A true metaverse! Can I see you in this lifetime?

If time goes back 20 years ago, few people may imagine that they don’t need to carry a wallet when they go out today, and most people watch short videos on their mobile phones.

So imagine what we might see in the next 20 years?

The metaverse will be one.

What is the Metaverse: In a word, it is a virtual world parallel to the real world.

In the metaverse, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that in the metaverse, you will be able to do almost anything you can imagine - get together with friends and family, work, study, play, shop, create, etc. Wait, it's a completely different experience, and you can experience it yourself instead of just watching it.

A year ago, Ma Huateng, founder of Tencent, also threw out a similar concept of "full Internet". He said that with new technologies such as VR, new hardware and software being promoted in various scenarios, I believe that another big reshuffle is about to begin. Just like the transformation of the mobile Internet, those who can't get on the boat will gradually fall behind."

The Metaverse may now be the hottest topic in the global capital market, no one. Even Luo Yonghao was interested, saying that the next entrepreneurial project was the so-called Metaverse Company.

Not long ago, Zuckerberg announced that he would rename Facebook to META and fully enter the metaverse. Stimulated by this, Nvidia in the United States has risen by nearly 50% since October, becoming the seventh-largest listed company in the U.S. stock market. In China, Zhongqingbao who made games successfully doubled in 6 days.

What stirs the nerves of the capital market is two words: the future.

However, many professional researchers have stated that it is difficult for listed companies with current concepts in China to make substantial breakthroughs in the Metaverse within at least 5-10 years.

We need to figure out what the Metaverse contains? Is a metaverse possible? Where is the future?

01

Since ancient times, human beings have wanted to open up a world different from reality. This world can get rid of the suffering of reality. The handicapped people are strong here, the poor people are rich here, the inferior people are confident here, Lonely people are warm here...

In ancient times, this world was recorded in the Western "Bible", Dante's "Divine Comedy", Bach's religious music, Eastern "Book of Changes", "Heluotu" and even "Journey to the West" and so on.

But at that time, there was an unbridgeable gap between the spiritual world and the real world.

With the advancement of science and technology, values, humanistic thinking, technological tools, and economic models, this gap is being filled little by little.

In 1992, Neil Stephenson coined a term for this world in his novel "Avalanche" - the metaverse.

In fiction, mobile computing, virtual reality, digital currency, smartphones, augmented reality, and more. Many engineers, entrepreneurs, futurists, and geeks see Avalanche as a great prediction for today's tech scene.

In Stephenson's pen, the original purpose of the metaverse is to help people briefly escape from unbearable reality. But what many overlook is the satire of the metaverse in the novel, which has become an addictive, violent place.

In 1999, the "Matrix" trilogy, which was popular all over the world, raised the deduction of the "metaverse" to another extreme. In the sky where people marvel at the works, it conveys the unease and fear of the virtual world. The protagonist NEO discovers that he is not himself, he is just a series of programs living in the THEMATRIX digital matrix. His real body is nothing but a "battery" that provides bioelectricity to the world controlled by the mother machine.

In 2018, "Ready Player One" showed the "Oasis" of the virtual game universe, which is considered by many to be the future of the "Metaverse".

In the plot, the protagonist Wade is in the dilapidated carriage of the slum (anywhere), and after wearing VR equipment (immersion), he becomes another himself Parsifal (identity) in the oasis of the virtual world, and gets to know a lot of people (friends). ,social relationship). When being beaten, Wade also feels immediate pain in his physical body (realism, low latency). In the oasis, people can go wherever they want (a sense of freedom), and they can earn money through labor and competition (the economic system), which gradually allows the people living in the oasis to form a unique set of values and cultural characteristics ( civilization). "

In Ready Player One, the metaverse becomes a part of the real world, and the bridge between the virtual world and the real world seems to be drawn more and more clearly.

02

Zuckerberg said: "The most difficult technical challenge of our time may be fitting a supercomputer into the frame of ordinary glasses. But it is the key to connecting our physical and digital worlds."

At present, although it has not been able to do as Zach hoped, in fact, the hardware devices for humans to enter the virtual world have been quite interesting.

