When you can't attend a tech event or concert in person, you can let your "digital doppelganger" participate in it through the metaverse in the future. In addition to feeling the charm of speakers and performers in all directions, you can even experience the presence of the audience and tourists discussing and communicating near you. Since December 27, the three-day Baidu Create 2021 (Baidu AI Developer Conference) has been launched on the meta-universe APP "Xi'an", and the pace of Internet giants laying out metaverses and connecting virtual worlds has been accelerating. However, the metaverse still needs to overcome many technical problems before the life and business scenarios are fully implemented.
The domestic meta-universe platform was unveiled
After logging in, taking a name, pinching your face according to your preferences, selecting accessories, and clicking to enter, you will come to a virtual world called "Shilang".
After entering Greem, users will be "airdropped" in a virtual space, and can directly enter the ongoing Baidu Create 2021 virtual venue according to the prompts, or visit various scenes in Greem with their own interests.
If you choose to enter the venue, you will be assigned a "live" seat. After taking a seat, in addition to seeing and hearing the speakers on the virtual stage, users can also hear some noisy venue ambient sounds, as if they are in a real large venue.
"Our way of getting together is both dreamy and realistic." Baidu chairman and CEO Robin Li said. On the 27th, he and Ouyang Ziyuan, the first chief scientist of the Chinese lunar exploration project and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kip Thorne, Nobel Laureate in Physics and scientific adviser of "Interstellar", Kevin Kelly, founding editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, and others appeared in the conference launched in the metaverse.
Walking out of the venue, the shape of "Hiram" is a Mobius ring planet. Here, you may encounter Optimus Prime, Bumblebee, or visit the Shaolin Temple, a thousand-year-old temple, to practice martial arts with the Three Treasures monks; you can also explore Sanxingdui and dig up thousand-year-old national treasures; visit the Three-Body Museum to see the trisolaran fleet shuttling overhead.
Although Baidu does not plan to make Greem a social tool, it still has certain basic social functions. When traveling through The Land, users can achieve voice interaction through headphones and microphones, and when they encounter strangers on the road, click on each other's avatars, and buttons such as each other's names and friends will pop up. Although Baidu did not disclose the number of users who visited Greem in the past two days, its popularity is still evident: the reporter received nearly 20 requests to add friends during the two greek experiences, totaling about 30 minutes.
In the Experience of Hiram, there are also some unsatisfactory points, such as the stuttering of pictures and sounds in certain scenes. Ma Jie, vice president of Baidu, said frankly that under the current network technology conditions, vision, hearing and interaction are the three mountains that hinder the development of the metaverse, and the challenges brought by technical difficulties are very large.
Giant layout show "muscle"
While laying out the metaverse, Baidu's achievements in artificial intelligence technologies such as digital human generation were also unveiled. At the meeting, Baidu CTO Wang Haifeng "created" an ink painting with Baidu Brain through voice interaction, and asked Baidu Brain to compose a poem based on the content and artistic conception of the painting.
"Behind this is the more powerful and intelligent AI capabilities brought about by the knowledge enhancement model, as well as the integration and innovation of speech, vision, natural language processing, knowledge graph, VR, AR and other technologies." Wang Haifeng introduced. Based on the technological breakthrough of the large model of knowledge enhancement, Baidu Brain can better meet the application needs of various scenarios of digital people. At present, Baidu has created a series of digital people in all walks of life.
The heat of the metaverse is indistinguishable, and the technology giants at home and abroad have long shown a strong interest in participating in the construction of the metacosm. In early December, after changing its name to Meta, Facebook, which has a market capitalization of nearly 6 trillion yuan, announced the official opening of its meta-universe platform Horizon Worlds. International chip giant Nvidia also officially launched its metaversy technology "toolbox" Omniverse this year, compared to the application layer of games, social networking, etc., Nvidia said that it will be more inclined to the bottom of the metaverse hardware, the technical platform base of the virtual space.
In China, ByteDance has acquired Pico, a VR hardware and software research and development manufacturer, at a high price. Tencent executives said that they will make a difference in the metaverse through AR, VR, AI and other technologies. In terms of NetEase, Ding Lei previously publicly stated that he had made technical and planning preparations for the meta-universe, and when the time was ripe, "NetEase may run faster than anyone." ”
Preempt the Entrance to the "Virtual World"
Technology companies have embarked on a meta-universe boom, behind which is the bet and judgment that the next stage of the Internet may face a "virtual world" competition.
"The metaverse is not only an entertainment and interaction center, but also a platform for people to continue to innovate and improve efficiency." Ma jie said. He revealed that combining the industry's most advanced AI, cloud computing and VR technologies, Green's ultimate goal is to create a platform for partners and developers, a platform that can put imagination to root.
In order to attract developers and cultivate the ecosystem, at yesterday's Baidu AI Developer Conference Meta-Universe Sub-Forum, Baidu announced that the first phase of the Xi'an Virtual Space Multiplayer Interactive Platform will open virtual space customization, customized identity, multi-terminal compatibility, VR conferencing, real-time voice, full real-life human-machine interaction and other functions to developers.
Behind the concept of the metacosm is hot, technological trends such as artificial intelligence penetrating into thousands of industries and human-machine symbiosis have swept in. Robin Li believes that the era of "human-machine symbiosis" has arrived, and China will usher in the golden decade of AI. In the next decade, AI will significantly reduce the technical threshold and provide a technical "big base" for the intelligent transformation of all walks of life.
Wu Qi, executive director of the Wuxi Digital Economy Research Institute, believes that at present, subject to the immaturity of technology, industry and business model, the metacosm is only applied in a small range and is still in the initial stage of development. From the perspective of technology and infrastructure, technical limitations are the biggest bottleneck in the current development of the metaverse, and the corresponding underlying technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence are still far from the needs of the metaverse landing application. For example, the high-speed and low-latency network environment required to support the development of the metaverse has not yet achieved extensive coverage, and the human-computer interaction technology and brain-computer interface technology for building a virtual world are still in the early stage of research and development.
Image source: Baidu Xilang