Metaverse, Chinese often referred to as the "metaverse", its concept includes AI, communication networks, digital derivatives, 3D development engines, AR/VR/MR, content communities and other fields, since "Roblox" wrote "Metaverse" in the prospectus in 2020, the topic of this concept and the next Internet era has been detonated.
Perhaps at the time of the release of the first iPhone, it is difficult to predict that there will be P/UGC content communities such as Douyin and Kuaishou in the mobile Internet era, but after experiencing the changes in the Internet era, we have reason to believe that under the impetus of new technologies, new products, and new content forms, the metacosm will bring new value and imagination space to entrepreneurs, content platform parties and even every user with creative ability.
After nearly a year of in-depth observation and visits, as well as the collection of excellent projects in the five major areas of meta-universe new infrastructure, content ecology, XR ecology, AI, and blockchain ecology, 36Kr has tapped many potential enterprises and innovative products with core competitiveness in the industry, and officially released the "2021 Meta-universe Industry Ecological Atlas" today.
As the 1.0 version of the atlas, a total of 34 cases of enterprises or projects are included in the five major fields, and the role and development path of 8 of them in the industry are detailed.
2021 Metacosmic Ecological Atlas-36Kr Productions; this Atlas does not constitute any investment advice
Metacosmity - New Infrastructure Haima Cloud
Relying on the core technology developed by the full stack, we deeply cultivate the field of real-time interactive graphics rendering cloud computing services represented by cloud game computing services, and provide the industry with powerful and cost-effective graphics computing cloud services, including cloud games, cloud mobile phones, cloud rendering, cloud coding, etc.
Self-developed high-density ARM array server, deeply customized X86 hashrate server, self-developed container-based Android instantiation, distributed container management platform, deeply customized HMMRTC real-time interactive streaming media system, full dynamic coding, game pre-pooling technology and dozens of other patented technologies. Haima Cloud currently has 20,000+ self-developed servers, and has established the largest edge computing network in the field of cloud gaming, with more than 30 service nodes, more than 35 million independent devices used every month, more than 250,000 peak concurrent users, and more than 10,000 games running on the platform.
As the cloud-native game-metaverse of games continues to evolve, the demand for computing power in real-time visual and graphics computing, real-time interaction with massive users, and digital twins that reference the real world has grown tremendously. Haima Cloud is carrying out research and reserves on a new generation of computing architecture, and the self-developed fourth-generation server released in July 2021 can achieve a high-quality gaming experience of 8K/30FPS and 4K/120FPS, and the network speed of the instance has increased from 1Gbps to 2.5Gbps, supporting larger concurrent data communication. In addition, the company is carrying out a number of forward-looking technology research for the metacosm, developing and optimizing the computing architecture and software capability architecture for the metacosm, hoping to become the computing cornerstone of the metacosm through technological innovation and infrastructure construction.
Spiritual realm to dimensional
Lingjing Zhiwei is a platform for creating a connected and open digital space for brands and artistic activities, based on web-based interactive technology, users can freely enter the virtual world from mobile phones and PCs anytime, anywhere. Each digital space can include diverse capabilities including open worlds, live streaming, high-fidelity 3D experiences, interactive video, gamified personas, and social network spreads, and these digital spaces can be interconnected to build connected virtual communities and worlds.
By using capabilities including user experience design, 3D vision, and digital interactive technology to build a customized digital space, Lingjing Zhiwei can quickly match scenes such as online virtual meetings, entertainment interactions, and online communities with the needs of brands, achieve commercialization, and allow users to participate in the metaverse world at a lower cost.
Image source: Corporate official
Cloudy imagination
Yuntian Imagine focuses on "ultra-high-definition, strong interaction, low latency" interactive video cloud computing, and carries out customized optimization and breakthrough of software and hardware integration in core areas such as GPU hardware architecture, operating system, graphics rendering, video codec, virtualization, edge cloud, etc., to achieve cost-effective interactive video cloud PaaS services, and to create rich and large-scale commercial solutions in the fields of cloud games, ultra-high-definition interactive cloud video, video AI, and cloud VR.
