When the team was formed in April of this year, Ivan set a rule to foster members' rapid iterative awareness: publish a new version for the product every month.
Which day was the election? The VR browser team was founded with only 15 people. The 15th is also a mid-month month, "meeting the golden mean."
Five months later, on the same day, they took a small step and went online with Baidu VR Browser 1.0 (Android). "This is China's first VR browser", is a VR resource aggregation platform. It has three major functions: web browsing, video playback, and application stores (mainly games) in the VR environment.
VR environment:
Note: Huang Cheng promised that the data in the text is correct and responsible for its authenticity. He has backed up short-hand recordings and endorsed the content objectively.
Combining VR with Browser
In a conference room at the Baidu Building in Shanghai, Ivan and the two leaders of the department are working on this year's annual plan. After brainstorming, he put the surging VR technology on the table for discussion. "Can I combine VR with a browser?"
Ivan’s interest in VR has been long-standing. At university, he participated in the VR project. However, the "virtual reality" at that time was covered in a mysterious veil and it only survived in academic textbooks and was not realized in industry.
In his opinion, VR did not show up because the hardware was not up to the standard, "the experience is not very good." However, with the development of technology, VR glasses, head display, one machine and other equipment have been available, the market has also trained a large number of users.
Behind it, there is a lack of VR content. In contrast, 2D and 3D video resources in Web sites can be called "massive." They cannot be viewed in VR environments.
He contacted many years of research and development experience in Baidu browser, and BU and department leaders repeatedly mentioned the need to innovate in the VR field. The idea gradually came into being. "Browser is a good entry-level application", Ivan wanted to be a VR browser. It can not only aggregate third-party VR content but also can VR existing web pages.
More and more excited, he even drew a blueprint for his imagined VR browser in his mind. “In the future, we can use it as a platform to provide developers with a WebVR engine (similar to Web App) and develop VR applications in the browser. ".
When the voice did not fall, one of the Leader stunned and said excitedly: “I already wanted to do VR!â€
Since all three people have thought of one place, they immediately started to work on product technology planning, report to the department and BU leaders after rapid prototyping. The latter asked for advancement as soon as possible, and he said, "Doing products that allow users to scream."
In response to Baidu’s culture of encouraging internal innovation, Ivan and the head of the department’s product testing and design team made in-depth discussions. In April this year, he created the VR Browser Independent Project Team (internal codename “black teaâ€) and “do it with entrepreneurial attitude. product".
VR browser available
The development of a PC-side browser is a strength of Ivan and the team. But for the new VR technology, they are still new.
In the following month, the team learned VR knowledge from the beginning and started user research. The results are basically consistent with Ivan's judgment : VR resources are few and scattered, users may not find what they want after downloading a VR app, and the interaction mode is also monotonous. “They lack a platform-level one-stop service. Application of services."
Little friends deliberately pose.
According to industry and user pain points, he planned three major functional modules for the Baidu VR browser : web browsing, video playback, and application store in the VR environment (currently mainly games).
Among the three functions, web browsing and page video playback in the VR environment are the core. VR video playback includes ordinary video and web video, the latter is a difficult point. Ivan wants to cover all video types, not only ordinary video (Baidu's own cloud video) can be on-demand in VR scenes, but also includes external web video playback in VR environment.
The hardest part is that the images rendered by the Web rendering engine, especially video frames, are efficiently rendered in 3D scenes. No way, he and the team began to study the underlying code of the Android system, using the underlying Surface exchange and texture drawing acceleration technology to build the effect step by step.
After overcoming technical problems, Baidu VR Browser realized its initial vision. For 2D and 3D video, the user is equivalent to watching a large screen 2.5 meters away, "just like watching a movie at a home projector." VR video discards the defects of the original 2D page and the resulting distortion of the picture, and realizes 360-degree panoramic viewing under the VR environment. It is "like being enveloped by a sphere full of pictures."
On June 15th, the first Beta version was released and Beta2 went online one month later. "Our internal people never thought that they can really browse the web in VR environment."
However, the problem can not be ignored: VR immersive sense is not strong enough to be improved; eyeglasses as a means of interaction is still relatively single; in addition the browser is running even when the Catton, needs to be optimized.
Update iterative products
On the same day three months later, Baidu VR Browser 1.0 for Android was launched on Baidu Mobile Assistant. In this version, the aforementioned problems are truly resolved. However, due to the time-consuming development of new interactive means, the team in this version only improved the previous interaction experience, such as shortening the gaze from the original 2 seconds to 0.5 seconds; and improving the user's head trajectory detection technology. Inadvertent click in a short gaze.
Browser interface design also incorporates careful thought. The theme is vast space, "dark-colored environment allows users to focus on web pages and video itself." The buttons used to watch the video are similar to the spacecraft console. "It has a good sense of technology with VR technology."
Baidu VR Browser (Android Edition) Home Interface
While iterating products, Baidu's VR browser has cooperated with domestic VR hardware manufacturers and VR content videos . For example, it has established strategic cooperation relationships with hardware manufacturers such as Pico and Xiaozhai. The home page has been for barley, VR, and trinocular monkeys. Other platforms set traffic diversion entrances, and application stores have also launched many third-party VR games.
At present, the "Baidu VR browser users are growing every day," this month, compared with the previous month, an increase of about 100%, users use more than 20 minutes a day.
Next, Ivan wants to take the team together with the Baidu Input Law team and the Deep Learning Institute to develop new interactive methods , including speech (such as instructions, search, input, etc.), gestures, etc. to solve the lack of interactive means, unnaturalness, etc. problem.
According to him, the iOS version of Baidu's VR browser will be launched at the end of this year, and the team is also trying to develop PC-end products and negotiating with the hardware vendors to co-operate with the App.
Ivan thinks very far. He wants to make the product a bridge to the VR industry chain . This also coincides with Baidu's VR platform strategy.