Facebook company renamed, instantly detonated the concept of metaverse, becoming the hottest and most promising concept and Internet development direction this year, in fact, before this, there have been VCs and large manufacturers began to layout, but the speed after this can be described as overwhelming, it can already be said that the future of the "metacosm" has come.
01 The future of the metaverse has come
The concept of the metaverse is not limited to games and virtual scenes, basically can be extended to another parallel digital universe, another parallel world, is corresponding to and related to reality, but there is a broader, more imaginative space of the new society beyond reality, which can explain why the metaverse will contain huge business opportunities and value, and it can also be seen why the major giants are scrambling to rush to the fundamental driving force. This not only includes technological innovation, but also includes social innovation, economic innovation, financial innovation, it can be said that the metacosm has opened a new primitive society, so that all our current business models can be restarted, and the market space and user scale is larger, which can not help but make people move.
Regarding the current global development and prospects of the metacosm, it is not the focus I want to say here, you can refer to the latest authoritative academic research institutions (Tsinghua, Peking University, Fudan) 2021 and 2022 metacosm development reports, the names are as follows:
Tsinghua University-2020-2021 Metacostem Development Research Report
Essence Securities & Peking University HSBC Business School - Meta-Universe 2022, Accumulated Power
Tencent & Fudan University: 2021 Meta Universe Annual Report
There are also research reports of investment institutions, such as:
2021 EKay Capital Meta-Universe Report
Roblox In-Depth Report
Etc. There are many online and you can search to download research to learn. The world of the metacosm is not only related to the Internet, blockchain, Internet of Things, cloud computing and mobile terminal products, but also involves social, e-commerce, games, information, finance, AI, social life services, and even traditional industries and other major Internet fields, which can be said to be the organic integration of all existing technologies and existing business models.
Here the focus is to explore the technical basis, technical route and development context of the development of the metaverse from a technical point of view, so that we IT people want to effectively participate in the construction of the metaverse, from the whole and the part to understand how to start with theory and technology, technical learning routes and career planning, etc., so temporarily named the introduction of core technology.
02 The Technical Basis of the Eight Great Concepts of the Metacosm
As mentioned above, the concept of the metaverse is the organic fusion of the existing technology, business and social model, it can be said that it is not too much to create another world, from a technical point of view, the same, the core technology of the metacosm is also the organic fusion of various technologies that exist at present, on this basis, and then build an economic and social system.
The above figure is quoted from the new book "Metaverse", which depicts for us the six supporting technologies of the metaverse, and their inter-fusion relationship, which can be said to be all-encompassing, and the technologies we have heard about have a certain position here. So if we want to join the ranks of the metaverse, what learning and practice routes can be taken, which is the problem we have to face and solve now
Here is a look at what technologies are contained in the currently recognized eight-point concept of the meta-universe.
Identity:
Identity in the real society refers to a legal citizen based on identity certificates, as well as its use of real-name accounts in various online and offline business, the most typical is the mobile phone number, the domestic three major operators since the real-name system, mobile phone number is as important as the personal identity card, representing a person's identity symbol, the current various services use mobile phone numbers to identify the identity of more than the use of ID cards to identify.
From the perspective of id cards, including the current second-generation certificate, and online electronic ID cards, which include cryptography technology, hardware encryption and security chip manufacturing technology, the personal identity information is desensitized through encryption and identity authentication to allow service providers to easily verify identity, while protecting user privacy. At present, electronic ID cards use biometric technologies such as faces and eID hardware carrier encryption technology to achieve online remote security identity authentication. This in turn will extend to the distributed trust network (such as the blockchain network) through the block and consensus mechanism, the identity of the network node (person), as well as the power and obligation, which will become the identity of the individual in the metaverse and its various behaviors of the fundamental technical carrier.
Friends:
Dating is a natural attribute of the metaverse, which is why Facebook wants to change its name to meta, a comprehensive transformation of the metacosm, because the metacosm is the next generation of Facebook social networking, including the existing WeChat, whatsapp, line and other traditional social networking, as well as vibrato, Kuaishou, B station such video pan-social, will eventually be attributed to the metacosm.
Metaverse social will not only contain the existing instant messaging, chat community, community, video and other technical systems, in the metaverse of the world, based on virtual people social will become possible, which naturally also includes NLP, big data, deep learning technology existence, natural language interaction and understanding will become the main communication channels, while BASED AR, VR visual presence is the basis of real scene socialization, the future social is no longer based on terminal text, voice and video, Rather, it is based on the way people themselves have always interacted with the real world, including meeting, talking, etc.
