Metaverse wants to become a new generation of Internet, and the three key steps of existence, interoperability and standardization need to be improved.
Original title: “What kind of meta-universe will the giants create”
Written by: Chen Lishan
Guide
According to Bloomberg Information Analysis, by 2024, the market size of Meta Universe will reach 800 billion U.S. dollars.
The meta universe has three key aspects: presence, interoperability, and standardization.
Metaverse will be a huge public cyberspace in the future, and digital virtual and physical reality will usher in an unprecedented integration.
In the foreseeable future, more users will interact through interactive and immersive virtual platforms to consume and experience the meta universe.
NFT is a bridge connecting digital assets and the real world, and provides underlying support for the generation, confirmation, pricing, circulation, and traceability of digital assets in Metaverse.
The industry is establishing a common value and creating standards to create a cohesive and interoperable “society.”
Metaverse wants to become a new generation of Internet, and the three key steps of existence, interoperability and standardization need to be improved.
The concept of meta universe has taken the world by storm
2021 is a year when the concept of meta universe has taken the world by storm. In April of this year, ByteDance invested 100 million yuan in the code Qiankun of the meta universe concept company. In August, ByteDance acquired Pico, the giant Pico, for billions of yuan, and officially entered AR. At present, Tencent has applied for a total of more than 20 Metauniverse trademarks, including “Wang Zhe Yuan Universe”, “Cube Yuan Universe”, “QQ Yuan Universe”, and “Flying Vehicle Yuan Universe”. In August this year, the “Baidu World 2021VR Sub-venue” officially opened, and users can see the “Baidu World” composed of countless chips, integrated circuits and mobile data.
The battle for the meta universe is also fierce abroad. In July, Zuckerberg proposed Facebook’s “meta universe” corporate transformation plan. Later, Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella officially announced the corporate “meta universe” solution at the Global Partner Conference, which aims to help corporate customers realize the integration of the digital world and the real world. Game company Epic Games also announced that it has received 1 billion US dollars in financing, which will be used to expand Metaverse related businesses.
In addition, major technology companies such as Google, NetEase, and HTC are also competing for the meta-universe outlet. According to Bloomberg Information Analysis, by 2024, the market size of Meta Universe will reach 800 billion US dollars. Ark Investment also predicts that the profit from the virtual world will reach 400 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, and about 180 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.
What is the meta universe? According to the description of venture capitalist Matthew Ball, Metaverse (Metaverse) is a vast network composed of persistent, real-time rendered 3D worlds and simulations, supporting the continuity of identity, objects, data, and rights , And can be experienced simultaneously by an effective unlimited number of users, each user has his own sense of existence.
Rabindra Ratan, associate professor of media and informatics at Michigan State University, USA, there are three key aspects of the metaverse: presence, interoperability, and standardization.
Presence is the feeling of being physically in a virtual space and being virtual with others. This sense of presence is achieved through virtual reality technologies such as head-mounted displays, which aim to improve the quality of online interaction.
Interoperability means that virtual assets can be transferred seamlessly between virtual spaces. Blockchain technologies such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFT) facilitate the transfer of digital goods across virtual boundaries.
Standardization is the key to achieving platform and service interoperability across meta-universe. As with all mass media technologies—from printing presses to text messaging—common technical standards are critical to widespread adoption.
Meta universe-the “integrator” of virtual and reality
So far, the meta-universe is only a rudimentary form. In other words, what kind of space the meta-universe is cannot be defined in a single and comprehensive manner. But we can know that Metaverse will be a huge public cyberspace in the future, and digital virtual and physical reality will usher in an unprecedented integration. On the one hand, the meta-universe can exist in the form of a “game”. This “game” will be constructed and maintained by users, and the equipment and props will become assets, and the meta-universe may become another space parallel to the real world. On the other hand, the meta-universe can also exist in the form of virtual light into reality, and simulation technologies such as VR and AR will allow numbers to exist in a clearer way. In the future, the hodgepodge of various data and physics will make Metaverse a “integrated master”, realizing the perfect integration of digital and physics.
This is an opportunity to go to the extreme and create a world where permits don’t let you do it, firefighters don’t let you do it, and building codes don’t let you do it.
——Travis Scott
When the sudden epidemic prevents the concert from coming as scheduled, the screen with crazy visual effects may be able to bring you another shock. Travis Scott held a virtual concert in the chicken-eating game “Fortress Night”. The entire concert is only about 10 minutes, but the unconstrained concert imagination is shown in the form of animation.
The skyscraper-sized Travis Scott “ravages” on the island. During the performance, he traverses various landscapes, from city to space. Travis Scott has also changed from a cyborg to a fluorescent astronaut. After the whole concert, it can be described as vigorous and vigorous. It is reported that more than 12.3 million players participated in the concert at the same time. Critics call it “amazing” and “spectacular”.
NVIDIA Omniverse connects all worlds by realizing the vision of the meta-universe.
——Richard Kerris, Vice President of Omniverse Development Platform, NVIDIA
The Omniverse platform is Nvidia’s basic technology and platform products for the realization of the meta universe. However, this product has “deceived” the world. In April this year, “Leather Knife” Huang Renxun held a press conference on the Internet. The release selection was in his own kitchen, and Lao Huang, wearing a leather jacket, digs out the products to be released from all corners of the house and introduces them. However, three months later, NVIDIA exposed this “scam.” It is reported that 14 seconds at the press conference were established through Omniverse.
From Huang Renxun, the kitchen background and all the details are restored through modeling. In order to restore Huang Renxun, NVIDIA used motion capture to restore every movement and expression, including every fold on the face. According to reports, NVIDIA made 21 versions of fake old yellow, and finally picked the most similar one. This “scam” allowed the world to see that the meta universe is so powerful that it is fake and chaotic.
