Editor's introduction: The metaverse has been hot for a while, some people are crazy bets, some people are scornful. For new things, we should think rationally and give more consideration, and the author of this article will explore the metaverse with you, please take a look.
The emergence of the metacosm stirred up the lively capital market.
Some people bet wildly, some people scoffed. Just when most people are still arguing about what the metaverse is, some people have already taken action, publishing books, teaching courses, running lectures... I got the first pot of gold in the metaverse. However, throwing away those flashy empty shelves, there are also people in the metaverse field who are currently advancing steadily and have made some progress.
We believe that any new technology and concept is a mixture of fish and dragons in the initial stages, but once it has passed the barbaric growth and ushered in formal development, those potential things will eventually change people's perception of the world.
Therefore, for the metaverse, it is still necessary to have less reckless statements to call it a liar, and more caution after calm thinking, after all, every towering tree was once a seedling in the initial growth stage.
First, the technical layer
The capital market is hot, but in the end, it still depends on technology companies to be down-to-earth.
What exactly is the metaverse?
Asking a thousand people may have a thousand answers. But everyone knows that where a company is related to the metacosm, then its stock price will continue to soar in a certain period of time, get great attention in the market, there are too many people who want to share a piece of the pie, and the metacosmic company is obviously not enough.
This is a story that is not uncommon in the capital markets. AR/VR, sharing economy and even 5G, etc., are all lessons from the past, and now the sharing economy is a chicken feather, and the faltering pace of 5G commercialization is a mockery of the previous market, but it does not prevent capital from chasing the meta-universe now, because the capital market will always need new myths.
Myths are heard a lot, it is easy to make people wary, it is better to listen to some real content.
Wang Congqing, president of HTC China, said in an interview: "The metaverse is actually the next generation of the Internet, it will be a 3D world, you can use VR equipment to enter it, and experience a complete immersion. ”
Throwing aside the long-term outlook of the next generation of the Internet, equipment, immersion is the key word, no matter how ever-changing the metaverse, it must be inseparable from the hardware support and the sense of experience brought by software, so peel off the language of the ceiling, who masters the hardware /software technology, who grasps the real definition of the metaverse.
In this regard, Roblox, whose market capitalization has exceeded $48 billion and written the "metacosm" into the prospectus, undoubtedly has a lot of say. Roblox, a company that is extremely optimistic about the capital markets, has tens of thousands of products on its platform, and it is often defined as the world's largest multiplayer online game creation platform, but the company clearly does not limit itself to the label of game platform.
Roblox pays more attention to its own ecology, hardware and technology can rely on funds to make breakthroughs in a short period of time, but the formation of a good ecology requires enough time to precipitate, Roblox spent 15 years to create a suitable ecology for creators, attracting more people into this ecology, and based on this ecology, giving more possibilities to the metaverse.
At present, Roblox has achieved its cloudification and cross-end interoperability. Based on cloud technology, Roblox realizes that basically all scenarios and content are downloaded in real time, without preloading and installing in advance. Although this is still far from the virtual reality sense and neural technology represented by the metaverse, it is indeed an important step towards the metaverse.
The name of Digital Kingdom Group Co., Ltd. may be unfamiliar, but on December 31, 2021, Jiangsu Satellite TV New Year's Eve concert last week and digital person Teresa Teng Lijun chorus is what many people have heard, that night across time and space two sang "Big Fish", "Story of a Small Town", "Walking the Road of Life", the behind-the-scenes technology of this show comes from this company.
As a provider specializing in virtual reality experience services, this set of technologies in the Digital Kingdom is a high-end rendering system that integrates machine learning, "Mystique Live", which has been applied to thanos in the movie "Avengers" series, and its advanced face capture system has performed well.
Capital's response to this was also swift, with the digital universe rarely up 25% on the first Hong Kong stock trading day after the concert.
In various fields, the metaverse has progressed to varying degrees. Like Aoya Design, the practice at the level of scene intelligence has created an intelligent experience space including open and interactive; the display made by Netta Software at the Mobile World Congress has proposed a one-stop solution for virtual digital people; Baoying has successfully landed a number of projects that combine AR and cultural tourism, such as Malacca Characteristic Town.