Touch Feedback Gloves

California-based company HaptX has launched an advanced haptic feedback glove with "Real Touch" technology. In the virtual world, the touch feeling can be truly fed back. Each glove features 133 tactile feedback points that fully cover the palm and fingertips, the company says. Its patented technology can make your skin shift like a real object.

VR treadmill

In the VR experience stores that have been rolled out in large areas across the country, the core of its equipment has a VR treadmill. Real-time walking directions and actions can be reflected in virtual games in real time.

tactile clothes

The tactile vest launched by South Korean VR hardware manufacturer bHaptics can already simulate the recoil of shooting in the game, the frictional feeling of taking things from the backpack, and the position of being hit and the feeling of impact when attacked by monsters.

VR space capsule

This chair can rotate, undulate, has a holographic projection screen, and haptic feedback, which can provide players with an immersive experience while protecting players from being injured by scaring items in VR. Immersion is particularly prominent in subjects such as space, roller coasters, and racing cars.

Of course, these are just consumer-grade hardware devices, and there are more "wow" products on industrial/enterprise-grade hardware, such as Leica's photogrammetry cameras, which have up to 360,000 "laser scan set points per second" for Capture entire malls, buildings and homes with greater clarity and detail.

03

Hardware devices are just the first step into the metaverse, and software/content breakthroughs are still tough.

Perhaps many friends still have the impression that there was a wave of VR glasses in 2016. At that time, large and small brands of VR glasses sprang up like bamboo shoots. But people's curiosity was quickly swept away by products with obvious flaws and lack of content.

This period, once known as "the first year of VR", has shown a decline.

In the past five years, there is almost no VR content that can really form an influence in China. There are very few people who are willing to spend a lot of money to develop VR content abroad. Until the end of March 2020, "Half-Life: Alex" was released, and it suddenly received rave reviews in the VR industry.

"It's really scary!" From a game reviewer, you can interact with everything you see. The way to search for items in the game is not by pressing buttons, but by real actions; Zhou's radios, flower pots, chairs, and more can be interacted with. There are even appropriate sound effects to assist from the side, footsteps, the sound of clothes rubbing, really immersive.

But, but, but!

Such an epoch-making masterpiece has still not been able to achieve wider dissemination and recognition. There are three main points:

1. The inescapable 3D dizziness.

Although the game has been optimized a lot, the realistic scenes still make players prone to dizziness. Because 3D dizziness is very easy to occur and the reasons for it are complicated, it is the heaviest roadblock in the current VR industry.

2. How to walk.

In VR games, movement has always been a big problem. Although there are VR treadmills, the cost is too high for players, and game makers do not see them as a solution. In "Half-Life: Alex", three modes of virtual joystick, circle teleportation and teleportation are used, but they are only bypassed and not really solved.

3. The cost is too high

Playing this well-made game requires more high-end equipment. In China, the current higher-end VR devices, such as HTC's VIVE Cosmos series, cost about 6,000 yuan for a basic version. Especially when there are not many high-quality game content at present, the cost of this equipment is not acceptable to most players.

As of now, it has been more than a year since the release of "Half-Life: Alex", and I have not seen a game masterpiece that can compare with it. In addition, VR game masterpieces are mostly on exclusive platforms, and have not yet landed in the domestic market. It can be said that the domestic VR game market has not yet been opened.

04

Whether it is the metaverse described in "Avalanche", "The Matrix", "Ready Player One", etc. mentioned above, it is not just a game, it is more about life, in addition to entertainment, there are social and work, and it needs a virtual machine that can link to virtual reality . world and real-world economic systems.

But it's harder than a 3A game.

In 2003, the online game "SecondLife" (Second Life) was launched in the United States. This is not a game in the general sense, where players focus more on creativity, everyone can create houses, pets, cars, clothes, games, programs, and more. All player-created items have property rights and can be sold, transferred or leased at will to earn Linden Coins (game currency). A mechanism similar to a linked exchange rate between Linden Coins and the U.S. dollar can facilitate two-way exchange.

