Author | Chenglin Pua (Malaysia), Editor, | Yu Baicheng
The metacosm will receive a lot of attention in 2021. First, Meta's "All In" strategy, and then other large companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Baidu, Tencent, ByteDance and other domestic and foreign companies to enter and deploy. Under the hype of capital, the meta-universe has become the next place where soldiers must compete, and many companies are vying to eat this big cake.
Looking at the metaverse, it can mainly be four aspects, namely hardware, software, services, content and applications. The connection between the metaverse and the real world is mainly hardware. More advanced hardware will enable people to have a better experience in the metaverse and mature the metaverse industry chain. So what hardware support is needed for the construction of the metaverse?
chip
Chips are the "base food" of the metaverse.
On November 9, 2021, Nvidia released a major business update announcement to the market at the GTC conference of the global industry technology summit held by NVIDIA, that is, Nvidia will provide basic technologies such as chips for metacosmity in the future. AMD, which is also engaged in graphics graphics card (GPU) development, has recently begun to serve the metaverse pioneers. On November 9, AMD announced that Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has become its business partner, and in the future, Meta will purchase AMD chips to meet The huge demand for data centers and computing power after Meta's transformation from "social media" to "meta-universe".
The construction of the metaverse requires huge computing power, and chips can support this. AMD CEO Su Zifeng said on November 9: "We are in a period of high-performance computing explosion, which is also driving the need for more computing to support services and devices that affect every aspect of our lives. ”
The rise of VR/AR products will also drive the development of the most core components, chips, and the demand for chips will only increase. Similar to automotive chips, today's VR/AR chips have shown a trend of separation from mobile phones and towards independence and customization.
Previously, due to the niche of VR/AR products, few technology companies designed special chips for them. For example, in 2018, Oculus and Xiaomi jointly launched the VR all-in-one product Oculus Go (known as Xiaomi VR All-in-One In China), which uses Qualcomm's flagship chip of mobile platform processors launched in 2016. In addition, the screen of the 2014 Oculus Rift DK2 uses the screen of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. It can be seen that in the early days, VR/AR hardware mainly relied on mobile phone-related supply chains.
But with the expansion of this market, the industrial chain around VR/AR products will also get opportunities to flourish, especially chips. In 2018, Qualcomm also released the XR 1 chip, a chip designed for VR/AR products. Today's well-sold Oculus Quest 2 uses the Qualcomm XR2 chip (the second generation of the XR 1). The big sale of Oculus Quest 2 has also prompted Qualcomm to gradually make efforts in the VR/AR industry chain. Qualcomm is rumored to have set up a dedicated department after the success of the XR2 and a team to continue to design chips for VR/AR devices.
On the other hand, industry giants such as Apple, Meta, and Magic Leap are likely to continue to go in the direction of self-development and customization. According to foreign media reports, Apple has completed the design of VR/AR chips in 2020 and commissioned TSMC to produce chips in 5nm advanced processes. From Qualcomm to Apple, they have devoted their efforts to the core field of chips, and it is foreseeable that the chips of VR/AR products will usher in a period of accelerated development in the future. As this market continues to expand, more players will enter the game in the future. The metacosm will drive the vigorous development of the chip industry, and the vigorous development of the metacosm also requires the strong support of the chip.
Virtual reality (VR/AR) devices
Virtual reality is the technology that shows the metaverse to people. As an important bridge connecting the real world and the metaverse, virtual reality equipment has now received the attention and march of many institutions, including many well-known large technology companies.
Meta, the "All in" metaverse, earlier launched the Oculus family of products. The Oculus Quest 2, launched in 2020, has been rated by many well-known technology websites as the most worthwhile virtual reality device to start with. And it costs only $299, with a resolution of 1832×1920 per eyepiece (roughly equivalent to a high-quality image of 4K). Arguably the Oculus Quest 2 is the most cost-effective virtual reality device available today.
Virtual Reality Device Market Share Source: Counterpoint's Global Virtual Reality Devices Report
The launch of the Oculus Quest 2 also helped Meta capture more than 75% of the market (shipments in the first quarter of 2021).
In fact, in addition to Meta, Microsoft also has its own virtual reality device called HoloLens. It's now iterative to the second generation. HoloLens is a pair of mixed reality smart glasses developed and manufactured by Microsoft. The second generation sells for $3,500, which is a bit of a gap from Meta's Oculus Quest 2 in terms of cost performance.
It is now rumored that Apple is also actively researching virtual reality devices and is expected to launch them in 2022. Apple, which is good at combining soft and hard, will inevitably be a strong opponent in this field in the future. In May 2021, Apple also acquired virtual reality company NextVR for $100 million to enhance its VR prowess in entertainment and sports.