In addition, the national team also began to lay out the metacosm. In the "2021 Meta-universe Virtual Human Customization and Content Production Project Selection Announcement" released by Tianyi Ai Music Culture Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Telecom, the text on the proposed procurement of "Meta-universe Digital Human Production Project" is particularly eye-catching.
It seems that the progress of the metaverse is inseparable from these companies seeking breakthroughs in technology, whether it is developing software or hardware, they are adding bricks and tiles to the expansion of the metaverse.
Second, the application layer
From technological innovation to product landing, where is the first bucket of gold in the metacosm.
Engels once said: "Once society has a technical need, this need will be more able to advance science than ten universities." ”
The popularity of the metaverse has spawned a large number of related companies, and capital urgently needs them to prove themselves, and those companies that use the metacosm as a signboard also need to show their achievements and speak with facts. Product landing, running through business logic, forming a closed loop, and even finding profit points, this is the urgent expectation of meta-universe companies.
At present, the metaverse has two major application directions worth looking forward to:
1. Virtual People & Virtual Variety Shows
On the eve of Halloween in 2021, Yichuang Technology launched the virtual person "Liu Yexi", its appearance made the concept of the meta-universe short video burst into flames, and in less than 30 hours after the release, the number of likes reached 2.73 million, and the number of fans increased by 1.3 million.
There is no doubt that the virtual person is definitely an important track for the development of the future meta-universe, and has obvious advantages in terms of content provision and immersive experience, just like "Liu Yexi", many people speculate that its future may carry out the path of carrying goods, IP, etc., but since its inception, the pace of Onetron Technology in this regard is not fast, and its CEO frankly said that it does not do things that the market is very anxious about, nor does it stimulate market anxiety, they want to do Marvel in the meta-universe.
Similar to the appearance of "Liu Yexi" on Douyin, the broadcast of the virtual variety show "2060" is also eye-catching, which is the first virtual variety show broadcast on Shanghai Star Satellite TV in China, and the audience enters the 5,000㎡ all-green screen studio and brings VR glasses to watch the show. Judging from the digital people of The Autumn Festival launched by the show, the ultimate expectation of the company behind it, Qilingshi, is to launch a mainstream virtual digital singer who can break the circle.
Like the digital kingdom, companies such as Onetron Technology and Qilingshi have benefited from technological innovation, from display devices to optics, from modeling software to rendering engines, without the support of these software and hardware, virtual people can not talk about.
2. Games
In terms of games, there are many hardware attempts, such as the Black Shark mobile phone that has been acquired by Tencent, and it has cooperated with AR glasses manufacturer Rokid on ChinaJoy to explore the linkage between the game phone and the AR headset.
There are even more attempts at software, and the aforementioned Roblox is one of the best. In China, "Minecraft" is more typical, players in the virtual space engaged in a variety of creation, collect resources, complete battles, etc., has a good game experience.
What's more, "Decentraland" can also "speculate". Famous singer Lin Junjie announced on Twitter that he, as a player in Decentraland, had purchased three virtual lands on its platform for $123,000.
Coincidentally, Hong Kong media also reported that Hong Kong real estate giant and CEO of New World Development Group Zheng Zhigang bought one of the largest digital plots in the meta-universe game The Sandbox, with an investment of about $5 million.
Just when many people are still waiting, there have been so many meta-universe projects that have landed one after another, and they have made progress in IP value, virtual digital people, games and so on. Some may still be crude, and some will prove to be just detours in the future, but as the first people to eat crabs, the metaverse is no longer an empty concept for them, but a real profit and opportunity.
If you don't want to miss a new opportunity, then you shouldn't miss the outlet of the metaverse.
Third, the theoretical layer
The tide is inevitable, and we will eventually enter the digital age.
How far are we from the real landing of the metacosm?
In August 2020, Musk, the "Silicon Valley Internet Celebrity Entrepreneur", demonstrated an experiment on brain-computer interfaces. The pigs in the experiment have undergone surgery to implant the latest version of the Neuralink device into the brain, through which the information in the pig brain can be read in real time.
Neuralink devices can be charged wirelessly, and their battery itself lasts up to 24 hours, which can be safely removed after a period of implantation. This project is extremely controversial, and many people have been imagining that the project can be applied to people to achieve brain-computer interfaces.
