Zhi DongXi (public number: zhidxcom)
Author | Xu Shan
Edit | Yunpeng
At the end of February this year, Meta's internal VR operating system team codenamed XROS quietly disbanded.
The new XROS operating system is not based on Google Android's Linux underlying framework, but rather a completely new operating system developed by Meta specifically for VR devices.
Xiao Za, who has a "social software family bucket", has always been worried that his business will be limited by Apple or Google, trying to break through from the new VR operating system architecture.
However, due to various reasons such as R&D bottlenecks and large R&D investment, according to the technology media The Information, Meta disbanded the VR operating system team of XROS, which also means that Meta chose to abandon the construction of a new operating system framework.
In fact, not only does Meta see the market space for VR device operating systems, but other tech companies have also spied a huge market cake.
Abroad, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have been trying to create operating systems for VR/AR devices. In China, in addition to VR hardware manufacturers such as Pico and HTC, a startup company that has been developing VR device operating systems for nearly 7 years is also trying to become one of them, hoping to drive the "fast lane" of the next generation of computing platforms with its own 3D operating system.
Founded in 2014, Yingchuang Technology can be regarded as one of the earliest teams in China to start a business in the VR/AR industry. However, unlike most VR/AR companies that only focus on a certain segment, Sun Li, co-founder of Yingchuang Technology, revealed that Yingchuang Technology is the only company in China that cooperates with Qualcomm in the three fields of VR, AR and MR, and has also been Qualcomm's largest domestic customer in the XR field.
Behind the three major fields of VR, AR and MR, not only the credit of many smart glasses such as Honghu and Jimo and VR headsets such as Qi Ji, but also the core business of Yingchuang Technology is 3D operating system Teslaact.
Sun Li told Zhi Dong that the operating system of VR devices is equivalent to Android in the mobile phone world and Windows in the PC world.
He revealed that the total shipments of XR (AR, VR) equipment of Yingchuang Technology, such as Honghu, Jimo, Qiji and ODM business, once ranked first in China. At the same time, in 2021, the Tesseract system has covered 70% of domestic VR equipment brand owners, occupying 40% of the domestic VR operating system shipment market.
▲ Shadow Technology's Tesseract system
Sun Li also mentioned that at present, Yingchuang Technology has completed four rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of 600 million yuan, and the company's valuation will reach 6 billion yuan. On this occasion, we had the honor to have a two-hour in-depth dialogue with Sun Li, founder and chairman of Yingchuang Technology Group, to discuss the development story and deep business logic of vr/AR operating system with him.
First, with the game machine to learn programming? Sun Li chose to start a business with his high school classmates
Talking about the opportunity to create Yingchuang Technology, Sun Li, co-founder of Yingchuang Technology, told Zhidong that this may be traced back to his dream of "the world's richest man", or even a small bully learning machine.
In the 1990s, for domestic primary school students, the Xiaobawang learning machine was a new thing. After playing through a number of games such as Tank Wars and Super Mario, Sun Li, a third-grade student, discovered the programming function of the Little Bully Learning Machine through the instruction manual and began to teach himself the road of programming.
"I copied down the code on the manual, and then I typed it out step by step on the learning plane, and I could see the small planes moving, which aroused my great interest at the time." Sun Li said.
At that time, the Little Bully learning machine was equipped with G-BAISC (Game Basic) and F-Basic (Float Basic). Among them, G-BAISC can be used for game design, which also lays the groundwork for Sun Li to contact programming, learn computer professionals, and even for the subsequent establishment of game companies.
▲ Use the little bully learning machine to learn programming (image source: B station UP main smile is not a code farmer)
After junior high school, Sun Li had his own idol, Bill Gates, "creating an operating system in a computer, which is a very magical and incredible thing." When Sun Li talked about Microsoft and Bill Gates, he was a little excited and did not skimp on his appreciation.
Also in junior high school, Sun Li had already set his goal: "To be the next Microsoft." ”
Subsequently, Sun Li went from making web pages, making game websites, and even starting a game company Shanghai Innovation, all of which were moving towards his own goals.
Talking about the process of starting his own game company, Sun Li jokingly called it a process of "saving the country through the curve". "I've always thought of making games as my first pot of gold." In 2014, Sun Li sold Shanghai Chuangdong for 150 million yuan.
"At this time, I started thinking about what is the product that can change people's lives." Sun Li saw the ceiling of the game industry in starting a game company, and in 2014, when Meta bought Oculus for $2 billion, Sun Li also got an Oculus device to experience it, which gave him new ideas.
"I thought VR/AR devices would be one of the most important platforms of the next decade, even subverting mobile phones and computers." He talked about how excited he was at the time, and when he talked to a few of his friends about it, everyone felt that there was a lot of space in this field.