Immersive:
Immersion is the biggest feature of the metaverse, derived from the real simulation of the virtual world, so that participants are immersed in the scene, in order to achieve the realm of virtual and real fusion, the technical basis of immersion is graphics and 3D technology, including computer vision, image processing and video processing technology, fusion after the two directions, one is to take the 3D modeling route, including character modeling, environmental modeling, etc., as well as image real-time rendering technology, to achieve the simulation and reproduction of real scenes, the second direction is to take the AR/VR route, Including the current MR and XR, whether virtual reality or augmented reality, are based on human position perception and visual processing and tracking technology, similar to the current driverless cars and robots used, a variety of sensors automatic perception, high-precision positioning, and binocular vision and visual understanding and other deep learning methods.
Low Friction:
Low latency is based on the amount of big data required for 3D engine rendering and the sense of presence, the real-time requirements required for immersion, which in the traditional game field, the biggest bottleneck lies in computing power, so the size of gpu-based graphics computing power determines the quality of the picture, fluency and real-time feeling, and into the metaverse environment, especially based on the fully distributed peer-to-peer construction of the network world, network latency will become the bottleneck of large data transmission, with the emergence of 5G communication technology, network latency has a big improvement over 4G However, in order to adapt to the rapid development of the metaverse, the transmission capacity of 5G is far from enough, and in the future 6G, high-speed and low-latency transmission technology based on quantum theory will inevitably appear. Another requirement is the requirements for the ability of network processing hardware, especially high-speed network card technology, and the demand for network data processing chips will become more and more intense.
Variety:
Diversity relative to creativity, the need for personalized creation, rather than the uniform realization of planned characters or products, which is inseparable from the development of artificial intelligence technology, based on the 0 knowledge system of self-learning system, including reinforcement learning, etc. can be based on the basis of no prior knowledge according to their own environment, derived different knowledge and experience.
At present, the existing diversity stems from the recommendation system based on deep learning, which has a wide range of applications in the field of information flow and video, that is, the so-called thousand faces, to achieve passive personalization and diversity, and the future metacosm is an active personalization and diversity model, specifically reflected in the direction of intelligent manufacturing, with the accumulation of big data, automatic manufacturing technology based on AI algorithms, can intelligently "create" any future item, one is virtual human interaction, and brain-computer interface direction, Let the machine continuously learn from people, so that it can carry out human-like thinking activities completely autonomously.
Anywhere:
Anytime, anywhere access, which is the concept of the development of the Internet of Things, so that any terminal device can achieve all-weather network access capabilities, which includes network technology, close range, Bluetooth, wired, wireless, cellular, satellite and other converged communications, but also includes security authentication technology, identity authentication and secure encrypted transmission of data, which is still essential.
Economy:
The economy is in a more abstract upper-level social model, based on a distributed trust blockchain, and digital cryptocurrency technology, deriving the possibility of transactions, resulting in a completely decentralized financial system that serves as the economic support pillar of the metacosm.
On the other hand, the emergence of NFTs based on blockchain encryption authentication technology provides technical guarantees for the value and commercialization of creation, and the indispensable commodities in the economic system will prosper in space, spawning the emergence of various profit models, and also enabling people from all walks of life to occupy a place in the metaverse.
Civility:
The last and final feature is civilization, that is, the advanced stage of social evolution, and the emergence and development of civilization will promote the formation of a virtual world society, thus developing from digital twins to digital symbiosis, and then further integrating into real society. The construction of the entire virtual world, from the beginning, is inseparable from the development of computers and networks, providing a cloud-based platform, the development of electronics and circuits to provide high-performance chip support, the development of software and hardware systems, providing space and social construction, so the metacosm itself is a great fusion of various technologies.
03 Metaverse Technology Branch Roadmap
Since the metacosm is the product of the great fusion of technology, we also need to decompose the branch technical route from the fusion system, conduct separate research and learning, in order to clarify the thinking, save time, and accelerate progress. If you comb through the techniques according to a hierarchical model, you can look like this figure below:
Draw Self,Original Universe》
We can clearly see the technologies and systems that we are now studying and using, and at that level, the hierarchical relationship with other technologies. But here we take a clearer branching model to find and summarize the technical route required for the metaverse, and we are more able to grasp the ins and outs of the technology, causal relationship, so that we can trace the source and step by step. This series of articles will focus on this theme, a detailed study and discussion of the technical system of each branch, here first made a general summary, can also be used as a preview.
The three technical cornerstones of the metacosm
1. Communications and distributed networks
2. Algorithms and big data
3. VR/AR and immersive rendering
Three major application scenarios of the metaverse
1. Virtual Social (New Social) - Tencent, Douyin, Station B
2. Knowledge growth (new information) - Baidu, headlines, zhihu
3. Transaction payment (new e-commerce) - Ali, Pinduoduo, JD.com
The three branches of the metacosm
1. Metacosm of data
2. Computational metacosm
3. Social Ex-Universe
Stay tuned...