Yuntian Imagination is positioned in the meta-universe industry new infrastructure builder and PaaS solution service provider, the company based on the self-developed customized GPU computing architecture to build 5G cloud network fusion real-time computing network, graphic rendering, video codec, edge computing and other technologies, as well as cloud games, cloud VR, video AI, ultra-high-definition interactive video cloud video and other 5G interactive video cloud PaaS capabilities are the basic technical capabilities to achieve the meta-universe form of important infrastructure. Taking cloud games that can break through the limitations of local hardware as an example, the flexible allocation of cloud and local computing power, anytime, anywhere click-to-play, improve the efficiency of high-quality content distribution in the meta-universe, optimize game performance and experience, is the prototype and important path of the meta-universe.
Meta-universe - mobile game in content ecology
With IP as the core, the company provides high-quality IP games for global players and builds an IP game ecosystem through independent research and development and joint research and development. Through its own IP operations such as "Legend of paladin" and "Monopoly", we continue to create high-quality content and interactive experiences for users and create high-quality IP. At present, the layout of the research "Legend of the Paladin Sword: The World" is one of the forms of the Immortal Sword Meta universe.
At this stage, the mobile game has been in the games, film and television, content, modular play, licensing, offline and other indispensable related industrial chain layout, is expected to launch the Xianjian co-creation community next year, in 2023 launched the open world game "Paladin Legend: The World". The Xianjian Co-creation Community will provide an active UGC ecosystem for Xianjian IP, as well as the Xianjian IP product "Xianjian Legend: World" in the cross-platform open world RPG, which will provide support for the "Xianjian Meta-Universe", and the virtual world and the real world will be linked through the Xianjian IP and the anchor point of "Xianjian Legend: World".
Meta-Universe-XR Ecological EM3 (Beijing Elink Technology Co., Ltd.)
Independent research and development of "HOLA" virtual social system, the use of virtual reality technology, restore the real communication experience, so that anytime and anywhere "meeting" becomes possible, application scenarios include: remote communication, virtual office, VR live broadcast, etc.
The system is composed of VR/AR headset and software application, hardware provides entrance, software provides platform, lightweight, cross-platform, high simulation is the most core feature of the system.
EM3's headset positioning social and remote communication, lightweight, high-quality, light interaction is the most important consideration in product design. Based on different optical solutions to meet the needs of different communication scenarios, AR is suitable for communication around the target, and VR is suitable for immersive communication. The core of the software is cross-platform, so that users of different terminals can communicate in the same system, and different scene settings provide atmosphere and props for different communication modes.
Social networking plays a key role in the formation of user networks, EM3 hopes to use virtual reality technology to establish communication between people, form a stable social relationship, and then build a complete social system. The formation of business models and economic systems is inseparable from the establishment of social systems, which is a necessary link for the meta-universe ecology to enter a benign development.
Meta-Universe-AI Biaobei (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd
Biaobei Technology is positioned as an artificial intelligence voice interaction service provider, based on AI+SaaS open platform, to build data services and industry solutions. In terms of voice technology, Biaobei has developed and launched high-quality universal speech synthesis solutions and personalized customization services, including TTS customization, sound reproduction, sound conversion, etc., which can highly restore the voice of natural people and cooperate with virtual people to interact with the voice of real scenes.
As one of the core technologies of Biaobei Technology, speech synthesis has the following technological innovation routes:
In the TTS1.0 stage, Biaobei took the lead in introducing the attention mechanism into TTS, and realized commercial productization and launched the sound workshop; TTS 2.0 stage, the introduction of neural network sound coder, strengthening the ability of personalized sound customization, expanding the type of timbre and application scenarios; TTS3.0 stage, introducing the transformer mechanism and GAN deep learning technology, focusing on optimizing the sound experience of audiobook scenes.