"I think starting a business still needs a little impulsiveness." In the midst of excitement, he and a few of his friends founded ShadowTronics. In the start-up team of Yingchuang Technology, Cai Baojun, chief scientist of Yingchuang Technology, Jiang Xiaodong, vice president of Yingchuang Technology, are Sun Li's high school classmates, and Hu Jinxin, co-founder and vice chairman of Yingchuang Technology, is Sun Li's college classmate.
Among them, Jiang Xiaodong was responsible for the module development and system stability problem analysis of Huawei products, and is currently responsible for the mapping, depth detection and 6DOF handle research and development of Yingchuang Technology.
The word "shadow creation" also has a special meaning. "We want to create an illusory world, and since all kinds of colors are reflected by the reflection of light from objects, we think that shadows essentially create the world. Shadow Creator's English name is also derived from this. Sun Li said.
At this point, several young people rooted in different industries came together because of an idea to change the world, and on a summer day in 2014, they founded Shanghai Yingchuang Information Technology Co., Ltd.
Second, with the 3D operating system accounting for 40% of the market, Yingchuang has overcome the difficulty of algorithm power consumption
Speaking of why do vr/AR device operating systems, Sun Li said with a smile: "This is still related to Microsoft. ”
As we all know, Microsoft relied on the DOS system and the PC giant IBM at the time to "tie" in a boat to make its system rapidly popularized.
After confirming that VR/AR devices will become the platform for the next generation of mobile terminals, Sun Li realized that if he can provide a set of operating systems that can be used by various VR/AR device manufacturers like Microsoft, there is undoubtedly a huge potential for development.
At that time, Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO successively entered the VR/AR field, which also hinted at the broad market prospects of VR/AR equipment. On the other hand, although the Android system has existed for many years, because the current mobile terminals such as mobile phones use multi-touch interaction or typing, they cannot fully match the VR/AR hardware, and the new VR/AR operating system needs to redefine the interaction mode of the device.
In other words, even in 2022, there is no standard operating system for XR devices on the market.
At present, the operating system of VR devices can be classified according to two main lines: one is the operating system architecture between Android and iOS, and the other refers to the freedom of the head and gestures of the VR device and the open and closed ecology.
In the former, Apple sticks to its own iOS unique ecology and is secretly preparing the realityOS system. According to Bloomberg, Apple is likely to introduce and demonstrate the realityOS system at WWDC2022.
At the same time, according to the Wall Street Journal, Google is developing an operating system developed specifically for VR/AR devices based on the Android Linux architecture.
Meta was previously reportedly disbanded by a VR/AR operating system team with a new architecture that was different from Android. As for whether Meta's VR operating system based on the Android architecture is still under development, there is not enough information to draw conclusions.
Sun Li talked about the current VR operating system market: "In the future, the operating system of VR devices will maintain the situation that Android and Apple are divided into two worlds, or three worlds. ”
According to the classification standard of the latter, at present, there are closed ecological 6+6, 6+3, 3+3 head hand freedom operating system in VR operating systems at home and abroad, or 3+3 head hand freedom and open ecological operating systems.
The 3D operating system Tesseract of Yingchuang Technology is the only operating system that authorizes third-party service providers to have 6+6 head-to-head freedom so far. That said, there is currently no fully equivalent operating system on the market.
Sun Li told Zhi Dong that VR devices cannot directly run an ordinary Android system, so from 2015, Yingchuang Technology began to build a 3D operating system suitable for VR and AR devices based on the open source Android operating system.
Initially they called the 3D operating system Blue Cat, and in 2021 they renamed it Tesseract. Sun Li said that Tesseract is the only operating system that integrates interaction algorithms such as SLAM, 6DoF, and natural gestures based on computer vision, as well as a variety of rendering optimization algorithms.
These algorithms are the results of years of research by Yingchuang Technology, among which, in terms of SLAM algorithm, the SLAM algorithm developed by Yingchuang Technology is more difficult than the simple use of computer vision to achieve SLAM.
▲The natural gesture operation of Yingchuang Technology
Yingchuang Technology makes up for the large power consumption problem caused by the computer vision shooting process by using a large number of IMUs (inertial sensors), and fully uses IMU data as a supplement in the calculation process to achieve the lightweight of the algorithm.
"Whether it's SLAM or 6DoF, the difficulty factor of integrating these algorithms into the same system is very high, which is why this operating system is best suited for VR/AR." Sun Li also said that having such an operating system also saves the process of "reinventing the text" for customers, and users can directly use Teslaact as the underlying framework and then adapt to their own hardware.
Similarly, Sun Li mentioned that unlike most manufacturers who want to learn from Apple to build their own "moat" with operating systems, Tesseract is the only 6+6 operating system authorized by third-party service providers so far, and everyone can get the right to use Tesseract through payment.
