What are the points of interest in AR/VR at this conference that touches the hearts and minds of many? Let's run through it below.
▌Major manufacturers
Lenovo
Lenovo's entry into virtual reality and augmented reality is not just for fun, as evidenced by the fact that Lenovo has announced its involvement in three major fields: VR, AR and MR.
Subsequently, Lenovo, together with Google and HTC, created Google Daydream VR, and also at the beginning of the year in the CES 2017 conference to show its MR device, in April of this year, according to Lenovo Lenovo Insiders program team member Ross McDougall (Ross McDougall) revealed that this MR device has a resolution of 1440 x 1440, with a 6.5" x 4.0" resolution. ×x 1440 resolution, 6-degree-of-freedom inside-out tracking, compatibility with a wide range of Win10 apps, and "a price tag of $399, which will be available in August of this year".
Then on June 1, Microsoft revealed more information about its WindowsMR headset at Computex Taipei, including an Asus MR headset and a new design from Dell. At this edition of CES Asia, Qingting.com speculates that Lenovo is also likely to reveal more about this MR headset.
In addition, Lenovo launched an AR phone, which is nothing new, but just two days ago at AWE, Lenovo once again made a push in the AR space, announcing a partnership with Wikitude for Augmented Human Cloud (AH Cloud), which aims to improve the knowledge of professionals in the industry by using AR, artificial intelligence, and big data, among other things and capabilities to transform the way work is done. Specifically using LNV's remote video application (Kepler), Wiki-Intelligence recognition engine and Markerles SLAM technology, workflow and 3D AR content editing tools (Titan), and Deep Learning Recognition System (Martin), to create a fully integrated AR and AH Cloud application platform, which will then be combined with Lenovo Smart Glasses to create an AR-enabled Industry 4.0 device + cloud platform.
Lenovo is eager to achieve its own juggernaut status in this new era of VR/AR/MR, and we can wait and see what the results if.
Carl Zeiss
Carl Zeiss itself is a veteran optics company, in the VR era, more want to play to their advantage. Previously, Carl Zeiss released a mobile VR headset for cell phones called VR One, but it didn't stir up much of a splash.
In the CES held in Las Vegas earlier this year, Zeiss and its acquired Swiss computer vision company Dacuda (earlier this year, foreign media revealed that Magic Leap acquired Dacuda's 3D scanning division) showed the VR One Plus headset, and announced a set of mobile VR solutions about room scale.
HTC VIVE
It should be a week of both joy and loss for HTC, loss in that, as mentioned above, the HTC Vive came in third place, behind the Gear VR and the Playstaion VR, from IDC's statistical report on VR device shipments in Q1 2017. Happily, just at Apple's annual WWDC conference held in the early hours of this morning, Apple's side domineeringly announced that it would take a big step into the VR/AR field, and the first step is to launch a VR-Ready Mac, and officially support the HTC Vive platform.
Mac OS also supports the Beta version of SteamVR, and on the WWDC floor, Apple used the HTC Vive to show off its latest progress in VR.
The strong combination is always expected, after all, Apple this thigh is not usually thick ah. And in addition to Apple, there is Intel, May 30, HTC Vive announced a partnership with Intel to apply WiGig wireless VR solutions to the Vive.
NVIDIA
NVIDIA, as a giant in the graphics card world, has recently released another big move - the launch of a new design program at Computex 2017. Officially, OEMs such as Clevo, Asus and MSI will start rolling out high-performance "Max-Q" gaming laptops with VR-Ready GTX 1060, 1070 and 1080 GPUs. The GTX 1080 graphics-equipped gaming laptop is said to be able to reduce its thickness to 18mm, making it a computer that enables users to have a VR experience.
Just a short time ago, in April, NVIDIA also demonstrated the Quadro series of graphics cards based on the Pascal architecture at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, including: GP100, P2000, P4000, P5000, P6000 and so on. Such as GP100 can integrate VR into design and simulation workflows, while IrayVR is NVIDIA's rendering solution, now licensed to software vendors such as DassaultSystèmes and Autodesk.
At this year's CES Asia, we got a glimpse of all of these products.
Intel
It has to be said, Intel in sports - especially VR live sports this road is further and further. June 1, Intel announced on its website, officially signed a three-year agreement with the MLB (Major League Baseball), cooperation will be in the form of Intel's True VR application The form of cooperation will be in the form of Intel's True VR application for live and on-demand broadcast of MLB games. Now, on True VR, not only can you see the golf game, but the baseball game as well. Importantly, Intel seems to be confident in this aspect of live VR sports broadcasting, and judging from the information revealed on their official website, they are also confident in this type of audience, and feel that this will be a not-so-small market.
In addition to the combination of VR and sports, Intel vice president and general manager of the Customer Computing Business Group, Song Yixia (Gregory Bryant), also spoke at the recent Taipei Electronics Show, announcing that Intel and the HTC Vive have become strategic partners, and demonstrated the HTC Vive wireless headset launched through Intel WiGig technology.
