Recently, many people have been confused by the metaverse, but as a hardware player, instead of studying vague concepts, I prefer to understand it from a product perspective. Three or four years ago, I experienced the Oculus Go VR all-in-one, and although its effect is far from the vision depicted in the metaverse, this device has greatly lowered the threshold for ordinary people to experience virtual reality, and has also brought me a lot of fun and freshness.
After many years, with the east wind of the meta-universe, many VR manufacturers have launched a new generation of all-in-one machine headsets, and iQiyi Adventure, which focuses on film and television content and VR ecology, has also updated its Dream VR all-in-one machine, as a product priced at less than 2,000 yuan, it has a Snapdragon XR2 flagship chip and 6DoF space freedom, in short, compared to the products of three or four years ago, it has greatly improved its hardware performance, can the experience be further? Curious, I had an experience with it.
Hairband-less headband, 6DoF space freedom
The overall shape of iQIYI Adventure Dream VR is more similar to Oculus Quest 2, they all use a dual-gamepad design, compared to the single-controller Oculus Go I used many years ago, the dual-controller Dream VR has more ways of operation, especially in game scenarios (such as music games), left and right hands can be combined to operate, and the playability is also higher.
In addition, Adventure Dream VR also supports 6DoF degrees of freedom, which specifically means that in addition to being able to detect changes in the field of view in the 3 directions of the head, it can also detect body movements back and forth, left and right movements, and up and down movements. Higher degrees of freedom mean more realistic simulation of interactive scenes and greater immersion.
There are four infrared cameras in the four corners of the front panel of the headset host, which can sense the external environment through the camera when worn, so as to facilitate spatial positioning. In addition, there are Type-C charging ports, headphone holes, and thermal openings above the console. The thermal opening also means that the fan has inside, which can effectively reduce the core temperature when used heavily, so that the performance can be released stably, and as for the fan noise, it will hardly be affected when it is used.
Adventure Dream VR features hidden near-field speakers, which are also a common configuration of VR all-in-ones, so you can feel the basic stereo sound effect even without headphones when using it, and the volume adjustment button is placed on the left side of the bottom of the headset.
In terms of wearing style, Adventure Dream VR uses an adjustable headband, which can quickly adjust the tightness of the headband through the knob on the rear side.
Compared with the lace-up design, it is more applicable, both children and adults can find the right wearing size, and most importantly, the headband design does not squash the hair like a strap, when you swim in the metaverse, you no longer have to worry about the image problem in the real world.
In terms of wearing comfort, the mask space of Adventure Dream VR is relatively large, and players like me who wear glasses can also wear it directly, and the material of the mask is a soft and elastic black sponge, which can effectively block out external light. The triangle gap under the mask is the space left for the bridge of the nose, maybe my nose is relatively small, after wearing it, if the eyes look down, you can still find a gap, but this is exactly what I want, because through the gap I can observe whether the position I am in is safe, whether there are obstacles on the ground, etc.
Handle, black and white contrast design is more beautiful, there is a positioning sensor in the black ring, you can let the helmet track the position of the handle, the handle is enough to fit the palm of the hand, the vibration of the motor is also good, the main control key layout is scientific, but the bottom of the button is slightly lower, another deficiency is that the handle workmanship is more general, and some gaps can be observed at the splicing.
The cheapest flagship VR all-in-one at the moment
At the beginning of the article, we mentioned that Adventure Dream VR is a very cost-effective headset, mainly because it is equipped with a flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chip in the price of less than 2000 yuan, and also supports 6DoF degrees of freedom, so it basically matches the flagship all-in-one headset in terms of performance and control.
Snapdragon XR2 is a custom chip developed by Qualcomm specifically for AR/VR devices, compared to the Snapdragon 835 chip used in VR devices many years ago, XR2's CPU and GPU performance are 2 times higher, AI performance is 11 times higher, and it also supports today's WiFi-6 and other standards. In terms of storage, Adventure Dream VR is equipped with 8GB of LPDDR4X memory and 128GB of UFS3.1 flash memory, which is very generous in the price range of 1999 yuan.
It is a pity that the screen quality, although its chip can fully support the higher specifications of the resolution, but limited by the price positioning, the screen of The Adventure Dream VR only supports 2560×1440 resolution, if calculated according to the monocular resolution, it is only 1280×1440, I can clearly feel the presence of grain when watching, as for the refresh rate, it supports 72/90Hz.
