Original title: "The Metaverse: Not Just Facebook and Tencent", by Chenglin Pua
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the end of June 2021 that the company's future plans are far more than social media, but to build a metaverse. Zuckerberg declared that he hopes to build Facebook into a metaverse company in the next five years or so.
On July 29, 2021, Facebook released its audited financial report for the second quarter of fiscal year 2021. In the financial report meeting, some analysts asked about Facebook’s investment in Metaverse and related visions, and Facebook executives gave corresponding answers. Facebook stated that it will continue to invest in the development and construction of the metaverse at an annual scale of about 5 billion US dollars.
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Metaverse has become a "must fight" place
The Metaverse has become the next battleground for tech giants. So what exactly is the metaverse?
The concept of metaverse first came from American writer Neil Stephenson's 1992 science fiction novel "Avalanche". In the novel, it depicts a virtual world in which people can experience the sensory feedback of the real world through various high-tech equipment, that is, to create a parallel and perceivable virtual world outside the real world. We have our own bodies in the real world, and we also have our own virtual avatar "Avatar" in the Metaverse.
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Source: Movie "Ready Player One"
According to Roblox, a true metaverse product should have eight elements:
1. Identity: Possess a virtual identity, whether related to real identity or not
2. Friends: Have friends in the metaverse, you can socialize, no matter whether you know them in reality;
3. Immersion: Being able to immerse yourself in the metaverse experience and ignore everything else
4. Low Latency: Everything in the Metaverse happens synchronously, there is no asynchrony or delay
5. Diversification: Metaverse provides a variety of rich content, including gameplay, props, art materials, etc.
6. Anywhere: You can use any device to log in to Metaverse and immerse yourself in it anytime, anywhere
7. Economic system: Like any complex large-scale game, the Metaverse should have its own economic system
8. Civilization: Metaverse should form a virtual civilization
Creating a virtual metaworld requires the support of many advanced technologies including blockchain technology. For example, the metaverse needs to be able to provide props, art materials and economic systems. The NFT based on the blockchain system can become a new value carrier and capitalize virtual items; by mapping digital assets, online equipment, decorations, and land property rights all have tradable carriers.
In addition, DeFi's efficient and reliable financial system can also accelerate the construction of the Metaverse. The user's financial operations in the Metaverse are not restricted by geography, economic level, or trust. Through smart contracts, they can be executed automatically and independently, avoiding black-box operations.
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Metaverse frequently goes out of the circle, and big factories are deployed one after another
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"ASTRONOMICAL" VIRTUAL CONCERT
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Hua Chenyu "Peace Elite" Virtual Concert
In March 2021, mobile game developer GreenPark Sports reached a multi-year deal with the NBA and raised $14 million in its first round of financing. The company will create a virtual space for NBA fans, fans can enter to watch NBA games together. Fans will also be able to compete in various challenges and equip their in-game avatars with authentic NBA gear like jerseys and hats.
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"Cyberpunk 2077" game screen
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The rapid growth of the game market, source: Newzoo report
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Facebook sees the Metaverse as its next growth point
Facebook's metaverse layout started 7 years ago. In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion, and the virtual reality headset launched by the latter ignited people's expectations for the future of VR.
On September 26, 2019, Facebook officially released Facebook Horizon, a new social VR world, and it is scheduled to land on the Oculus platform in 2020. Facebook says it will "play an important role in helping build the broader metaverse that spans VR/AR". Today, one-fifth of Facebook's human resources are devoted to AR/VR business. From 2014 to early 2020, Facebook has invested nearly $5 billion in AR/VR business.
On September 26, 2019, Facebook officially released Facebook Horizon, a new social VR world, and it is scheduled to land on the Oculus platform in 2020. Facebook says it will "play an important role in helping build the broader metaverse that spans VR/AR". Today, one-fifth of Facebook's human resources are devoted to AR/VR business. From 2014 to early 2020, Facebook has invested nearly $5 billion in AR/VR business.
At the end of June 2020, Zuckerberg said that Facebook's future plans are far more than social media, but to build a metaverse.
At the end of June 2020, Zuckerberg said that Facebook's future plans are far more than social media, but to build a metaverse.
And on July 29, Eastern Time, at Facebook’s financial report meeting, Zuckerberg even mentioned the “metaverse” 20 times, which shows how much he attaches importance to this emerging concept.
At the meeting, Zuckerberg also gave a specific timetable, hoping to transform Facebook into a metaverse company in the next five years or so. He said that the construction of metaverse is the vision of many technology companies and even the entire technology industry. It can be regarded as a revolution after the mobile Internet, but this is not something that a company can achieve. He said he will work with other companies, as well as numerous individual creators and developers, to make this happen. The Metaverse will be a physical Internet, and it will be jointly operated by many participants in a decentralized manner.
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Tencent: In order to win the battle, it is crazy to sweep goods
Longtime Metaverse researcher Matthew Ball likens the game to a "portal" to the Metaverse. And Tencent, which "monopolizes" the social needs of Chinese users, also wants to occupy this entrance, and tries to use its social potential to create a new universe.
At the end of 2020, Ma Huateng wrote in Tencent's annual special issue "Three Views": Now, 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 "Full Internet". The door to the virtual world and the real world has been opened. Whether it is from virtual to real or from real to virtual, we are committed to helping users achieve a more realistic experience.
