In 2022, the popularity of the Metaverse will continue to increase. Write the development layout of Metaverse in local government work reports or related planning documents, or set up special institutions to promote the development of Metaverse technology and industries.

Industry experts generally believe that the Metaverse still has a long way to go before industrialization. The early deployment of the Metaverse in various places is conducive to promoting the development and technological progress of the Metaverse-related industries, but it should also be noted that the development of the Metaverse cannot deviate from the industry, deviating from the real to the virtual, and making the Metaverse a conceptual hype.

Many places ahead of the layout

At the beginning of this year, many cities expressed their intention to deploy a new track in the Metaverse. Hefei and Wuhan have included the development of Metaverse in their local government work reports; the "Taihu Bay Science and Technology Innovation Belt Leading Area Metaverse Ecological Industry Development Plan" issued by Binhu District, Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province proposes to promote the development of Metaverse technology in many fields In-depth application, as well as the coordinated development of upstream and downstream links and entities in the Metaverse industry; Beijing stated that it will promote the formation of a new type of Metaverse innovation consortium and explore the construction of a Metaverse industry cluster.

A few days ago, at the press conference on the development of small and medium-sized enterprises held by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Liang Zhifeng, director of the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that it is necessary to cultivate a group of innovative small and medium-sized enterprises that enter emerging fields such as Metaverse, blockchain, and artificial intelligence.

Is the layout too early? In this regard, Pu Songtao, deputy director of the China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute, said that at present, the Metaverse is still a long way from industrialization, and its industrial development is difficult to form a large scale in the short term. However, the development of the metaverse by local governments is a positive signal, indicating the will and determination of local governments to actively seek new growth points for industrial development.

"It is necessary to have a more rational, objective and full understanding of the current situation of local emerging industries and digital economy development." Xu Ying, vice president of research at Zhongcheng Think Tank, analyzed that areas with a certain development foundation can give priority to creating metaverse-related clusters and cultivating metaverse Emerging business formats in the universe, promote the research and development and innovation of Metaverse-related technologies, and preempt the layout of the future Metaverse market. However, for some areas where the digital economy is not strong enough, does not have the strength of metaverse-related technology research and development and innovation, and the scale of Internet consumption is limited, try to avoid "following the trend" and hyping the concept of metaverse development.

Pu Songtao believes that the development of Metaverse in various places can guide leading enterprises to actively carry out technical research and product research and development related to Metaverse, which is conducive to further pooling industrial resources such as funds and talents, and accelerates the industrialization process of Metaverse; it also helps to develop Metaverse. Cosmic related industries, such as virtual reality, etc. Metaverse is a typical fusion technology, and its industrial development also depends on the continuous progress and maturity of industries such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence.

"Metaverse is built on the basis of the gradual maturity and integration of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and blockchain, and is the product of digital development to an advanced stage. The industry chain of the Metaverse is very long. The layout of the Metaverse will bring new development opportunities to related companies in the entire industry chain." said Zhou Hongyi, founder of 360 Company.

Do not deviate from the industry

The term metaverse originates from the American science fiction novel "Avalanche". It originally meant a virtual world that was born out of the real world and parallel to it, and was always online. It was first used in the field of games. However, industry experts emphasized that the development of Metaverse cannot be separated from the industry, and should be based on the industry and the core. If it deviates from the industry, the metaverse is like a castle in the sky, illusory and worthless.

Xu Ying believes that today's metaverse is not the same as a game, nor is it equivalent to a virtual world after going through stages such as 2D multiplayer games, social games, 3D interfaces, collaborative creation, and virtual human participation. Metaverse provides an immersive experience of virtual scenes based on extended reality technologies such as virtual reality and brain-computer interface. It uses digital twin technology to clone a mirror image of the real world, and uses blockchain technology and digital currency technology to build an economic system in the virtual world. The new generation of Internet technologies such as 5G and the Internet of Things integrates the virtual world and the real world in various fields. Each user who accesses it can produce, edit and create content for various elements of the virtual world, and create content through connection and sharing. Create a metaverse.

"In the eyes of a thousand people, there are a thousand metaverses. As a concept deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, the metaverse should serve the real economy and the digital transformation of traditional industries. Among the many schools of the metaverse, I am a firm digital twin. Pai, that is to oppose the metaverse that is too detached from reality and addicted to games, but supports the metaverse combined with industrial digitalization, realizes the metaverse of the industrial Internet, and continuously empowers the digital transformation of various industries and the high-quality economic development." Zhou Hongyi said .

Pu Songtao said frankly that at present, there are still obvious traces of hype in the Metaverse. There are not only the need for publicity of new concepts in the industry, but also the interest-driven hype of concepts in the capital market. Xu Ying believes that due to the popularity of the metaverse concept and the hype in the capital market, it is easy for some local governments to be unreasonable, one-sidedly focusing on grabbing the air, blindly pursuing projects, looking for resources, and promoting consumption, etc., which is easy to cause resources in the process of development. waste.

The road to industrialization is still far away

At present, the industry has formed some products and services with more multiverse characteristics. According to Pu Songtao, for example, Roblox (a game company), the first share of the Metaverse to be listed in 2021, has established a UGC (User Generated Content) platform for massively multiplayer online game creation, allowing developers to create secondary creations in virtual space, and A two-way economic system with Robux (a virtual currency) as the core is established, and the characteristics of this economic system are relatively close to the economic system under the concept of the metaverse. In addition, global leaders such as Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple also have strong R&D foundations and capabilities in the fields of virtual reality, online social networking, and cloud services, and are fully capable of forming Metaverse primary products and services in a short period of time.

However, the Metaverse still needs to go through a few hurdles from the real industrialization.

"The Metaverse has the characteristics of multi-dimensional technology superposition, virtual-real interaction, real-time participation and experience. Therefore, the industrialization of the Metaverse must first solve the problem of the path of the application of multi-dimensional technology superposition." Xu Ying believes that the current Metaverse related Technologies such as blockchain technology are still in the trial period of industrialization, brain-computer interface technology has not yet left the laboratory, some human-computer interaction technologies are not mature enough, and digital twin technology is still in the theoretical research stage. The premise of the development of the industrialization of the universe, and its process also determines that the metaverse still has a long way to go. At the same time, the Metaverse requires massive content creation and scene creation. It requires every participant to devote themselves to the creation of virtual content and realize data connection and sharing in order to realize the mapping of the virtual world to the real world. This is a huge project. Metaverse productization at scale is still far off.

In addition to technical problems, Pu Songtao analyzed that the development of the Metaverse still needs to solve three problems. One is the product form, what kind of products and services Metaverse needs are still being explored, especially around different application scenarios, the forms of products and services of Metaverse may not be the same; the other is the business model, the mainstream business of Metaverse The model is not yet clear, and its commercial value can be reflected in the real world as well as in the virtual space; the third is industry supervision. Issues such as how to establish a supervision system for virtual space in the metaverse and how to regulate the development of the metaverse are all worth exploring. .

“Essentially, the digital transformation of a city is to build a digital twin of the city, that is, to guide reality with virtuality, empower the physical world with digital space, and form a closed-loop digital twin. This may be one of the first scenarios to embrace the metaverse. However, For the Metaverse, many people see opportunities, while security practitioners see more risks. Under the strong demand of the Metaverse, network security must also be upgraded." Zhou Hongyi said.

（经济日报记者 黄 鑫）

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