This is the first product on the market that uses a Micro OLED screen to achieve binocular 8K effect. Monocular 4K, pulling the resolution to the limit of what the current industry can reach, is almost a ceiling. Being able to read text clearly means that in Vision Pro, the screens of all other electronic products can be replaced.
At the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) held on June 5, local time, Apple brought an impressive MR (mixed reality) device Apple Vision Pro, with Eyesight, hand-eye control and other functions. Apple CEO Tim Cook said in his keynote speech that "Apple Vision Pro brings us into the era of spatial computing."
"The entry of a company like Apple will undoubtedly bring a key inflection point to the industry, and may usher in the active activities of multiple links in the industry such as product form, content ecology, consumer application scenarios, and industrial chain, and achieve breakthroughs in public cognition." YVR Chief Marketing Officer Zhu Ran told The Paper (www.thepaper.cn).
Apple seemed to be strenuously avoiding mentioning the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) and the metaverse at the conference. For example, the outside of the headset is equipped with the "Eyesight" perspective function, which is actually a 3D avatar of the user's face, generated by scanning the face, industry insiders revealed that this function is achieved through machine learning, but Apple is silent about AI. Zhang Xiaojun, founder of See+AR, also told The Paper: "Apple has never mentioned the meta-universe, and the concept of pure virtual world does not conform to Apple's aesthetics. The form of MR is also trying to avoid users entering the closed virtual world, and the emergence of Eyesight is to not immerse people in their own world. ”
The outside of Apple's headset is equipped with the "Eyesight" perspective function, which is actually a 3D avatar of the user's face, and also reflects the concept of avoiding the user from entering the closed virtual world.
A "shot in the arm" for the industry
Many technology practitioners and futurists believe that the way humans interact will shift from 2D interaction to more efficient 3D interaction. 3D visual interaction systems depend on the development of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), which are collectively referred to as "extended reality" (XR).
"Before the release of Apple's MR device, the XR (extended reality) industry had entered a trough." Zhang Xiaojun said that for a long time, the industry has been difficult to be taken seriously, consumers mainly see it as a way to play casual games, rather than an electronic device necessary for daily life, which is also related to the hardware and ecological immaturity of the XR industry.
Chen Ming, chief operating officer of YVR, also said in an interview with The Paper that the reason why VR technology has fallen into a trough is because manufacturers have hurriedly dispersed after following the trend, overestimating the level of VR in the short term, and underestimating its long-term development and improvement capabilities.
Apple's entry into AR has obviously given the industry a "shot in the arm". Apple, as one of the world's most technological, innovative and brand appeal companies, has used Vision Pro to "hang" peers in an all-round way. "Before the development of the AR industry was limited, the essence was still because the product was not good, such as the screen effect after wearing it, the content was not good enough, and it would definitely be unsellable." But Apple's product this time, judging from the promotional video, can be called perfect. Zhang Xiaojun said.
Zhu Ran also believes that "Vision Pro can definitely be regarded as an experimental product that breaks the convention, which will bring positive impetus to the industry." ”
Some industry insiders questioned whether Apple's MR equipment would squeeze the development space of other manufacturers, and several respondents believed that it would not. "The first reaction is to squeeze, because apples are better in all aspects, and people will choose apples." Zhang Xiaojun said, "Later, I thought it was not, because in essence it may still be a problem of market positioning and price range, and the products of these domestic manufacturers are affordable alternative products, not products that compete with it (Apple), so from this point of view, the market positioning of products is quite different, but it may be a promotion." ”
Very impressive effect
Several respondents believe that the Vision Pro's configuration is an industry benchmark. In terms of display, the Vision Pro main display uses Micro OLED, and the resolution of one eye reaches 4K, which is the first product on the market that uses Micro OLED screen to achieve binocular 8K effect.
The facts have also proved that the visual experience feedback obtained by ultra-high resolution is generally very positive, and almost everyone who has experienced Vision Pro has given a fairly high evaluation. "Whether in terms of hardware parameters, interaction design, or the wide range of application scenarios released at the conference, Apple's Vision Pro is amazing." Pengpeng Li, technical director of XR at Unity China, told The Paper. Unity has become the native partner of Apple announced at this conference to log on to VisionOS.
At present, most of the VR products on the market, for cost considerations, most of them use LCD or Mini LED backlight + LCD form, the advantages are obvious, low cost, high yield of mass production maturity, obvious shortcomings, brightness, ppi, contrast and color gamut and other aspects of parameters are also lower. The price of Quest 2, PICO 4, etc. is between RMB 2,000-3,000, while the price of Micro OLED single screen is as high as hundreds or even hundreds of US dollars.
It is understood that Apple's Mirco OLED is fully customized, with a size of 1.42 inches, which belongs to the largest Micro OLED screen. According to relevant screen practitioners, the yield rate of the two Micro OLED screens equipped by Apple this time is only 20%, which is one of the reasons for the high price of its MR equipment.