Judging from the expression, the "Quanzhen Internet" that Ma Huateng calls is similar to today's Metaverse. In Ma Huateng's eyes, Quanzhen Internet is Tencent's next "must win" battle.
Roblox stock price trend
Roblox stock price trend
The prospectus stated that people play, work, consume, and even make money in the virtual world created by Roblox to "feed back" real life. The real world continues to be virtualized and digitized, and reality and virtuality are connected to each other. This is the basis for Roblox to believe that they are not just a game platform, but a metaverse with richer meanings. When people were setting their sights on the Metaverse, they discovered that Tencent had already deployed in this field.
In February 2020, when Roblox completed its US$150 million Series G round of financing, Tencent has already participated in the investment and is the exclusive agent for Roblox's product distribution in China. In addition to being a shareholder of Roblox, the first stock in the metaverse, Tencent is also a shareholder of Epic. Epic is the abbreviation of Epic Games Inc., an American video game and software development company. The most famous technology is the Unreal Engine (Unreal Engine) adopted by its own "Unreal Series" games, and with the help of this engine, it has developed such as the "Gears of War" series, "Infinity Blade" and "Infinity Blade". Well-known games such as Fortnite.
In April 2021, Epic announced that it had received US$1 billion in financing, mainly for the development of the Metaverse. This financing set a record for the highest financing in the metaverse track, and Epic's valuation reached 28.7 billion US dollars. In August last year, when it completed financing of US$1.78 billion, its valuation was only US$17.3 billion. In eight months, Epic's valuation has risen by 65.9%. Tencent owns 40% of Epic, and it has undoubtedly become a representative company in the Metaverse field.
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Nvidia: Introducing the Metaverse of Engineers
In the eyes of Nvidia founder Huang Renxun, with the continuous development of technology in the future, the virtual world and the real world will cross and merge. Now it is the cusp of the Metaverse world, and NFT will also play an important role in it. "
Nvidia launched the Omniverse beta version in October 2020, and more than 17,000 customers have tested it. Many companies, including BMW, Ericsson, Volvo, Adobe, and Epic Games, are participating in Omniverse cooperation. Omniverse is an open platform designed for virtual collaboration and accurate real-time simulation of physical properties, known as the metaverse of engineers. Engineers can simulate robots, cars, factories and other things in it. Complex visualization workflows for creators, designers, and engineers are also being transformed as users and teams connect key design tools, resources, and projects in a shared virtual space to iterate collaboratively.
The platform has the following four characteristics: First, realistic rendering effects. Realistic experience at your fingertips; second, audio input, facial animation output; third, amazing visual effects; fourth, action is creation.
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BMW uses Omniverse to improve its production system, source: BMW Group official website
In addition, Volvo uses Omniverse for car design; Ericsson uses Omniverse to simulate 5G wireless networks; British architectural design firm Foster + Partners uses Omniverse to achieve seamless collaboration across teams in 14 countries, and more.
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Ericsson uses Omniverse to simulate 5G wireless networks, source: Ericsson official website
Huang Renxun is looking forward to the Omniverse platform. He believes there will be a bigger market, a bigger industry, and more designers and creators designing digital things in virtual reality and the metaverse instead of designing things in the physical world.
At Siggraph 2021, the top computer graphics conference held on August 11, Nvidia released a documentary, revealing its "shocking secret". It turns out that in the past three months, the company founder and CEO Huang Renxun did not participate in every live online product launch conference. Behind this terrifying conspiracy, Omniverse, a virtual collaboration platform developed by Nvidia, has contributed a lot. With the combination of RTX ray tracing technology and Omniverse, art creators can break down the boundaries between real and virtual. RTX ray tracing technology scanned Huang Renxun, and obtained thousands of photos from various angles taken in the studio, and then edited through 3D modeling. The kitchen behind it is built on the Omniverse platform by art creators, and finally uses AI to combine the two to make the real ones.
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Building the metaverse faces daunting challenges
A number of industry insiders said that although the financing of Metaverse products is now hundreds of millions of yuan, it seems that the prospects are bright, but the whole industry is still in the early stage, and there are many components and infrastructure that have not been built.
Technologies such as VR/AR and blockchain in the Metaverse are still a long way from being fully mature. Although there are VR/AR products that allow us to experience virtual reality very well, its ecosystem is still in its infancy, requiring more engineers to participate in the construction of its ecosystem, and software and hardware facilities also need to be constantly iterated to bring more realism The effect; blockchain technology has only been developed for more than 10 years, and its ecological technology still has a lot of room for development. Concepts that have been popular in recent years, such as NFT and DeFi, also need more time for testing and iterative development.
In addition to technical challenges, the construction of the Metaverse will also face some social challenges.
For example financial issues. In the Metaverse, we are bound to face the question of which currency to use. Now that the world is dominated by US dollars, do we also use US dollars in the metaverse? Presumably many non-US users would disagree, then cryptocurrency would be a great option. But this choice will make the Metaverse an area that is difficult for the government to supervise, and many illegal activities such as money laundering will occur in the future. Getting many users to reach a consensus on currency is a social problem that needs to be faced in the construction of the Metaverse.
In addition, the supervision of speech and extreme thought control are also social issues that the Metaverse needs to face. For example, the US election network is full of misleading content. These contents threaten the social stability of the United States and even cause more social problems. As the next generation of the Internet, how to regulate and control the extreme speech ideas in the metaverse is also a social challenge, otherwise the metaverse may become a breeding ground for some extreme ideas.
