Hypereal founder Huang Chaiming
"Why entrepreneurship?"
"Because I don't want to find a job.
This is Xiaobian's dialogue with Hypereal's founder, Huang Chai-ming. Hearing this answer, Xiaobian laughed.
During this year's Shanghai MWC, Xiao Bian heard that a domestic startup company had done a VR head display, team luxury, and first-rate products, so he went to visit and found that it was quite close to Vive after experience. ( Xiao Bian himself is Vive. user).
The Chinese name of Hypereal, the company's Chinese name, is named after the founder's name. Huang Chai Ming’s speech is very straightforward, without concealing the self-confidence of himself and the team’s talent. During the conversation, he dismissed the current three major VR headlines. In fact, no wonder, he said that their team spent a total of 10 people in 3 months, and they created the Hypereano Pano (HyPano) product with its own space positioning system and handles. The base station is called HyBeacon. The handle is called HyFeel.
This product was officially unveiled on ChinaJoy 2016. At first glance, the entire product was like the HTC Vive helmet with the Lighthouse base station and the Oculus Touch controller.
In terms of parameters, it is also aligned with Vive and Rift. The official parameters are:
2K OLED screen;
110 degree field of view angle;
11ms delay
90Hz refresh rate;
Positioning space can be expanded.
HyPano supports Open VR, is compatible with VR games on Steam, and also has its own SDK. Huang Chai Ming stressed that the hardware and software of this product are developed independently. Although its spatial orientation method is the same as that of Lighthouse, he stated that there has been a lot of related research in this area before Lighthouse, and they have developed HyBeacon based on these researches, but they are not products of Shanshan Vive.
HiBeacon base station
Xiao Bian thought that the experience of this product was close to Vive after experiencing HyPano on two occasions. The reason why it did not reach the level of Vive was because two experiences found that there was jitter in positioning. In this regard, Huang Chai-ming explained in a later interview that the problem was due to the motor used in the base station, and that the problem would be solved by switching to the same motor supplier's product as the HTC Vive.
The product release did not disclose key information such as selling price and time to market. Later, Huang Chai Ming told Xiao Bian that the products would not be available until the end of this year (November, December). The price would be relatively high. Level, but the specific number was not disclosed.
User experience, handle or development version
Hardware is not the focusHypereal is a startup company founded last year with more than 100 employees. It has done hardware, software and content on VR products. But in fact, hardware is not their focus. Ten people's investment (five people do space positioning) can explain this, besides Huang Chai Ming also said that they will not make large-scale production of HyPano, but make their own A small number of high-end products (prices are also high-end) will then be licensed to other manufacturers to produce VR headsets. In addition, Xiao Bian also found that the VR peripheral team has already obtained Hypereal's space positioning system.
So what are the rest of the company doing? He said that he is studying the technology of graphics and graphics. After questioning by Lei Fengwang (searching for "Lei Feng Net" public concern) , he revealed that the company is developing a product that includes a professional graphic design software, which will be launched in conjunction with the head display in December this year; there are also image processing chips. Can be used in video compression, transmission and other fields, but these studies are still in the early stages.
The company's team includes a number of experts in graphic technology, including Chief Scientist Xu Dong, Ph.D. in Graphics from Zhejiang University, formerly AUTODECK Software Development Supervisor, responsible for AUTOCAD graphics, and Chen Lu, Director of Graphics Technology, also a graphic of Zhejiang University. Doctor of Science.
Hypereal also launched two games developed by CJ on its own, one is Zombies Never Die, which is a first-person defense game for zombies; and the other is HyBuilder, which allows you to play like a stack of wood. The entire world is created in the virtual world.
No matter if it is an application or a game, the company does not intend to put it on its own platform alone, but instead it will create a cross-platform product.
The importance of the content is exceeding the hardwareAfter experiencing HyPano, Xiaobian and many VR industry people talked about this product. Some people said that the threshold of VR hardware is not high. In fact, these companies are quite numerous, but their promotional channels are not very wide.
He said it is not difficult to make a complete set of HTC Vive-like products, including Lighthouse. However, HTC must be the strongest in this aspect of the supply chain. Domestic manufacturers can achieve a similar experience, but if they really want to mass-produce, they must invest enough to burn.
" Actually, VR's technical barriers are not very high, and now all VR devices are not significant black technologies and they have the potential to leapfrog, " he continued. He believes that these companies will not have a particularly big impact on the industry, because the advantages of large companies in supply chain, content promotion, and after-sales services are obvious.
There are also industry insiders that, in fact, there is no need to pay too much attention to VR hardware. The hardware structure has been formed and content is the focus that should be paid attention to. There is no content hardware is also useless.
According to Xiao Bian, if the supply chain matures in the future, resulting in a drop in the price of high-quality VR equipment, the most affected may be high-end VR head-display manufacturers such as HTC Vive. However, HTC is also working hard to develop a content ecosystem and avoid the risk of hardware only.
As for Hypereal, this hardware product has already proved its R&D strength. The next important thing is to look at the situation of his home graphic design software and image chip product.