The next topics to be discussed will include but are not limited to the following:
The car cockpit may become the last pure land of play for adults;
When the game is on the car, "can play" and "cool to play" is not a concept at all;
You never know what your teammates are using to play games with you;
Musk: You're going to play real games in the cockpit, and this car is... Ideal L9: Yes, it's right underneath;
Cockpit game is to better carry the baby? That's real nonsense.
body:
Recently, the topic of "are we going to play games in the car" has become a little hot again.
The specific reason is that I believe everyone knows, thanks to the ideal L9's new car communication activities, this topic has been pulled out again for discussion.
As far as the eye can see, many people think that playing games with on-board hardware is simply too unreliable.
Admittedly, before discussing whether it will become a third space and whether there is a cultural attribute, the essence of the vehicle is still the means of delivery, and the core element of driving behavior is safety, which is beyond doubt.
But we want to talk seriously about "gaming in the car" and "gaming in the car" – note that these are two things. On the one hand, analyze the possibility of getting in the car and which games are suitable for getting on the car; on the other hand, look at the essence of the problem of "playing games in the car".
Why does the game get in the car?
First of all, the need for entertainment in the cockpit of a car has long been proven to be necessary and evolving.
In recent years, commercial KTV venues have not been the hearts of young people, so the keen KTV jukebox system developers with a library and microphones, using the airtightness of the car space and the innate quality of the sound, the cockpit has been built into an exclusive K-song room. As long as you don't care about the eyes of others, everyone can be the most hilarious Mai Ba in the parking lot.
Car companies, suppliers, technology giants, Internet companies are all bright guys, why is the cockpit game still not on fire?
Before asking this question, let's first figure out who is playing the game.
Shen Yanan, co-founder and president of Ideal Auto, once said at a public event, "We have statistics that the average length of time that Ideal ONE owners stay in the car but do not drive each week has reached 4.4 hours."
Talking to many people about this topic, basically everyone will think that this 4.4-hour scene will most likely be waiting at the campus gate to pick up the children from school. Or as friends at the car company said, an hour in the cockpit of a car is the last lunch break for workers.
Let me give you a particularly typical example. One day I went to the hospital to visit friends, my daughter-in-law waited for me in the parking lot for a short time, and I could pull out my mobile phone to open "Glory of the King" for two rounds of qualifying. When I got back to the car and saw that her face was like an eggplant burned in a pot, I probably didn't have to ask if I won or lost, take her to a good meal.
Whether it is a lunch break, waiting for people, or charging, the best target of the current car cockpit game is to target fragmented time and users who are willing to pass the time in the cockpit. Like many mobile games, it doesn't require a lot of time and space, and it doesn't need a very clear purpose. Start at any time, end at any time — at least for a long time until Elon Musk's top A-3 blockbuster is fully realized.
Some people may say that there is disposable time, why don't I brush Weibo / read Zhihu / chat WeChat / on B station / close your eyes for a while?
How time is allocated is everyone's freedom. In essence, adults are free to choose, not to be left without.
I've heard from a friend that the time he passed The Order 1886 (1886) on PS4 was squeezed out of the time from quietly getting up at five o'clock in the morning to before his wife got up at seven o'clock.
For those players who love the game, don't doubt their enthusiasm. All they need is space and time not to be disturbed.
Games are not "playable" if you have them
In terms of developing cockpit scene possibilities, GeekCar's good friend Miss Leek Box didn't mind letting her Tesla Model 3 bear more. If it weren't for the strong and persistent taste in the car later, not enjoying snail powder in the office at noon was her greatest kindness to her colleagues.
Back to the point. Whether it is a super long screen that can be divided into two for more than one meter long, or a co-driver entertainment screen whose size is about to catch up with the mainstream computer monitor, or a co-driver screen that is independently connected to Bluetooth headphones, etc., it is not difficult to see that more and more car companies are iron-hearted to take the independent entertainment space to the end.
The better the vision, the more often the reality is bone-chilling. Playing unpleasant in-car games, like a large number of missing online music in the song library, and travel services that can only be queried and cannot be booked, are all angels who folded their wings in the previous life and were taken to bake wings.
