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Recently, the Metaverse has become a hot topic in the technology and capital circles. Tencent, ByteDance and others have entered related fields, and foreign technology companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Nvidia have also made layouts. Many interviewees believe that the Metaverse, as a carrier for the integration of the virtual world and the real world, contains huge opportunities for changes in social, content, games, office and other scenarios.
What exactly is the Metaverse? What does it mean for the Internet? What kind of "parallel world" will it spawn?
Chenjing Technology uses spatial intelligence and virtual reality technology to superimpose a designed children's playground on the real scene of the company's office building. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Ma Xiaocheng
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Technology companies are planning to build a metaverse
In March this year, Tencent invested in the Metaverse concept stock Roblox, which soared on its first day of listing. Its multiplayer online creation game "Roblox" is compatible with virtual worlds, casual games and self-built content. As early as the end of last year, Tencent Chairman and CEO Ma Huateng wrote in Tencent's internal publication: "An exciting opportunity is coming. After ten years of development, the mobile Internet is about to usher in the next wave of upgrades, which we call the full-fledged Internet." In August this year, ByteDance acquired Pico, a Chinese virtual reality equipment company. In April, ByteDance invested in the metaverse concept company "Code Qiankun". In addition, companies such as NetEase, Lilith, and Mihoyo also have layouts related to the metaverse. In addition to Internet giants and gaming companies, some start-ups have also already made their plans. Two years ago, when Chenjing Technology founder Hu Wen and his two classmates founded a company in Nansha, Guangzhou, they did not expect that in just two years, a global technology trend would come to them - the Metaverse. Now, they are building the "digital base" of the Metaverse, converting the real world into a "digital language" that computers can recognize, and superimposing various virtual applications on this basis. For example, standing on the completed Mingzhu Development Building in Nansha District, Guangzhou, and looking down, the Lingshan Island in Mingzhu Bay is still under development. However, through virtual reality equipment or tablets, people can clearly see that the planned but unbuilt buildings are superimposed on the existing real scene at a 1:1 ratio - this is a "mirror world" created by Chenjing Technology for the local government. The "mirror world" built by Chenjing Technology for Lingshan Island in Pearl Bay, Nansha, Guangzhou. Photo provided by the interviewee "Through the construction of the metaverse, the information of the real world will be greatly supplemented by the virtual world, and the way humans interact with the virtual world will be completely enhanced. On this basis, a business model full of imagination will be born, and games, social networking, entertainment, consumption, etc. will undergo qualitative changes." Hu Wen said. Internationally, technology companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Nvidia have all made plans. On October 28, local time, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, announced that the company would be renamed Meta to focus on the Metaverse business. In recent years, Facebook has invested heavily in virtual reality and augmented reality technologies, developing hardware products such as virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, and watches. In May this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company is working to build an "enterprise metaverse." In August, Nvidia, a manufacturer of image processing and artificial intelligence chips, announced the launch of the world's first simulation and collaboration platform that provides the foundation for the establishment of a metaverse. 2
The underlying technology is maturing Reality and virtuality are closely integrated So, what exactly is the metaverse? The concept of the metaverse first appeared in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash by American writer Neal Stephenson. The novel depicts a virtual digital world parallel to the real world - the "metaverse". People in the real world have a virtual avatar in the "metaverse", and people compete with each other to improve their status by controlling this virtual avatar. In fact, there is no recognized authoritative definition of the metaverse in the current scientific and technological community. Professor Shen Yang of the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University believes that the metaverse is a new type of Internet application and social form that integrates multiple new technologies and integrates the virtual and the real. It provides an immersive experience based on extended reality technology and generates a mirror image of the real world through digital twin technology. It builds an economic system through blockchain technology, closely integrates the virtual world with the real world in the economic system, social system, and identity system, and allows each user to produce and edit content. When explaining why the company changed its name, Zuckerberg used a video to visually demonstrate the future of the metaverse: you can create a virtual "home", invite familiar people to socialize, put on a device to enter a virtual workspace to work with colleagues, and even create a virtual world... Hu Wen believes that it is no coincidence that the concept of the metaverse has become popular this year. After years of preparation, the application of underlying technologies such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, 5G communications, and wearable devices has become increasingly mature. The combined application of these technologies has made the creation of the metaverse possible. Zuo Pengfei, an associate researcher at the Institute of Quantitative and Technical Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that there are profound economic and social reasons behind the Metaverse fever - the mobile Internet dividend has peaked and begun to fade. As a carrier for the integration of the virtual world and the real world, the Metaverse contains huge opportunities for changes in social, content, games, office and other scenarios. Traditional digital technology companies and emerging start-ups all want to seize future track opportunities. The "2020-2021 Metaverse Development Research Report" recently released by the New Media Research Center of Tsinghua University believes that 2020 is the critical point for the virtualization of human society, paving the way for 2021 to become the first year of the Metaverse. On the one hand, the epidemic has accelerated the virtualization of society. Under the prevention and control measures of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, the length of time the whole society spends online has increased significantly, and the "stay-at-home economy" has developed rapidly; on the other hand, online life has changed from a short-term exception to a normal state, from a supplement to the real world to a parallel world with the real world. Human real life has begun to migrate to the virtual world on a large scale, and humans have become an "amphibious species" of reality and digital.
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How far are we from the metaverse? Many internationally renowned consulting firms are optimistic about the future of the metaverse. For example, a Bloomberg Industry Research report predicts that the metaverse will reach a market size of US$800 billion in 2024, and PwC predicts that the metaverse market size will reach US$1.5 trillion in 2030. Although the prospects are attractive, most interviewees believe that the metaverse industry as a whole is still in its early stages. Judging from the current status of computing power conditions, network technology, and extended reality, the industry will still need 10 to 20 years of development. Shen Yang believes that the current metaverse industry is in its early stages of development, with the characteristics of immaturity and instability of emerging industries. There are still many uncertainties in the metaverse, and both the industry and the market urgently need to return to rationality. Zuo Pengfei believes that with the combined effect of technology upgrades and demand upgrades, the realization of the metaverse scenario is only a matter of time and also represents the general direction of the future. He suggests that my country support the development of the metaverse industry from the aspects of technology, standards, applications, and laws. "From a technical perspective, technological limitations are the biggest bottleneck currently facing the development of my country's metaverse, especially the underlying architectural information technologies such as mobile communications, big data, and artificial intelligence, which urgently need to be improved. my country should increase investment in basic information technology research and development, encourage and support related companies to strengthen basic research, enhance technological innovation capabilities, and steadily improve technological maturity." Zuo Pengfei said. Industry insiders suggest that, at the legal level, we should summarize and refine the governance experience in the development of online platforms, strengthen forward-looking legislative research on the metaverse, and pay attention to issues such as regulatory review and data security.
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