When the wind blows in the meta-universe, VR/AR comes to life again.
In 2014, Meta (then known as Facebook) made waves by buying two-year-old VR startup Oculus for $3 billion. Around 2018, due to the bottleneck of technology and the lack of high-quality content, VR/AR could not find the appropriate commercial landing direction, and suffered a "fever".
Now Meta is once again leading the drama, VR/AR in the context of the meta-universe narrative, business imagination to a new level.
Global SHIPMENTS of VR/AR headsets reached 11.2 million units in 2021, surging 92.1% year-on-year, according to an IDC report.
The figure is still forecast to increase by 46.9% in 2022; VR/AR shipments will maintain double-digit growth in the coming years and exceed 50 million units in 2026.
Zuckerberg said at the launch of the Oculus VR headset that VR/AR content and the ecosystem will explode when the 10 million active users threshold is crossed.
Now, it seems, the time for qualitative change has come. The warming is also reflected in capital markets.
According to Crunchbase, nearly $3.9 billion has flowed into VR/AR startups in the past year, the second highest investment on record. In the fourth quarter alone, global investors invested $1.9bn, a record.
First, large manufacturers frequently to seize the next generation of intelligent platform
Looking back, the emergence of smart phones led to the arrival of the whole era of mobile Internet. The richness of content and interaction forms carried by smart phones exceeds that of PC, TV and other media in the past, causing a huge impact on traditional media and bringing subversive influence to all aspects of society.
Now, 14 years after the release of the original iPhone, smartphones are stuck in features and experiences, with shipments falling and the market reaching saturation.
Many people believe that VR/AR will be the next super medium and VR/AR devices will be the next smart platform after smartphones.
Therefore, it is understandable that the big companies are making vigorous efforts and spending money to promote their own hardware and software ecosystem.
The largest market share is currently held by Meta, whose Oculus Quest 2, released in 2020, accounts for around 78% of the market with its superior performance and low price.
Meta also plans to release two AR glasses as early as 2024, according to media reports. One of the AR glasses, called Project Nazare, does not require a smartphone, but will require a wireless device to assist in computing.
Hypernova, another cheaper AR glasses, needs to be paired with a smartphone.
According to Meta's plan, the company will launch AR glasses in 2024, 2026 and 2028.
Google is the poster child for getting up early and catching up late.
Google Glass failed spectacularly in 2015, leaving valuable lessons for other companies as a pioneer in AR exploration.
Since then, Google has been sitting on its hands until the last two years, when the parent company of Google successively acquired North, a Canadian AR glasses manufacturer, and Raxium, a Micro LED company, indicating the return of Big Brother.
At the beginning of 2022, the media exposed the AR head-display Project Project Iris, which is expected to be launched in 2024 at the earliest. In the B-side of the market, Microsoft HoloLens dominates. Apple has also been rumored to release VR/AR headsets.
In a closer look, Bytedance has gained a dominant position in the Asian market with Pico, while Xiaomi smart glasses, OPPO Air Glass and IQiyi's Adventure series glasses currently occupy a small market share.
In addition, Alibaba, Tencent and other companies have entered the VR/AR hardware field by investing in Nreal, Black Shark Technology (Plan) and other companies.
Even Luo Yonghao has hit the track. In response to netizens' concerns on Weibo, he mentioned that future startups should focus on AR, rather than the VR metauniverse defined by Zuckerberg.
Second, VR/AR landing, not only for playing games
In terms of landing scenes, in the past, when we talk about VR/AR, we have nothing but games, video and entertainment. In fact, in the enterprise side, VR/AR application scenarios are constantly expanding.
Companies led by Meta and Microsoft have taken virtual office space as an important layout to explore the meta-universe. Especially today, with repeated epidemics and the rise of telecommuting, immersive virtual office experience has become a critical requirement for many enterprises.
Accenture, for example, has partnered with Microsoft to create a virtual space called the Nth Floor, where employees from around the world can meet, speak, and work.
About 100,000 new employees join Accenture each year, all of whom can be hired and trained in a virtual space. Thousands of employees have participated in dozens of events through VR/AR headsets.
Accenture also recently purchased 60,000 Oculus Quest 2s for employee training, the largest purchase of an enterprise-class VR headset to date.
VR/AR is more than just cool or fun to use in corporate training. There is some evidence that this novel approach can actually improve training outcomes for companies.
One of the important aspect is that the VR/AR training provides realistic atmosphere, especially for practitioners in the field of medical, service and so on, this is the feeling of sense of reality and serious tradition "role-playing type" training cannot satisfy the role play to easily embarrassed or funny, or into a colleague's big stage play, Training is often compromised.
A study by Pricewaterhousecoopers found that subjects who participated in VR training improved their learning efficiency by 4 times compared with offline training and 1.7 times compared with traditional online training. The degree of emotional investment of VR trainers is 3.8 times higher than that of offline training and 2.9 times higher than that of traditional online training. After the training, participants in VR training were also more likely to practice the training content at work than participants in the other two types of training, with confidence levels 40% and 35% higher, respectively.
In some specific industries, the value of VR/AR training is in hard skills.
Osso VR, a VR company that provides surgical training and evaluation services to medical institutions, has calculated that the cost of hosting an offline surgical training can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, so many people have little opportunity to participate in the training, let alone learn about surgery for rare diseases.
With the help of VR equipment, medical staff can carry out training anytime and anywhere, save costs and practice targeted to help them improve their operation level.
Plant trees today and enjoy the shade ten years later
In this wave of VR/AR fever, there is no lack of voices.
Some people believe that the current VR/AR technology has no essential breakthrough compared to a few years ago, and the chip, sensor, communication and other technologies it relies on are far from the requirements of "immersion". Therefore, this wave is still a bubble, a new bottle of old wine cut leech formula.
Is that true?
2018 was the last year that VR/AR technology appeared on Gartner's emerging technology maturity curve. Later, Gartner officially stated that VR/AR related technologies had become mature, and it was no longer included, giving way to more new technologies requiring attention.
Since then, although VR/AR has shown visible technological progress, from the perspective of terminal experience, there is still room for improvement in picture quality, delay, perceptual interaction and other aspects, and the lack of killer apps on the content level is still a problem that hinders the popularization of VR/AR devices.
However, it will take time to break through these technical barriers and build a healthy and thriving ecosystem of developers and creators.
In Meta's Q1 2022 earnings presentation, Zuckerberg said that the current efforts in VR/AR will only bear fruit in 2030 and 2040. Waiting for VR/AR to come to fruition requires a little patience. It's not just patience.