The Big Bang Of The Universe: Bubble Or Tuyere?

When any technology is proposed, it is often a concept. There will be hype in the concept in the future. After the hype, the bubble will burst, and then it will be a cooling-off period, and then gradually develop. The same is true for the meta universe.

At the Spring Equinox this year, Beijing is still cold in spring. In a party hall in Baiziwan, a hardcore geek conference in the cyber security circle-DEF CON CHINA was held in a low-key manner.

As the top conference in the field of global cyber security, DEF CON has a history of 28 years and is called the “Oscar” of the security industry. In 2018, BaiduSecurity teamed up with DEF CON to introduce it to China for the first time, and it has subsequently become one of the most important events to connect the global cybersecurity community.

But this time, compared to previous years, DEF CON CHINA is more attractive in that, in addition to live guests who can listen to the meeting, it also implanted the meeting in a completely virtual world-the Greek VR platform. At the opening of the conference, Baidu Vice President Ma Jie, DEF CON founder Jeff Moss, Apple The company’s co-founder Wozniak is in this world, discussing topics such as AI and geeks.

Unshared News said : What is different from the usual remote video connection is that in this full virtual world, the audience can even interact remotely through the VR headset. “I only wanted to listen to the conference, but I actually had a voice chat with an overseas audience in the virtual world, and even shook hands.” An audience member excitedly described the scene to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter. However, the listener also bluntly said that the overall experience is not smooth and the picture quality is not ideal., “More or more fun.”

At that time, the concept of “meta universe” had not broken the circle. But who would have expected that in just 7 months, it will stir up the entire technology industry: Facebook, MicrosoftGet together and squeeze in, domestic giants preemptively register trademarks, and A-share meta-universe concept stocks are violently pulled up at every turn… For a while, it seems that “everything can meta-universe”.

“The concept of meta universe is reaching the culmination of excessive expectations. In the second half of next year or the next year, this bubble will definitely burst.” Recently, Baidu vice president Ma Jie bluntly stated to the media including 21st Century Business Herald that the tide has receded. Later, you will see naked swimmers, “So the industry needs to be calm and pragmatic. It needs infrastructure, market cultivation, software and hardware development, and rich and high-quality content construction.”

The universe of all things?

Almost half a month has passed since Facebook “changed its name to Mingzhi”. However, the meta-universe mood is still burning.

On November 12, the Meta Universe concept stocks opened again and moved up. Hengxin Dongfang rushed higher at the opening, and the afternoon increase reached 19.98%, hitting the daily limit until the close. Aoya Design, Chinese Online, Bauing shares and other meta-universal stocks rose close to or more than 10% that day.

“This week is simply an exclusive week for Meta Universe.” An investor sighed to the 21st Century Business Herald reporter, “Prepare to observe more and dig out individual stocks at the same time, ready to pounce on it at any time.”

Behind the change in concept stocks is the continuous flow of news related to the meta universe. On November 11, the China Mobile Communications Federation’s Metaverse Industry Committee (hereinafter referred to as the “Metacosm Industry Committee”) held an inauguration ceremony, which also means that the first domestically approved Metaverse Industry Association officially appeared in public.

The starting point for this round of meta-universe explosion is undoubtedly the transformation of Facebook’s official announcement strategy. On October 29th, Facebook (FB.US) officially announced its strategic transformation and was renamed “Meta”. The company’s stock code will be changed to “MVRS” from December 1st. Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is desperately “calling” for the meta universe. In the letter from the founder, Zuckerberg stated that Metaverse is the next frontier, “From now on, we will put Metaverse first, not Facebook first.”

If it is said that Facebook is practising “to be a meta-universe company” with its own actions, then the online game creation platform Roblox(RBLX.N) is the way to write the meta universe into the prospectus, which interprets “be the first stock of the meta universe” if you want to be.

