See the future of science and technology in the "Winter Olympic Snowflakes"

IT Times reporter Cui Pengzhi Fan Xinru

A Winter Olympics touched the hearts of the people of the whole country.

Many people still remember the protracted performance on the evening of February 4. "The Water of the Yellow River Rises from Heaven" fills the whole venue, presenting a picture with Chinese aesthetics, and the ink blooms everywhere and turns into an ice waterfall to welcome athletes from all over the world. After the change of the twenty-four solar terms, the Olympic flame shone in the middle of a snowflake, which was a tiny flame, but it was endless, making the world creep in front of it...

Talking about the above moments, Zhang Yimou, the general director of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, said in a follow-up interview: "There is no sense of performance, the most direct to the hearts of the people." "The most moving beauty comes from the concept of low carbon and the high use of science and technology, and China painted a green daisy on the Olympic spirit at the Winter Olympic Games - low carbon environmental protection, sincere self-confidence."

Behind the aesthetics represented by a piece of "Winter Olympic snowflakes" is the hard power of Chinese science and technology filled with countless "black technologies". Virtual digital people, digital yuan, 3D simulation... In the changing light and shadow of art and science, the "future" is gradually becoming full, as if it can be seen at a glance.

Sign Language Virtual Anchor: "The Digital Man of the Future"

From February 5, the audience of Beijing TV's "Beijing You Morning" program was surprised to find that in the lower left corner of the screen, there was a special sign language female anchor. Dressed in a red blazer, she looked to be about 20 years old, her long jet-black hair neatly tied behind her head, her face was lightly made up, and she calmly and skillfully broadcast sign language news.

This young female anchor is the "Winter Olympic Sign Language Broadcast Digital Human System" created by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission to better experience the grandeur of the Winter Olympics for the hearing impaired. According to the introduction of R & D personnel, "Sign Language BroadcastIng Digital People" is trained based on the "Wudao 2.0" large-scale intelligent model, which can broadcast sign language news in real time according to sound, providing news media with intelligent digital sign language generation services for the whole process, so that people with hearing impairments can quickly understand news newsletters.

Sign Language Broadcaster Digital People convert the broadcast content into sign language, broadcasting the Winter Olympic games and venue results for the hearing impaired, so that they can better access the Winter Olympics information. In the view of some industry insiders, in the post-Winter Olympic era, sign language broadcasting digital people can still play their unique role. The promotion of sign language broadcasting digital people can accelerate the promotion of national common sign language and create a barrier-free environment for the equal participation of persons with disabilities in social life.

When it comes to virtual digital people, I believe that many people are not strangers. In 2021, virtual digital people have already shown strong commercial value. With the collapse of many real idols, virtual idols have mastered the "traffic password". Liu Yexi, a beauty virtual person blogger launched by Chuangyi Video, rose to 1.3 million fans overnight. South Korea, which is good at the idol industry, has not missed the development of virtual digital people and launched the virtual digital human girl group Eternal.

But in the past year, the digital virtual people who frequently come out of the circle have mostly concentrated in the entertainment industry. The emergence of sign language broadcasting digital people at the Winter Olympics has further broadened the application scenarios of digital people, from the nature of business to the nature of services. In the future, digital people may no longer be just humanoid idols created by technology companies, but will further penetrate into people's daily lives and assume more and more social roles. Even further, virtual digital people will be one step ahead of us, into the "metacosm", becoming the first indigenous people of the "metacosm" world.

Winter Olympics Consumption Scenario: "Future Payment"

Talking about the top ice piers of today's Winter Olympic Games, many people will lament the fiery status quo of "one pier is difficult to find", and one overlooked detail is that buying ice piers in Winter Olympic venues is likely to require the use of digital yuan.

In the licensed souvenir shops at the Winter Olympic venues, the counters are plastered with the tip "Support digital yuan." According to 21st Century Business Herald, due to the provisions of the Brand Rights and Interests of the Winter Olympics, the Winter Olympic venues only support VISA and cash (physical RMB and digital YUAN) payments, eliminating the inconvenience of carrying cash and the trouble of finding change.

In fact, the digital yuan has long been associated with the Winter Olympics. As early as April 2020, the relevant person of the Central Bank's Digital Currency Research Institute said that the digital yuan will be the first batch of pilots in the "four places and one scene", of which "four places" refers to Xiong'an, Suzhou, Shenzhen and Chengdu, and "one scene" is the Winter Olympics scene.

The business management department of the central bank pointed out at the 2022 work conference that the digital yuan Winter Olympics scene pilot has achieved full coverage in seven major scenarios, and in terms of quantity, the number of digital yuan landing scenarios related to the Winter Olympics has reached 403,000.

In the winter olympic venues, many people downloaded the digital yuan app and used the digital yuan for consumption. Previously, the IT Times reporter reported that the digital yuan App was officially launched on the major application malls on January 4, and a payment industry practitioner once told reporters: "The official launch of the (App) should be hoped to complete the landing before the Start of the Winter Olympics." ”

Compared with the previous pilot activities, the appearance of the digital yuan in the Winter Olympics is more like "gathering great achievements" and "attracting worldwide attention". According to media reports, many foreigners also favor this payment method, and the Digital Yuan App supports mobile phone number registration and wallet opening in nearly 100 countries and regions participating in the Winter Olympic Games. In addition to the App, the public can also purchase a Winter Olympics-themed digital RMB hardware wallet in the Winter Olympic venues.

