“And one more thing……” Opening of Facebook Connect 2021
In the Keynote session, Zuckerberg made an unsurprising decision: In order to allow the public to fully understand Facebook and bet on the vision of Metaverse, the company will be renamed
Meta.“I believe that Metaverse is the next chapter of the Internet, and it also opened the next chapter of our company.” Facebook
Born in a special era. When the Internet is emerging and becoming the entrance to a “new world”, Facebook has changed the way people “connect”.
Today, Zuckerberg is no longer the boy who first came out on campus and saw investors in pajamas. Obviously he thinks he has seen the next “future”. The last time the Facebook company appeared in the public eye as “Facebook”, the “Like” icon representing past achievements has been removed from the Facebook headquarters. In the future, Meta’s work content is divided into two parts: “Family Bucket” social products, and building the platform of the future.
You really can no longer use “social media” to define Facebook.
Zuckerberg hopes to build a new “digital world”. In August, Facebook launched the public beta version of the Horizon Workrooms platform: log in with an Oculus device and participate in meetings in a virtual way. In the future, Meta will integrate more 2D applications into it, such as Facebook, Instagram, Slack, Dropbox, etc. This year, Meta will add Messenger functionality to the Horizon platform. With Quest, you can call friends in Horizon, further breaking the boundaries between “virtual” and “reality”.
In Zuckerberg’s view, Metaverse is a sustainable, real-time, and no access restriction (multi-terminal) environment. “Imagine the meta-universe as a physical Internet, where you not only watch the content, but you are in it.”
Meta fantasy, suppose you are brushingcell phoneWhen I saw a good friend at the concert, I sent you an “invitation to join”. At this time, you bring AR and seem to be in it. The concert is over, and the two people in different worlds have made an appointment to go to the “Metaverse afterparty”, where you bought the evening clothes for the “Avatar” (digital double), and just now The “digital collection” NFT of the concert.
Buy NFT in Metaverse | Facebook
The wind in the meta universe blew one after another. Even so, there is not even a very precise definition of the meta-universe. So in the keynote for an hour and a half, Zuckerberg tried his best to give examples, what can people do with the metaverse?
Ecology: Construction
As a popular game on Quest, “Beat Saber” alone has revenue of more than 100 million U.S. dollars on Quest. Since “Population: One” was released last year, it has become the most active game on Quest. “San Andreas” in the “Grand Theft Auto” series will also be Oculus Quest 2 (starting in 2022, Oculus Quest will be renamed Meta Quest.)
Zuckerberg gave more ideas about the meta-universe. Games alone are not enough, but they can also be used for fitness, office work, and so on. In response to this, Meta will launch a set ofAccessories, The new anti-sweat handle for the Touch controller, and at the same time solve the problem of wiping sweat during exercise. Regarding more upcoming game features, Oculus will hold a game show next year.
For example, playing chess with friends, playing table tennis, fencing, surfing, games not only mean a large-scale immersive experience, but also means that using AR and holographic projection, every entertainment and sport in life will be different for this reason.
Play chess with your friends in different places | Facebook
You can build your home in Horizon Home. When friends come, it is a meeting place; when you are alone, you can arrange your work tasks and design your work space as you like. Just as computers and mobile phones took over your entertainment, work, and social life in the past, Zuckerberg hopes that a VR/AR device will continue to do so in the future, and even take over all life.
The team is testing Quest for Business, which allows you to log in to Quest2 with an office account (not a social account) and collaborate with colleagues to access Horizon Workrooms. Quest for Business also allows companies to access the dedicated platform functions they need, such as account management, mobile device management (MDM) solutions, SSO integration, etc.
However, Meta Universe’s huge ecological construction cannot be completed by Meta itself. In its vision, it is possible for developers to build various applications through “underlying technology”.
Zuckerberg once said, “At present, our focus is to help develop the community and expand the people involved in the construction of the metaverse and virtual reality.”
For example, there are 600,000 creators in the Spark AR community, and they use the Spark AR tool to create AR special effects. AR special effects are very popular in Facebook’s “Family Bucket” product. Facebook said that Spark AR has continued to become the world’s largest mobile AR platform.
This time, Zuckerberg announced the launch of the Presence Platform platform, including Insight SDK, Interaction SDK and Voice SDK. Insight SDK helps to build a mixed reality experience based on the user’s physical space. “A real sense of presence (presence) is the key to feeling connected in the meta-universe.” The person in charge said. And Interaction SDK provides ready-made gesture interaction for developers; Voice SDK opens voice control function.
Hardware: Entry
In addition to ecology, Zuckerberg believes that the core of the meta-universe must first have suitable equipment for entry. But the new generation of Quest hardware speculated by outsiders did not appear.
Meta just sold a key point. It is developing a high-end VR internally code-named Project Cambria. In terms of function, it will have the functions that VR did not have in the past, and will allow your Avatar to maintain natural eye contact and communication with other users, which can accurately reflect your facial expressions and allow others to better understand your feelings.
Project Cambria can make Avatar more realistic | Facebook
Another focus of enhancement is the mixed reality experience. New sensors and reconstruction algorithms enable Cambria to express objects in the physical world with depth and perspective. Adopt new optics to improve visual fidelity. Of course, this also represents Cambria’s higher price than Quest2.
In addition, Meta also announced the first AR glasses, code-named Project Nazare. This AR glasses ultimately wants to be the size and weight of the glasses that people use every day. However, Zuckerberg did not give a time to launch, “We need to integrate holographic displays, projectors, batteries, radios, custom chips, cameras, speakers, and sensors that map the surrounding world into glasses about 5 mm thick. It will take many years.” But what can it be used for? The user puts on his glasses, clicks on the Whatsapp application in front of him, you invite friends to participate in the game, and then they are projected to you.
However, for the technical problems that need to be solved in the pursuit of presence (presence) in the meta-universe, Meta has just begun. Take “Avatar” as an example. In the future, our digital avatars in the virtual world will definitely be more than just “squeezing a face”. Meta said it put a video to show how difficult it is.
“The rendering and relighting of the hair and skin shows the fidelity that the 3D digital avatar ultimately needs to achieve, allowing the individual pores on his skin to be seen.”
3D Avatar | Facebook
“And, when the hand touches and stretches the cloth of the clothes, how precise the movement of the cloth…”
It can be said that Zuckerberg gave us a picture of his understanding of the partial face of the Zhongyuan Universe-albeit in the form of CG. Its path is to focus on layout from three aspects: hardware entrance, underlying technology, and content ecology. However, from the imagination, Meta also has a long way to go.
It is not easy to abandon the social media empire he built by himself, but Zuckerberg had to do it again.
Just a few days ago, The Verge published an article stating that an internal document showed that since 2019, the number of young Facebook users in the United States has fallen by 13% and is expected to drop by 45% in the next two years. It is estimated that the number of young users between 20 and 30 years old will drop by 4% in the same time period. Worse, the younger the user, the less often they use the app. The messages expressed by these numbers are straightforward, and Facebook is losing the younger generation.
On the other hand, in the hearings of the regulators and in the interview rooms of the media, internal “whistleblowers” from Facebook continue to provide people with fierce information about the indifference and inaction of the social giant’s internal influence on the external society, and even Deception, these all give more evidence to the regulators (such as the new FTC chairman Lena Khan) who threaten to “dismember” Internet giants with antitrust blades.
Changing the name and re-emphasizing a distant but bright future is obviously necessary for both Zuckerberg and Facebook. (Geek Park)
Author | Shen Zhihan Editor | Jing Yu
