Wen 丨 Zheng Xuan
Source 丨Tou China Network
In 2021, after the meta-universe was hot and ByteDance officially announced its acquisition of VR headset manufacturer Pico, the market blew up a meta-universe storm. Some listed companies that have taken the concept of meta-universe have already gained several limit increases.
The explosion of the meta-universe has made the VR industry, which has been silent for a while, become the focus of the market again. StepVR founder Guo Cheng told The Investment Network that the metacosm is not a new concept, and this time can break the circle, which is inseparable from the development of technology inside and outside the industry for many years.
STEPVR, which has been precipitated in the VR market for 8 years, is using a very challenging way to realize VR restoration of the five senses experience through self-developed VR large-space laser positioning technology, motion capture technology and force feedback technology, to create a VR large-space offline experience store, with reference to the development path of the PC from offline Internet cafes, so that ordinary consumers can enjoy the deep immersion VR experience at a low price; at the same time, through the self-developed universal treadmill, the large space products are changed into small space VR terminal products, extending to the C-end family consumer level. Create a "gate" into the metaverse world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="88" > under the trend of three-dimensional, virtual, and internet of everything, the virtual economy is accelerating the formation of the metacosm</h1>
Roblox founders, who had earlier pushed the concept of metaverses to the forefront, proposed eight key characteristics of the metaverse - identity, friends, immersion, anywhere, diversity, low latency, economy, civilization, and the industry is more willing to explain it with the virtual world "Oasis" in the "Ready Player One", that is, a virtual real world, in which people live, socialize, shop, work...
To achieve this virtual real world is not easy, it needs to be fully equipped with the above eight characteristics.
According to the data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently, as of the end of September, the number of 5G base stations in China has reached 1.159 million, the number of 5G terminal connections has reached 450 million households, and the Gigabit optical network also has the ability to cover more than 200 million households. In terms of cloud XR construction, under the joint promotion of major operators and cloud service providers such as Microsoft, Huawei, Alibaba, and Expo Cloud, the effect of in-depth integration of terminals, networks, and clouds has initially emerged. On the other hand, underlying technologies such as AI and blockchain are also widely used in various industries. Finally, the most important XR section, products, ecology, including the user base, have a relatively solid foundation under the precipitation of these years. For example, the shipment of VR equipment has begun to grow rapidly since the launch of quest 2, and it is expected to exceed 10 million units in 2021.
In addition, in the environment of the epidemic restricting travel, the virtual economy such as virtual conferences, exhibitions, fashion weeks, art exhibitions, social networking, shopping applications are more and more extensive, users are accepting and adapting to this new form, such as the current HTC Vive big and small conferences, AWE exhibitions, Virtual Market and other exhibitions have chosen to be carried out in VR, and visitors from all over the world can also participate in these events in VR without leaving home. On the other hand, virtual people and digital people have also made great breakthroughs in the past two years, and virtual applications such as virtual Internet celebrities and hosts are also sweeping the world at an unprecedented speed. For example, at the recent NVIDIA press conference, the fake real "virtual Huang Jenxun" successfully deceived all the audiences watching the conference, and its degree of realism is comparable to the real shooting effect.
From the research and development of virtual reality-related technologies, market investment, and then to the application of actual scenarios, the set of virtual economies they have formed is accelerating the construction of the metaverse, which are important bricks and tiles for the construction of the metaverse world. Under the impact of the metaverse boom, this year's VR industry is undoubtedly ushering in the second spring, because VR has an inseparable relationship with the metacosm, and vr or AR will be the last screen of human beings before the brain-computer interface is realized. At this stage to achieve immersive, realistic virtual effects, VR is the most feasible and the most mature form of technology.
Guo Cheng, founder of STEPVR, believes that with the development of Internet technology in the past 20 years, people have moved chat, shopping, payment, watching news, watching videos, etc. to online, creating countless virtual worlds. Universe is no longer the bottleneck to achieve the metaverse, tencent, Facebook, ByteDance and other giants, fully capable of creating a metaverse or oasis. What constrains them is the development of Meta. Mobile phones and computers can only allow consumers to view the virtual world in two dimensions across the screen, and VR technology is the door for people to enter the metaverse world.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="86" > reference PC development path to accelerate VR popularization from the B-end offline</h1> line
In the past two years, with the development of VR technology, VR has made breakthroughs in the consumer end, successfully circulating ecological health. However, compared with overseas Facebook to single-handedly pull the popularity of VR on the C-end, China has not seen signs of consumer-side development until the past two years, and a more pragmatic and feasible way is to gradually educate C-end users through offline, such as NetEase and HTC have chosen to cut in from offline. Just like the early PC, when users do not understand the value, role and use of VR products, the offline experience store model similar to Internet cafes has become a channel connecting users with PCs, and entertainment, as the most important scenario, allows users to quickly contact and understand PCs, thereby accelerating the speed of PCs from the B end to the C end.
