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Last week, the biggest news in the XR industry was that Pico, a subsidiary of ByteDance, officially announced its new product plan. Relying on ByteDance, Pico's every move has attracted much attention from the outside world. After all, Pico's attitude largely reflects ByteDance's attitude towards XR.

While overseas technology giants such as Google, Meta, and Microsoft are increasing their investment in XR, Chinese technology giants have been somewhat "calm" in recent years. Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent have in fact given up their XR business, and only ByteDance is sticking to it. Pico's last new product launch was the Pico 4 series new product launch in the fall of 2022. But the "life cycle" of the Pico 4 series may not be over yet.

According to official information, Pico will hold a 2024 new product communication meeting in Beijing on August 20, with the key words being "outstanding" and "entry".

In addition, at present, Pico's so-called new product is the long-rumored Pico 4S, which Lei Technology reported in March. At that time, we quoted Pico OS product manager Ma Jiesi as saying that Pico's new product would not be released before the end of April, and it should wait until the second half of the year.

However, specifically for the domestic market, this new product should be called Pico 4 Ultra, so we will temporarily use "Pico 4 Ultra" to refer to Pico's upcoming new products.

As the official release date is set for August 20, more information about Pico 4 Ultra has begun to leak out.We finally saw the true face of Pico 4 Ultra.

Pico 4 Ultra, picture/network

According to the pictures provided by the well-known blogger @Onleaks, the overall design of the Pico 4 Ultra has not changed much compared to the previously released Pico 4 series. The most direct change is the "camera" on the front of the body.

In addition to the original four VGA cameras on each corner, the Pico 4 series also has a central RGB camera on the front (for VST video perspective).The Pico 4 Ultra has two symmetrical cameras, and the size seems to be much larger.

In addition, as previously revealed, the Pico 4 Ultra's handle adopts a ringless design, which makes the design more simple. It not only means fewer obstacles in daily use, but also means that Pico has made great progress in the handle tracking algorithm, so it dares to remove the tracking ring.

However, the changes to the Pico 4 Ultra are obviously more than that.

Pico 4 Ultra is finally here! The best alternative to Vision Pro?

Although the market performance of Apple Vision Pro has disappointed many people, there is no doubt that mixed reality MR is still the trend of the entire industry and is also the key upgrade direction of Pico 4 Ultra.

First of all, it should be pointed out that the Pico 4 series is the first batch of consumer headsets to support VST color perspective. Through a centrally located RGB camera, Pico users have already experienced VST in 2022.

Photo/Pico

Here is a brief introduction. The principle of VST (Video See-Through) is actually to shoot the real space through the external camera and then display it on the internal screen to simulate the real space.

But strictly speaking, the Pico 4 series is still difficult to be regarded as an MR product. The most prominent problem is that the quality of perspective is not high, and a single camera is difficult to "replicate" the three-dimensional sense in the real world. Users mostly use it intermittently, such as drinking water, answering the phone, going to the toilet, and other short-term scenarios where they need to leave the virtual world and return to the real world, so as to reduce the experience cost brought by daily wear.

This is also one of the most anticipated changes of Pico 4 Ultra.

From the leaked pictures, we can see that the two cameras on the front of the Pico 4 Ultra are significantly larger in size. Coupled with the continuous iteration of the camera's hardware and algorithms, we have reason to believe that the video perspective quality of the Pico 4 Ultra should be significantly improved compared to before.

Pico 4 Ultra, picture/network

On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, a single camera can often only produce a two-dimensional flat image without depth and stereoscopic sense.But just as humans form a sense of three-dimensionality through the visual differences between their two eyes, symmetrical dual cameras can also simulate the three-dimensional sense of real space to a certain extent.From this perspective, the three-dimensional sense in Pico 4 Ultra video perspective will most likely be significantly improved, thus bringing a more realistic and natural spatial experience.

Based on better picture quality and three-dimensional sense, Pico 4 Ultra may be Pico's first true MR headset, and users can also interact with virtual content in a simulated physical environment.However, when it comes to display quality, it depends on the screen, which is also the most confusing part of the Pico 4 Ultra at present.