In addition to the operating system, Yingchuang Technology has also created a variety of smart glasses such as Honghu and Qiji.
▲ Sun Li wore a qi ji to play the piano
Among them, Honghu is the world's first MR glasses equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 platform, which can realize the 6DoF positioning tracking of the head hand, which can be operated by full freedom gestures, and its main body constitutes a pair of glasses, a host and two handles.
"Together, Honghu and Jimo shipped about 10,000 units last year." Sun Li revealed the latest shipment data statistics to Zhi Dongxi.
Third, taking into account the two commercial methods of hardware and software, the compound annual growth rate has achieved 260%.
Behind the accumulation of technology is the efforts made by the research team of Yingchuang Technology for many years. According to reports, the R & D team currently employs about 400 people, including more than 300 R & D personnel, the core team is composed of postdoctoral and doctoral students from Cambridge University, Stanford, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and other famous universities at home and abroad.
Sun Li said that Yingchuang Technology has always regarded itself as the promoter of the industry. "We hope to empower our products to the industry." He said.
At present, in terms of business model, Yingchuang Technology is mainly based on two commercial landing models:
First, the overall solution of MR smart glasses hardware and software is applied in education, industry, medical and other fields, which accounts for 20%-30% of the overall business.
▲Yingchuang Technology has developed a number of smart glasses
The second is to focus on the service and licensing fees of the operating system, which accounts for 70% of the revenue.
According to Sun Li, the revenue of Yingchuang Technology in the past three years has basically achieved a compound annual growth rate of 260%. "This year we expect revenue to reach about 500 million yuan." But at the same time, Sun Li also mentioned that the company's profit as a whole is still in a state of loss, but the amount of loss is decreasing year by year, and it will achieve positive profitability in about 2024.
How to increase the revenue source of Yingchuang Technology? Sun Li mentioned that in the future, Yingchuang Technology will expand its profitability by providing cloud services, and will provide some software and hardware to manufacturers in a modular solution.
"At present, Yingchuang Technology is at a crucial moment, if Yingchuang Technology can seize the opportunity and seize key customers, it can become a big company like Microsoft in one fell swoop." Sun Li said that if all goes well, the revenue of Yingchuang Technology can reach 6 billion yuan after three years, and the revenue will exceed 10 billion yuan after five years.
Fourth, watching movies is not the main landing path of VR equipment, and the underlying research and development needs more talents
Is the "metacosm" really silent after a year of heat? Will the VR/AR industry boom also decline?
"The recent BOOM in the VR/AR industry is due to technological maturity, but it is still far from the node of the outbreak." Sun Li believes that most of the current AR/VR devices are still at the level of movie-watching entertainment, and have not really brought value to users like mobile phones and computers.
So what can bring real value to users and promote product popularization?
"We believe we need to think of VR/AR devices as efficiency tools. Whether it is a mobile phone or a computer, it is a very useful efficiency tool in itself. Sun Li mentioned that smart glasses can only achieve a qualitative breakthrough in popularity if they become a just-needed need in scenarios such as office.
▲ Sun Li is wearing jimmed smart glasses
As for when will it become a flashpoint in the VR/AR industry?
He feels that most of the current VR/AR equipment is still in a stage of exploration, and many large manufacturers' VR/AR equipment are testing water products. The real VR/AR product may have to wait until 2023 after the launch of Apple's AR glasses, which may usher in an explosive period.
In addition to his status as an entrepreneur, Sun Li also serves as a postdoctoral workstation enterprise mentor and deputy director of the Fudan-Yingchuang Optical Chip Joint Research Center. As a mentor, he gave his advice to college students who were hesitant to enter the VR/AR industry.
"At present, the mainstream form of VR/AR hardware is still uncertain, and the VR content ecology is not perfect, which is not the best period for industry development." However, there is a shortage of talents in the vertical fields of rendering engines, image processing, operating systems, or AI applications in VR/AR systems, and you may wish to try them in these directions. ”
Conclusion: On the eve of the change of computing platforms, Chinese companies aimed at operating systems
In the PC era, Microsoft knocked on IBM's door with a semi-finished DOS system, and then took advantage of the momentum and even became the world's largest company in terms of market capitalization. Years later, a Chinese company took aim at the operating system of the next-generation computing platform smart glasses, moving toward the "Microsoft" of the next era.
The development direction of 3D Internet is already the trend of the times, how to make all walks of life from mobile Internet to 3D Internet to create value is the key to the birth of new industries. On this road, Yingchuang Technology is not guided by financing and listing, and chooses to steadily go through its own business model and build an open ecosystem with the operating system as the core.