Roblox’s move shows quite “popular”. After listing on the New York Stock Exchange with an issue price of $45 in March this year, Roblox closed up 54.44% on the first day. In the past three months, its stock price has hovered in the $70-90 range. After the three-quarter report was disclosed after the US stock market on November 8, although the loss was still as high as 74 million U.S. dollars and it had lost 15 consecutive quarters, its stock price still soared 42.23% to 109.52 U.S. dollars the next day.

Under the upsurge of the meta universe, domestic giants also acted one after another.

In September, TencentTianmei’s new project “ZPLAN” recruits multiple positions. Many media reported that the project focused on social + games, with a team of more than 1,000 people, and was even “real hammered” as a Tencent Metaverse project. A source disclosed that the relevant Tencent team is participating in the development of Metaverse, “and the size of the team may not be small.”

Tencent’s latest response also confirms the above news. On the evening of November 10th, Tencent Holdings’ third quarter 2021 results conference call, Tencent CEO Ma Huateng and Tencent President Liu Chiping executives publicly stated that Metaverse is a topic worthy of excitement, and Tencent has a lot of technology to explore and develop Metaverse. And capabilities, such as games, social media and artificial intelligence related fields, the company has a wealth of experience.

On October 20th, AlibabaThe XR Lab of Dharma Academy will make an official appearance at the Yunqi Conference in 2021, and it will further explore the field of meta-universe in the future. “Meta universe is the entire Internet on AR and VR glasses.” Tan Ping, head of the XR laboratory of Alibaba Dharma Academy, gave his own understanding. In his opinion, AR and VR glasses are the next generation of mobile computing that is about to become popular. Platform, Meta Universe can be understood as the presentation of the Internet industry on this new platform.
Baidu also officially released the Baidu VR2.0 industrialization platform based on Baidu Brain in October this year. Ma Jie said that the complete VR2.0 industrialization solution incorporates Baidu’s leading technology in the AI field. Baidu expects that these open source and open technologies can be applied to the meta universe to a greater extent. In addition, through the virtual venues of DEF CON CHINA and Baidu World Congress this year, Baidu is also accumulating practical experience related to Metaverse.

ByteDance included the VR (virtual reality) startup Pico as early as August this year. A few days ago, ByteDance also invested in Guangzhou Semiconductor to further increase the layout of the code element universe at the hardware level. Public information shows that Guangzhou Semiconductor was established in January 2020. It was co-founded by AR optics expert Zhu Yisheng and scientist Professor Chu Daping. It focused on diffractive optics and semiconductor micro-nano processing technology, and designed and mass-produced AR display optical chips and molds. Group, it also owns semiconductor AR glasses hardware products.

In fact, since July, including Tencent, iQiyi, Alibaba and other technology companies have applied for multiple “Meta Universe” trademarks. HTC VIVE has also announced a strategic cooperation with China Mobile Migu to jointly build a world-leading 5G+ high-quality XR content ecosystem, allowing the concept of “Meta Universe” to be implemented. Reality.

Under the continuous bombardment of multiple news, the meta-universe concept stocks also continued to be upset. Since October 29th, the overall growth rate of the meta universe concept sector has exceeded 35%. The meta universe concept stock “leader” Zhongqingbao (300052) does not have a dime related to the revenue of the meta universe, but in two months In time, the stock price has risen nearly 5 times. During the period, a number of listed companies received enquiry letters, requesting further clarification on the connection with Metaverse, whether to increase the amount of investment related to Metaverse and other hot spots through disclosure.

“There are so many rubbing cars, it’s hard to tell the truth from the fake.” Ma Jie shared his views. In his view, almost everyone believes that the meta universe will be the future, but the current meta universe is still in the bubble stage, and the bubble may burst as soon as next year. “Therefore, the industry needs to be calm and pragmatic, and requires infrastructure and market Cultivation, software and hardware development, and rich and high-quality content construction.”

“When any technology is proposed, it is often a concept. After the concept, there will be hype, and the bubble will burst after the hype, and then the cooling-off period, and then gradually develop. The same is true for the meta universe.” Gartner senior research director Gao Tingxiang The 21st Century Business Herald reporter analyzed that “it may be just a path in front of the Gartner technology maturity curve.”
Three bottlenecks

Although many people in the industry believe that Metaverse is probably over-hyped at present, this does not prevent them from looking forward to this next-generation Internet form.