Intel has been seeking a place for itself in the VR market, and as Qingting.com has reported in previous articles, while Intel has introduced high-end i9 processors priced at up to $2,000, they are still far from being VR-ready. Intel plans to continue to improve the performance of their cores in hopes of one day being able to meet the demands of the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and other high-end VR games.
Frank Soqui, Intel's general manager of VR and gaming, said, "Intel integrated graphics will be able to support high-end VR and not just mainstream applications. Our goal is to continue to improve the performance of our processors and core graphics for high-end content, such as Oculus and HTC."
Also, Intel recently announced that it will be sponsoring the inaugural VR Experience eSports open tournament, The Unspoken VR Tournament- - a VR multiplayer magical adventure FPS game, and perhaps those who were there at CES Asia will have a chance to try it out.
AMD
Recently, AMD's Ryzen 3 VR processor was revealed, and it's official, confirming that the Ryzen 3 will be officially released in the third quarter of this year. Currently known an AMDRyzen31200, 4 cores and 8 threads, main frequency 3.1GHz, 8MB of three-level cache, thermal design power consumption of 65W.
Some analysts say that if the performance of AMDRyzen3 is close to or reaches the level of the Intel i5, then it will become a very competitive VR processor. The price and exact time of release have not yet been revealed, so I wonder if AMD will release more information at CES Asia.
Qualcomm
Recently Qualcomm has had a falling out with Apple over patents, followed by a switch to Google, and it's official that Qualcomm subsidiaries are now working with Google, and the two sides will be ****ing together to build a new generation of Daydream VR headsets. This has also attracted a lot of attention, and you can be sure that Google's new VR headset will be equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, which is designed for VR.
At CES earlier this year, Qualcomm, for its part, also announced a concept VR all-in-one based on the Snapdragon 835 platform. But whether this VR all-in-one will be related to Google's collaborative VR headset is unknown.
In addition, recently, Qualcomm held a "wired/wireless infrastructure network media conference" in Taipei, Qualcomm Qualcomm Technologies senior vice president and general manager of connectivity technology, Rahul Patel demonstrated the 802.11ad wireless technology in VR glasses. applications.
Microsoft
Microsoft's recent release of the Hololens aside, in addition, more attention was paid to the information made public a few days ago at the Taipei Electronics Show about the many Windows MR headsets with which it has partnered, including ASUS's MR headset and Dell's MR headset with its new design.
At the Taipei Electronics Show, Microsoft also revealed that the MR headset being built by Lenovo is also a partnership with Microsoft. At the moment, for Microsoft, it seems to be a big push to bring "MR headsets" to the forefront.
At CES Asia, you should be able to see and experience these MR headsets.
▌Companies
Looking at the more than 70 VR/AR vendors participating in CES Asia 2017, there are newcomers coming for the first time, as well as "familiar faces" who came last year; there are those who bring hardware to the blind date, and those who come to "sell out" technology solutions. "Among these vendors, Qingting.com is the only one that can provide technical solutions. Among these vendors, Qingting.com focused on selecting a number of companies, which are either "little lovers" favored by the giants, or guests who came from afar across the ocean, so without further ado, let's follow Qingting.com to see it.
YiShi HaoXi (AR glasses)
This company you are not familiar with? The company's name is "The Rise and Fall" and it's a "Rise and Fall" company!
This company appeared in CES Asia last year, not to mention, this is not a story AR company ah. The company is a mainland subsidiary of the JORJIN Group, which was founded in Taiwan in 1997 and is a provider of core modules for smart glasses.
JORJIN cooperated with smart glasses include: VUZIX M100, EPSON BT-200, BT-2000, EVENA Eye-On Glasses, Lenovo LENOVO New Glass, HITACHI Doctor Cloud Smart Glasses, etc., involved in the field of industry, logistics, medical, law enforcement, education, and entertainment.
At last year's CES Asia, Yixi demonstrated the application scenarios of the overall solution of smart glasses in the industries of equipment maintenance, military and police law enforcement, medical care, operation and maintenance inspection, vocational training, etc., as well as the introduction of the wireless communication, wireless sensing, thermal imaging, and image stabilization technology solutions from abroad.
At the recent COMPUTEX 2017, ZOZEN brought the "binocular smart glasses" solution developed in cooperation with IISI, and displayed what is said to be Taiwan's first "binocular smart glasses", which looks like the following. The look of the glasses is the following.
Jozhen is said to be the world's only provider of mass-produced smart glasses on both ARM/Android and Intel/Win10 platforms, so I'm guessing these "binocular smart glasses" will be a top priority for the company at CES Asia.
InvenSense (motion capture, MEMS sensors)
MEMS sensor technology has been advancing rapidly over the past few years, and has been mentioned repeatedly in the fields of photo stabilization and motion tracking. These types of vendors are also becoming more common at CES Asia, and InvenSense could be one of them.