Ma Jie, vice president of Baidu, said at the XR International Forum that Baidu will support the development of the meta-universe and VR industry in the future. On October 19, 2021, Liu Liehong, chairman of China Unicom, said at the 2021 World VR Industry Conference that China Unicom will promote the accelerated development of the VR industry.
According to IDC data, global VR equipment shipments are accelerating, and it is expected that global VR headset shipments will maintain a compound annual growth rate of 41% from 2021 to 2025. Shipments are expected to increase from 6.7 million units in 2020 to 8.5 million units in 2021 and 28.6 million units in 2025.
Global estimated annual VR equipment shipments Source: IDC
As the most important hardware to show the metaverse to people, virtual reality equipment will be fully developed in the future.
Cloud computing data centers
The operation of the virtual world is inseparable from powerful computing power, and cloud computing will be fully developed because people continue to build metaversms. The explosion of data volume in the metaverse has led to a surge in the demand for computing power, and cloud computing is considered one of the most important infrastructures in the metacosm. It's unrealistic to rely on the computer equipment of ordinary people to run the massive code of the metaverse, and cloud computing is a good solution.
Behind cloud computing is more data center construction. Metaverses upload the programs that need to be computed to the cloud, then through powerful data processing, and finally back to the user. More powerful data centers mean faster processing power, which will greatly improve the texture and fluency of the metaverse.
To connect into the metaverse, we need to enter "parameters", that is, where to go, which commands to place, etc., just like playing a game and typing on the keyboard to enter instructions. The parameters that people enter in the metaverse are far more complex than the instructions generated by typing on the keyboard, and the sensing device collects our "input parameters", throws them to the cloud for operation and then converts them into parameters that the metaverse can understand, so that we can move or give instructions in the metaverse.
After conveying the instructions, the modeling part of the metacosm is followed. Everything in the metaverse, buildings, etc. is virtualized. NVIDIA once interspersed a few seconds of "fake" Huang Jenxun and background in its online GTC conference, requiring more than 30 staff members to first use RTX ray tracing technology to scan Huang Jenxun, take thousands of photos of Huang Jenxun and kitchens from various angles, model the "kitchen" in omniverse, a virtual collaboration platform developed by NVIDIA, and finally combine through AI to fake the real. Just building a kitchen requires a lot of data to generate and simulate, let alone a world. Building a realistic and massive metaverse world requires powerful cloud technology to support powerful simulation capabilities.
Humans need to get a certain amount of "feedback" when connecting into the metaverse, and cloud technology passes the "feedback" back to the device at hand after a certain operation, thus giving us a certain amount of perceptual feedback.
Many technology companies are also actively deploying related facilities. For example, Unity has recently launched the "Unity Cloud Distributed Computing Power Solution". According to Unity officials, the solution can save up to 70% more than 70% of computing time. While improving the overall computing efficiency, it also reduces the loss of local computing resources and greatly saves costs.
Unity Cloud Technology Solutions
5G communication facilities
An important function of the metacosm is that it can connect with people. One of the technical difficulties of the metaverse is to achieve low-latency connections, which puts forward higher requirements for communication infrastructure, especially 5G.
Previous Oculus headsets (such as the Oculus Go) were basically paired with a smartphone to render their worlds, which made them heavy, hot, and graphically much worse than what a PC or game console could provide. Although the latest Oculus Quest 2 does not need to connect to the phone, you can calculate it yourself, but the texture is still rough, obviously ar/VR devices to fully calculate the rendering and operation of the virtual world is unrealistic. With the help of cloud computing, we can send important input parameters to the cloud and then receive output parameters. With faster connectivity such as 5G, AR/VR devices will be able to render their graphics remotely, further sending the results to our AR/VR devices for display quickly, just like displays and sensor collections.
To achieve this, we need reliable latency of about 7 milliseconds or less and another technology called mobile edge computing. To do this, we need separate 5G networks to implement this technology.
5G has been very hot in the past two years, and many people have discussed its application scenarios, and the metacosm will be an important application scenario for 5G to show its fists. 5G will be greatly developed under the trend of the metaverse, and the metacosm will also provide a more realistic virtual experience to people due to the rapid development of 5G.
Today, the world as a whole is generally lagging behind in 5G facilities. The construction of the metacosmum requires a large number of 5G connection devices, which is also the difficulty that the metacosm has to overcome when it enters the homes of ordinary people. If the metacosm is to be successful, it is inseparable from the mature 5G infrastructure.
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[This article was originally published in ChainDede, authorized to be published by Titanium Media App, Author: 01 Blockchain]
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