Welcome to Decentraland, create, explore and trade in the first virtual world owned by users.
——Decentraland official website
What is a virtual reality space, Decentraland can give you a concrete image. Here, all virtual land needs to be purchased, and the owner can build various buildings on the land. You can see Sotheby’s, one of the oldest auction houses in the world, where various NFT artworks are auctioned; Guosheng Securities has also built a headquarters, and users can learn about the latest developments and activities of Guosheng Securities; Maserati’s luxurious showroom The degree is no less than the offline store, and there is a 360-degree display of the simulation version of the car.
In addition, there are various casinos, football fields, and small towns built by artists. Users can also go shopping and even order takeaways to their homes. Players can travel everywhere without leaving home. This space is augmented virtual reality. From social networking, shopping, exhibitions to carnivals, here can satisfy your imagination of the intersection of virtual and reality.
In the meta universe, you feel like being with other people, just like dancing and fitness in reality. The difference is that this kind of experience cannot be done on a 2D application or web page.
–Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook
When talking about the meta-universe, Mark Zuckerberg gave his imagination of the meta-universe. Break the “mechanical sense” that the screen brings to people, and create a real sense of existence through immersive online communication.
“Virtual reality and augmented reality can allow Metaverse to widely help people experience a sense of presence. I think this sense of presence makes our way of interacting more natural. When we hold many meetings today, we are all looking at faces on the screen. Grid. But we are used to being in the same room with people and having a sense of space. If you sit on my right, then it means I am also sitting on your left. In the future, you can sit on mine like a hologram On the sofa, instead of just doing it over the phone.”
User collaboration, virtual economy, accelerated interconnection
Metaverse was called by Mark Zuckerberg as the successor of the Internet. And Metaverse has already begun to show its feet in user collaboration ecology, opening up the virtual economy, and accelerating interconnection.
Ecological platform for user collaboration
According to Bill Gates, “a platform means that the economic value of everyone who uses it exceeds the value of the company that created it.” Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney said, “When When most of the content people spend time browsing is created by other people, something is a platform.”
Meta Universe is such a platform. The form of existence on the platform is constructed by users, which is different from the traditional form of creating and providing products by Internet companies. All users participate in the creation and maintenance of the meta-universe, and players can earn income or spiritual happiness through the content of the built-up ecosystem. In the foreseeable future, more users will interact through interactive and immersive virtual platforms to consume and experience the meta universe.
Open up the virtual economy
To truly connect the meta-universe with the real world, it is necessary to open up the economy between virtual and reality. The emergence of NFT makes this possible. NFT makes digital an asset, and various virtual world props, buildings, and cards become “real money”, which will make Metaverse not just a virtual game, but a “real” industry, namely Users can create, sell, and resell virtual assets.
According to the CITIC Securities Research Report, in the first half of 2021, the overall market value of the NFT industry reached US$12.7 billion, an increase of more than 300 times compared to 2018. NFT is a bridge connecting digital assets and the real world, and provides underlying support for the generation, confirmation, pricing, circulation, and traceability of digital assets in Metaverse. The mature development of NFT will further accelerate the implementation of the Metaverse economic system.
Accelerating the interconnected internet
For Metaverse to become the next-generation Internet, it is essential to interoperability and portability of various platforms. This is like the need to break through the barriers of various countries and regions to achieve globalization, and the meta-universe also needs to form a unified huge economy. Such a new virtual country without land and borders may be born.
In September 2020, the Global XR Content Telecom Alliance was established by operators and industry partners such as China Telecom, South Korea’s LG U+, Qualcomm and others. Extended reality (XR) is a term that uses computer technology and wearable devices to produce a combination of real and virtual, human-computer interaction environment. From the virtual world input by wired sensors, to the complete virtual world. The industry is establishing a common value and creating standards to create a cohesive and interoperable “society.”
There is a long way to go
Meta Universe has a long way to go if it wants to become a new generation of Internet. The three key steps of existence, interoperability and standardization need to be improved.
XR (Extended Reality), a new technology that belongs to the future, is also called the ultimate form of human interaction. Extended reality is a collection of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). From the computer simulation of three-dimensional space, the implantation of false content in the real space, to the new visualization environment created by combining the reality and the virtual world. The technical background required by the meta-universe remains to be studied and developed, but it is foreseeable that a more bionic interaction method will be what the Internet will look like in the future.
When the metaverse combines virtual and reality closely, the boundary between virtual and reality becomes more and more blurred. Although the virtual world is more “humanized”, at the same time, the impetuousness, richness and greed of the “economic” world have also been brought to this “paradise”. NFT brings the concept of assets to the digital world and redefines the value of interconnection. However, the gap between the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong, etc. brought about by material benefits in real life have also been brought to the meta universe. The speculative injection has made NFT full of bubbles when it first appeared. Various capitals and giants are deploying meta-universal strategies, and they will also become meta-univers’ future talkers.
In addition, to open up the economy of the entire interconnection platform, inter-organizations also need to be interconnected, and many standards have yet to be developed. The virtual image of the meta universe era is more “representative”, various digital assets need to be further recognized, and assets between platforms also need to circulate. Developers and creators need to build under the framework and standards to realize the seamless transfer of various meta-universe characters and assets between different platforms. This is a difficult and long-term challenge for the meta-universe under interoperability and standardization.
Looking back, the ubiquitous Internet has subverted and penetrated into our lives. However, the Internet has opened the “Pandora’s Box,” a supernatural force driving the development of the Internet. The bets of the giants have given us a positive signal that Meta Universe may be what the Internet will look like in the future. However, there is a long way to go, the meta universe is still in its infancy, and various technical, ethical, and standard issues need to be resolved.
