Track Hyper | Benchmarking AVP: Play Dream Technology launched a domestic space computer

Author: Zhou Yuan/Wall Street News

On June 28, the Apple Vision Pro (hereinafter referred to as AVP) was launched in China, priced at RMB 29,999.

In terms of actual experience, AVP is not perfect. For example, if you log in for the first time, because you don't have a handle, you need to use the focus of your gaze to achieve the corresponding digital "click" action, and if the focus is not accurate, you can't complete the click; The whole login process is cumbersome, has a certain threshold, and does not have the characteristics of "fool-like"; Excessive drape, low wearing comfort, and so on, and so on.

If these experience weaknesses are not important, then walking or riding in a vehicle while wearing an AVP will affect the motion vibration of the device's system application window. Because the window disappears briefly (or the vision is blurry and the app can't be accessed), the app changes as well. This feature not only affects the user experience, but also dilutes the business value.

Wall Street has learned that there is an XR company in Shanghai - Play Dream Technology and launched a product similar to AVP - Play Dream MR. This product is defined as the world's first Android space computer, which can support spatial viewing, MR games, 3D space viewing and light office functions.

Play the dream MR is equipped with an 8K Micro-OLED screen, achieving binocular 27 million pixels, 3882PPI, and PPD up to 45 in the central area, achieving a single-point transcendence of AVP in optical indicators.

At the same time, this device is equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon's second-generation Snapdragon XR2+ chip, which uses a precision camera sensor array: 11 high-performance cameras, 7 types of sensors and 22 infrared fill lights, successfully achieving excellent multi-modal interaction of eyes and hands, and achieving a more high-definition and low-latency virtual-real fusion experience.

In addition, Playing Dream MR avoids some of AVP's experience weaknesses, such as supporting hand-eye interaction and voice interaction, it also retains the joystick interaction, which is more familiar to users, and the 3:2 balanced weight will be more comfortable to wear.

Because the various technologies of PlayDream Technology have surpassed the general technical level of the industry, PlayDream MR has an overall experience comparable to AVP.

What are the technical advantages of MR in Playing Dreams?

In addition to its own technical capabilities, the C-end experience of any smart terminal also affects the breadth of experience and market popularity, including scene playability and ecological richness. As a new XR player that has only been established for 4 years, what is the degree of scene and ecological construction of its space computer?

What are the core technical advantages?

Playing Dream Technology, it was established in 2020 and was formerly known as "YVR". The company's core technical team members have more than 10 years of experience in the XR industry.

Since its establishment 4 years ago, Play Out Dream Technology has released two VR products. Launched in Singapore on June 25 this year, the company's new spatial computing product is the company's third smart terminal device.

The reason why it has such a high R&D efficiency, according to Zhu Ran, CMO of Playout Dream Technology, is because the Playout Dream Technology team has three elements: professionalism, concentration, and focus.

Dr. Teng Zhang, Chief Technical Engineer of Playout Dream Technology, further said that Playout Dream MR was mainly born on the basis of the triple technical capabilities built by Playout Dream Technology.

First of all, Playout Dream Technology has developed a "tracking module", including head 6DoF tracking, handle 6DoF tracking, hand 26DoF tracking and eye tracking. Thanks to these technologies, devices can sense human intent through human movements. In order to achieve ultra-high precision, ultra-high robustness and ultra-low latency tracking effect, Play Dream MR is equipped with 11 cameras, 7 types of sensors and 22 infrared fill lights.

Second, to achieve a seamless integration of the virtual world and the real world, you need to have the ability to digitize the real world. The "Map Module" developed by Dreamtech can build a map composed of point clouds, grids, and semantic tags, save map data, and share it between devices.

Thirdly, through continuous investment in technology research and development, PlayDream Technology has improved the visual experience of PlayDream MR.

Zhang Teng said that the foundation of the spatial computer vision experience is the screen and optics. The high performance requirements of these two types of hardware have prompted Dreamtech to adopt the most cutting-edge solutions in the industry: the configuration of binocular 8K Micro-OLED screens and self-developed ultra-light resin Pancake optical solutions.

Among them, the role of the Pancake optical solution is to greatly reduce the distance between the screen and the lens through the design of the folding optical path to reduce the total length of the optical module; Compared with the traditional Fresnel solution, the optical module using the Pancake optical solution greatly reduces the thickness and overcomes the problems of blurred edges and Fresnel halo, thereby improving the comfort and visual clarity of wearing the headset.

Based on the above configurations, the Dream MR has reached 27 million ultra-high pixels, 3882 PPI, 92% DCI-P3, 103°FOV, and 45 PPD in the central area.

At the same time, Playout Dream Technology has also developed an ultra-low latency VST with 1:1 restoration. "With our VST technology, we want to allow the wearer to see the physical world as the human eye actually sees it, rather than seeing the digital results of the physical world as the camera plays. ”

What's the difference between the two? To answer this question, we must first be clear, what is the role of VST technology for space computers?

This technology plays a vital role in space computers. VST allows devices to capture real-world scenes through the camera and combine these scenes with virtual information (the digital world), creating an interactive environment that blends reality (physical) and virtual (digital) in the user's field of view.

Therefore, the role of VST technology is to enhance the user's sense of immersion and interactive experience, and at the same time provide a technical bridge for the seamless connection between the virtual and the real.

For example, through the MR knob on the fuselage, the user can adjust the integration of the virtual environment and the real environment (also known as immersion) from 0 to 100%, but the "real environment" that the user sees is actually a "digital physical space" in front of the screen.