It's not enough to just get in the car, the game to enter the cockpit still has to face important problems to be solved:
01
Core hardware capabilities
How well does the in-vehicle chip perform? What kind of games can I run? Running locally or mirroring directly?
This is a question to the soul of the game in the car. The operating mechanism of the car is different from the personal computer, and the configuration cannot be added at will. Can the in-vehicle SoC provide a stable experience for the user's gaming entertainment behavior under the premise of ensuring that all the body functions are normal?
Facts have proved that even luxury brands that emphasize the sense of technology must look at actual performance.
We chose the national MOBA mobile game "Glory of the King", found the entrance in the application market of the co-driver entertainment screen, tossed for nearly half an hour, and finally completed the download update and successfully logged in.
After entering the game, after pulling all the screens full according to the previous habits, it was found that the actual frame rate of the picture could not be played normally.
This game is all too familiar for gamers. Therefore, open the picture options, set the frame rate and resolution to the lowest "energy saving" file, select "Standard" for the total picture quality, and turn off the anti-aliasing option that occupies a lot of hardware resource expenditure.
As can be seen in the display screen, the jagged teeth around the characters are very obvious. Even if the pursuit of graphics has been reduced to almost the minimum, there will be some stuttering during the process of moving the character model around.
Entering the map's smallest single-player mode, the content that needs to be rendered in the entire scene is much smaller than the standard 5-on-5 mode. The character movements, moves, and special effects in the open space can only be said to be barely smooth. If the characters controlled by the AI and I really start to fight in the core area, the frame rate of the picture will drop to a certain extent.
If I had to describe it, it would be that I had never seen the character's killer skill, which should have been an electric flint, so real in the special effects of the picture that was slowed down.
Because it is directly controlled by the touch screen, the temperature of the co-pilot screen tells me that it is almost overwhelmed. The sound of the fan coming from nowhere also seems to tell the chip's cooling system that is working dutifully.
As for the strange posture of the whole person's upper body reaching forward to play the game with the touch screen of the car machine, it is not a good feeling. At least it's not much better than when I was a kid, to avoid my parents' discovery, to tuck myself and the bedside lamp into the bed at night to play the Nintendo GAMEBOY handheld, and finally it was so hot that I almost had heat stroke.
It's not that I deliberately, in fact, people support external handles
The experience here reminds me of a meme in the Tieba subculture called "1 frame can play, 2 frames are smooth, 3 frames of e-sports". This sentence is a joke about those players who have to force the game to run no matter what the minimum configuration requirements of the game are, even if the experience is very bad.
It turns out that it makes practical sense to use a ceiling-level game to "torture" mainstream cockpit chips. If you do not explore the margin of the ability of mainstream chips, everyone is still rolling up the number of cockpit screens, the fluency of the car, and the types of ecological applications, and the day when the appeal of the experience is seriously faced, I don't know when it will come.
02
Networks that cannot be ignored
On the other hand, the impact of network conditions on the gaming experience cannot be ignored. If the player can tolerate poor image quality and fluency, then network latency is another dimension of suffering.
Slightly experienced players know that the light network delay affects the speed at which the player receives screen information, judges decisions and input operations, and when it is severe, the game screen will be directly stuck. By the end of this delay, it is presumably that the player's character has been knocked down or that he has missed a game that could affect the outcome of the game.
Affected by the form of the game, the confrontation is slightly more intense, the requirements for judgment are slightly stricter, and the delay will immediately become a major enemy that affects the experience. Unfortunately, if it is not a stable wireless network connection indoors, the quality of the network connection in an open environment has always been a huge challenge for the actual gaming experience. Just like me in the back seat of the commuter ride-hailing car, even if the game-specific mobile phone has always had a good 5G signal, in the tens of minutes of driving on the main road from Beijing's South Fourth Ring Road to the East Fourth Ring Road, I will still pass through several signal blind spots, and experience several packages ranging from seconds to tens of seconds, network latency soaring, and even completely stuck.
Latency is the enemy of all players
03
The gaming advantages of the cockpit are still irreplaceable
The difficulty we are discussing is not the possibility of blindly singing the game into the cockpit. If we just give a yes or no conclusion simply and rudely, that is really a problem, and succumbing to stereotypes is by no means our style.
