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The number one player
In 2021, the concept of "metaverse" suddenly heats up, making tech giants flock to it. How does the Metaverse relate to today's internet? Is it a huge outlet, or a huge gimmick?
"You can do anything, go anywhere. You can ski on the pyramids, you can climb Mount Everest with Batman..."
In the sci-fi movie "Ready Player One" released in 2018, the slum boy Wade Watts was like a fish in water in a virtual online game and lingered. The people in the movie enter this virtual world called "Oasis" through VR (Virtual Reality) headsets.
"Ready Player One" stills (Source: Warner Bros.)
In reality, many tech giants believe that the future of the Internet is a similar virtual world. However, the name of this virtual world is not "Oasis", but "Metaverse".
2. Mark Zuckerberg
At the end of July, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested in an earnings call that Facebook should be known as the "Metaverse Company." He wants Facebook to complete this strategic shift within five years, and by the end of the 2020s, bring reliable VR headsets and AR glasses to the mainstream. Ultimately, people will be immersed in this virtual world in the form of VR, or a part of the virtual world will be integrated into the real world in the form of augmented reality and mixed reality.
Facebook Inc. has made a lot of money from its advertising business in the last year or so as people have become more "household" during the pandemic. Zuckerberg suddenly announced changes to the business model at this time, which is obviously not an easy decision. Weeks after Zuckerberg's ambitions, his company has launched a VR workspace for people who need to work remotely.
The virtual office space is currently in beta
In addition to Facebook, Apple confirmed the acquisition of VR start-up NextVR in May last year; in April this year, game company Epic Games announced that it had raised $1 billion to invest in its metaverse plan; Tencent not only held a large stake in Epic Games , also invested in another metaverse game Roblox; in May of this year, Microsoft announced that it was working hard to create an "enterprise metaverse"; at the end of August, ByteDance spent 9 billion yuan to acquire the domestic VR hardware startup Pico. ) layout of the Metaverse; in South Korea, an organization called the "Metaverse Alliance" is lobbying the local government and enterprises to jointly develop an open national VR platform...
"Metaverse" has gradually become a technology hotspot sweeping the world, and technology companies that have not yet labeled the "Metaverse" are probably "ashamed to say hello to people." But the main focus of ordinary people is: what is this metaverse?
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3. The sci-fi origin of the "metaverse"
The concept of the metaverse was first created by American science fiction writer Neil Stevenson in his 1992 novel "Avalanche". According to the description of the novel, people of the future communicate with each other in the form of virtual avatars in an immersive digital world.
(Image source: Visual China)
The current internet allows us to break down physical boundaries and connect with people from far away. But while providing convenience, the form of the medium also greatly limits the experience of interpersonal communication—we can only interact through the limited means provided by the platform (such as instant messaging, email, video). Stevenson foresees that the future Internet will be a three-dimensional virtual living space. People can enter and exit this virtual space at any time, and interact with others and the virtual world instantly.
The term metaverse, although increasingly used to describe the vision of the Internet evolving into a virtual world, has yet to have a clear and unified definition. Stevenson himself has no say for what the metaverse should look like. He himself explained in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2017 that he just coined the concept back then.
On the other hand, chip giant Nvidia's "full universe" Omniverse, augmented reality company Magic leap's "magic universe" Magicverse, Ma Huateng's "full true Internet", "Wired" magazine founding editor Kevin Kelly described " Concepts such as "mirror world", "AR cloud" and "space Internet" all have the shadow of the metaverse. Before the publication of "Avalanche", the sci-fi concept "Cyberspace" had a similar nature. Maybe it's "heroes see the same thing", the characteristics of the metaverse, the whole universe and other concepts are very similar to the future Internet in the ideal of technology giants.
△On August 12, Nvidia revealed itself through the documentary "Connecting in the Metaverse". During a speech by Huang Renxun, the company's CEO earlier this year, there were more than ten seconds of images that were digital doubles produced by the Omniverse technology platform (Image source: Nvidia)
If there is one definition of the metaverse, it is the future tense of the Internet. The prefix "meta" to the term metaverse means transcendence, and tech companies have chosen to use the term to highlight its properties beyond the internet. The Internet we can access today is a two-dimensional world that is "surrounded" by small screens, and in the future Internet envisioned by the giants, everyone will "be in it".
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4. Not just virtual reality
The realization of the concept of the metaverse relies on technologies such as virtual reality, but what is the difference between it and pure virtual reality?
