Following Apple's release of the ARKit platform for iOS, Google also recently announced ARCore, an augmented reality platform for Android. The preview version is compatible with Android devices such as Pixel and Samsung Galaxy S8. Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice president, said that ARKit will be the world's largest AR platform, and Google said that the ARCore official version will cover 100 million devices before the end of the year, and both sides' AR battle will kick off.
CCID Consulting predicts that by 2020 China's virtual reality (VR/AR) market will reach 91.82 billion yuan. IDC predicts that the global consumption of virtual reality (VR/AR) in 2021 will increase from 114 dollars this year to 215 billion dollars. IDC also said that after the launch of the iPhone 8 equipped with ARKit, the growth rate of virtual reality consumption in the period from September to December will far exceed the average value, and the AR market has great potential.
To improve terminal coverage and user conversion rate, the ease of use of AR development tools and the attractiveness of developers is crucial. From a functional point of view, ARCore has three basic items: environmental detection, motion tracking, and optical estimation. Environmental detection supports plane search and surface feature detection; motion tracking supports the placement and movement of virtual objects, and mobile phones around the object can also be relatively stationary without blurring or shifting; optical estimation superimposes real-world lighting onto virtual images. Let the shadow of the virtual object match the real world, and realize the light perception of the real world by the object. The 3D lion in the ARCore demo made a frightened response when the staff turned off the light.
Damon Pidhajecky, chief engineer of Frame Interactive’s virtual reality at the United States, told reporters that his most promising ARCore function is environmental testing. “If you place a virtual object on the positioning point (camera captured by the phone camera) and then move it while holding the phone in the room, the object is still in the position I'm positioning. As long as the camera lens scans again to the positioning point, you can see it.†Pidhajecky Say.
ARKit relies on Apple hardware to use the iPhone, iPad camera, motion sensors, gyroscopes to achieve plane definition, scene tracking and optical estimation; Apple A9, A10 processor optimized scene recognition function, its CPU, GPU is also ARKit in Metal ( (Apple graphics rendering technology), 3D engine SceneKit, and third-party tools Unity, Unreal provide maximum performance support.
Taken together, Apple and Google’s "Heroes are the same." The platform functions much the same. According to Jiang Jiayi, a Tmall interactive technologist, the application of the ARKit beta has been in an endless stream for three months. If Google wants to seamlessly integrate with iOS AR applications, ARCore is bound to have the same or similar functionality as ARKit to reduce the cost of AR application migration.
Although similar in function, the technical experience of the two platforms is different. Dan Miller, a technician of the AR engine Unity, recently released a comparative video of the same demo using ARKit and ARCore. In the Unity development environment, ARKit matches the virtual object with clear shadow boundaries, ARCore's shadows blur; ARKit converts ambient light parameters into Unity's light parameters to adjust lighting, ARCore uses its own shader to control lighting, and ARKit uses transparency. The color blocks are labeled with the plane and ARCore is labeled with a grid.
"ARKit and Unity's SDK tools and feature set are more interoperable. ARCore's performance in the feature set is similar to that of ARKit, but ARKit has more extensive example scenarios and sample code," Dan Miller told reporters.
In the comparison experiment of FusedVR, ARCore initialization is faster; but when the mobile phone is rotated greatly, the virtual object created by ARCore will deviate slightly from the original position, and will return to its original position after the device is stable. ARKit does not have this problem, and the ARKit feature point (Points that can represent the target object in the image) are also denser than ARCore, and the detail experience is better.
Ke Jing, the general manager of Kukai's VR/AR division, told reporters that Kukai first noticed ARKit and ARCore, and made some small applications for internal use.
"ARKit and ARCore have increased the overlay technology of graphics recognition technology and enhanced information from a stage that is not easy to develop, has high hardware requirements, and the SDK is immature, to a consumer-level product, allowing AR technology to be used in hundreds of millions of terminals, and will inevitably speed up the basics. The progress of technology R&D and content production has driven the rapid development of the entire industry, said Li Jing.
At the same time, she pointed out that the two platforms are still in the early stages of development and there is still a long way to go from the point of view of maturity and availability. "Every technological development requires an evolutionary and iterative process. It is like the birth of a bird and the feathers that fly up are two different nodes," said Li Jing.
In terms of development environment and third-party tools, Apple supports XCode, Google supports Android Studio, and Ar.js. Both parties support Unity and Unreal. Google has also launched two beta versions of the Google browser for AR, one for Android systems to support ARCore and one for iOS systems to support ARKit. Ar.js developer Jerome Etienne told reporters that Google's web AR prototype is the most exciting feature of his, and he believes that the web version of AR applications will be popularized in mobile terminals. Jiang Jiayi believes that the current ARKit technology experience is better, but ARCore has more room for imagination.
According to Gartner data, in the first quarter of 2017, Apple’s iOS device shipments were 51.992 million units, the market share was 13.7%, and Android was 327.1 million units, accounting for 86.1% of the market.