Just like for many years, whenever animation is mentioned, the mainstream perception in China has always unilaterally considered it "for children", and even more will be equated with "childishness" in behavior. But in fact, animation is only a form of expression and content carrier, and excellent script and lens language, and even surreal pictures can bring far more energy than live-action shooting.
Back on the car, the car cockpit also has its own irreplaceable advantages.
First of all, the car cockpit is a very "convenient" space in some way, somewhere between a personal smartphone and home indoor entertainment. Parking, basement spaces, curbside... The car itself is a mobile private space that connects many real-world locations. The binding attributes of the car and the driver and occupant determine that as long as the legal compliance does not violate public order and good customs and does not cause trouble to outsiders, the car has both the two attributes of a movable private space and an equipment complex.
Image source: Qualcomm
Secondly, the car is an innate real cockpit. Friends who know a little about the game can more or less name several racing games: Microsoft's Forza series, Sony's "GT Turismo" series, and EA's "Need For Speed" series that has been dormant for a long time. Just like flying joysticks are for flight simulation/air combat games, although gamepads can be played, mouse and keyboard can be played, and even touch screens can be played, the most enjoyable is the steering wheel, gear handles and pedals under the feet that are closest to the real way of control. Looking at it this way, the most familiar parts in the cockpit of the car are already ready, and even the budget for buying a separate racing seat is saved.
Of course, the user's line of sight to the screen is better if it can be better taken care of. The three-point line between the user's line of sight, the control device and the content display is more reasonable for simulation and racing games.
Forza Horizon 4 racing cockpit perspective
up 主：FD
Third, the equipment advantages of the car cockpit. Except for a few extremely cheap models, the acoustics in the cockpit of the car are generally not bad. In terms of how to achieve better audio performance and higher sound insulation, car companies and suppliers have been working hard for too many years, too light and familiar with the road. Before working in the WEILAI EC6 smart cockpit evaluation work, I tried to connect to Bluetooth with a fun mentality and returned to the King's Canyon. In addition to the slight transmission delay, the sound field wrapping and heavy volume of the 12 speakers are far from comparable to the phone's external amplifier or true wireless headphones.
NIO EC6 Smart Cockpit
Although the effect of audio equipment has always been mysterious and hanging, the huge gap in the number of louder speakers, larger unit sizes, and higher power has also proved a simple and crude truth: a miracle. In contrast, the game behavior in the room, to achieve good acoustics, good sound insulation conditions, the price to pay is too large.
The characteristics of the cockpit affect the experience of the game in the car, and also determine the type of game that can enter the cockpit.
What games can I play in the car?
Now when it comes to the future of gaming, it's always about 5G, the cloud, VR/AR/MR — oh yes, and the metaverse that anyone wants to play.
The future is too far away, only the day. Let's talk about something practical: what kind of game is suitable for getting in the car.
01
The network remains the decisive foundation
As mentioned earlier, latency affects the final experience. Considering the uneven conditions of networking in an open environment and the plethora of factors that may cause interference, network problems are still inevitably taken into account.
Based on this, competitive multiplayer game types that emphasize real-time online and faster gaming are obviously more difficult to implement. League of Legends, Glory of Kings, DOTA series as the representative of the MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, Chinese translated as "multiplayer online tactical competition") type of games bear the brunt, the intensity of the confrontation between multiple groups of live players determines, any one person drops the chain, I am afraid that not only themselves and the winners and losers, but also the blood pressure of their teammates.
「Listen here, noob」
Perhaps mobile devices such as 5G mobile phones can provide stable internet hotspot access at the expense of battery life and temperature control – in that case, why not play games directly with mobile phones? And why should we give up the near and seek the far?
Similarly, the emphasis on competitive elements and fast-paced online shooting, fighting, racing, and sports competition games are obviously not suitable for the car before there is a major innovation in the networked experience.
What is gratifying is that we can see on some new models in China that the latecomer advantage of new hardware is emerging. As long as the extreme inconvenience caused by the mismatch between the shape and size of the central control screen and the control mode can be put aside, and then the rapid accumulation of physical fatigue caused by holding the central control screen, the fluctuation of network latency seems to be within an acceptable normal range.