It is fully conceivable that in the future, the replacement of the brain-computer interface will be faster, there is no damage to the human brain, and everyone can install it by wearing a device by themselves, which will cause a subversive breakthrough in human cognition, processing, etc., and this will become a basic breakthrough in the metaverse, with VR/AR and other technologies, jointly create a new future.
Both PCs and mobile phones are tools that humans use to receive information and feedback, but they are all two-dimensional, and the metaverse is three-dimensional. From this point of view, the metaverse actually subverts the previous way of receiving information, meets people's needs for more information, and facilitates the connection with the world.
In the digital age metaverse, everything can be uploaded and downloaded, including the human mind and consciousness. The flesh will eventually be destroyed, but through digitization, human beings may achieve another form of immortality, that is, "cyber-immortality", and the temptation of this is unprecedented. The things that were once the dreams of the Qin Emperor Han Wu may become a necessity for everyone in the future.
But a virtual space that can be online 24 hours a day, fully immersed in it, is indeed enough to trigger some bad associations. When the satisfaction provided by AR/VR transcends reality, those who are not satisfied with real life will naturally choose to stay in the metaverse.
"Derealization to virtuality" is afraid that it will become an unavoidable problem in the metaverse.
Ever since Brzezinski proposed the so-called "nipple music" theory, there have been things that have been accused of "nipple music", which make people lose the ability to think about real problems, such as television, games and even the Internet. But the metaverse is clearly a more competitive existence than they are, because it makes the virtual close to the real, confusing the boundaries between the two.
For the platform that builds the metaverse, they are naturally happy to see the user's addiction to the platform, and the more people who are immersed in it every day, the higher the profit, so the metaverse is in full swing, and it is indispensable to the vigorous promotion of such capital.
The ethical and equity issues that come with it in the digital age cannot be ignored. Just like the "cloned human" controversy caused by the "cloned sheep", it is also hoped that while a large number of companies are piling up technology, there are also some companies that can make the metaverse more humanistic and make technology better serve human beings, rather than bring destruction.
While fully imagining the metaverse, we must also clearly see that the technological progress required by the metacosm will inevitably bring about the problem of network security. In the past, network security may only be a loss of money, but the network problems in the metaverse era may be the "disaster of killing", and an efficient, safe, convenient and credible network environment will be the cornerstone of the metacosm era.
When the fake is true, it is true or false, and the risks that may result from the metaverse need to be dealt with in advance. In the popular British drama "Black Mirror", there have been many imaginations about such technologies, but they are basically pessimistic, although this is a literary creation, but it is a nightmare that human beings urgently need to avoid.
Technology itself is neutral, but the people who use it are not. For good and evil, in one thought.
Fourth, think
You need to sink your heart to do the metacosm.
For the meta-universe, the future is bright, the road is tortuous, so you may wish to open your brain and take a big step, but the results must be down-to-earth. Because if there is no good technology with good results, the metaverse may not be able to escape the fate of the short-lived, but once successful, then this generation is about to make history.
Sitting on the vent of the meta-universe does not mean that it can fly, and the company that started by hype will eventually be destroyed by hype. The concept is good, but it is still necessary to have a heart that sinks down to do business, for every Internet practitioner, this is the road where opportunities and challenges coexist.
Can humanity use the metaverse to build a better future? Humans can do it, and humans should do it, which is not only a beautiful expectation, but also a technical goal.
Will the world be a better place? The answer is unknown, but in the not-too-distant future, the metaverse will give us a response.
Resources:
- Entertainment Capital, "Unveiling Liu Yexi: When the Metaverse Short Video Becomes a "Manifestation Science""
- "Interview with the "First Stock of the Metacosmity": How does Roblox with a market capitalization of 48 billion adapt to the Chinese market? 》
- Financial Associated Press, "Virtual "Teresa Teresa" New Year's Eve singing, the company behind the rise of 25%! Meta-universe new outlet industry is about to make a difference? 》
Author: Qigong; public number: Giant Finance
Original link: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/sPCFCrDj5V5JfoJhwE5vcg
This article is published by @Giant Finance with the permission of Everyone is a Product Manager. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Pixabay and is based on the CC0 protocol.