At first glance, ARCore rooted in the Android Nougat system seems to have more potential, but ARKit supports iPhones or iPads with A9 and above, that is, iPhone 6S and later models and iPad Pro that were released in September 2015. , iPad2017. According to Statista's data calculations, the global sales of the iPhone from the fourth quarter of 2015 to the third quarter of 2017 were 430 million units. Coupled with the upcoming iphone8 and two iPad series, Apple's support for ARKit's inventory devices will be much higher than Android's 100 million targets.
In terms of controllability of inventory devices and autonomy of incremental devices, Apple based on its own brand is also better than the cross-brand Google. Apple can control the hardware and software of iOS. Google faces hundreds of models produced by different brands and many versions of Android. The AR experience of different models is difficult to be consistent.
"Android's market share has obvious advantages. Google will allow ARCore to adapt more Android models. But Apple iOS has two advantages. First, iOS is the best platform for developers to benefit, and it has a natural attraction for developers; It is iOS consistency. If you make changes to adapt to AR, the user group can be unified and quickly upgraded to the latest version. Android's complicated hardware and software versions obviously do not have this condition, said Brain Blau, research vice president of research at Gartner.
AR layout, Apple, Google maintained its own style. The cautious Apple acquired Metaio, which has 171 AR patents, Faceshift, a motion capture company, and Flyby Media, which has partnered with Google Tango to develop AR for mobile devices, and Realface, a facial recognition company, and other VR/AR teams. The ARKit is accumulative. product.
The open Google started earlier in the development of AR, developed a series of virtual reality devices such as Google Glass, Cardboard, and Google Jump, DayDream and Tango two virtual reality platforms, and developed a 360-degree panoramic broadcasting platform for its video website Youtube. Google has been practicing AR platform for many years. Tango can realize 3D motion tracking, area learning, and depth perception in mobile phones equipped with 3D sensors, motion tracking cameras, barometers, and gyroscopes. Google Vice President Clay Bavor said ARCore originated from Google’s exploration and accumulation of the Tango platform. Google will develop depth sensors and camera modules for ARCore based on Tango. Google’s accumulation of maps and searches will also allow ARCore to improve its spatial orientation. Advantages.
Oglass CEO Su Bo said that ARKit and ARCore are consumer AR engines. The release of both is a watershed between the B-end market and the C-end market in the AR industry, which means that the AR consumer and industrial markets will be clearly differentiated. This is why Clay Bavor said that the professional Tango platform will “retreat behind the scenes†as a technical output platform, and ARCore will replace its strategic position on the mobile phone. To ensure that ARCore's terminals can use Tango's technology, Google still needs to strengthen its control over Android hardware. In recent days, Taiwan media reported that Google is about to acquire or invest in the HTC mobile phone business. Whether HTC will become a Google partner or a Pixel foundry, it is not difficult to see that Google is focusing on strengthening the control of the hardware ecology.
"Mobile phone cameras can't meet the computing power and resources required by AR. Apple and Google want to build an AR platform. It should provide highly integrated sensors and corresponding algorithms for the terminals, and realize the sensor's decompression in technological iterations." Brain Blau The reporter said.
Ali Baba led AR technology company Magic Leap, and it was Google that led the company three years ago. After Google released ARCore, Alibaba also released the AR Buy+ platform, which allows consumers to project virtualized products onto the screen captured by mobile phone cameras. Previously, Baidu released the AR development platform DuMix, which provides SDKs and editors for developing AR products. Tencent has also opened up the QAR platform, allowing developers to access App into Tencent AR modules, and domestic large companies are accelerating AR layout.
“Chinese companies have an irreplaceable advantage in terms of content, applications, hardware, product diversification, and commercialization. The two content providers that came on stage at this Apple conference are all from the Chinese team. One of them is the AR game. Development requires not only the basic platform and the SDK, but also the improvement of the entire industry chain and ecology.†Li Jing told reporters, “Domestic companies can find more commercial value in the improvement of the entire industrial chain, and move forward to the source of the industry chain. ."
For small and medium-sized enterprises that can't integrate AR algorithms, it's a quick way to make a pop-up app that resembles Pokémon GO. Jiang Jiayi believes that because mobile AR will affect traffic distribution, SMEs can use the popular app to gain an opportunity to stand up. She expects that more AR apps will attract users' attention by creating social games such as hotspots next year.
Before AR glasses enter the consumption period, the mobile terminal is the most ideal AR carrier, and the C-side platforms like ARKit and ARCore can indeed educate consumers and realize public awareness and user transformation of AR. But as Su Bo said, being led by a giant may be covered by a giant. For domestic enterprises, seeing the development trend of AR applications and finding the right positioning and profit point in the AR industry chain will have the opportunity to become a “dark horse†in the transition from intelligent machines to consumer glasses.
T Copper Tube Terminals,Non-Insulated Pin-Shaped Naked Terminal,Copper Cable Lugs Terminals,Insulated Fork Cable Spade Terminal
Taixing Longyi Terminals Co.,Ltd. , https://www.longyicopperterminals.com