Cloud VR by moving a large number of local computing to the cloud, on the one hand, eliminating the need for expensive and bulky local computers, removing the connecting wires, and realizing mobile convenience, lightweight and low-cost; on the other hand, realizing the VR content aggregation, and safeguarding copyright.
The main bottleneck facing the current development of the VR industry lies in the imbalance between cost and user experience, and the cloud VR solution will solve this pain point and is the inevitable choice for VR to move towards large-scale application.
Cloud VR performance enhancement of the network bandwidth and delay also put forward higher requirements, the current 4G network is still difficult to meet, 5G network transmission rate can reach 10Gbps, is 100 times the 4G; transmission delay can be reached 1ms level, is 1/50 of 4G, is expected to help the cloud VR really landing, expanding more application areas.
All-in-one machine will become the mainstream form of VR/AR equipment in the future
Experiencing the bubble burst, the development trend of the VR equipment form has been gradually determined, the industry standards have been launched, high-performance all-in-one (cordless) VR equipment can provide full immersion will be the mainstream of the future.
According to IDC's report, from 2017 to 2019, global VR equipment shipments in the screenless category (Screenless Viewer) equipment decreases year by year, and it is expected that in 2019, the share of shipments will fall from 60% to 16% in 2017; all-in-one equipment (Standalone HMD) shipments rise year by year, and it is expected that in 2019 it will reach 2.69 million units, the shipment share from 4% in 2017 to 38%; PC-based VR equipment (Tethered HMD) shipments accounted for a small increase each year, in 2019 is expected to be 46%.
Currently, users generally reflect the use of PC-side VR devices to experience VR games, the hand will from time to time hooked to the headset device connected to the host cable, very much affecting the game experience. For AR devices, cable bondage is an obstacle to the further expansion of application scenarios. Therefore, cordless must be the future trend of VR/AR devices, all-in-one machine will become the mainstream form of VR/AR devices in the future.
Cloud VR helps scale the VR industry
While all-in-one VR devices have the advantage of being mobile and portable, they also sacrifice computing performance so that the current user experience is difficult to compare with that of PC-based VR devices. In order to solve this problem, the industry has proposed a cloud VR solution, which moves a large amount of local computing to the cloud, introduces cloud computing and cloud rendering technologies, and with the help of a high-speed and stable network, transmits the display output and sound output from the cloud to the user's terminal device after encoding and compression, thus eliminating the need for a local host.
This solution eliminates the need for a connecting cable between the VR headset and the host computer on the one hand, and realizes mobile convenience; on the other hand, it eliminates the need for expensive and bulky high-performance local computers, and realizes lightweight and low-cost.
The main bottleneck facing the development of the current VR industry lies in the imbalance between cost and user experience, so the cloud VR solution is the inevitable choice for VR to move towards large-scale application. Cloud VR not only solves the biggest pain point of the hardware end, but also solves the content production and distribution link before the VR content discrete, no copyright protection pain point, cloud VR makes VR content can be aggregated, on the one hand, there is a copyright protection, on the other hand, can realize the rapid distribution to the masses and vertical industry users.
Cloud VR solution architecture consists of four parts: content layer, platform layer, network layer and terminal layer. Content layer: mainly responsible for providing VR content to the platform layer, including content providers and content aggregators; platform layer: provides cloud rendering, streaming, transcoding, storage and encoding functions for VR content; network layer: mainly consists of backbone network, metropolitan area network (MAN), access network and four parts of the home network, which is responsible for the Cloud VR service to provide large bandwidth, low-latency and stable transmission; terminal layer: mainly realizes VR content, home network access and user identification. Terminal layer: It mainly realizes the functions of VR content presentation, home network access and user authentication, and connects to the platform layer through Wi-Fi/5G access network.
5G network performance greatly improved to help cloud VR landing
VR experience clarity and smoothness can be improved by improving the VR content/terminal resolution and refresh rate, respectively, to improve the above performance at the same time also put forward higher requirements for the network bandwidth and delay. Weak interaction VR is mainly on the network bandwidth puts forward higher requirements; and strong interaction VR on the network bandwidth and delay at the same time put forward higher requirements.
Weakly interactive VR transmission program includes full-view transmission and FOV transmission, the former is more demanding on the bandwidth, strong interactive VR only FOV transmission a transmission program. The FOV transmission scheme is to transmit the 360-degree surroundings to the terminal, and when the user's head rotates and needs to switch the screen, all the processing is done locally in the terminal. With the full-view transmission scheme, because the viewer can only see the current part of the field of view when watching, the unseen part of the network bandwidth accounted for, but not really used, thus causing a large waste of network resources, so the industry has proposed a FOV (Field of View) transmission scheme, which only transmits high-quality view angle areas, not involving non-view angle areas.
The FOV transmission scheme currently includes two specific schemes, Pyramid Transmission and Tile Wise Transmission. According to Huawei's Cloud VR Network Solution White Paper 2018, in the comfort experience stage VR, the full-view angle transmission bandwidth requirement for weakly interactive VR video applications reaches 140 Mbps, the FOV transmission bandwidth requirement reaches 75 Mbps, and the transmission bandwidth requirement for strongly interactive VR applications reaches 260 Mbps.
To achieve the comfort experience stage VR applications, the The current 4G network is difficult to meet the above performance requirements. 5G commercialization in 2020 will significantly improve network performance, specifically in terms of transmission rate, latency, connection density and mobile speed.
The transmission rate of 5G network can reach 10Gbps, which is 100 times of 4G; the transmission delay can reach 1ms level, which is 1/50 of 4G; the connection density can reach 106/km2, which is 100 times of 4G; and the mobile speed can reach 500km/h, which is 1.5 times of 4G.
According to the "5G Cloud-based Virtual Reality White Paper" jointly released by Shanghai Bell and ICT and other organizations, the downlink bandwidth will be increased to 100Mbps-1Gbps starting from 5GR15, and the network latency will be reduced to 10ms, which will start to enter the next stage of VR experience. By then, VR equipment clarity, smoothness comprehensively improved, motion sickness eliminated, product weight reduction, cost reduction, the industry is expected to begin to enter the scale of application.
-- For more data and analysis, please refer to the China Virtual Reality (VR) Industry Development Outlook Forecast and Investment Strategy Planning Analysis Report by Prospect Industry Research Institute.
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