Apple's Vision Pro has attracted a lot of attention since its official launch.
After the first batch of purchases of this device and in-depth experience and teardown analysis, Pimax Technology, a leading high-end VR headset manufacturer in China, recently held a meeting in Beijing. The event invited many well-known domestic technology and finance companies, not only showcasing Vision Pro and Pimax's own flagship product, Pimax Crystal, but also conducting an in-depth discussion on the development prospects of spatial computing.
Pimax took this opportunity to clarify to the attendeesIn the new era of spatial computing, in addition to Apple, there is a broader "open world" waiting to be explored, and high-end such as PimaxVR headset manufacturers are a key force in this.
Li Jie, vice president of Pimax, said at the meeting that the advent of Vision Pro has effectively stimulated the market demand for high-performance VR equipment. As a representative enterprise dedicated to the consumer market and with high-performance VR products as the banner, Pimax is deeply honored to enjoy the dual growth of market popularity and business performance, which can be described as "fame and fortune".
In particular, since the official launch of Xiaopai Crystal last year, the sales volume has exceeded the annual shipment of the previous generation of products in just half a year, and has driven the company's revenue to double in 2023. At the 2024 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2024), Pimax Crystal won the CES 2024 Innovation Award, which is the most important in the global consumer electronics industry, becoming the only product in the VR field to win this award. At the same time, Pie Crystal has gradually been rated as the recommended headset of the year on a par with Vision Pro by more mainstream **.
Li Jie further talked about Xiaopei's insights into the field of spatial computing and his cognition of Vision Pro, and shared Xiaopai's product planning and vision for the future field of spatial computing. Here are his main points.
01 The value of spatial computation lies in the calculation of dimensionality
What is "Spatial Computing"?
Pimax believes that spatial computing is not only the evolution of computing technology to a higher dimension, but also a technological innovation that enables human beings to interact efficiently with the digital world in a natural way, indicating the release of huge energy and potential.
Fundamentally, the human body is an advanced space computer, perceiving input signals through the senses, processing information through the brain, and outputting through the limbs, supporting countless activities in daily life. Although this ability of human beings is very powerful, its scope of action is limited by the direct perception of the senses, which limits the expansion of knowledge and skills.
The key to the rapid progress of human civilization lies in the generation and dissemination of indirect knowledge. By modeling and virtualizing the real world, which is the so-called "dimensionality reduction modeling + dimensionality reconstruction" process, we have realized the long-distance transmission and sharing of knowledge, although this process sacrifices the integrity and density of some information. With the advancement of technology, the mechanism of knowledge dissemination has entered the orbit of ascending.
For example, with the development of computer graphical interfaces, human-computer interaction has been upgraded from one-dimensional to two-dimensional, which has greatly lowered the threshold for use and given birth to a revolution in the information industry. The emergence of spatial computing marks the leap from two-dimensional to three-dimensional, closer to human experience, greatly reducing the loss of information in the process of knowledge dissemination, and simplifying the process of receiving and understanding knowledge.
In other words, in the era of spatial computing, technology allows us to create a virtual world close to the real world, and can "mirror" or "enhance" the real world that is far away or even historical or future, which not only improves the ability of human beings to perceive, recognize and act on the world, but also may fundamentally change the relationship between people and the world and accelerate the development of human civilization.
By citing the evolution of engineering drawing and the progress of video games from 1D MUD to 3D VR, Li Jie further elaborated on the importance of computational dimensionality.
He also mentioned that Vision Pro, as a milestone product in spatial computing, has also shown great value in the traditional planar computing paradigm. Pimax believes that the interaction efficiency of personal computing devices is inversely proportional to their closeness, but Apple's spatial computing devices have achieved this historic breakthrough by replacing the optical imaging technology of traditional screens, taking into account efficient interaction and personal experience for the first time. (See image below).
02 Vision Pro is actually a VR headset
After a preliminary teardown and analysis of Apple's Vision Pro, Pimax confirmed that it is essentially a high-end VR headset that integrates high-performance** perspective (VST) functions.
