When it comes to social products, it’s hard to avoid a meta-cosmic direction. So what are the problems with how close the metasverse is to landing? Will solving these problems be new product opportunities? As one of the segments of meta-universe track, how to develop into meta-universe products in the next few years, create new product experience, and achieve user growth? This article is based on the speech delivered by Zhen Xi, an expert in the industry solutions of Leyun, at the online seminar titled “How Social Products Explode Overseas Target Markets” hosted by Leyun and Leyun. She mainly shared her understanding of the metasomes, her analysis of Facebook and Soul, and introduced how social products can develop into the metasomes.

PART 01

What is the meta-universe?

First of all, let’s break down the metaduces, with a disclaimer to be inserted. There are many different definitions and in-depth interpretations of the metaduces, so we will only discuss the most basic XR-based metaduces.

Back to its roots, the metadverse was born primarily because of changes in the user end. In 3-5 years, the metasomes will still be a prototype, similar to the early days of the mobile Internet, where you can play some native apps on a mobile device and browse poorly adapted PC web pages, but the overall experience is not great. Mobile devices are not a complete replacement for PCS, but most users now need only their phones for all their needs.

There will also be a very long transition phase in the early days of the metasverse, where you can access the metasverse on all computing platforms, including VR and AR, as well as PCS, as well as mobile devices and game consoles, to address the lack of XR devices.

The meta-universe is the next generation of Internet with a stronger sense of presence, and VR is the display mode that can provide the strongest sense of presence at this stage, so VR is the most suitable display mode for the meta-universe at present, and the corresponding users using VR equipment will get more experience, so as to stimulate the popularity of equipment. It may take a lot of phenomenal, killer apps to get there.

A partial map of the early metasverse can be seen with reference to the current state of the mobile Internet.

The meta-universe is built on top of the current Internet, and if you master the hardware portal, you are likely to master the meta-universe platform. You can take out your mobile phone to see what is essential on the mobile phone, such as the app store, information flow portal (news, Douyin, Weibo), search, the universe is so big, we still want to reach what we want to see through these.

Basic social communication includes phone calls, short messages and wechat. Personal identity, there may be a big distinction here, many people now also build their vests on the Internet, but it is not necessary. In the future, this may be necessary. Your personal identity will include your avatars, digital assets, and so on.

On top of that, there are a variety of other applications: games, entertainment, social, shopping, office, meetings, etc. As devices change and use VR\AR, it’s not as convenient to use text input. So all applications need to be compatible with these capabilities, including avatars, real-time audio and video communications, motion recognition, and speech recognition.

What kind of company has a chance to become a meta-cosmic platform? According to the current situation of the mobile Internet era, there are the following possibilities:

  • Hardware entry, such as Apple, Google, Microsoft;
  • Search platforms, app stores and other portals;
  • Social platforms with large numbers of users.

PART 02

Facebook’s metasverse layout

Facebook, as we All know, is an American social giant, and the news that it has changed its name to Meta, All In, has shocked a lot of people. So let’s take it apart and see what it does in the metasverse.

  • Oculus Quest 2, the latest news is that Qualcomm has announced that 10 million units of this device have been shipped. It is equipped with the Qualcomm XR2 chip, which was released in December, 19, and has the same performance as the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865, which was the flagship Android device of 20 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, I bought a Mi 10Pro mobile phone with 865 chip and the price is 5999 yuan, while the entry-level mi 10 with the same chip costs about 4000 yuan. It’s a sign of how cheap VR hardware is at $299, or 2,000 RMB, so its model makes money from ecology, especially games.
  • Project Cambria will be a more expensive high-end device with all the latest advanced technology and Project Nazare will be a possibility for the future.
  • Horizon Home: With hardware, it’s natural to do an entry platform, including the Quest Store as well. Services like Slack, Dropbox, Facebook and Instagram will soon run as 2D panel apps in VR.
  • Facebook account system: must use.
  • Messenger: A built-in social tool that will use voice as the primary form of social interaction.
  • The founding members of the digital currency Diem have a global user base of more than 2 billion. Once approved, it is likely to rapidly develop into a global super-sovereign digital currency, which is likely to restructure the global monetary and financial systems.
  • Horizon Workroom: Office collaboration platform, which not only has VR side, but also has universal side, which can be joined with ordinary visitors. It mainly provides video conferencing and whiteboard collaboration capabilities in virtual space.
  • Horizon Worlds: VR World editor where users can create their own VR Worlds or mini-games.
  • Games are an important cash flow that attracts users to buy and keep using VR devices; Fitness is like a game; Education is the future.
  • Quest for Business: Enterprise-only login allows employees to collaborate and access productivity applications such as Horizon Workrooms and Gravity Sketch without having to use a personal Facebook account. Quest for Business will also support access to proprietary platform features needed for enterprise work, such as account management, IDP and SSO integration, third-party mobile device management, and more.
  • Presence Platform: This is the Meta open AR/VR open Platform. In particular, the platform provides a library of common gestures and a voice SDK to make gestures and voice the most intuitive input method.