Relying on the massive amount of high-quality own data, Biaobei has trained a basic model with excellent performance, so that the customer's timbre customization requirements for data can be reduced from the traditional tens of thousands of sentences to hundreds of sentences, quickly generate new sounds, and achieve low-cost sound customization. Taking the basic scene game industry of the metaverse as an example, Biaobei Technology speech synthesis can customize its own virtual human voice for each NPC and player according to different scenarios, creating a more intelligent, personalized and natural and realistic interactive experience.
Zhongke deep wisdom
Zhongke Shenzhi has developed a multimodal virtual human action drive engine to realize motion capture sensor drive, AI script drive, voice drive, camera drive and other technologies, and developed and exported high-precision large-space positioning technology based on lighthouse. In terms of business, Zhongke Shenzhi provides standardized products such as e-commerce intelligent anchors and virtual live broadcasts for the market, and provides "customized solutions + standard products" SAAS services based on real-time animation image middle platform, which are mainly used in four fields: rapid animation production, motion capture and mixed reality imaging, virtual live broadcasting, and super spatial positioning system.
Through AI technology, motion capture algorithm and real-time rendering engine, Zhongke Shenzhi has built a real-time animation image middle station "MotionVerse" covering the form of pan-content, which can help content developers quickly produce XR image content and provide technical support for virtual content production to solve various commercial scenarios in the metaverse.
Large-scale spatial positioning and motion capture technology based on Zhongke Deep Wisdom allows users to interact with virtual people and virtual objects. At the same time, Zhongke Shenzhi provides a large-space positioning SDK to the developers of the meta-universe to help developers develop industry applications with a lower threshold.
Metacosmity - Blockchain Ecosystem OEC
OEC is an open source high-performance decentralized transaction public chain, aiming to create a completely open blockchain community, anyone can use the source code to build their own transaction chain, or can build applications on top of the transaction chain through smart contracts.
GameFi and NFT are important elements of the metaverse concept and the focus of the OEC layout. In August, the OEC launched the GameFi Hackathon Contest. In September, OEC accessed the Ouyi DeFi Hub product page, and the Ouyi NFT market became an important part of the OEC ecosystem, and a variety of NFT assets were available for users to choose from.
As a participant and builder of the blockchain industry, OEC launched the "Ten Million Dollar Fund Boost Metacosmity Program" in August this year, helping excellent projects in the meta-universe, GameFi and other fields to accelerate the growth of outstanding projects in the fields of meta-universe and GameFi through a series of initiatives such as special investment funds, GameFi special Hackathon and GameFi project incubators. At the same time, OEC has successively launched a number of high-quality metaverses and GameFi projects such as BladeWarrior and CryptoGladiator, bringing together a large number of excellent metaverse project developers and players to build a meta-universe ecology with GameFi as the main line and many subdivided applications.
Write at the end
The metaverse ecological map version 1.0 is based on research in the past year, and the follow-up 36Kr will continue to update and enrich the content, and continue to bring cutting-edge information to the market, but this is not the only trend we have when the new wind direction arrives.
In November 2021, 36Kr officially announced that it will release the digital collection for the first time, officially opening the construction of 36Kr's meta-cosmology. 36Kr will jointly issue a total of 1124 meta-universe identity authentications with Tencent Magic Core with the date "1124" of the day, and provide a total of 1124 digital collections as souvenirs for live and online audiences. The digital collection is limited in circulation, non-replicable, scarce in quantity, extremely collectible, unique and exclusive, not transferable and tradeable, and does not have investment attributes. In addition, 36Kr is exploring cooperation models with more enterprises in different fields in the meta-universe industry ecology.
2021 may be called the "first year of the metacosm", but we don't want to define it that way. From the perspective of the development progress of enterprises in the five major areas of the industry, if you want to enter a virtual world with excellent experience, orderly environment, low entry threshold and never downtime, you need the industry and users to work together for several years or even longer, but this does not affect everyone's common efforts towards the new goal of digital development.
It is believed that under the layout of the metaverse, 36Kr will explore new growth space with the industry.