So, why doesn't Apple just define Vision Pro as a VR device?
Pimax explained that this is related to Apple's consistent product philosophy, which aims to allow users to enjoy a better, more efficient and colorful life experience without departing from the basic framework of the real world. Therefore, the term augmented reality is more appropriate than virtual reality to describe its product vision.
But why did Apple choose to use VR as the technical basis when designing this so-called AR product?
Pimax believes that the realization of the vision of spatial computing requires two basic capabilities: "reality virtualization" and "virtual reality". In order to achieve the effect of "virtualization of reality", it is necessary to choose the ** video see through (VST) instead of optical see through (OST) solution for the following reasons:
1) Perfect virtual-real fusion requires precise management of each pixel in the field of view, which is not possible with OST technology.
2) VST supports the processing and enhancement of the real environment, such as turning a noisy office area into an elegant workspace, or replacing the view of the construction site outside the window with a Maldivian beach, while OST technology can only show a "faithful" view of the real world.
3) VST can ensure that the secondary dissemination of content in the digital space is consistent with one's own vision, which is not possible with OST technology.
4) VST technology can be compatible with VR and AR modes, allowing users to choose the degree of integration of the real and virtual worlds, which is in line with the concept of spatial computing. On the contrary, OST technology only supports the narrow application scenarios of AR glasses.
Therefore, Apple chose to abandon OST and instead adopt the VR+VST technology route, which is also the development direction that Pimax has always adhered to.
03 VR headsets have entered the era of "volume pixels".
If VST solves the "reality virtualization", in the ** "virtual reality", that is, the development trend of VR, Pimax believes that the launch of Apple's Vision Pro points out the direction - that is, "volume pixels".
Before the advent of Vision Pro, Pimax's headset led the consumer VR industry with the world's highest pixel count of 16.59 million pixels, while other mainstream VR headsets in the same period had about 8 million pixels, and even the latest Quest3 and Pico4 only slightly exceeded 9 million pixels. Apple's first-generation headset pushed that record to 23 million pixels, and the next-generation product Pimax is working on is expected to break that record even further.
The high pixel count poses a huge engineering challenge to the engineering design of VR headsets, including computing, transmission, display, and cooling, almost all of which mean "crazy probing" at the edge of physical limits. This explains why Vision Pro and Pimax Crystal have come at a loss in size, weight, and cost – with the core aim of achieving a higher level of "virtual reality".
On the premise of ensuring high refresh rate and low latency, the key to VR visual immersion lies in angular resolution (ppd) and field of view (FOV). PPD affects visual clarity, and FOV determines the field of view. The monocular FOV multiplied by the PPD is the total number of monocular pixels. While the industry generally stays at a low pixel count level, both Apple and Pimax see high pixel counts as the key to increasing immersion. This "volume pixel" strategy highlights the importance of visual experience on both sides, and marks the development trend of terminal devices in the era of spatial computing.
Apple named its first spatial computing product Vision, which embodies the ultimate pursuit of visual experience. Similarly, Pimax's first 8K product was named the Vision series. Li Jie, vice president of Pimax Technology, pointed out.
In addition to the visual experience, Pimax proposed VR3 two years agoTheory 0 also emphasizes that a good VR experience needs to combine sufficient physical and cognitive immersion. This is highly consistent with Apple's spatial computing philosophy, and shows that the two companies share a common philosophy and goal in advancing VR technology.
In the latest SDIC ** research report, the world's major VR manufacturers were comprehensively scored based on the core functions and performance of Apple's Vision Pro, and the results showed that if the Apple Vision Pro was set to a full score of 100, followed by Pimax (5.).9)、meta(5.0)、varjo(4.5)、pico(4.4)、htc(4.3)、dpvr(3.5)、yvr(3.5) and valve (32)。Of all VR manufacturers except Apple, Pimax received the highest rating.
However, even though Pie is ranked the highest relatively, its score is still a little bit short of the passing line. What does this point difference reflect? Xiaopai believes that on the one hand, there is a difference, and on the other hand, there is a gap.