4K is one of the key points pointed out by industry insiders, although 4K is not unfamiliar to consumers, but this "4K" is different from the 4K common in audio and video products. "Monocular 4K, which pulls the resolution to the limit that the current industry can reach, can give people a very shocking effect. It sounds like 4K is common, but in VR, AR, 4K is almost a ceiling. Zhang Xiaojun said, "This is a threshold product, 4K can make consumers feel acceptable." 2K has a screen effect, which is like walking into a video hall in the 90s. ”
"Many people don't notice that in today's product display, Apple showed a lot of text content, such as text in the app, web document design, etc. It dares to show, which means that people can see the word clearly when they wear it, which means that it opens up a very large office scene. Zhang Xiaojun said that this means that in Vision Pro, the screens of all other electronic products can be replaced.
Apple showed a lot of text.
From the perspective of form and technical path, Vision Pro may be more like VR, through the full-color "Video See Through" (VST) to achieve MR fusion effect, but Zhang Xiaojun believes that the biggest difference between Vision Pro and existing VR and AR glasses in the market lies in two points. "The first is that it achieves a 4K display, and the second is that it uses the form of VR glasses to form the effect of AR glasses. Both of these are directly related to human vision. Current AR products are quite rudimentary and can only meet some specific needs, and Vision Pro may be Apple's transition form to achieve idealized AR in the future. ”
Apple carries the dream of bringing AR to the C-end
At the conference, Apple announced a new operating system "VisionOS", which Apple called "an operating system designed for spatial computing" that can synchronize with iPhones, iPads and other devices in real time. According to the release demo, VisionOS still maintains Apple's usual design language, which Apple says is "similar to MaOS and iPadOS and built on decades of engineering innovation."
Zhu Ran said that Vision Pro can quickly expand the use boundary of MR devices by taking advantage of Apple's unique ecological advantages or achieving "seamless switching" with other Apple ecological devices, providing unlimited imagination for future ecological applications, and will integrate with more application scenarios. In the long run, Apple's leading position in the content ecology is also expected to attract a large number of content developers to participate in related content creation, so as to greatly optimize the XR content ecology and experience at this stage, promote the continuous prosperity of the content ecology of the entire industry, and form a positive cycle in the industry.
For the application scenarios such as "MR + education" and "MR + industry" that Apple hastily brought over, Zhang Xiaojun believes that Apple has invested huge research and development costs in the AR field. "Some of the flashing features at the conference may have undergone countless R&D and innovations." He said, "We do the technology to know how many engineers have worked hard and how many iterations of the version can be done." AR is a very high threshold industry, and it is extremely difficult to do a good job of ecology, hardware, software, and a very good experience at the same time. At present, VR and AR glasses on the market are also facing similar problems, only hardware, no developers, destined to not last. ”
Regarding AR products, Microsoft, Google and Apple have their own technical routes and market positioning, and many domestic companies such as PICO and iQiyi also have relevant layouts, "Most of them are B-side-oriented, strictly speaking, only Meta and Apple are doing C-side products." Zhang Xiaojun said, "In fact, Apple carries a dream of bringing AR to the C end." ”
Spatial computing is a value orientation
At this conference, Apple also brought a new concept: spatial computing, which usually refers to a series of theories, technologies and tools for collecting, acquiring, processing and interacting three-dimensional multimodal data.
At present, various Internet giants have different understandings of spatial computing, and some professional practitioners often classify 3D engines or rendering as or even equated with spatial computing. Zhang Xiaojun said that the essence of spatial computing is to allow computers to understand the physical world, and based on this, seamlessly integrate the real world and the virtual world, including 6dof (6 degrees of freedom) motion tracking technology with Vio/Slam as the core; 3D reconstruction technology of people/objects/fields; Pervasive VPS (Visual Positioning) technology, etc.
"In fact, the term spatial computing is not new or old, it is not like mobile computing or personal computing is a very early word, spatial computing is a concept that only appeared in the 2000s and 2010s." Zhang Xiaojun said that in the era of mobile Internet, our computing or interaction is limited to between mobile phones and people. In the scenario of spatial computing, it is the interaction of three subjects, namely people, equipment, and the physical world.
Zhang Xiaojun believes that spatial computing is first an algorithmic technical capability, and secondly, it brings a new natural interaction change. The change in natural interaction may seem simple, but it affects the whole body, because the change in interaction affects the change of the entire application.
Matthew Ball, author of the best-selling book "The Metaverse Changes Everything," tweeted during WWDC: "Spatial computing is the way Apple uses to illustrate the 'metaverse'. But Zhang Xiaojun does not agree, he believes that spatial computing is a value-oriented, and putting reality at the center of the digital world is the core value concept of "spatial computing". "For many years we mentioned space calculations and nobody cared, but now that Apple does, it's different. Apple's avoidance of the term meta-universe is not only out of the consideration of self-esteem and not following the crowd, but more importantly, a value-oriented consideration. Apple does not want people to live in virtual space, the future of mankind is undoubtedly more and more digital, the more so, the more scarce and precious the real is. ”