In addition to the ICM-20690, InvenSense's ICM-20690, ICM-20600, and ICM-20602 have successively been validated by Google Daydream. It is understood that Oculus Rift, HTC's Vive, HoloLens, and some domestic VR/AR manufacturers have adopted different sensors from InvenSense.
Infinity AR
Infinity AR is an Israeli augmented reality company, but it's got a big leg up in China - Alibaba.
In November 2016, Ali invested $15 million in Infinity, making it the largest shareholder in Infinity AR, owning more than 22 percent of the company.
At CES in January 2017, Infinity showed off a prototype in collaboration with Israeli lens company Lumus. For Infinity, the focus is on solving the SLAM algorithm at the core of AR technology, and according to them, the company's technology is now relatively mature, and the next step will be to cooperate with Chinese manufacturers to realize large-scale mass production of AR glasses.
Effie Li, the head of Infinity China, also revealed that two Taiwanese manufacturers have already mass-produced the glasses, which will be available in the summer.
DreamWorld
DreamWorld is based in Silicon Valley and offers products with a 100-degree optical field of view and natural gesture interaction.
And its current product, Dream Glass, with a purported field of view of up to 100 degrees, will also be on display at CES Aisa and available for pre-order after the show.
What's interesting is that the Dream Glass is not in the usual form, but in the "AR Box" category that Qingting.com previously mentioned, and needs to be used with a cell phone.
DreamWorld CEO Zhangyi Zhong said the Dream Glass will be priced at less than $350, with the exact price to be announced later.
DreamWorld is a Silicon Valley startup with members from Magic Leap, Meta, Nvidia, GE and other AR companies. Its founder, Zhangyi Zhong, majored in optics at Zhejiang University before going to the US to pursue a PhD in vision.
It is understood that DreamWorld has previously completed a $2 million angel round of financing.
Xenoma
This is a company that researches printed circuit cloth, using E-skin clothing developed by Xenoma.
Xenoma is a company incubated (spun off) from the University of Tokyo in Japan, and its main product is a body compression garment utilizing miniature inertial sensor technology -- (Xenoma's) e-skin, which is simply a wear-all-in-one motion capture system.
The R&D team used stretchable circuitry to integrate more than 30 sensors into the suit, and these miniature inertial sensors will be distributed in various key parts of the body. It is understood that the number, type and location of these sensors can be customized at will.
At CES in January 2017, Xenoma has already shown this e-skin suit e-skin, demonstrating features such as monitoring the body's respiration, posture and temperature, in addition to being machine washable straight away. It is said to be ready for mass production this year.
▌New Products
In this party, Qingting.com collected some information about new products or news that domestic companies will release at CES Asia. For domestic companies, whether from the hardware or to the content, we are all very familiar with, we will not do too much elaboration here, directly present the relevant information (continuously updated).
Pico
Pico will be showcasing four new products at this year's CES Asia, including the Pico Goblin Little Monster VR all-in-one, including the yet-to-be-formally-released Pico Neo CV edition.
Brightwinds
Brightwinds will present its new HiAR Glasses, which will be released on June 8.
Shadowtronics
Shadowtronics will also show off two new AR products -- New Air and Halo.
IDEALENS
IDEALOEYE, a sister company of IDEALENS, will showcase its latest panoramic camera, the C4.
AIQIYI VR
will also show its all-in-one VR machine, QiYou.
Antvision
Antvision's second-generation VR Transformers Customized Edition is understood to have obtained an image license from Transformers' parent company Hasbro.
Seven Xin Yiwei
In addition to the already launched VR eye-tracking module aGlass, Seven Xin Yiwei will also show the latest demo of VR Driving, which is the application of eye-tracking in safe driving.
▌Features
With the popularity of smart cars, it's not surprising to see cars at CES Asia, and VR devices, VR content, and AR glasses are all commonplace, but Qingting.com has noticed that manufacturers specializing in automotive + AR solutions seem to have increased quite a bit at CES Asia 2017.
In this, it is mainly centered around automotive AR images, in-vehicle AR technology and so on. In addition, automobile brands such as FAW Pentium, FAW Volkswagen, Chery Automobile, Guangzhou Automobile Chuanqi, and BMW also combined AR technology to do "AR online auto show", which is considered a means of automobile marketing.
In fact, the car + AR has long been nothing new. 2015, BMW launched a joint Qualcomm AR glasses for car owners, drivers can drive through the AR glasses to see the navigation data, driving speed, speed limit prompts and fork information. Only, at present, with the gradual maturation of AR technology, there are more companies in this field of deep plowing.
Besides AR+Automotive, others include is VR content, underlying technology, AR/VR hardware and so on. We will also continue to pay attention to the latest information of CES Asia, for more information, please see the China Augmented Reality Industry Alliance referred to as AR Alliance or ARA in the first time to bring you detailed reports.