In Guo Cheng's view, this path is also applicable to VR, which is the core reason why STEPVR chose to cut in from offline.
Guo Cheng said that one of the advantages of choosing to cut in from offline stores is to avoid confrontation with the ecology of high-quality home entertainment content such as TVs and mobile phones. In contrast, offline formats are more dispersed, and offline entertainment formats such as script killing, board game halls, naughty castles, and KTV are booming. Compared with the family scene, vr experience stores are easier to break through from offline consumption scenes. Therefore, STEPVR's self-developed laser positioning technology first chose the path of "VR theme park" built from the large offline space.
Globally, VR theme park pioneers include the "Dreamscape Immersive" offline chain experience brand invested by "Ready Player One" director Spielberg, the American VR chain brand The Void, which has Disney-backed, and Sandbox VR, a VR offline chain brand in Hong Kong, China, which is invested by Ali.
The Void, which owns Disney IP such as Star Wars, Invincible Destruction King and The Avengers, was once regarded as an industry leader, unfortunately, The Void failed to withstand the blow of the epidemic and chose to sell its assets to a lending institution after the funds ran out. However, Dreamscape has now opened 4 stores around the world, successfully withstanding the blow of the black swan of the epidemic. Sandbox VR also filed for bankruptcy protection last year, and as the pandemic improves, the company is now back to expansion. In 2021, STEPVR will open the world's largest VR experience hall (more than 150 experience halls have been signed at present, and 99 have actually opened), the largest single (single 1000 square meters, and in preparation for landing a larger space) offline large space VR experience hall.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="85" > the leading position in the offline VR experience market, how does STEPVR do it? </h1>
Since its establishment in 2013, STEPVR has developed large-space laser positioning solutions, with nearly 100 million yuan of investment and accumulated nearly 100 patents, of which more than 60 are invention patents. The large-space laser positioning technology that has been polished for several years has laid a solid foundation for STEPVR and has become the core "weapon" for its expansion of the offline market. It is understood that the current positioning accuracy of STEPVR can reach the level of 1mm, and the calculation delay can be controlled below 2ms.
At the same time, STEPVR large space VR relative to the small space range of VR experience, its advantages are not only reflected in the player can achieve free walking in the space, to avoid "teleportation" play or translation to produce vertigo, the degree of freedom is higher, while combining the wind, heat, vibration and other devices in the field, presenting a rich experience of more layers of senses, in addition to more attractive is that in the field can also be with other participants PVE collaboration or PVP battle, in the virtual world, all players' limb movements, Behaviors and even expressions are reflected in sync, as if they are traveling together into a magical adventure.
However, to achieve a large space is not simple, the core of large space VR technology is the tracking and positioning algorithm, it is understood that STEPVR laser positioning scheme has been widely used in VR offline experience hall. At present, the spatial positioning method is mainly divided into two types: inside-out and outside-in. Inside-out is mainly represented by Oculus Quest, through the headset camera to model the space to achieve 6DoF spatial positioning; outside-in is represented by STEPVR, the use of external positioning equipment to track objects, the current tracking technology programs are mainly the following: laser, visible light, infrared positioning. Laser positioning mainly uses the supporting positioning light tower (small square box) to emit a laser strafed in both directions of horizontal and vertical orientation to the positioning space, and then receives the beam through the receiver mounted on the headset, and then calculates the angle difference between the two beams of light to reach the positioned object, and solves the coordinates and attitude of the node to be measured. So as long as the person or object to be tracked enters the laser strafing range, it can be captured.
With the core technology, but if you want to really do a good job in an offline format, you must have a good enough entertainment method, a good enough business model, and a stable enough product, all three are indispensable. In 2015 and 2016, thousands of VR experience stores emerged in China during the bubble period, most of which did not have core technology, but took the household equipment to the line to rent, and naturally could not develop.
