Since Shenzhen IDF 14 (held on April 2, 2014), Intel has been giving its RealSense technology a lot of time at every major trade show, such as Computex Taipei and CES, for more than a year now. RealSense continued to be one of Intel's key features at IDF 15 in San Francisco in August.

So what is RealSense? What are the prospects of its application? What are its competitors? How will it affect the future of computer technology? With these questions in mind, let's take a look at what real sense technology really is.

In a nutshell, RealSense technology is a set of camera components developed by Intel with multiple sensors that can be placed on laptops, designed for small mobile devices like tablets and even phones, and adapted by geeks for drones and even smart robots.

With the RealSense camera component, these devices can do more and better. Things like fast 3D scanning, ambient sensing, biometrics, hover touch, and even some of the attributes of VR or AR. These features will make it easier for devices to perform tasks, such as a tablet with RealSense that can quickly create 3D models of objects being scanned using 3D scanning capabilities, making 3D printing easy for people who don't know how to use professional software for modeling.

RealSense camera component

Another example is the drone equipped with RealSense, which can fly in the woods without pressure through its environmental sensing and infrared positioning functions. At present, even the best UAV pilots do not dare to travel in the forest covered with trees.

From these examples, we can see that the current RealSense, although not embedded in the mass audience, is very promising. Perhaps, it is just waiting for a better time, or a talent.

·RealSense, VR and AR

In 2015, technology companies including Microsoft, SONY and FaceBook began to make efforts in AR and VR market. Microsoft HoloLens, SONY PlayStation VR, which was just renamed, and Oculus, which was acquired by FaceBook, are undoubtedly the leaders in AR and VR industry. In addition, manufacturers in various fields, including Razer, LeEco and Samsung, have also begun to explore VR and AR fields and launched corresponding devices one after another. But in the process, many people ignore Intel's RealSense technology.

The main direction of AR and AR equipment is in the field of entertainment and games. At the recently concluded Tokyo Game Show, SONY unveiled a slew of games for PlayStation VR and offered several demos to play. Although there is no further news about Microsoft HoloLens in the field of AR, it can be seen from some early demonstrations that the combination of HoloLens and XBOX platform in the future will also bring a completely different experience from the past.

VR, AR will become the industry in 2016

Razer, Storm Video, LetV, Samsung and other manufacturers provide VR solutions for mobile phone and PC video entertainment. For example, letV recently launched a 360° panoramic live sports event platform, which is a good example. Razer also showed off its VR gaming goggles at IDF 15 in August.

Judging from the actions of these industry giants, 2016 will be a year of explosive growth of VR and AR technology.

It was also a critical year for Intel RealSense. Unlike simple VR and AR, RealSense is a technology that can be used for both. It gives developers more imagination, can help developers develop AR or VR devices, and is more versatile in terms of features.

But this diversification has also become a double-edged sword. No matter HoloLens and PlayStation VR for games, or Storm Video and video entertainment, or letv virtual reality glasses, they have a single orientation, but more specific goals, which can locate users more quickly than RealSense, which takes both sides.

In addition, the promotion path of RealSense is still using laptops or tablets, but how many Oems will join the RealSense camp and make RealSense camera standard in the future notebook camera is still a big question. At the same time, from the user's perspective, it's often a case of 'Oh, RealSense has lots of features, but it doesn't seem to be enough to convince me to buy a device.' So RealSense still has a long way to go, industry-wide, product-wise, and user-wise.

· What is the application prospect of photorealistic technology

Working in the PC industry, RealSense's adoption seems like a natural progression. For example, at the beginning of the popularity of the camera on the laptop, many people think that it is unnecessary to put a camera on the laptop, taking photos is not as good as the camera, shooting video is not as good as DV, but when the Internet era comes, the camera has become the necessary equipment for video conference, network through, and thus has become the standard hardware of today's laptop.

RealSense is also a camera, but it's much more powerful than a regular camera. A RealSense camera incorporates infrared sensors and various sensors that make computers and other devices more sensitive for things like 3D scanning and distance sensing, and make them look smarter.

Not only computers, but also mobile phones can become carriers of RealSense

In addition to becoming standard hardware on computers, RealSense has other applications as well.

In games, for example, players can use a RealSense camera to scan their image into the game and become the main character of the game, so that they can control themselves to take adventures in the game world. Unfortunately, RealSense game development has been slow compared to Microsoft and SONY, which have their own game platforms. At least we haven't seen a single game that supports RealSense scanning modeling yet.

For example, in the field of business applications, RealSense's distance, spatial awareness function will play a greater value. With these features, you can turn your phone or tablet into a 3D modeling tool, and only need to scan the object you want to model. RealSense can do modeling very quickly, which can be used in architecture, art and other fields.

In addition, RealSense also has great practical potential in information security. Its biometrics, combined with Windows Hello, can create a wider variety of login methods. The most basic such as face recognition, in addition to can also be through expression, or action to achieve login recognition, compared with the past single face recognition, RealSense can bring more possibilities, but also make computers, mobile phones, tablet devices become more secure, after all, the thief will not know what kind of security login verification you choose.

From these application areas, RealSense not only has the application value for games and entertainment, but also has great potential for business and security.

· Photorealistic technology may be the driving force of PC revolution

After all, Intel's RealSense is likely to be popular first for laptops and tablets. After all, Intel has a complete ecosystem in the PC field. As long as you can let users experience the practical value of RealSense, then its popularity will become inevitable. And according to Intel, the RealSense camera component, while versatile, isn't expensive enough to fit into a mainstream laptop or tablet.

HP all-in-one with RealSense camera and hovering touch

So what will happen to our computers in the future when computer cameras are equipped with RealSense?

First, our PC devices are going to get smarter. The original computer camera was only used for video chat, video conferencing, not to sense things. The RealSense camera component, through various built-in sensors, can recognize 3D graphics of objects, can sense the size of space, can sense the distance of objects, which makes the computer camera from 2D to 3D, thus becoming more useful.

Second, our PCS will become more secure. As mentioned before, RealSense has biometrics function is not the past simple face recognition, it can have more ways to identify security verification, so as to improve the security of PC devices. In addition, RealSense recognition speed in the past ordinary cameras to be more rapid, do not have to worry about slow recognition speed and affect the login speed.

To sum up, through the change of a camera, it can bring better practical value to the computer, and greatly improve the security, this kind of income is actually very considerable. But if it can do more in gaming and entertainment, RealSense could be the driver of the future PC revolution.