You never know what your teammates are using to play with you
Up Lord: Battle of Pineapple Glory
On the contrary, casual, business, text, and tableboard games that do not emphasize the rhythm of the game are less stringent in terms of connection speed and network latency. As long as it can provide game account login, update and upgrade, synchronization of the progress of the network connection guarantee, such games can often provide a good entertainment experience, the threshold for getting started is relatively lower.
Of course, it is also necessary to design or external equipment through reasonable interactive control to solve the fatigue caused by the long-term suspension of the arm, otherwise it will still be more curious than the actual significance.
02
Those car companies that can play
In 2021, as savvy as Musk more than once shocked the world with the news that the AAA game masterpiece was about to hit the car.
The new Model S Plaid, announced in June, features amd Ryzen processors and AMD RDNA2 architecture GPUs, claiming performance comparable to overclocked Sony PS5 consoles. In the demo video, The Model S Plaid's 17-inch central control screen is running Cyberpunk 2077, which Musk says is "pretty awesome, very smooth, and even runs to 60 frames."
With The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and then Cyberpunk 2077, we don't know why Musk and his team are so keen to bring Polish game developer CD Projekt (CDPR) to the car. As of April 2022, The Witcher 3 shipped 40 million units worldwide in 2015. In line with the principle of "black and red is also red", cyberpunk 2077, which has been mixed by players, has sold 18 million sets since its release in December 2020.
There is no doubt that CDPR, which is loved by players as the "Polish Donkey", represents almost the highest level of production of games in the world, and is also one of the largest traffic IP in the game industry. Leaving aside Musk's preference for CDPR, being able to run the world's hottest AAA game masterpiece on his own car is a strong embodiment of the technical strength of Tesla and partner AMD.
At CES 2022, AMD CEO Lisa Su also confirmed that in addition to Tesla Model S/X, Model 3 and Model Y are also applying AMD-related technology products in the central control entertainment system.
Musk and "Su Ma" this wave of mutual platform, I give a full score.
Just earlier this year, Musk tweeted that he was going to bring the Steam game library to the car. If that's not just talk, it's far more meaningful than some of CDPR's AAA blockbusters.
As the world's largest comprehensive digital gaming social platform, Steam, which has reached 69 million DAU in 2021, connects developers, publishers, and players as never before. And the full Steam ride will have multiple significance:
The digital version of the game on the Steam Mall can be browsed and purchased on the car terminal, and the games that have been owned can be downloaded to the car machine system, and the cockpit hardware and external equipment can be played at any time;
Steam's complete game-based social and social features, including instant text, voice communication, group communication, etc., are expected to enter the cockpit system and connect the multi-terminal experience;
There are already some manufacturers that have opened up the multi-terminal cross-platform online mechanism of the same game in PS/XBOX/Steam, and if the Steam connection on the car side can also be incorporated into it, the experience will be more complete;
It is also the most important point that the games that support Steam Cloud cloud archiving can also allow the game progress in the personal computer to be downloaded and run by the car machine, and truly complete the seamless experience between cockpit games and family games.
G Fat Valve founder Gabe Newell
"Software-defined cars" have long been the consensus of the industry. If you substitute for the game on the car, the hardware mentioned above is an indispensable foundation, and if the Tesla team can fully achieve all this through steam, it will be a real merit.
If nothing else, the relevant content services will still be paid for in the form of subscriptions to Tesla users, who will pay as much as they like.
This shore of the Pacific Ocean, which is also a game on the car, the ideal L9 side of a series of spoilers to spread activities, can be said to be too clever.
On the one hand, the new car will completely continue the "car and home" concept of the explosive ideal ONE. On the other hand, through the release of pictures and text information, the two controversies of "whether the cockpit can play the game" and "whether the cockpit game can coax the baby" are put together in front of people's eyes, giving everyone too much space for discussion.
3K resolution automotive-grade OLED ceiling entertainment screen (if 2560×1600 can be called 3K), 21 speakers, the maximum power amplifier is the highest level of the current car original audio 2160W, 7.3.4 panoramic sound layout, 4D immersive audio system... In contrast, these high-level hardware equipment makes the meaning of premium more reasonable.