On the Pico 4/4 Pro, Pico uses two 2.56-inch Fast-LCD screens with a binocular resolution of up to 4320 x 2160 and a maximum 20.6 PPD (angular resolution).On the Pico 4 Ultra, you probably won’t see the expensive monocular 4K Micro OLED screen. Xiao Lei thinks it will most likely still be a Fast-LCD screen, but the resolution may be improved.

In addition, the questions left by Pico 4 Ultra include whether it will be similar to Pico 4 Pro, equipped with a camera for eye tracking on the inside of the headset, and support automatic pupil distance adjustment, etc. These will affect the price and experience of Pico 4 Ultra.

The processor upgrade is basically certain.

Image/Qualcomm

According to leaks, Pico 4 Ultra will be equipped with Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, just like Meta Quest 3. This XR chip was released at last year's Snapdragon Summit. Its GPU performance is 2.5 times higher than the previous generation, and its energy efficiency is increased by up to 50%.It also supports parallel processing of up to 10 channels of sensor and camera data, and VST latency as low as 12ms.

In other words, Pico 4 Ultra should not only provide a smoother experience in daily operation and medium-to-high-load games, but also benefit from the advancement of image processing of Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2, and the latency of video perspective will be greatly improved. Moreover, compared with the 8GB memory of the default configuration of Quest 3, Pico 4 Ultra is rumored to be equipped with 12GB memory, which should theoretically have better performance than the former.

On the whole, if the price remains within a reasonable range, Pico 4 Ultra may be the best alternative to Apple Vision Pro for some time to come.In addition, considering Pico's (and Byte's) accumulation in VR content and application ecology, it may even be better than Apple Vision Pro in terms of entertainment.

Why is MR the only way forward for head-mounted displays?

It is undeniable that in 2024, VR alone will hardly touch the nerves of mass consumers or even digital enthusiasts.

In addition to the upcoming Pico 4 Ultra, Lei Technology has also seen many new MR products at the CES Consumer Electronics Show at the beginning of the year, including new products from manufacturers such as Sony and NOLO. In addition, in the past six months, there has been the 1X99 USD (final price to be determined) MR Play Dream, and vivo's official announcement of entering the market.

Play your dream MR, Photo/Lei Technology

All major XR manufacturers are optimistic about the development direction of MR, and this is not just because of the leading product Apple Vision Pro.In fact, the MR experience based on VST technology has, to a certain extent, solved some of the inherent problems of past head-mounted display products, such as the temporary "interruptions" mentioned above, and VR's high requirements for space.

As we all know, VR has always had high requirements for space, especially in applications or games that involve movement. In a regular home environment, the safe zone is generally small, and users are in a completely virtual environment, and they are also worried about hitting objects or people when swinging.

In contrast, with a sufficiently good VST video perspective, the human eye can observe the layout and changes in the real space in real time.As a reliable basis for judgment when moving, it also expands the use area and scenarios of head-mounted display products. From the user's perspective, this is also the core difference between Pico 4 Ultra and previous Pico products.

The key change is that the MR experience based on VST allows users to interact with digital content in the physical world at the same time, and return to the highly immersive virtual world at any time.

Although former Oculus CTO John Carmack disagrees with this direction, at least in the foreseeable future, we simply cannot completely sever our connection with the real world. In this case, let’s “face reality.”

At least, MR provides a possible direction.

Before the official experience and price announcement, Lei Technology cannot accurately evaluate the Pico 4 Ultra product. But in any case, this is a product that Lei Technology is very much looking forward to, and it is also one of the most anticipated heavyweight cutting-edge products in the consumer electronics industry in 2024.

Admittedly, the Pico 4 Ultra may not necessarily have drastic changes in hardware, but the series of upgrades around the MR experience alone are enough to significantly change the user's daily experience. From another perspective, if you are also interested in the changes brought by Apple Vision Pro in experience, the Pico 4 Ultra must not be missed.