And wanting to polish a mature offline business model is not something that can be done overnight. Guo Cheng said that in the eight years of entrepreneurship, STEPVR has been accumulating technology and polishing products for the first seven years. Until the technology and business model tend to mature, the opening of stores will be accelerated after the Spring Festival this year.
In order to ensure the offline experience, content and operation STEPVR have decided to personally grasp, it is said that most of its content is now self-research, with the future battlefield as the center, the Spring Festival only has 10 stores of STEPVR, half a year has been opened to more than 150, and with the growth rate of 50 to 80 per month to accelerate the expansion, Guo Cheng is expected to reach 500 at the end of this year, next year can open to 3000, and the area of large space that can be supported ranges from 100 square meters to 1000 square meters, supporting unlimited expansion, And maintain the record of a single 1000 square meter field to accommodate 40 players competing at the same time. In the future, STEPVR also plans to expand the large space experience of the "Future Flying Wing" and "Future Adventure" series on the basis of the existing future battlefield, future light wheel and future mech, and enrich the content ecology.
The reason why STEPVR can expand rapidly, in addition to the popularity of the meta-universe concept this year has attracted more consumers and partners, more importantly, because software, displays, feedback and other products are independently developed by STEPVR, while ensuring the quality of experience, the cost is relatively controllable.
In the offline consumer industry, whether it is catering, cinema or other entertainment venues, it is a successful business model to recover the input cost within 12 months of the operation of a new store. According to Guo Cheng, stepVR's fastest store only takes one and a half months to recover costs, and the average return cycle is 6-9 months.
Through the accumulation of technical strength and healthy business model over the years, STEPVR has now achieved overall profitability.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="63" > through hardware and the underlying operating system, to create a "gate" into the metaverse</h1>
STEPVR, which has achieved dazzling results in the offline market, has greater ambitions for the future.
If you want to divide the practitioners of the VR industry into factions, one faction pursues the lowest threshold for product use, and improves the product experience on this basis. The most representative figure is Zuckerberg, who led Oculus to launch a series of VR all-in-one products; the domestic counterpart is ByteDance's recent acquisition of Pico. These companies are targeting the consumer market from the start, allowing consumers to buy products to take home and use.
But the current technology determines that a simple VR device that only provides visual hearing and hand movements cannot allow consumers to truly "enter" the virtual world in the short term. Therefore, the proposition of another group of VR practitioners is to create a system that truly restores the five senses (hearing, vision, smell, touch and vestibular sensation), and gradually realizes the most realistic VR immersive experience as possible.
A lot of what this faction is doing can be seen in Ready Player One. For example, in order to move freely in the VR world, the protagonist uses a universal treadmill; for example, in order to achieve the interaction between the hand and the virtual world, the force feedback glove worn by the protagonist; and in order to simulate the tactile feedback in the game as much as possible, the protagonist begins to wear a somatosensory suit in the middle of the movie. These devices give the protagonist a realistic virtual reality experience.
Guo Cheng and the STEPVR he founded are typical "experiential schools". He told the investment network that STEPVR, a company, has been doing research and development of five sense simulation technology in the past 8 years, from the initial independent research and development of laser large space positioning technology, motion capture technology, force feedback technology, to now can achieve eye, ear, touch, smell and motion feedback. Most of these technologies do not have mature solutions in the market, for which STEPVR has carried out a lot of research and development work.
Not only in terms of hardware, STEPVR is currently developing a complete operating system to open up all interactions and experiences - STEPOS (Chinese name: Ladder), the system covers the application layer, framework layer, service layer, kernel layer four layers. According to the understanding of the investment network, from the underlying algorithm, hardware circuit, structural design, to engine docking, equipment production, content development and all aspects are developed and produced by STEPVR itself.
In addition, STEPVR is also developing miniaturization solutions, currently in order to move freely in the VR world, STEPVR's current stores need 100 square meters and more space per UNIT (experience unit), and in the future, with the introduction of technologies such as universal treadmills, Guo Cheng said that only a smaller space is needed to allow players to move freely.
For STEPVR, in addition to providing consumers with a more extreme experience, independent research and development technology can also maximize the cost advantage, achieve the scale and systematization of commercial landing faster, and truly solve the survival problem of the commercial format of VR experience stores in previous years.
Guo Cheng said that STEPVR will continue to polish technology, polish products, do meta things, and become iPhone and iOS in the VR industry: "Our goal is to be a door into the metaverse. If you can't polish the technology, it is impossible to open the ecology only by relying on subsidies. ”