Some think the metaverse is the objective of the future Internet and another revolution in information technology, while others merely consider it a Ponzi scheme. While a metaverse may be in its early phases of development, many of its basic components are already in place. They have effectively supported the integration of technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) with social media, gaming, video, and more. As a result, large technological businesses are also actively planning their metaverse.
In March 2021, Roblox, a multiplayer online creation game platform, launched an IPO on NASDAQ, bringing the term “metaverse” back into the limelight after 30 years of silence. Since then, the metaverse has been on the road to fame. First, blockchain people discovered its great value as an NFT application scenario and gave it a lot of hype. Then several technology giants, including Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia, rushed in.
Meta: name has said it all
Among others, Facebook is the most responsive to the metaverse. Having just announced the formation of a metaverse group in June 2021, the social giant continued to change the company name to Meta in October of the same year.
Meta’s investments involve hardware and applications. With such a heavy investment, Meta’s goal is clear — to master the dominance of hardware, operating system, and other underlying facilities and to create new traffic growth points.
As early as July 2014, Facebook acquired the famous VR device manufacturer Oculus for 2 billion dollars. With Facebook as a strong backing, Oculus launched a series of new products. In September 2020, Oculus launched the Oculus Quest2, a VR headset with high-cost performance to increase the VR market share of Facebook significantly.
Meanwhile, to match the VR hardware plans, Meta also developed metaverse applications and contents. Aiming at people’s needs for VR life, work, and social entertainment, Meta launched four VR platforms: Horizon Home, Horizon Workroom, Horizon Worlds, and Horizon Venues, building a complete metaverse ecosystem for users.
In addition, Meta has also established the App Lab platform, which allows some small development teams to bypass app stores and share their VR gaming works directly with users. This move is a clear attempt to circumvent Apple and Google and seize the content channel further. Overall, Meta, as a comprehensive giant, has a good posture in the four directions of front-end hardware, underlying architecture, artificial intelligence, and content & scenarios.
Microsoft: A pioneer of enterprise metaverse
In a speech at Microsoft Inspire, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella first proposed the concept of “enterprise metaverse”, which means “the new layer of the infrastructure stack that’s getting created as digital and physical worlds converge. “ It is a combination of digital twin, Internet of Things (IoT) and mixed reality. Unlike Meta, Microsoft is more focused on the direction of enterprise-class needs.
At the end of 2021, Microsoft launched two metaverse applications: Connected Spaces and Mesh for Teams. Connected Spaces is a module of its SaaS product Dynamics 365, mainly used for enterprise management. Relying on the computer and artificial intelligence technology, it can help managers observe the operation of their enterprises in real-time and make specific suggestions for improving governance. While Mesh for Teams was launched as a component of Teams, Microsoft’s SaaS collaboration tool, and creates a metaverse office environment for users. Combined with Mesh for Teams’ MR (Mixed Reality) capabilities, users in various locations can transform themselves into avatars, join collaborations through Teams, hold meetings, send messages, work on shared documents, etc., within a united holographic experience.
Besides technology, Microsoft’s acquisitions in the gaming industry have further enriched its metaverse assets. In January, Microsoft announced it had gained Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Microsoft believes that this acquisition will provide the foundation of its metaverse. Its broad offer is just in time in this early stage of metaverse development.
Google: Launching AR devices secretly
Compared with Meta and Microsoft, Google’s metaverse journey is a little secretive. According to foreign media, Google has recently started a mysterious project called Iris, which is likely to develop an AR headset.
This project is exceptionally secretive, and only a small number of employees are authorized to enter its R & D building with special verification. In addition, participants in the Iris project are required to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Google. Rumor has it that the Iris project has over 300 people and many technical gurus.
According to Google insiders, the AR headset will use an outward-facing camera to combine computer graphics with real-world video. Its presentation will be more realistic than existing AR products like Snap and Magic Leap. The product will use Google’s original processor and run on Android.
For the operating system, Google is working on an Augmented Reality OS for the future development of augmented reality headsets. In addition, Google plans to use its data center to render images remotely and then transmit them to the user’s headset through a network connection.
As you can see, Google, as another prominent investor, naturally hopes to occupy a place in the metaverse.
