On the last weekend of March, the Beijing Civil Aviation International Conference Center in Wangjing had almost the highest concentration of Visionpro in the country.
This is the world's first developer conference event since the release of Apple VisionPro. Hundreds of thousands of people came here to exchange new news on current VisionOS application development.
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There are now more than 1,300 vos native applications, and more than 1.5 million applications compatible with iPhone and iPad. Meta has been in business for 10 years, but currently there are not so many applications.
What do these people from home and abroad who are most concerned about VisionOS talk about when they get together? Although everyone almost sounds confused when they hear the term “killer app”, no one cares: What is that app?
Contains Visionpro at an explosive concentration
As soon as I entered the venue, I saw two people holding “magic wands” in their hands, making gestures and mumbling words, and a circle of people gathered around to take pictures. The sharing in the venue and the display at the booth were carried out simultaneously. The venue was packed and people had to queue up in front of the booth to experience popular applications.
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Let's Visionpro event wand PK | Image source: Geek Park
Inspaze, developed by Zhiwen Group, always had the longest queue in front of the booth. When asked which apps are worth trying, almost everyone would recommend it. There are also many enthusiasts in the circle who say that it is the “killer app” of VP now.
Inspaze is a social application that brings a new imagination to social interaction in VP. Inspaze integrates real-time voice translation, persona, spatial audio, social games, etc., providing a space that belongs to you, and supports socializing on iPhone and VP. Friends can come to your space, listen to the music you play, and play chess together in your living room.
Socializing in virtual space is actually common in the VR era. However, due to limitations in hardware shipments and computing power, the effects of previous classic social applications were not ideal.
Inspaze effect | Image source: Zhiwen Group
And since the space effect of VP is unmatched by previous devices, on Inspaze, I think I would be happy to sit on the sofa in someone else's “QQ space”, surrounded by butterflies and vinyl music, play board games, and chat. . At the very least this app will make me regret that VP is too expensive, otherwise I really wish I could play it more.
This application also has a special background. It is the only VisionOS application built from scratch by an Internet company in China that does not rely on any original business.
In fact, Inspaze is one of the most fancy-looking applications, and more applications focus on lightweight functional applications. After all, in the early desert virtual space, the first batch of developers must have been doing infrastructure construction. Application development in the spatial computing era should stand on the shoulders of giants in the 2D era.
Even though the national version of VP has not yet been released, Chinese developers and consumers are very enthusiastic about Apple Vision Pro. It can even be said that Chinese developers are the most enthusiastic VP developers.
However, when Chinese users get VP, they will find that visionOS does not provide Chinese input method and speech recognition. Of course, Chinese developers cannot do nothing. The Dino app immediately solves this problem and is very unique in interaction design.
With Dino, you can input Chinese by voice offline. When the input is completed, Dino will automatically add the text content to the clipboard. At the same time, you can also drag it to any text box.
Dino interaction: When pinching two fingers for voice input, the dialog box tilts slightly, like “prick up your ears and listen” | Image source: Geek Park
After chatting with some VP users who have been using it for a while, I found that the function they use the most is watching videos on the ceiling. Lying motionless on the bed can greatly reduce weight bearing and dizziness, making it painless and immersive.
Then a player is just what you need. Moon Player is an all-round player for Apple Vision Pro. It supports playing videos in various formats and provides a stable and smooth viewing experience. The Moon team also has a product called Moon Portal, which allows users to freely decorate spaces and explore AI worlds and various 3D scenes.
In VP, the experience of the weather forecast function will also be greatly improved compared to the 2D era. The space simulator application seaons is an immersive weather application based on AVP, including 34 immersive weather atmospheres and spatial audio, which allows you to feel the wind, rain and snow there after asking “How is the weather where you are?” fog. Developer Cosmo said that in the future, there will be more imagination extending from this application and it will bring new products.
If you don’t catch up on the iPhone moment, catch up on the VP moment
The status of developers is very vital, and everyone may have some expectations. They may be able to catch the same “VP moment” as the “iPhone moment”.
Now is perhaps the best time for XR application development and VOS developers. VP has just arrived, and the freedom of the application development environment has not yet reached the end of the world. The support in the entire ecological chain is very rich.
