If you're lucky and have been close to 40 years old, you certainly know the progress of technology that always wants to take users to a different world, a different reality from the current one. The creation of virtual reality goggles or headsets has been around for a long time, but it has matured in recent years.
The maturity of the virtual reality headset industry is evidenced by the diversity of such products, both from game console manufacturers, as well as other device brands. Pico is a startup from China that was established in March 2015, and since being owned by ByteDance in September 2021, this startup has grown rapidly, even starting to penetrate the market of countries outside of China.
And at GDC 2023, Pico opened up a big show to show off their virtual reality set, complete with a gaming corner even though the set is still not officially on sale in the United States. Apart from providing a gaming space for attendees to try, they also held a session with developers and we had the chance to meet Zhang Jian, who is the Head of Pico XR Engine & Runtime Engineering.
All Pico Virtual Reality Headset Models Are SDK
In software development, SDK or is short for Software Development Kit is the most important thing that developers need to have. Sometimes, to have this SDK is a costly thing, especially in game making, developers have to buy SDK to develop and test the game.
Zhang Jian said, Pico is aware of this and makes the initial cost for developers not too high. In fact, developers only need to have a Pico virtual reality set to start developing applications, by activating 'Developer Mode'. So all Pico virtual reality sets are ready to use as SDK, right out of the box.
The Time To 'Port' The Game To Pico Is Short, But It Needs Time To 'Polish'
In the game industry, sometimes most game studios will develop games for one platform first, before converting (porting) them for other platforms later on. Only the big developer studios are usually able to launch the game on day one, available for all platforms.
When Zhang Jian was asked about the developer issue that would usually take time to 'port' the game, he replied that it is not a problem in the Pico platform because 'porting' can usually be done quickly because Pico supports popular development platforms such as Unity SDK and Unreal SDK.
Even Pico also supports OpenXR so if the project, game or application developed is in OpenXR, then it doesn't take time for developers to port it.
But Zhang Jian added, what is the main question is to do software polishing (polishing) for games that have been ported. This is because for any software that has been ported, there will be challenges in perfecting and ensuring that the software that has been produced before, operates well in the latest platform.
And if the game is developed without an understanding of virtual reality, it may not be suitable to play in virtual reality so polishing the game is important to guarantee the player's experience while playing it.
In a different session, Zhang Jian also demonstrated how easy it is to port existing games, including games developed for the Meta Quest virtual reality set, and can be repackaged to operate on the Pico virtual reality set.
Raytracing In Virtual Reality
One of the interesting things in today's game development is the 'Raytracing' function which makes the visual quality of the game more beautiful and very exciting. In the smartphone arena, processing chips have begun to be equipped with Raytracing capabilities but none of them support it.
When asked about Raytracing on the Pico virtual reality headset, Zhang Jian shared that it is subject to the availability of the Snapdragon processing chip. Until now the Pico 4 virtual reality headset is powered by the Snapdragon XR2 chip but for any experience with the Raytracing function, it may only be available if the latest version of the headset is also equipped with the corresponding chip.
Zhang Jian also added that until now, Pico's virtual reality set was built with full focus for user comfort, with optimization on latency and FPS focusing on users so that no 'motion sickness' occurs. And from the reaction of visitors to the fair as well as the participation of developers in the workshop provided by Pico, it is clear that Pico's efforts in competing in the world of virtual reality.