In terms of battery life, Adventure Dream is equipped with a battery capacity of 5500mAh, and can support about 2 hours of continuous playing in the measured full-powered state, and support about 3 hours if watching movies, which is a very good level in a number of VR all-in-one machines.
Backed by iQiyi Pictures, there are three free games
At present, the vast majority of VR devices will still copy the logic of flat interaction into the VR world, which is more in line with the operating habits of today's users. The same goes for the Adventure Dream VR all-in-one.
In terms of system UI, the overall style of Adventure Dream VR is relatively simple, its interface is dark style, and the eye stimulation is relatively small when watching. The home page is divided into four sections, corresponding to the four icons on the Dock bar, divided into app store, online theater, asset library (including my apps, albums, files, etc.), settings. In addition, on the homepage you can also view the battery level, network information and shortcut settings of the handle and console in real time.
Inside the system, when you lift the handle, the corresponding virtual handle will also appear in the screen, and the buttons on the handle will be marked, which is very friendly to novices who are not familiar with the layout of the buttons.
Backed by iQIYI's rich film and television resources, Dream VR provides a lot of movies, TV series, animations, variety shows, etc. that can be watched, but most of the resources need to open a membership. I take this year's hot high-scoring TV series "Mountains and Seas" as an example, and I can find that like most VR players, Adventure Dream VR simulates the scene of the giant screen of the movie hall, and the sense of immersion is still relatively strong.
In terms of game resources, the Adventure Dream system comes with 3 games with a total value of 187 yuan, and their gameplay is relatively simple and the production level is relatively good.
The first is the "Music Movement Future Sound Project", which can be found from the name, which is an easy to get started music game. My earliest contact with the music game is still the hot "Rhythm Master" in previous years, and Adventure Dream has been upgraded to a VR version, in the game, you can freely swing the two lightsabers in your hand, follow the rhythm of the music to hit the oncoming note blocks, some similar to the combination of "Fruit Ninja" + "Rhythm Master", in addition, there will be some obstacles and bombs in the game, thanks to the support of 6DoF freedom, you can also dodge left to right, or crouch down to dodge.
The second is "Professional Table Tennis VR", to be honest, before the experience, my expectations for this game are not high, because the operation of table tennis is very diverse, even if it is a VR game, it is difficult to completely restore the real sports feeling. However, after the experience, I found that its effect was somewhat beyond my expectations. First of all, the physical system is not bad, the strength of the ping-pong ball, the movement trajectory on the desktop, are very in line with the real scene, and the level of the robot is also very high (complex mode), almost all the balls can be received, but for the player, it is also only a simple serve, if it is a smash, spin, hang the ball and other fast and complex movements are difficult to capture.
The last one is Crisis Squad 2, a classic shooter game. In the game, you only have a pistol at the beginning, after saving enough money, you can replace automatic rifles, light machine guns and other stronger weapons, the authenticity of this game is relatively strong, you can simulate the real cartridge, and in the shooting scene there will be enemies from all directions, the game is still more exciting. But after all, it's a game, and you still have a superpower — dodging by observing the trajectory of bullets.
It's still far from the metaverse, but it doesn't affect its excellence
After my experience, compared to the Oculus Go three or four years ago, today's iQiyi Adventure Dream VR has really made great progress. It supports two handles and 6 DoF degrees of freedom, giving you more gameplay and experience in the game. The blessing of the XR2 chip has also enhanced its performance a lot, and it has also become the only all-in-one product with a flagship configuration below 2000 yuan. Of course, it also has some regrets, the biggest drawback is probably that the display quality has not improved much, but as a tasting equipment, it is also qualified.
At the end of the article, I would also like to share my thoughts on VR devices at this stage. The first thing to explain is that even though the performance of today's chips has improved a lot, from the perspective of product definition, today's VR devices have not changed qualitatively compared with previous years, but only around the performance and existing operation methods. In this case, it is actually far from the scene of the metaverse. In addition, in fact, for the metaverse, the progress of hardware products is only one of the links, and the establishment of related resources and ecology is also very important.
Now it seems that we are actually more suitable for the VR all-in-one as a simple entertainment device. Years ago, I shared my Oculus Go with family and friends, through two small lenses, they felt the excitement of the game, watched the film simulating the real scene, and for me, the greater sense of accomplishment is that when I see the expression of amazement on their faces, the mood is very satisfied. So now too, Adventure Dream VR can also let your relatives and friends feel the wonderful scenes that are difficult to reach in life, if you are interested in VR all-in-one machines, you may wish to experience it.
This article was originally published by Geek Park GeekPark, please add Geek Jun (ID: geekparker).