From this, various industries in reality were born, such as shopping malls, advertisers, real estate developers and even banks. At the peak of "SecondLife", well-known companies such as Toyota, GM, Adidas, Unilever, etc. all expanded their business territories in the game, and the total output value of the game exceeded the wealth owned by several third world countries. It even created real-world millionaires.

However, the decline and demise of "SecondLife" was also very rapid. In 2007, online gambling was banned, causing a large number of gamblers to queue up to withdraw cash at virtual banks. This run on the market, coupled with extremely high interest rates, directly overwhelmed the fragile virtual economy. After that, SecondLife quickly declined.

"SecondLife", which used to be crowded on virtual streets, has long been ignored, but it has left discussions on moral boundaries, policy rules, economic systems and other issues in virtual society, and it also shows how difficult it is to build a virtual society. .

05

As can be seen from the previous article, the metaverse is a construction that requires hardware to software to social rules, and is far from a grand goal that a company or a game can accomplish.

But unfortunately, at present, the so-called concept stocks in the A-share market are mostly only invested in games and some hardware, and the suspicion of hot spots is relatively large.

Take Zhongqingbao, the leader of the metaverse concept in the market, as an example. In early September, it proposed that it was building a game "brewmaster" based on the metaverse concept. Since then, the stock price has soared more than three times.

According to Zhongqingbao, "Wine Master" is a development and management game centered on the operation of a winery. In the game, players can make wine "by themselves" and can pick up wine offline. At the same time, through cooperation with liquor brands, the brands created by players in the game will also have the opportunity to obtain NFT certification, and players can earn profits through auctions within the circle. This game has cooperated with Jinsha Ancient Wine. According to estimates, the initial investment in research and development of the "Brewer Master" game is 5 to 15 million yuan.

Screenshots of the tweets from the official account of Zhongqingbao are for display only, please refer to the game content after the launch

According to the description of Zhongqingbao, the proposed investment amount, and the screenshots of the exposed game, "Beverage Master" is more likely to be a conventional business development game, without the free creation, real touch, and VR vision in the metaverse mentioned above. and so on features.

In addition, many listed companies made relevant remarks.

In sell-side research, brokerages have published several Metaverse research reports.

Among them, CITIC Securities released a 163-page metaverse in-depth report titled "Metaverse Future Conjectures and Investment Opportunities", which attracted much attention. The report stated that there is still a long development path from the ultimate metaverse, and there are many uncertainties, but the metaverse is the future digital existence of human beings and will have a profound impact on society.

The report specifically mentioned that at the current point in time, it is difficult for us to give short-term beneficial investment targets for the Metaverse. However, in the medium and long term, we are optimistic about the investment opportunities in related fields brought by this.

06

Reflect.

The real metaverse could be another world, a space where infinite possibilities can be created. The metaverse is far more than games, and games and social interaction are just stepping stones to the door of the metaverse.

Such a huge plan and goal cannot be achieved by a company, nor can it be achieved overnight.

The gratifying thing about the current metaverse trend is that it allows us to peek into a corner of the future, where real capital bosses lead the efforts.

But the scary thing is that impetuously rushing ducks to the shelves, playing gimmicks, and doing marketing are not good things for the Metaverse. Just like the sudden wave of VR glasses in 2016, it came and went quickly, leaving behind more cautious and fearful capital and scornful consumers.

CITIC Securities stated bluntly in the research report: "The Metaverse is the next-generation Internet in the next 20 years and the digital survival of mankind in the future."

As early as February 2020, Tencent participated in Roblox’s $150 million Series G financing and exclusively represented the distribution of Roblox’s products in China. The latter is hailed as the game closest to the current metaverse, with Roblox’s average daily active users (DAU) in the third quarter of 47.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 31%.

ByteDance has also recently completed the acquisition of Pico, a domestic consumer VR brand, with an acquisition amount of 9 billion yuan.

Taobao held a "Tmall Double 11 First Metaverse Art Exhibition" on this year's Double 11. The virtual spokesperson AYAYI was sought after by many young users.

AI, virtual humans, NFTs, optoelectronics/sensors, content creation engines, etc. are all advancing at a rapid pace, and they are building the "new infrastructure" of the metaverse era.

We look forward to the future.