What is the difficulty of mobile VR spatial positioning technology?

Among the VR helmets that have already been introduced, HTC Vive's product experience is at the forefront. One of the reasons is that it has a Lighthouse space positioning system, which is superior to other products in the interactive experience.

The other two, Oculus Rift and PlayStaTIon VR will also launch their own space positioning system, so the remaining big question is: When will mobile VR have spatial positioning?

In fact, mobile VR still has a lot of problems to solve, spatial positioning is only one of them, the priority seems not so high, but Oculus CTO John Carmack said in February this year that he is researching space positioning technology for Gear VR, and is inside out Spatial positioning (from the inside out) means that the phone has to handle all the data processing.

Why not directly use the technology of the PC platform?

Many people may think, if Vive has implemented cost-effective and high-quality spatial positioning technology, why not use it directly on mobile VR?

Someone has already done this. At the Connect Eco Conference held at CES Asia, Da Peng released a space positioning system in cooperation with G-Wearable, which is a laser positioning system similar to Lighthouse.

But the application of this system means that the mobility of the helmet is limited because it requires external equipment to achieve positioning (laser transmitting station), so the mobility advantage of the mobile VR core is gone. Moreover, it is aimed at the 2B market, so even if the cost is high, it is acceptable, but it may not be suitable for the consumer market.

Mobility is probably also why Carmack chose to develop inside out spatial positioning technology. The inside out system usually uses the camera inside the helmet to track the location of the external environment to determine where it is, without the need for external equipment.

It is not easy to do so.

Why is it so difficult?

1, the corresponding sensor is missing

According to Venturebeat, ARM developer relations manager Nizar Romdan said in an interview with GamesBeat that one of the major obstacles to the implementation of mobile VR spatial positioning technology is that the sensors needed for location tracking have little other use.

“Mobile devices are limited by product form,” he said. "It's basically a thin body with a 5-inch screen. How many sensors can it be plugged in?" Mobile phone manufacturers may not consider adding sensors to VR when making mobile phones, because the popularity of VR applications is not high.

But this is changing. Google launched the Daydream VR platform at this year's I/O conference, drawing a line for Daydream-enabled phones that requires standards in terms of sensors, performance, and screens. So mobile phones optimized for VR should be more and more. In fact, before the launch of this type of mobile phone, the VR all-in-one is also a good form.

However, even with the right sensor, there are other obstacles.

2, performance

The spatial positioning of the mobile head display has already existed. The AR (Augmented Reality) device of Microsoft and Magic Leap includes spatial positioning technology, but we don't know how to implement it. In some interpretations, Microsoft's HoloLens uses Slam technology for spatial positioning, but there are still obstacles to using this technology on mobile phones.

HoloLens uses PC-level processors and the entire device is optimized for AR applications. Even if the mobile phone is optimized for VR, it is a big hurdle to use similar technology.

“The more sensors are added, the more information you need to process,” Romdan said. "But the power consumption requirements are still the same. The power of the smartphone is about 3W, and the larger one can reach 5W, and it can hardly reach 10W. Compared with the 300-600W on the PC, it is not at the same level. You have to keep this power down while keeping this information low."

Therefore, even if there is a solution, it is found that it is impossible to consume 100W of power.

Is there a good solution?

Simply saying that it is not difficult to achieve spatial positioning of mobile VR, but it is not easy to achieve a series of requirements to enter the consumer market. "The spatial positioning of mobile VR is experimental, but it is very difficult to find comprehensive product indicators such as low cost, low power consumption, high performance, and light mobility." Ximmerse founder He Jie told Lei Feng.

Ximmerse is doing the optical solution for moving VR spatial positioning. It is positioned by the camera on the head display plus the light ball positioning point on the handle, and is equipped with inertial motion capture. Ximmerse's booth was arranged at the big machine's in-house conference, and their other M-Polaris positioning solution might use Ximmerse. According to He Jie, the system will be mass-produced in the next few months. The specific effect will be tracked by Lei Feng.

What is the difficulty of mobile VR spatial positioning technology?

Ximmerse's official X-HAWK solution, with 6-degree-of-freedom tracking and tactile feedback by attaching a camera to the helmet and matching the handle

Lei Feng network columnist, senior VR practitioner Wang Rui told Lei Feng. He believes that Slam positioning is a relatively promising technology, especially with the increase of computing performance and power consumption. In addition, Ximmerse's solution is also good, can do Low cost and good positioning accuracy.

Carmack, although there is no more news at the moment, but according to him, he said that he is "flowering most of the time" for the Gear VR spatial positioning. As a well-known genius software engineer, it is also expected that there will be quite a smart combination of hardware and software in the future.

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