thoughAR VR manufacturers have a lot of demand for dedicated chips, but the weight of XR chips within Qualcomm is not very high.
Before 2018, most of the VR manufacturers used XR version chips cut out based on Qualcomm mobile phone chips, for example, the Oculus Quest used the Snapdragon 835 processor that was modified by the magic, that isSnapdragon 835 XR Edition
For the sake of convenience, let's first unify a concept here - let's follow Qualcomm's proposal for the time being, and refer to AR, VR, MR as XR.
In fact, Qualcomm's official first-generation XR dedicated chip XR1 is also considered to be a lite version of the Snapdragon 835 845, and the performance is closer to the Snapdragon 600The target product is:At that time, more emphasis was placed on watching moviesSplit VR and 3DOF all-in-one machines
Even Qualcomm officials have made it clear that high-end VR all-in-one PCs still use Snapdragon 835 845 chips.
Including the XR2, which was released at the end of 2019, is also considered to be a lite version of the Snapdragon 865.
Until this CES 2024, Qualcomm released support90fps4.3K monocular display12-channel parallel camerawith12ms delayThe Snapdragon XR2+Gen 2 can be regarded as catching up with Apple's Vision Pro before the release, and it really pulled the XR chip performance to the baseline that Apple's MR has raised.
Behind this, is QualcommWithin half a year on the XR product lineEmergency layout,Four rapid updates in a rowProduct (AR1, XR2 Gen2, AR2, XR2+ Gen2).
Prior to this, the release of Qualcomm XR dedicated chips was so slow that it was even rare to have an update once a year.
Qualcomm, squeezing toothpaste, finally brought "fruity" hope to XR manufacturers at this CES.
Just how lively is the XR theme at CES 2024 this year, relevant data shows that XR and metaverse exhibitors alone, just:More than 400
So, what kind of new product display or concept refresh do these exhibitors bring?
The first is the popularity of "4K screen".
Resolution is one of the most critical parameters of display equipment, however, for XR products, it has always been an unspeakable pain point, an XR industry person told the zinc industry, "As far as the display technology of VR equipment is concerned,2k for one eye is considered a passing grade, and 4k for one eye is the standard configuration that should be there, which is not a high match. ”
Especially in immersive game scenes, in order to get out of the "mosaic" world and create scenes and character modeling closer to the real world, in addition to computing power, resolution has become another key metric.
Judging from the various XR products exhibited by manufacturers at this exhibition, there are already many products with a single-eye 4K resolution.
In terms of materials - screens, in addition to Sony, which made a single-eye 4K special screen for Apple, BOE also exhibited at CES 2024 this time8K (Monocular 4K) display module
In terms of solutions, after Qualcomm released the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, based on the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2, the highest support is supportedMonocular 4MR reference design for 3K, 90FPS, 12-channel cameraIt has been jointly released by Goertek, a domestic XR chain manufacturer, and Qualcomm.
Goertek also brought this reference scheme to CES 2024 for display.
As far as the finished MR glasses are concerned, at the Sony press conference the day before CES 2024 is launched,SonyAn MR glasses with a 4K Micro OLED display was released.
Skyworth also exhibited monocular 4K MR glasses at the exhibitionpancake 2
From this point of view, in order to make MR products that benchmark Apple's Vision Pro, the ** chain is ready, and XR manufacturers have begun to run into the market.
The second is the popularity of spatial computing.
At WWDC 2023 in June 2023, Cook "enabled" a new concept – spatial computing to define Vision Pro.
Cook said in a high-profile manner at the press conference, "Just as the Mac brought us into the era of personal computing and the iPhone brought us into the era of mobile computing, the Apple Vision Pro brought us into the new era."The era of spatial computing
Spatial computing, as the zinc industry prefers to call it, is an inevitable technology for creating 3D content and realizing the integration of virtual and real.
On the same day that the release date of the Vision Pro was announced, Cook made another high-profile call for this product, saying on Twitter, "the era of spatial computing has arrived!
At the same time, Apple has also officially updated Xcode to allow developers to submit VisionOS applications to the App Store.
But it is also emphasized that developers are not allowed to name VisionOS applications in terms such as AR, VR, XR, etc., insteadTo be named Spatial Computing Application
Qualcomm also positioned the Snapdragon XR2+Gen 2 platform on spatial computing, and Hugo Swart, general manager of Qualcomm's XR business, also delivered a keynote speech at CES 2024 titled "How the demand for VR AR headsets will affect the metaverse and spatial computing".
Previously, Qualcomm had revealed that the Snapdragon XR2+Gen 2 will be the first to be carried on Samsung, HTC, Immersed, YVR and an undisclosed company XR device.
However, Sony prefers to call this release a productSpatial content creation system（development of spatial content creation system）。
This MR glasses are actually a product developed by Sony for 3D software development companies, so that these developers or development teams can develop more "spatial content" (that is, 3D content) based on this device.
Then there is the "per capita" benchmark Apple Vision Pro.
Apple's Vision Pro can be called the strongest MR glasses at the moment, and it has naturally become the object of XR manufacturers.
Especially on the market, there have been chips, screens, and even reference solutions that can compete with Apple's Vision Pro, benchmarking against Apple, which has naturally become the ultimate goal of many XR teams.
As early as last year, Samsung, Qualcomm, and Google formed the strongest MR lineup, in order to support Samsung to make an MR glasses that can compete with Apple's Vision Pro.
According to foreign media reports, for this reason, Samsung has also postponed the MR product that was originally planned to be launched in 2023.
At CES 2024, benchmarking against Apple's Vision Pro seems to be the best way to measure the strength of an XR team.
Goovis officially said that the PPD of Goovis V3 is as high as 45, alreadySurpasses the 40 ppd of the Apple Vision Pro
Even what ASUS showed at CES 2024airvision m1, xrealair 2 ultraand other products, which are also regarded by foreign media as products that benchmark Apple's Vision Pro.
Since Meta was forced to shift its focus to AI and Apple released Vision Pro, Apple has become the hope of the entire "village".
Whether the XR industry can rekindle hope in 2024 depends on whether Apple's Vision Pro market performance is fierce.
However, Apple has officially revealed that Vision Pro is actually a version for the professional market and developers, which is essentially similar to the XR device released by Sony at CES 2024, all to promote the emergence of 3D content and pave the way for the arrival of the metaverse next.
What's more, 2.The price of 50,000 yuan has made this product out of the consumer-level positioning, and even Apple itself will have the expected sales of this product in 2024The initial number of units was reduced from 1 million units to 400,000 units
Despite this, most of the practitioners in XR, metaverse, digital twin and other fields that the zinc industry has contacted in the past year are still optimistic about Apple and its Vision Pro.
In fact, from the perspective of the industry, Apple's Vision Pro will have a profound impact on the entire industry, and the zinc industry summarizes it into the following three aspects:
First,It will bring a strong push and upgrade to the XR industry chain
Second,It will bring a creative boom to the AR VR content ecosystem, which has been weak
Third,A goal was specified for more XR teamsIt also gives the XR industry a confidence and direction.
The first major global exhibition in 2024 will set the tone for AI, but it has given hope to the XR industry again.
Inside and outside the CES 2024 venue, spatial computing has become the mainstream, and everyone is talking about Apple, which is not present, and a new metaverse craze is beginning to sprout.
In 2024, with the blessing of AGI, the XR industry may beOnce again, we ushered in the first year of the metaverse
It's just that Apple might prefer to call it itThe first year of spatial computing