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Huawei VR OpenLab and Cloud VR |
NEWS |
At the Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF) in Hangzhou, China in October, Huawei announced the development of a new lab focused on developing the Cloud VR ecosystem. Much of the push behind Cloud VR has been driving the 5G radio network, as an application capable of consuming significant bandwidth and requiring low latency network – in many cases, Cloud VR has referred equally to implementations of AR and VR – with AR generally having a higher mobility requirement and therefore requires a stronger push to mobility and the benefits of 5G.
The VR OpenLab will be a new facility staffed with over 30 full-time people; supporting companies include Huawei, Cyber Cloud, iQiyi, 3Glasses, Hypereal, LetinVR, Nine!, Archiact, 3D, beamVR, High Fidelity, JD.com, Realis, Noitom, Rockchip, BOE, Virzoom, uSens, Pimax, SDMC, and other education and commercial institutions. This will likely act as a combination between an innovation lab – with some multi-party funded projects to be solved through cooperation of the various entities, with each retaining their own intellectual property, and an incubator – where the co-working of multiple party’s speeds innovation through shared expertise and access to funding and talent.
Interestingly, a starting point proof of concept has already been developed. Huawei, Cyber Cloud, and Leap Motion already developed and showed a prototype cloud VR system which leverages a cloud-based game engine (developed by Cyber Cloud) – connecting to an Oculus Rift headset which plugs via an HDMI and USB adapter directly into a broadband modem, sending motion vectors and receiving graphics from the cloud. The system doesn’t use much video compression, sending a remarkable 300 Mbps video stream down to the device, but is functional and low enough latency to play many games. With the pervasive Gbps FTTx based connectivity in Asia, this type of system is viable.
Cloud VR Economics |
IMPACT |
One of the strongest arguments behind cloud VR, and one of the reasons that it is being originated in Asia, is the cost factor. Today, premium “gaming” PCs cost US$1000-US$1500 while the HMD headset and peripherals are on order of US$500. Before game content costs, the setup costs roughly US$2000. While individual gamers will vary significantly, let’s assume that this PC will last the gamer three years – the gamer purchases about eight games per year and achieves about 40 hours of gameplay per game. All in, the cost is roughly US$2 per gaming hour. Today, in Amazon Web Services (AWS) within the U.S., the cost of AWS elastic GPU cloud ranges from US$0.05 per hour (medium instance with 1 GB) up to US$0.40 per hour (2 XL instance with 8 GB). All in all, it’s quite possible to see the cost benefit of cloud GPUs, especially if you can fit the workloads within large or extra-large instances at about US$0.10-US$0.20 per hour of compute.
What Else is Required |
COMMENTARY |
Seeing this early progress and significant investment in lab space around cloud VR, what is required and what is the opportunity?
What is required?
What is the opportunity, including consumer and industrial applications?
All in all, the computing ecosystem has oscillated between a client-based and server-based approach many times over the years (mainframes versus PCs). Today, a mix of local and enhanced cloud capabilities exists in most domains – save for “embedded” domains in which performance is critical or cloud connectivity cannot be relied upon. Most VR applications will rely to a certain extent on the cloud – from game updates to multiplayer gaming or ad-servers on downloaded gaming content. The question is more a question of howmuch will VR applications rely on local processing and storage, compared to how much they will rely on the cloud.One example in AR is that Microsoft’s Hololens can natively process about 250 K polygons of a CAD image on the device, while industrial designers routinely work on models with millions of polygons. The design choice faced is whether to decimate the model, with some downgrade in visual acuity and a slower model visualization review cycle, or rendering in the cloud. Both make sense for different applications. Ultimately, any technologies developed in support of cloud VR will increase the range of possibility for the entire VR ecosystem.