“In fact, in a sense, the metaverse defines a new way of social connection between people. I think this method is very worthy of attention,” Gao Ting said. “If the metaverse takes shape, it will bring The coming social model is completely different from our current two-dimensional mobile Internet-based model, and will even undergo great changes.”

What is the meta universe? In Ma Jie’s view, the answer lies in “The Number One Player”. He claimed to have watched the opening video of “Ready Player One” “not 100 times or at least 50 times”, “Oasis is the best explanation for the meta-universe”.

In other words, the meta universe is essentially a process of virtualizing and digitizing the real world. In such a virtual space, it is likely to become a second human space parallel to the real world.
However, Ma Jie also bluntly stated that the realization of the meta-universe requires extensive transformation of content production, economic systems, user experience, and physical world content.

“Meta Universe needs diversified and massive content, and even in the longer-term ideal situation, there may be economic systems and civilizations in it,” Ma Jie said. “These ideal things are definitely not achievable overnight. The development of the universe is a gradual process.”

In fact, in order for the meta-universe to become a reality, the three most difficult problems need to be solved. The first is the challenge brought by the real-time high-brush immersive experience picture.

In recent years, 3D sci-fi movies such as “Top Player” and “Alita”, as well as the game “Cyberpunk 2077”, which is full of futuristic technology, have set off an upsurge due to the excellent picture quality. However, “Cyberpunk 2077” only took 8 years to produce. Although it has been produced for a long time, there is still a big gap between it and the 3D movie.

Specifically, “Cyberpunk 2077” is rendered in real time by only one device, and each frame has a rendering capacity of 1/30-80 seconds, so as to achieve mega-pixel screen rendering. In contrast, the 3D movie “Alita: Battle Angel” is rendered by 30,000 devices, each frame is rendered for 500 hours, and a single iris image element contains more than 9 million polygonal simulations.

This also means that the real-time rendering capabilities of the two terminals, that is, the difference in computing power per frame is 54 million times-this is still a PC-level comparison, and the computing power required by VR is much greater than that of movie screens. Ma Jie pointed out that in the short term, the solution to the problem may not lie in breakthroughs in hardware, but mainly in the application of cloud technology, the core logic of which is to realize the separation of computing and display.

In addition, if the concept of meta universe wants to come true, it involves not only the picture, but also the appeal of multi-person interaction. Different from traditional online games and online conferences, the high real-time, high interactivity and high immersion of Metaverse require virtual space to be able to accommodate tens of thousands or even hundreds of millions of users to achieve simultaneous communication.

Taking a virtual concert with a scale of 100,000 people as an example, based on multi-person voice interaction at a distance, the dynamic capture and real-time presentation of the interaction of many users, and the high rendering, Low latency issues are challenges that the industry needs to balance at present.

At the same time, high-cost VR content production has made it impossible to form an ecological closed loop, which is also a problem that Metaverse needs to solve when it advances.

Ma Jie believes that a few years ago, VR, which was regarded as the outlet, was unsuccessful. In addition to the technology maturity that needs to be improved, it also lacks a benign construction of the content ecology. Although VR or Metaverse requires first-party and second-party manufacturers to promote the maturity of the industry first, the growth of the market still requires the support of third-party UGC content entrepreneurs. In this regard, an important problem that needs to be solved at the core is the rapid production of content.

Therefore, the advancement of the meta universe also has its own industrial rhythm. “Games and entertainment fields will become important fields of power in the current stage of Metaverse, and office and social networking will follow up in the future,” Ma Jie pointed out.

However, in order to realize the meta-universe in the shortest possible time, the organic cooperation of the entire society is required. Ma Jie said frankly that whether it is a technology company, content company or capital, it is necessary to start from the underlying technology to find a breakthrough in the content ecosystem.

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