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Apple: Paticipated in the game under name of AR
If the metaverse really comes, the current mobile phone-based terminals will be disrupted. This is not good news for Apple, and the market advantage that it has gained may disappear. It should be noted that although Apple does not publicly emphasize the metaverse, its private plans are no less than others. As Cook said, these plans are not in the name of the metaverse but of AR.
Apple has applied for numerous patents in AR hardware, such as the “Direct Retinal Projector”, which is specifically designed to deal with the problem of AR imaging on lightweight portable devices; the “Tunable and Focus Lens System” is used to help users with near-sighted eyes.
Compared to hardware, Apple’s portfolio of AR development platforms is relatively complete. Its ARKit, RealityKit, RealityComposer, and RealityConverter have formed a fairly complete AR development ecosystem. Relying on these four platforms, Apple can build a whole AR creative community. There is news that Apple will launch an AR headset this year and AR contact lenses in 2030. It can be said that Apple’s metaverse vision is steadily advancing and improving.
NVIDIA: Building a metaverse for engineers
In the metaverse era, NVIDIA is still expected to maintain its technical advantages reserved in the PC mobile era, especially in GPU, high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, etc. NVIDIA has its hardware platform, underlying architecture, artificial intelligence, and other directions now. In 2021, NVIDIA released the Omniverse platform, Omniverse Avatar, etc., to implement the metaverse into industrial scenarios.
Omniverse is an enterprise-oriented virtual work platform that brings together all hardware and software technologies such as GPU, CUDA, and real-time ray tracing RTX technology, to form a complete full-stack solution, thus solving the pain points associated with “physical world simulation” in a more efficient and compatible way. Omniverse makes it easy for game developers to tackle complex pipeline work, thereby increasing productivity. On the Omniverse platform, animation, texture, lighting, geometry, and other routine game development elements will be linked in one fell swoop. Everyone will see what others are doing in a WYSIWYG way.
NVIDIA will also use Omniverse to build a digital twin model E-2 (Earth Two) to simulate and predict climate change. Relying on its cloud computing, computing power, and engineer-oriented metaverse, NVIDIA has been trying to do more.
Roblox: A metaverse prototype emerges
Roblox is the first company to include the metaverse concept in its prospectus. It proposes eight key features of the path leading to metaverse: identity, variety, friends, anywhere, immersive, economy, low friction, and civility. Roblox focuses on building content and scenarios, and the platform also provides accessible tools and technologies for creators, making Client, Studio (creation platform), and Cloud (cloud architecture) form a complete ecosystem.
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Based-on Client, RobloxStudio, and Cloud, Robolx has realized the editability and explorability of gaming content, which has taken the initial shape of a metaverse.
WiMi Hologram: Discovering the underlying metaverse technologies
WiMi Hologram is a technology company focusing on holographic AR, and has been working on AR/VR since 2016. With the underlying technologies of the metaverse, with 5G+AI and AR/VR as the core, WiMi can provide the technical foundation for various applications. At present, WiMi has an XR headset “WiMi Hologram SoftLight”, an augmented reality headset “WiMi HoloAR lens", a holographic pulse lidar “WiMi HoloPluse LiDAR” and other hardware products.
Technically, WiMi Hologram is based on imaging detection and the technology of recognition, template matching and detection, video processing and recognition, holographic 3D layer replacement in imaging recognition, and dynamic fusion processing in the imaging track. WiMi Hologram will embed holographic AR content into metaverse applications and generate commercial value in commercial metaverse applications. In addition, WiMi Hologram Cloud has leading 3D computer vision technology and SAAS platform-based technology, which can be used in holographic advertising, entertainment, education, communication and other fields.
Tencent: A pioneer with completed portfolios
Tencent is one of the metaverse pioneers in China, with Pony Ma first proposing the concept of “Complete Reality of Internet” (CRI). As early as 2012, Tencent acquired 49.9% of Epic Games for $330 million; in 2020, Tencent participated in the G-round financing of Roblox; in 2021, Tencent’s exclusive Chinese version of Roblox went online. In fact, both Roblox and Epic Games have certain advantages in the competition of the metaverse.
