Liu Shan, Tencent Multimedia Lab: Immersive media is the next step in virtual reality technology

Affected by the epidemic, many activities in the fields of education, office, entertainment, and sales have changed from offline to online due to the relationship between the epidemic, and people's demand for high-quality videos has surged, bringing great challenges and opportunities to the transmission of Internet media information. Based on the accumulation of technology in the field of multimedia, Tencent Multimedia Lab is committed to continuous innovation in many directions such as immersive media, bringing richer application scenarios and friendlier user experience to the industry.

Recently, at the MIT China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum 2021 Summit, Liu Shan, Tencent Distinguished Scientist and Head of Multimedia Lab, delivered a keynote speech and discussed the future of immersive media and virtual reality.

"Since March 2020, global video traffic has surged, and network bandwidth has been under tremendous pressure," Liu Shan said, during the epidemic, most netizens worked from home, surfed the Internet, etc., but the network bandwidth could not withstand the high load of network communication demand, resulting in frequent network failures, so efficient multimedia compression transmission technology is also more critical.

Liu Shan pointed out that one of the research focuses of Tencent Multimedia Lab is media compression and transmission, which makes it possible to send high-definition and ultra-high-definition videos through the Internet.

"By 2022, the share of bandwidth consumed by ultra-high-definition content will further increase to about a quarter of the total bandwidth of Internet video." Liu Shan predicted. At the same time, she said, since 2016, the size of China's VR content market has continued to grow two to three times a year.

In terms of multimedia technology innovation, Tencent is constantly seeking breakthroughs. Since participating in the formulation of the H.266/VVC standard in 2018, About 100 technologies of Tencent Multimedia Lab have been adopted by the standard, ranking the world's leading number; in October 2020, Tencent took the lead in releasing the H.266 HD/Ultra HD real-time player in China within 3 months of the deadline of the standard, ranking the world's leading performance. Now Tencent H.266 decoder can support PC, iOS, Android and other terminals HD real-time decoding.

Liu Shan said that in today's rapid development of science and technology, people are no longer satisfied with just watching traditional two-dimensional videos, but are eager for a more authentic and immersive experience. Immersive media, by achieving the fusion and symbiosis of the physical and virtual worlds, is considered one of the disruptive trends that will change the way you live and work in the future. In the future, with the large-scale popularization of 5G, further breakthroughs in immersive media hardware and technology, the decline in production costs, and the development of more high-quality content, immersive media products and services will be adopted by mainstream groups, and the vast application scenarios and commercial space of deep immersive media will be fully activated.

Leading the future of immersive media

Currently, researchers at the Multimedia Lab are working to develop standards and products to enable the next step in the immersive revolution — immersive media.

Liu Shan pointed out that the point cloud system developed by Tencent Multimedia Lab enables people to reconstruct 3D twins of real-world objects through photos taken by ordinary mobile phones. This scheme can be widely used in VR tour, cultural relics protection, real estate sales and other directions.

Arianne Hinds, principal researcher at Tencent Multimedia Labs, said that the display of immersive technology in the future will be very different from today's flat screen or VR headset. With light field technology, people can view holographic images without using a 3D headset.

Promote cultural development with science and technology

In recent years, Tencent Multimedia Lab has been working on multimedia technologies that are used to help the cultural industry produce new digital products.

In January, Tencent and the Palace Museum conducted a popular live broadcast. The live broadcast uses the MULTIMEDIA Lab's VR360 immersive technology to provide people with an immersive view of the Forbidden City in Beijing during the quiet winter snowfall.

With the advent of the 5G era, the Internet can provide users with superior data bandwidth and ultra-low latency, allowing users to access more applications and making everything interconnected.

"In the future, Tencent will continue to focus on multimedia technology research and development to provide effective services and support for developers and partners." Liu Shan said.

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