Ali's layout in the VR field has been long-standing. The group's panoramic video business was already deployed early this year, and they subsequently led Magic Leap with $793.5 million in funds, making this company famous in Silicon Valley. MR company gradually began to be known to the people. Cai Chongxin took this opportunity to join Magic Leap's board of directors, and this action was precisely to coincide with the foreshadowing of BUY+.

The start of the BUY+ business actually dates back to March this year. The GM Lab established by Ali (VR Labs) opened up a dedicated path for BUY+ in content direction, trying to combine VR with shopping. In the voice of doubt, the BUY+ service officially landed on the Taobao Creativity Festival, which also cited Magic Leap's technology show. People began to clamor for the future of VR shopping.

Just a short time ago, Alibaba made a slogan for the VR shopping plan. The upcoming VR Pay will have the opportunity to allow users to complete the payment directly in the context of virtual reality. Since then, Ali's chain in VR shopping seems to have been assembled. "BUY+" and "VR Pay", together with the "creation plan" linked with third-party manufacturers, it seems that it is not impossible to recreate a virtual reality Taobao.

However, although Ali's blueprint has already been developed, there are still many difficulties in realizing it. Attached to its immature VR technology, VR shopping is more complex in content development. The current demand for this service is not very clear, but it is not actually a broad road.

Want to push Alipay VR Pay, Ali ambition appeared

In the BUY+ concept video, there are indeed many loopholes that cannot withstand scrutiny. On a mobile VR that is not equipped with anything, using gestures to control the virtual reality scene is still difficult. The BUY+ shopping video exposure coincided with April Fool's Day this year. At the time, everyone thought it was a joke.

However, this "joke" accidentally landed on the "Taobao Shopping Festival" a few months later. Although the live demonstrations did not come out of concept videos, Ali had at least completed a series of operations using the real machine, and the experience seemed pretty good.

Gesture recognition in the concept video is replaced by HTC Vive's handle operation, and the movement method also draws on the coordinate displacement mechanism in the VR game. The functions of the product's information interface, perfect item modeling, and try-on have also been realized. . Although the BUY+ system in the show was relatively complete, it was only a DEMO with a gorgeous feather coat. For Ali, they also lack a core service that enables easy payment in VR.

Although payment is only a small part of shopping operations, it almost determines the availability of online shopping. In the early days of the development of smart phones, people were more willing to use PCs for online shopping due to the inconvenience of mobile payment. However, the emergence of scan code payment, one-click payment, etc. has changed the status quo and mobile shopping has become more and more popular.

Unknown Mutual Mobile set up VR's payment service before Ali and successfully sold the first drink through Uber's take-out meal. In order to deal with this situation, Ant Financial finally could not resist, revealed the relevant information of VR Pay.

VR Pay tries to allow customers to complete payment operations directly in virtual reality, which greatly simplifies the VR shopping payment process. After all, letting users select good products in the context of virtual reality, it's a bit difficult to get to the order in the PC. According to the CBN (First Financial Daily), VR Pay will be released at the end of September. With the help of VR Pay, users can log in Alipay directly in the virtual reality environment through eye tracking and gesture actions. And complete the transaction.

Some similarities with the release of BUY+ news, VR Pay currently revealed these contents may not be fully applied. However, the combination of BUY+ and VR Pay almost duplicated the basic model of Taobao's online shopping. Coupled with the currently strengthened rookie logistics, Ali's ambition in VR shopping has been revealed.

Copy Taobao, dream good and cruel reality

1.VR shopping is not a pseudo-demand, but it is not a mainstream requirement

For some application scenarios, VR shopping does have the effect of icing on the cake. Clothing try-on, home design, large-scale electrical and mechanical product procurement can all achieve better sensory perception through virtual reality. However, the range of goods that require VR for demonstration is still very narrow. Frankly, it is not really a pseudo-need, but it is not a necessary core requirement.

The foods and daily necessities that are commonly found in everyday life such as instant noodles, drinks, fruits, toothbrushes, etc., virtually do not need to be purchased through VR. These products do not involve the user's individual customization, and their basic form has also been known by people. Reconstruction via VR is nothing but a superfluous addition.

In the face of similar products, traditional online and offline shopping may have advantages. Online shopping can be ordered accurately and quickly, eliminating the need for a virtual tour. The offline shopping is superior to the control of fresh products. Modeling by VR alone cannot give feedback on the quality of food. In addition, some living scenes do not need to use VR for shopping. When you eat outdoors or watch tickets, VR devices can only be extremely cumbersome.

On the other hand, although Ali has repeatedly stated that Buy+ and VR Pay will be mainly used on non-screen VR devices such as Cardboard, this argument contradicts the actual demonstration of BUY+. At the “Taobao Shopping Festival”, BUY+ was achieved by experiencing the best HTC Vive.

If you keep the existing program, users are unlikely to spend 10,000 yuan to purchase equipment to experience VR shopping that is not yet mature. As the cost rises, the corresponding demand will gradually decline. Once Ali transfers the application to a non-screen VR device, the overall shopping experience will be greatly reduced.

2.VR shopping is not more complicated than traditional online shopping, and the technical problems to be solved are far more complicated than the original Taobao.

Ali's VR shopping also has many technical problems that need to be solved urgently. There are no particularly good solutions for item modeling, setting up shopping situations, and interactions between users and products.

The first project of the Ali VR Lab, "The God of Nature", aims to establish a 3D commodity library in VR with a third party vendor to solve the problem of item modeling. In fact, the modeling technology of the items is already very mature. If the overall product base in VR shopping is only a few hundred thousand, then this is almost no problem with Ali's capabilities. However, with reference to Taobao, it can be found that the total number of commodities can only be calculated in terms of power.

In order to provide a better VR shopping experience, product modeling can not be too rough, the total cost is very high with the cost of 400 RMB per model. Wool is out of the sheep. Ali cannot afford to bear the full cost of the “creative animal project”. The cost of item modeling will be shared equally among the settled merchants. This actually increases the threshold for BUY+, and when a shop is lost When commodities are supported, its vitality will be reduced sharply.

At the beginning of the development of BUY+ and VR Pay services, the interactive experience of Ali VR shopping is certainly insufficient. Simply put, eye tracking and gesture recognition operations using bare-screen VR devices are almost impossible, as in conceptual video.

With reference to the efforts of other manufacturers in this direction, we can see that FOVE has achieved eye-tracking, and a special sensor screen has also strengthened the arrangement of sensors. However, this cannot solve the unconscious movement and closure of human eyes. Basic gesture recognition requires at least a few years of Kinect technology. If you want to involve deep-touch issues, Ali will need to devote more energy.

In addition, because of the differences in the items sold in each store, creating a separate virtual consumption scenario is also necessary to improve the user experience. This also requires the introduction of panoramic video shooting, splicing and other processes, and it also has the same cost pain points as item modeling.

What makes Ali even more troublesome is that similar products have appeared in their VR shopping experience. The Italian development team inVRsion had previously created a VR application called ShelfZone, which is mainly used to help large retailers build VR shopping environments. ShelfZone also operates based on HTC Vive, and their VR demo is also more mature than BUY+.

Ali's attempt to build Taobao in the VR field is a good idea. However, if the market and technology are not yet formed, he will fully devote himself to the event and will only receive a dream. Perhaps starting from the subdivision area and expanding the width layer by layer can be a solution. What can be seen is that services such as VR car purchase, VR appliances, and VR luxury goods have been quietly launched in the market.

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