04 The "Open World" in the Era of Spatial Computing
Although it coincides with Apple's product concept, there are many strategic differences between Pimax and Apple in terms of scenario selection, ecosystem, and technical architecture. Much of these differences stem from real-world capacity and resource gaps, prompting both sides to make their best choices.
It's no surprise that Apple opted for productivity and light entertainment, which has always been Apple's market positioning. On the one hand, this reflects Apple's values in terms of products; More importantly, Apple has the will and ability to nurture and support a complete content ecosystem on its own.
As a start-up, it is impossible for Pimax to copy Apple's strategy and independently build a complete closed system from chips to complete machines to applications and content ecosystems. It's not just Pimax that can't do this, but no company in the world outside of Apple has so far had the ability to do so.
Pimax currently focuses on games, light entertainment and vertical business applications, and its core logic is to make full use of itOpen ecosystemadvantages.
For example, on the SteamVR platform, Pimax users can enjoy more than 5,000 VR games and applications without the additional development cost of Pimax, which fully demonstrates the power of the open system. With UEV (a tool that turns 3D games developed on Unreal Engine into VR games), Pimax users can enjoy more than 11,000 additional high-quality games.
The gaming sector is especially important to Pimax, not only because of the huge global gaming market, with 1 billion active users and $240 billion in annual revenue, but also because the gaming industry has long served as a testing ground for technological innovation, which can reduce the cost of technological trial and error.
Another important feature of the gaming market is that this is not an area that Apple attaches great importance to. The Mac system has never been very "friendly" to game users, and Vision Pro does not even provide a controller, which can almost be said to "ignore" the needs of game users. Therefore, in the field of gaming, if users are looking for a VR experience similar to Vision Pro, Pimax headsets based on the Wintel+ Qualcomm platform will become a very competitive choice.
In terms of light entertainment, especially in space, the general low PPD in the industry has limited the viewing experience, and also limited the creative enthusiasm of artists, resulting in an extreme lack of high-definition VR** film sources, which cannot reflect the advantages of Xiaopai crystal high-definition movie viewing. Apple's Vision Pro has lifted the bottleneck for the development of VR content by improving the definition and supporting spatial shooting, heralding the rise of high-quality immersive film and television content. The cross-platform conversion cost of film and television content is much lower than that of the app, so it has the characteristics of being highly open, which will bring more choices of light entertainment content to Pimax users.
In the field of vertical business, many application scenarios with high gold content have high performance requirements for VR headsets and are not sensitive to the highest performance, so Pimax's headsets have advantages in these fields. Moreover, the characteristic of these industries is that there are many professional solution providers that focus on specific industries, and there is no need for Pimax to develop industry-specific solutions on their own. What Pimax needs to do is to take advantage of the functions and performance advantages of Pimax's products to better empower these partners and help them better understand the industries and customers they face. This is also the charm of the division of labor and cooperation in an open system.
Li Jie once again emphasized that adhering to "openness" is the core concept of Pimax in the selection of application scenarios in the era of spatial computing.
Because the open model has its own strong vitality and huge space. Even in the smartphone space, where the iPhone is almost dominant, the open Android-based system still accounts for 80% of shipments and 50% of revenue. Not to mention that in the PC segment, Mac only has a market share of around 10%.
If we talk about the era of spatial computing, Apple has once again defined and led the market, and it will inevitably occupy a considerable part of the market share in the future. But it's also certain: beyond Apple's closed world, there must be a larger open world.
Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared. Li Jie said that Pimax has been deeply cultivating the technical route of high-performance VR+VST for eight consecutive years, forming a complete and leading technology accumulation, R&D system and mass production experience in the field of high-performance VR, and establishing the brand image and reputation of Pimax as a high-end VR headset manufacturer in the global market, and in the process, it has also created a perfect marketing and service system for the global market.
Pimax is in the right place at the right time, and we will play a key role in the vast open market in the great era of spatial computing, and get our fair share and position. ”