In terms of experience, with today's virtual reality technology, users are isolated from each other in terms of participation. The Metaverse is considered to be a virtual reality that has a unified standard and can interact instantly between users. The relationship between the two is similar to online music today and tape music of the past, online games today and the early consoles. The same is listening to music and playing games. The past experience is isolated, and the future is interconnected.
Rabindra Ratan, an associate professor of media and informatics at Michigan State University, has written that the metaverse has three key characteristics: a sense of reality, interoperability, and standardization.
(Image source: Visual China)
First of all, only by creating an immersive feeling in the virtual space, and even creating a "digital twin" of the real world, can online interactions be more "real" and improve the quality of people's communication. Currently, VR technology is a powerful tool to achieve this sense of reality immersion. Facebook has a dedicated division called the Reality Lab. The department's top priority is to create "presence" in the metaverse—the kind of immersive ecstasy. Many of the engineers on this team have backgrounds in online game development.
Second, interoperability means that people's "virtual presences" can switch seamlessly between the "planets" of the metaverse (eg, work planet, play planet, etc.). This vision requires technology companies to break down the barriers of existing small garden-like "ecosystems" and create a more open and decentralized world. The gradually mature blockchain technology will be applied to the metaverse as the technical basis for people to purchase virtual goods and services.
Finally, technical standardization is the basis for the realization of interoperability of various platforms in the Metaverse. From print to instant messaging, mass-facing media requires uniform technical standards to be widely adopted. At present, international organizations such as the Open Metaverse Interconnection Organization (OMIG) are already developing relevant standards.
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5. Is the "metaverse" realistic?
It is not difficult to imagine that if a vibrant virtual world is to be created, the related VR and AR devices need to be as widespread as today's smartphones and easy to carry and use.
△ In the recently released movie "Out of Control Player", the protagonist accidentally saw a "parallel world" after wearing rose-colored glasses (Image source: Wired)
But this is not an easy task. So far, small and lightweight VR headsets often have limited picture quality, and high-performance VR headsets are "tethered" to the computer by data cables. Although VR headsets have become lighter and more affordable in recent years, the application of this technology has always been limited to a small group (game enthusiasts).
As early as 2014, Facebook acquired the virtual reality company Oculus. Zuckerberg also publicly announced in 2017 that the company's future goal is to "allow 1 billion people to use virtual reality", but this goal is still not small from reality. Gap.
In addition, just as today's Internet industry can be divided into hardware, software, services, etc., the infrastructure construction of the Metaverse also requires the accumulation of other technologies other than VR technology; privacy violations, language violence, fraud, addiction and other issues on the Internet , nor is it a simple solution to the "immigration" virtual world.
In this case, why did the concept of the metaverse suddenly become popular? Wired UK pointed out that during the past year-plus of the epidemic, people's travel has been more or less restricted, so many human interactions have been transferred from the real world to the Internet. For example, quite a few people have tried video conferencing, some are attending graduations in Minecraft, others have weddings in Animal Crossing... People have found that virtual worlds are not necessarily empty, they can also affect reality. There may be drama about building new social relationships.
△In the summer of 2020, Zhejiang University graduates traveled around the virtual campus in "Minecraft" (Source: Element Valley)
The risk of missing out is substantial, and once a breakthrough is made, the rewards will be substantial. At this stage, advertising revenue accounts for the majority of Facebook's revenue. But after becoming a metaverse company, new sources of income may also be generated in the new "universe", such as the sale of virtual items, virtual services, and virtual advertising spaces. Zuckerberg said that people will buy fashionable clothing for virtual characters that represent them, or go to virtual attractions.
Just as today's Internet does not belong to any one company, the Metaverse, if real, is not the exclusive product of any company. Zuckerberg's strategic layout seems to be repeating the process of founding Facebook in 2004 - getting ahead and grabbing the commanding heights of the market.
Born out of science fiction, the "metaverse" is a poetic term. In many ways, the metaverse will be the ultimate expression of social technology. But in the short term, this concept will not really enter people's lives. The Tencent Research Institute wrote in an article: "The best experience field of the Metaverse is still in the game. Starting from this C-end scene with the highest degree of preparation, the Metaverse may gradually become boundless."
(Image source: cnet.com)
On the other hand, because the concept of the current metaverse is ambiguous and a bit mysterious, after its exposure has increased, it has also become a "marketing panacea". Companies are gaining popularity one after another, claiming that they have already deployed the Metaverse business to attract investment.
The virtual world "Oasis" in the movie "Ready Player One" will be released in 2025. So when will the Metaverse "open beta"? Probably no one can set a specific date.
Original is not easy, reproduced from: https://m.thepaper.cn/baijiahao_14390022
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