The binocular 8K Micro-OLED display of the dream MR is actually two screens: through the powerful computing power of the optical camera, sensor and main control chip, the dream MR achieves an ultra-low latency of 14ms, and presents the real world in front of the user in front of the user in the form of 1:1 restoration on the screen, so as to achieve the effect of virtual and real fusion.

Virtual and real bounded: strong performance + low latency

In order to realize that the human eye can see the 1:1 real physical world through the screen of the space computer, the main chip of the space computer needs to provide super computing power; In addition, the device needs to have strong software performance in order to accurately allocate this valuable computing power.

The main chip of the MR is Qualcomm's second-generation Snapdragon XR2+ chip, which is also the world's first space computer equipped with this chip.

The performance improvements of the second-generation Snapdragon XR2+ chip (based on the performance of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chip) are mainly reflected in the 150% increase in GPU performance, the 50% increase in GPU power consumption, the 800% increase in AI performance, and the support for multiple cameras.

These performances, equipped with the second-generation Snapdragon XR2+ chip can theoretically be possessed, the difference is that different terminal companies, the application of these performances, there are differences in capabilities, and the application capabilities are mainly determined by software performance.

On this basis, the technical advantages of Dream Technology are mainly concentrated at the software level, and the core advantage is the algorithm, including the accuracy and engineering of the algorithm. Among them, the main role of the algorithm is to accurately schedule the computing power of the second-generation Snapdragon XR2+ chip.

In order to achieve accurate scheduling, it is necessary to effectively save computing power. Play Dream MR has accurate and effective eye focus (eye tracking) tracking capabilities, and its low-latency experience comes from its effective allocation of computing power.

Zhang Teng said, "First of all, we have put a lot of effort into optimizing the foveated rendering ability in eye tracking. Secondly, we have also achieved effective breakthroughs (such as frame filling prediction) such as ATW (Asynchronous Timewarp) and ASW (Asynchronous Spacewarp), which can greatly save GPU computing power. Third, we use software technology to maximize the heterogeneous computing power of Snapdragon chips. ”

Among them, ATW mainly solves the problem of delay and frame filling.

What does delay mean here? It is the time difference between the time when the human body moves and the time when the image is displayed on the screen.

ATW's technical principle: after the image is output by software, the rendering pipeline is connected to it, and it is responsible for using the new pose data of the person to do the reprojection calculation when the screen is uploaded, so as to avoid perceptible delay and thus vertigo; At the same time, when applying frame drops, ATW reprojects the image of the previous frame, which is called a supplementary frame.

Is it enough to have ATW? In fact, it is not enough, only by superimposing ASW can you enjoy the silky visual experience of MR. ATW compensates for the movement of the scene camera, while ASW compensates for the changes caused by the movement of objects in the scene.

In addition to these technologies, Play the Dream MR also features a VST with a low latency of only 14ms, allowing users to experience a digital world that is almost indistinguishable from the real world.

User value is always the greatest

These software technology solutions (capabilities) of Dream Technology are derived from self-research efforts based on long-termism.

According to Zhang Teng, when starting the research and development of Dream MR, he also considered directly using optical solutions on the market, but later found that the ready-made 4K optical machine solutions that can be provided by current suppliers cannot meet the performance pursuit of space computers in terms of edge clarity and edge distortion, which will affect the final user experience.

Since its establishment, "bringing users a better experience" has always been the business value orientation of Dreamtech. Zhu Ran, CMO of Playout Dream Technology, said, "We have the readiness and determination to continue to deepen the spatial computing track, so when we found that the existing solutions in the market could not meet the deadlines, we decided to build our own technical advantage barriers." ”

This kind of technological moat has a core competitive advantage over other traditional mobile phone manufacturers that are ready to transform for a start-up company with a sense of long-term position.

Zhu Ran believes that "in the future, these existing smartphone companies in the industry will participate in this track." Huang Feng, the founder of Play Dream Technology, often said internally that we should seize the historical opportunity and time window, thicken our technical strength reserves, and at the same time do a good job in mass production product experience polishing and performance iteration. The traditional mobile phone manufacturers in China are good at being the last to take the lead, which is to wait for the market to mature and then invest resources on a large scale. But by then, we have the technology and the competitive edge to be able to withstand the impact. ”

In addition to the technical advantages, the competitive advantage of Playing Dream MR is also reflected in the rich application scenarios and content ecology.

At present, Play Dream MR supports functions such as space viewing, MR games, and 3D space viewing. In terms of spatial viewing, Play Dream Technology has become the first strategic partner of IMAX and DTS in the field of spatial computing and mixed reality.

At the same time, the low-latency color VST is equipped with audio prompts for precise positioning and a 6DoF ring-free vibration controller, bringing a comprehensive upgrade to the audio-visual touch experience of the game. The dual 32-million-pixel ultra-high-definition 3D cameras support 3D spatial video shooting, and its display effect and interactive experience are unmatched by 2D images.

In addition, the MR is also compatible with mainstream office applications and multi-screen streaming, so the device can also be used in light office scenarios.

In terms of content ecology, Play Out Dream Technology has reached in-depth cooperation with nearly 100 CPs in many countries and regions around the world. At present, the number of apps on the store has exceeded 300 and continues to expand.

Zhu Ran said that Play Dream Technology has released the world's first Android space computer Play Dream MR, taking the lead in the spatial computing track, and then combining its own production and research advantages and user accumulation to ensure that it will continue to stay in the field before the spatial computing industry explodes, and it is possible to find differentiated competitive advantages to achieve corner overtaking on this track.

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