With the huge development potential of VR, vendors in different areas of the supply chain such as hardware terminals, tool platforms, and applications and content are ready to boost their businesses. While VR currently has a positive development trend, major issues such as poor user experience and the high cost of entry for users are in urgent need to be resolved. Huawei’s iLab, the innovation lab for ultra-broadband networks, shows that Cloud VR provides a better solution for VR development through cloud rendering.
Why does Cloud VR provide a better solution for VR development？The details are as follows.
Currently, a good quality VR experience mainly relies on PC VR terminals which are generally heavy and difficult to wear. Most PC VR terminals in the market require HDMI cables to connect to PCs, causing inconvenience.
However, VR cloudification can relocate the logical computing and image processing requirements. The distributed computing capabilities of ultra-multi-core servers, GPU clusters, and clouds are well represented by using the latest GPU rendering and AI analysis to make up for the insufficiency of VR terminals. In the Cloud VR era, terminals will be cable-free, light to wear, and convenient to access by various types of terminals. In addition, users can experience the optimal multi-screen integration and sharing, implementing online multi-user interactive VR.
Huawei iLab, together with recommendations by Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Valve, and Steam VR, found that the minimum configuration requirements for guaranteed basic VR experience include: GPUs equivalent to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970/AMD R9 290 or better, CPUs equivalent to Intel i5-4590 or better, and RAM of at least 8 GB. A PC and the corresponding PC VR terminal will cost over USD 1,500, which is a significant cost for a working-class family.
With cloudified VR, user terminals require only the most basic functions such as video decoding and encoding, and receiving and uploading of control signals. An STB can be used for decoding, and a mobile VR terminal for video playing, adding up to less than USD 440. Together with the content copyright fee, the total cost for a VR user is no more than USD 600.
Most VR content so far is off-line, potentially causing content management difficulties, and making it more difficult for the copyright of VR content to be guaranteed.
Through Cloud VR, content management becomes easy, and copyright can be protected. Precise data management and provisioning can be implemented in the cloud.
Currently, the high per-user cost, lack of content, and difficulty in popularization result in poor ecological circulation.
After VR moves to the cloud, user costs are greatly reduced, popularizing VR in more families and then enriching the VR user experience. Ultimately, the development of high-quality VR content and VR commercial scenarios will ripen.
The evolution from local VR to Cloud VR has become an inevitable trend. By 2025, among nine major types of VR applications, the most popular will be video games, entertainment, and live events.
Regarding the typical applications across these fields, Huawei iLab will release the VR OpenLab Industrial Collaboration Plan at UBBF 2017, and demonstrate five major Cloud VR application scenarios with industrial partners including: VR video streaming, VR gaming, VR live broadcast, VR live sports and games, and VR home fitness. Please stay tuned for more.