According to the available information, the ideal L9 cleverly uses cable direct to the screen projection to achieve. Whether it is the center control screen, the co-pilot entertainment screen or the rear cabin entertainment screen, you can use a Type-C line to achieve the projection of the Nintendo Switch.
The ideal L9 does not use the port model of Tesla, and the amount of development and the difficulty of achieving the game on the car are likely to be much lower. As long as a sufficient type-C cable is required, it can connect the host side to the high-level cockpit entertainment hardware, and the screen, audio, etc. are only used for local output. Not only can it avoid the bugs that may occur when the game is ported and developed across platforms, but it will also reduce the possible transmission delays and other drawbacks to some extent.
Ideal Auto also said in the L9 spoiler campaign that some mobile phones, Pads and laptops that adopt the Type-C interface have also achieved high-definition screen projection + charging, and more devices will be adapted in the future.
As for why the Nintendo Switch was chosen as the focus of communication, perhaps this is where the ideal team is clever.
Nintendo's significance to the gaming industry and gamers can be described by a consensus in the English game media: "Nintendo has made a name for itself as a family-friendly developer".
On the one hand, Nintendo's Mario, Zelda, Pokémon pokémon, etc. are already world-class cultural IP.
Nintendo's first-party games, on the other hand, have long been fun based on "fun". If you don't believe it, you can push back two years and look at the Switch "Ring Fit Adventure" that was once out of stock during the national stay at home at the beginning of the new crown epidemic in 2020. Not sticking to the form, so that people who do not play games can also enjoy the fun of games, it can be said that it is the charm of the Switch.
Rather than "rubbing glass" with a mobile phone, many of Nintendo's first-party game series have always paid more attention to multiplayer fun. As you can see from the first promotional images of the Ideal L9, each kid in the middle and back rows has a Joy-Con controller in their hands. The message is in line with the family concept of both Nintendo and the ideal car.
In addition, at a time when no game rating-related policies have been introduced in China, a large number of all-age games on the Switch have also made young parents more worry-free and at ease when choosing games to enjoy with their babies.
Although the launch has been postponed due to changes in the domestic epidemic prevention situation, I still look forward to the actual performance of the ideal L9 game on the car.
Write at the end
Let's go back to the very beginning.
Can I play games in the cockpit? Totally yes.
At this stage, whether it is a large-scale game with high hardware configuration requirements or a small game based on leisure and entertainment, with the pace of technological decentralization and the gradual landing of the latecomer advantage, it is completely expected.
The combination of hardware and equipment is not difficult to achieve, the degree of understanding of the "playable" of the game by the product managers of the car company, and the understanding of the designers' understanding of the game-centered control design determine whether the user gets a real entertainment experience in the cockpit or a well-behaved performance art.
As for whether the cockpit game can coax the baby? I think that's the problem.
Not to mention the safety problems in the driving of the vehicle, and the interference of the game sound on the driver. In a moving vehicle, the eyeball should be kept in a tense state for a long time, and the damage to vision can be calculated on an hourly basis.
Perhaps this concept cannot be quantified by numerical science, but here are some personal experiences that can be shared a little.
Commuting on public transport is often the most dominant game scenario. Judging from the past experience of an adult holding a PSP/PSV/3DS handheld to open up multiple "Machine Warfare" series of wargames, each one will take about 80 to 100 hours from pit to pit. At the end of each work, it will feel that the vision has dropped significantly, or the symptoms of slower focus of the eyes last for a month or two.
This is still true for adults, not to mention children who are in the developmental stage and have to spend their daily work with textbooks.
Of course, the game behavior in the cockpit is not to refer to the safety design that can only be started when some video playback is parked, and to avoid these potential risks and controversies by restricting the scene, probably every sober designer will have a mind.
At the end of the day, the essence of the game's entry into the cockpit of a car is for better recreation. As for whether it is in line with driving safety, whether it can be used to carry a baby, and under what circumstances it is suitable for the game, I believe that everyone with normal cognition will make a correct judgment.