"Civilization" (Civilization) is one of Zuckerberg's favorite games, and now it has become a common hobby of him and his daughter, and they have to play together for a long time almost every day. As a strategy game, the goal of this game is to build an "empire that can stand the test of time." This may also be Zuckerberg's expectations for the new "Meta" and the future society.
At 1 am on October 29, 2021, Beijing time, the Facebook Connect 2021 online conference officially opened. Mark Zuckerberg appeared on the scene and gave a speech that lasted 1.5 hours.
As the outside world guessed, the focus of Zuckerberg's speech is on the meta universe. In the final part of the speech, it was announced that Facebook will be renamed "Meta", which is taken from the first 4 letters of the English Metaverse of "Meta universe".
1. Renamed Meta, Facebook rushes towards "Meta Universe"
The reason for the name change, Zuckerberg gave the reason in the press conference. "Facebook is one of the most used products in the history of the world. It is an iconic social media brand, but it is increasingly unable to cover everything about us. Over time, I hope our company will be seen as Yuan Universe Company."
As early as May of this year, Facebook stated that it would transform into a meta-universe company within 5 years, and stated in the Q3 earnings conference that the company will continue to invest in its own AR and VR department Facebook Reality Labs before the end of 2021. 10 billion U.S. dollars, and more funds will be invested in the construction of "Meta Universe" in the future.
What exactly is the "meta universe" that made Zuckerberg go all out by changing its name and spending money?
The concept of meta universe first appeared in the science fiction novel "Avalanche" published in 1992, in which it described a virtual network world-metaverse. All people in the real world have a network clone in Metaverse, living in another parallel world that transcends reality.
Including "The Matrix" and the recently released "Out of Control Players" have also reflected the scenes of the meta universe, which can be summarized as follows: Human beings live in a virtual world in digital form, obtaining an immersive experience beyond the real universe .
The meta-universe scenes depicted in these sci-fi works still seem a little unrealistic, but the prototype of the meta-universe has actually arrived.
In this press conference, Zuckerberg demonstrated Meta's exploration in the metaverse field from many scenes such as life, study, entertainment, and office, and disclosed some of the research successes of Meta's FRL laboratory. Recently, a new team has been established to specialize in the research and development of "Meta Universe" products, hoping to integrate its Oculus VR helmet hardware, AR glasses and wristbands and other wearable technologies to explore more possibilities of "Meta Universe".
2. Combining hardware and software to explore more possibilities of the "meta universe"
In the press conference, Zuckerberg showed his virtual avatar, wearing jeans and a black long-sleeved shirt. He said that in the future, people "may" have multiple avatars for work, family and games, all of which are based on the support of hardware and software functions for the "meta universe".
In this conference, Zuckerberg introduced Project Cambria, a high-end XR headset. Project Cambria is equipped with more sensors than traditional headsets, which can realize eye tracking and facial capture functions, so as to vividly present the user's facial expressions in the virtual world and generate more realistic virtual avatars.
In terms of optics, Project Cambria uses the Pancake optical scheme, which repeatedly folds the light to achieve a slimmer design than Quest 2 while also providing high-quality visual effects.
Zuckerberg also demonstrated the MR function of Project Cambria with Angela Chang, the person in charge of VR equipment at Meta. Users can perceive the real physical world naturally while wearing a headset, and use a pen in the real world. write.
In addition to the wearable headset, Zuckerberg also revealed and demonstrated the latest progress Meta has made in the development of AR glasses-Project Nazare, the first mature AR glasses. In the demonstration, the user sent a message through Whatsapp to meet for a game, and then the virtual avatar of the friend appeared in the user's field of vision, and the game officially started.
"EMG Wristband" is also a stunning product previously released by Meta in the field of meta universe. With the help of the core technology of electromyography (EMG), it can replace the traditional "brain wave technology", receive motor nerve electrical signals transmitted from the spinal cord to the wrist and fingers, and convert the subtle nerve signals into a series of actions and convert them into manipulation Digital instructions for the device.
As one of the three sets of physical peripherals, the wristband is linked with hardware devices such as augmented reality glasses and XR helmets to further optimize the user's interactive experience with the digital world and enhance the integration of the physical world and the "meta universe".
In addition to hardware, Zuckerberg also shared the construction of the "meta universe" digital world in this conference.
Zuckerberg first mentioned the new avatar system that Meta launched in the Oculus Avatars 2.0 update in March of this year. After this update, it can provide users of its first-party application Horizon with the function of customizing the image.
In addition to being more realistic and more visually appealing than the previous version, Avatars 2.0 is also positioned to open up the Oculus and Meta ecosystems. It can be used in Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook mobile apps, and can be used in applications such as Epic Roller Coasters and PokerStars. Third-party platforms such as VR, Topgolf, Pro Putt, Synth Riders, and ForeVR Bowling establish ecosystem cooperation.
And said that it is expected that in December, Meta will launch the SDK for Oculus Avatars 2.0, so that any Quest developer can integrate this system into their own applications.
In August of this year, Meta launched Horizon Workrooms, an enterprise-centric virtual collaboration platform based on Horizon that allows VR users and video users to connect to the same place for online meetings, and provides several standard meetings Room space is for users to choose, and personalized functions such as color, decoration modification and company logo and poster import will be added in the future to further enrich and enhance the application scenarios of "Meta Universe".
In addition, Oculus also provides developers with more tools to integrate social features into the game. For example, allowing users to invite friends to visit, drop by or play VR games, etc., without using the Quest menu, lowering the barriers to user interaction.
3. The future of the meta universe is beyond our imagination
Although the meta-universe is still in its infancy stage, it is undeniable that the concept of meta-universe will set off the next generation of Internet revolution. If it can be realized, it will greatly expand the physical society and create more possibilities.
Regarding the development of Metaverse, Zuckerberg gave an expectation: "We hope that in the next ten years, Metaverse will cover 1 billion people, achieve hundreds of billions of dollars in digital business, and provide millions of creators and creators. Developers provide employment support."
The so-called employment support is actually an invitation letter issued to creators and developer groups.
The change in the intelligent age must first be driven by technology and by developers. Just as the theme of the F8 conference in June this year is "It's All About Developers", Zuckerberg and his new "Meta" attach great importance to the power of developers.
At the end of this conference, Zuckerberg not only announced plans to expand the functions of its Spark AR platform, but in the future will provide more development tools to help developers build application experiences based on smartphones and Project Nazare, and jointly create a "meta universe" Infrastructure construction, and also solemnly send out invitations to developers——
"If this is the future you want to see, I hope you can join us. The future will exceed our imagination."
Source of Figure 1:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/6hC2biixMiYNt5XvsH3emj-1024-80.jpg.webp
Source of Figure 2:
https://inews.gtimg.com/newsapp_bt/0/14119361294/1000
Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5 are taken from the official concept video of Project Nazare:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvufun6xer8&t=3629s
Figure 6 Source:
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