With the characteristics of anonymity, high security and convenience, the promotion of the digital yuan has been nearly two years, and the Winter Olympics may become the starting point for the popularization of the digital yuan.

Snowflake Torch Stand: "Future Display"

At the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, a giant "snowflake" shaped main torch platform attracted the attention of the whole world.

With the beautiful music and dazzling light and shadow, this torch platform slowly rises from the huge screen, and the crystal clear shape and the colorful fixed screen light and shadow change, so beautiful that people can't help but hold their breath. After a visual feast, the flame was lit and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, which attracted global attention, officially opened. Behind this performance of "shocking the world" is an equally "shocking" technology. The performance used BOE's LED double-sided screen related technology and 8K ultra-high-definition terrestrial display system.

It can be said that BOE's display technology is containing the shadow of future display applications.

According to the official public account of BOE, giant snowflakes are currently the narrowest "single-pixel controllable special-shaped display products" in the industry, only to reproduce the sense of snowflake lines and picture effects of artistic creativity. This is a double-sided hollow giant snowflake, its diameter of 14.89 meters, the whole body is composed of 96 small snowflakes and 6 olive branch form led double-sided screen, embedded with more than 550,000 LED lamp beads, each lamp bead is independently controlled by a single channel driving the chip.

A person in the display industry told the IT Times reporter that the mainstream display technology that can control a single pixel is AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode panel). Compared to traditional displays, AMOLED has faster response times, higher contrast ratios and wider viewing angles. Because individual pixels can be controlled without the need for constant backlight adjustment, AMOLED displays consume significantly less energy than traditional LCD screens.

Do you often worry about watching online videos for a long time before your phone runs out of battery? When using AMOLED display, even if the user views multimedia files, it will not cause huge battery life loss, and the use time of the mobile phone can be greatly extended in an emergency. Because of this, AMOLED has always attracted the attention of manufacturers such as Samsung and Philips, and has been called "next-generation display technology".

In addition, the stage where snowflakes were born is a "super screen", that is, the largest 8K ultra-high-definition ground display system, which fully demonstrates the human imagination. The overall area of the ground screen is 10,393 square meters, and it adopts technologies such as 8K+ resolution picture fusion and large-scale optical correction algorithm, which can present 100,000:1 ultra-high contrast ratio, 3840Hz ultra-high refresh rate, and 29900x15096 ultra-high resolution ultra-high resolution ultra-high-definition brilliant picture.

Imagine if the overall floor, ceiling and wall of a shopping mall in the future are composed of display screens, it may be able to display guidance and prompts in a timely manner with the eyes of customers, removing all external decorations and only using light and shadow effects to make the whole building brilliant.

Spring Blossoms: "Future 3D Simulation"

Accompanied by melodious pipa music, in the arena of the Bird's Nest, a fluorescent flower quietly blooms. As the petals stretch out little by little, the emerald green buds slowly bloom. The light petals are like a breeze, and it seems that you can still smell the faint fragrance, and spring has come.

Audiences who have watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics must be impressed by the opening program of "Li Chun". A total of 393 performers were mobilized in this show, presented by stage lighting and actors. The flower buds that bloom quietly and gradually converge are actually composed of 293 performers holding green fluorescent poles. The actors stepped on the scene, stood precisely on their own points, and with the change of music, they worked together, swung the long pole, and integrated with the special effects of the big screen on the ground, so that there was such a shocking scene at the opening ceremony.

The reason why the smart flowers on the screen can be so expressive is thanks to the perfect cooperation between the actors and the lighting effect. Behind this cooperation, there is also the emergence of black technology.

On the traditional stage, to make a precise stage performance, it requires countless rehearsals and adjustments by the actors in the early stages. But at this Winter Olympics, thanks to the "intelligent creation and orchestration integration" system, all this has become easy and precise.

This system, created by the Team of Beijing Institute of Technology, uses simulated virtual technology, and through technical means, the team members have created a fully simulated "virtual bird's nest" on the digital end. Unlike common digital models, this "virtual nest" can correspond to the real bird's nest one-to-one, accurate to each point. According to Professor Ding Gangyi of the School of Computer Science of Beijing Polytechnic University, through three-dimensional simulation technology, team members can simulate the whole process of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in the "virtual bird's nest", and conduct all-round platooning of all elements such as actors, lights, music, fireworks, Olympic torches, and even broadcast machine positions. This platform is equivalent to the film rehearsal system, which helps the director team to intuitively understand the overall effect of the opening ceremony, greatly reduces the number of real rehearsals, and saves human and financial costs.

Because the three-dimensional simulation system can build a realistic on-the-spot environment, it also has a wide range of application scenarios in real life. In today's real life, three-dimensional simulation systems are mainly used in flight training, urban planning, design and manufacturing, etc., in order to achieve cost savings and efficiency improvements.

In the future, the city you live in may be designed and built by a three-dimensional simulation system. In the farther future, with wearable devices such as VR, three-dimensional simulation systems may bring a more realistic virtual world experience.