On-site developers talked about the obvious advantages of Vision OS development. Apple provides a complete set of UI and interaction solutions, as well as a complete human-computer interface guide to guide developers on the correct design method. Moreover, the development starting point of Vision OS is Swift UI rather than Unity, which means that it is a framework or platform designed for applications, not games. The learning threshold is also low, and you can develop versions of iOS and Vision S at the same time, and add a unique 3D experience to Vision.
It is foreseeable that spatial computing will also enter the next era together with the productivity changes brought by AI. To build more content in spatial computing, AI will surely play a greater role in the future. There was also a lot of sharing about the combination of AI and spatial computing at this conference.
Many people hope that AI can be used in 3D content asset generation, but unfortunately there is no good effect yet. However, the efficiency of AI-generated 3D assets is already there, but the quality is very low and cannot be used as PGC. But can it be used as a UGC tool? Yuhang gave a direction in his sharing: Can you create a game that uses AI generation as the core gameplay?
He developed a combat-type AI-generated game. The gameplay is very simple. One element fights another element, and the winning element must fuse the other element. As shown in the picture above, Panda merges with a table.
Behind the protagonists of this conference, there is also an ecological chain that considers providing support and subsequent commercialization for them.
Moloco is a machine learning company. Morden Chen, senior director of monetization business of Moloco Greater China, shared his views on how new hardware takes up users' time and how the B-side can be commercialized in it. He talked about, “When wearable devices enter the market in the future, we need to consider how much time it can occupy? Who is using it? Is it young people without spending power? Or is it used by people with spending power? These factors will ultimately come down to commercialization, and machine learning capabilities can help applications become better commercialized.”
“Killer apps are not found”
After talking to everyone, it is generally believed that it is not yet time for the Vision?Pro killer application to appear. From the perspective of hardware shipments, 100 million units were sold when iPhone 4 made a big splash, and it is generally believed that XR device shipments need to reach 10 million units to have a certain level of usage feedback.
Hardware shipments can mean that new interaction methods gain a certain amount of popularity. Only when a certain amount of people become familiar with the new interaction experience can they get entertainment experience from it. Just like learning to tap and swipe the screen to slice watermelons and fight Angry Birds. Nowadays, people need to change from multi-touch to hand-eye interaction, and become familiar with the gaze click in VP, finger click and grab and place in space, etc. In fact, like swiping the screen, it is a natural interaction that can be learned once it is learned.
Vision?Pro version of Fruit Ninja | Image source: Apple official website
Judging from the rapid growth in the number of applications, various small applications can truly integrate this device into life and work scenes, rather than attracting heavy game console users in the big-production 3D sucks.
The content ecology and hardware shipments have always been a “chicken-and-egg” problem. No matter how many XR devices are shipped and “eat dust” at home, they will not be able to complete their mission of subversion, and killer applications will not appear.
Behind the current lack of immersion and 3D experience in the Vision OS ecosystem, perhaps it is Apple that pays more attention to application richness, rather than just the immersive interactive experience of the headset and large-scale games. Apple's idea may be to first move the iPad to Vision Pro, allowing people to gain a sense of familiarity, and then slowly turn it into 3D and turn it into real spatial computing.
Another factor holding back killer apps is cost. Although the cost of VOS development has decreased compared with other platforms to develop XR content, it is still relatively high, resulting in a high proportion of paid applications in VOS.
According to data from Appfigures, most applications on the Vision Pro platform currently use direct paid downloads instead of free downloads followed by in-app purchases. The average selling price of Vision Pro exclusive applications is US$5.67 (currently approximately RMB 41), of which 53% are paid downloads. Compared with applications on other platforms in the entire App Store, only 5% adopt the direct payment download model.
Developers say that investors and the media are the ones who love to talk about killer apps, but no killer apps have ever been found. Investment partner Xu Wuzhenge Fund talked in a podcast that the next three years will be the “fool's window period” for VP application entrepreneurship. The industry will form a value consensus. In the next 6-7 years, hardware and ecology will significantly improve and reach a breaking point. . In 10 years, consumers’ physical sensations will be very strong.
It is reported that Vision?Pro will be released in China in April and May this year. After holding the world's first developer conference in China, is Vision?Pro's killer app still far away?