Tencent has three major directions in the metaverse: the underlying architecture (Unreal Engine), the back-end infrastructure (cloud services, big data center), and the content and scenarios (various types of content and a mature social network interoperability ecosystem). Due to the shortcomings at the hardware level, Tencent plans to acquire the gaming phone company Black Shark Technology for 2.7 billion yuan, which will also be integrated into the PCG division. After this acquisition, Black Shark Technology will transform from a hardware manufacturer focusing on gaming phones to a VR device provider, which is the entrance to the metaverse. In addition, Tencent has launched a new XR business, and related technologies are gradually being applied.
Whether it’s the CRI or the metaverse, Tencent is actively planning this unknown change to seize the opportunity of the coming next-generation Internet.
Alibaba: Promoting multi-scene applications for e-commerce
Alibaba’s “metaverse” plan can be traced back to 2016, when it launched the VR shopping function on Taobao and invested in AR unicorn Magic Leap. In 2021, Alibaba’s more frequent moves into the metaverse began with the establishment of a new brand, “Yuan Jing”, XR Lab, and the hiring of AYAYI as the digital mastermind of Tmall Super Brand Day. Technically, according to Ali Cloud insiders, the company has provided a complete set of visual computing solutions, from rendering to streaming to coding, for enterprises and applications in the metaverse.
Like Tencent, Alibaba has also applied to register several trademarks, such as “Ali Metaverse” and “Taobao Metaverse”. In addition, based on its cloud computing, Alibaba has also expanded many other metaverse solutions, such as cloud games; experience optimization based on e-commerce scenarios (VR shopping, VR hardware, and virtual-human marketing). Overall, Alibaba’s metaverse roadmap is also worth waiting for.
Baidu: Bring the first practical metaverse product
What is remarkable is that Baidu is the first to launch a practical metaverse product—Xirang.
Xirang is a metaverse social app where users can create virtual identities and instantly communicate with friends. Xirang needs to be placed on the same server with the help of a data transmission algorithm and local rendering engine tuning, a high-capacity and high-concurrent architecture, and other designs, thus improving the system’s stability. Baidu claimed that the AI native cloud built by Baidu AI cloud provides PFLOPS-level extreme heterogeneous computing power, hundreds of GB of bandwidth, and infinitely scalable storage to support this mega-volume data transmission project.
It should be noted that the metaverse brought by “Xirang” is still in its early stages. Still, relying on its long-term accumulated technical advantages and successful experience, Baidu is expected to continue to break through the technical bottlenecks along the path.
NetEase: IPO on its metaverse
NetEase’s moves are equally attention-grabbing. Since people are working remotely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, NetEase’s immersive event platform “Yao Tai” allows for customization of scenarios and provides conference functions such as embedded PPT playback, live streaming channel switch, and text and voice group chat. NetEase Cloud Music, which launched an IPO last year, held its first “metaverse” ceremony on “Yao Tai”, with its founder Ding Lei ringing the bell with his two avatars.
In addition, NetEase also invested in the “virtual human” ACG business to create avatars of entertaining stars like Dilraba, Huang Zitao, etc. NetEase has invested in many VR technology companies at the technical level, including VR streaming company NextVR, VR equipment manufacturer AxonVR, and virtual avatar, and artificial intelligence modeling company Genies.
It can be seen that from AI to VR, from front-end R&D to virtual-human end, NetEase’s roadmap has covered nearly all the core technologies of virtual reality with practical products.
ByteDance: Bid on Pico in a comprehensive roadmap
At the end of August 2021, ByteDance acquired Pico, a VR hardware and software R&D manufacturer, for $1.5 billion (about RMB 9.6 billion), marking a crucial step in its metaverse roadmap. Then we saw the launch of the famous virtual-human “Liu Yexi” by Douyin, which set a record of millions of fans and more than 3 million likes after the first video was released. Since then, virtual humans have attracted widespread attention, and we have seen more virtual idols chased by young people.
Up to now, ByteDance has spent tens of billions of yuan, covering social software, VR hardware, and virtual humans, whose roadmap is very comprehensive. Facing the era of the metaverse, ByteDance seems to be ready to make the metaverse “dance” as well.
Looking Forward
The industry will begin to see an influx of cash and talent as a result of the favorable policies, which will pave the way for an optimistic future in the metaverse.
In addition to the behemoths that were detailed above, there are also other startups that are looking to get into the game. Even if established technology companies may have a greater impact on the industry as a whole, emerging businesses still have the potential to contribute novel concepts to the exciting future of the metaverse.
