亚信科技

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments jointly issued the “Three-Year Action Plan for Innovation and Development in Metaverse Industry (2023-2025)” (hereinafter referred to as the “Action Plan”). Focusing on the main goal of building an industrial metaverse and empowering the manufacturing industry, and driven by the integration and innovation of a new generation of information technology, the “Action Plan” stated many points such as building advanced metaverse technological and industrial systems, cultivating three-dimension interactive industrial metaverse, creating immersive interactive digital life applications, building industrial support with a complete system, and building a safe and trusted industrial governance system. 

According to Dr. Ouyang Ye, CTO and senior vice president of AsiaInfo, and IEEE Fellow, the promulgation of the “Action Plan” has greatly boosted the confidence of IT practitioners, which not only made a clear path plan for metaverse's technological and industrial development but more importantly, provided a detailed and feasible guide on how to deal with the challenge of the organic combination between the implementation of expanding domestic demand and the supply-side structural reform in the new era. 

First, it has high foothold. This “Action Plan” is a national document specified on the metaverse and officially promulgated by the national ministries and commissions for the first time, providing the metaverse track with a high foothold. The metaverse has been designated as a comprehensive application of the new generation in IT industry as well as a future industry with broad development space and huge potential. The development of the metaverse industry will greatly open up new scenes, new applications, and new ecology of China's digital economy, and cultivate new economic drivers. 

Second, the track is accurate. This “Action Plan” has focused on the industrial metaverse for intelligent manufacturing, the consumer metaverse for cultural and tourism business, and the enterprise metaverse for public services and infrastructure, and provided guidance from driving scenario requirements to defining technical elements, which is very conducive to the second digital intelligence upgrading of the current industrial form, and then promote to create a new industrial ecology that can tackle technical problems in key areas and realize co-creation and co-integration. 

Third, the methods are sufficient. From a technical perspective, the industry generally believed that the related technologies involved in the metaverse and even the multiverse have matured, such as blockchain, virtual reality, digital twins, digital human, etc. However, how to “create and adjust” into a unified, continuous, and interoperable ideal metaverse form is still a big challenge. This “Action Plan” has put forward the top-level design from the aspects of technological innovation, product tools, application scenarios, standard construction, industrial support, governance system, etc., so that the series of difficult problems have rules to follow. 

Fourth, it aims at the implementation. From the “Action Plan”, we can also find pragmatic designs, such as the construction goal of “famous products, famous enterprises, famous districts and famous persons” in metaverse; The industrial metaverse facing “production lines, factories and parks with digital twins as its core”; And the scene design for living consumption, public services and emergency safety. We have found that these designs are obviously close to production and practicality with clear guidance quality, which is completely different from metaverse products such as games and digital collections in the industry. 

When talking about the current layout of Chinese metaverse industry, Dr. Ouyang Ye told all media reporters of the Communications Weekly that we should concern from the market -heat perspective. According to incomplete statistics, the number of metaverse projects subject to public bidding in the first half of this year has reached the latest high in history, especially in the directions of culture and tourism, commercial display, industry, education, and content production. According to the published metaverse consulting report and the published industry map of the metaverse, the edge of the metaverse track has been continuously expanded, the industrial development of the metaverse has been continuously accelerated, and the construction demand of metaverse projects has welcomed a “blowout” moment. 

If we concern from the perspective of technological ecology. We can find that the metaverse has brought a brand-new technology vision and established a “technology barn” with unlimited space, which is available to everyone. The technical sectors such as “basic engine software”, “platform economy”, “creator economy”, “developer ecology”, “content rights and interests”, “wearable terminal”, “computing power and infrastructure” and “artificial intelligence” will welcome great development opportunities. 

If we concern from the perspective of evolution trend. We can find that with the extensive use of new-generation technologies AIGC and GPT, the metaverse has undoubtedly obtained great vitality and scalability in various fields in terms of generative content and business connectivity. Let's take the enterprise metaverse as an example. The enterprise metaverse takes effect by constructing a physical space mirror image or generating infinite virtual space, in which digital twins are used to connect the external and internal digital systems of enterprises, digital human beings are used to connect consumption and production scenes, supply chains and sales channels, social digital human employees who break organizational boundaries cooperate with virtual human, and participate in seamless integration and mutual assistance between human and machines, information and AI, as well as services and experiences, thus helping enterprises to realize all-round digital intelligence upgrading in products, services, processes, and management in the digital world. 

Ding Ying, AsiaInfo's Chief Expert on Metaverse Planning, pointed out that we have also realized the challenges and difficulties faced by the industrial development of metaverse technology. For example, how to build a more stable and efficient technical system; How to ensure data security and privacy protection; We still need to constantly break through barriers in the key underlying technologies such as digital modeling, rendering engine and simulation engine. 

If we concern from the perspective of technology research and development. We can find that it mainly includes: full-stack digital 3D technology; AIGC technology specified for content creation; 3D asset interoperability design and standard system; Computing power network adaptation (cloud rendering, etc.); Data weaving technology in 3D scenes; Fusion technology of underlying engines; Immersive experience, social interaction and production collaboration of digital human in virtual space; Research and development of key technologies such as metaverse digital identity. 

If we concern from the perspective of product research and development. We can find that it mainly includes: virtual space creation platform, 3D immersive real-time communication system, and 3D real-life map platform. At the same time, the digital-twins model designer (similar to the management asset shell) has been improved, the metaverse content creation and development platform has been launched, and a number of industry model applications for metaverse operation and maintenance, cloud universe business hall, etc. have been created; In addition, continuous investment in product research and development has been put in the fields of industrial metaverse and cultural and tourism metaverse. 

If we concern from the perspective of ecological construction. We can find that, at present, AsiaInfo has established a joint R&D and co-creation mechanism for metaverse's front office and middle office and will promote the vision development and support plan of “Creating a Metaverse Together” with its industry coverage. At the same time, combined with the leading position in 5G, big data, computing power endogenous network, digital twins, edge AI and other industries, AsiaInfo will jointly empower domestic enterprise metaverse market. 

It is understood that AsiaInfo has not only released forward-looking metaverse reports such as the “2023 China Metaverse Marketing Market Research Report” and “2023 China AIGC Industry Panorama Report” in the field of the metaverse but also built its system design philosophy in metaverse technology, that is, AsiaInfo hopes to solve the underlying logic problems and takes the lead in realizing metaverse development with the help of products with relatively high maturity in product capability. 

Dr. Ouyang Ye has stated that AsiaInfo hopes to become the “Expert of Four Conditions” in the field of metaverse, that is, the connector of full-stack digital 3D technology, AIGC and digital-twins technology; The provider of general content creation and metaverse application development platform products; The leader of metaverse ecology in the communication industry; The enabler of metaverse application in pan-enterprise market.