PART 03

Why is Soul a meta-cosmic society?

After Facebook, let’s take a look at another example of social product in China — Soul. It also calls itself a social meta-universe for young people, and many people wonder why no VR product dares to call it a social meta-universe. There must be a coherent logic to this. This is because Soul already has the core capabilities to become a meta-universe product on the meta-universe platform: virtual identity and virtual assets, real-time audio and video interaction, and “social relationships with netizens.” Later need to enter the VR platform, adapt, the last frame on the line.

Analysis shows that Soul goes deep into the realm of virtual identity. Through pinching face, soul test, voice business card, gravity sign (tag), home page, instant, discovery and other functions to design and display their virtual identity, that is, the human set. Anyone can find out who you are, or who you want others to think you are, simply by going to your homepage. This is important because many people want to start their second Life in the meta-universe.

Based on the input information, Soul uses AI algorithms to recommend users and information, helping users find matches, and forming high-quality interactions through text, voice, and video. These are one-on-one socials, but Soul is also expanding into multiplayer socials, including group chat parties, Werewolf Soul, and Dreamland Nights, all of which are real-time audio interactions.

About this kind of social relations, the Soul is so description: every user can set up new social relationship “yuan universe”, the social is no longer confined to the physical location, not for the purpose of a shallow social relationship, social relationship is no longer a line map, the higher dimensions of social relations will help users to eliminate loneliness. So Soul is talking about the meta-universe, but it’s really talking about his personality.

PART 04

How will social products evolve into the meta-universe?

After reading these two cases, we can conclude:

  • Metauniverse is still in the early stage of product landing and verification, and VR products have reached a certain popularity (10 million shipments).
  • The current XR products are still experience-enhancing products and cannot replace mobile phones. At present, according to the experience of mobile Internet, it needs to replace mobile phones before it can be widely promoted. In the future, if the demand for experience is enhanced and more users can use it deeply, there will be a lot of demand, such as replacing the TV in the living room, game consoles and large screens in meetings.
  • Products at this stage should focus on the present and take into account the future;
  • Low-latency, 3D virtualised real-time audio and video will be the foundation of metascosm social interaction. The real-time interactive cloud service provider represented by Paileyun is one of the underlying technology infrastructure of the meta-universe, providing the real-time non-delay transmission of massive data, especially the real-time audio and video capabilities.

We provide full-stack audio and video services, based on Pano Backbone, the global real-time transmission acceleration network we built, to achieve voice calls, video calls, interactive whiteboard, interactive live broadcast, cloud recording and other functions. At the same time, our capabilities are platform-wide, and based on our SDK, we can implement voice chat rooms in social scenarios, interactive live streaming or cloud gaming scenarios.

First of all, to support social going to sea, we need to provide global high-quality network services. Our team has the same gene as Zoom, and we have learned from Zoom in the design of the global network architecture, combining the characteristics of The Chinese network, and realizing the acceleration of high-quality real-time transmission of the global network.

Secondly, from the perspective of the scene, one-on-one video and interactive live broadcast dominated by video and social networking are still hot spots in the field of entertainment and social networking. New AR stickers and virtual image technologies are the trend of the meta-universe, which will also promote a new round of product iterations.

As you know, not all countries have good network infrastructure, especially in underdeveloped areas where bandwidth is limited. Our recently released new coding engine, Pano Venus, uses the latest AV1 codecs to reduce video bit rates by 40% to 70%, making it clearer and smoother in low-bandwidth scenarios than before. This technology also supports application in interactive live video scenarios, which can reduce the cost of live video bandwidth by more than 50%.

The second big scene is sound social, especially multiplayer voice chat room, which is a popular play in the current entertainment social scene. It is suitable for interactive podcast, player association, anchor interaction, multiplayer party, online KTV and other typical social scenes, and can extend more plays on this basis.

KTV chorus is the most technically challenging scene in the online real-time voice scene at present. It involves a lot of technical points to complete this scene, and has very high requirements for audio transmission and processing delay, as well as music restoration and sound quality. Our solution can achieve three-dimensional synchronization of vocals, accompaniment and lyrics, real-time synchronization of ear return, ultra-low-end to end delay, Full Band ultra-high sound quality, two-channel stereo, changing bel Canto and so on.

Singing together, listening together, watching movies together, working, living and entertaining together on the Internet are the scenes of the meta-universe. The mode of “Together +” has become the current trend of social products at home and abroad.

Finally, it summarizes the audio and video technology required by the metauniverse, including hd video coding, ultra-low delay, virtual human, panoramic video, space audio and so on. As a company with technical pursuit and sense of mission, Patleyun is also continuously iterating product technology, hoping to explore the larger world of meta-universe with industry customers.