In 2021, the Metaverse will detonate the technology circle. Judgments about the "metaverse" never stop. There is still no unified definition of this term.
Opinion leaders represented by Zuckerberg regard VR as the entrance to the metaverse. During the Spring Festival, the whip bulls used Pico Neo 3 to experience the feeling of a metaverse.
Ping-pong may be the right way to open the Metaverse.
“Remarkable”
During the Spring Festival holiday that just passed, many people became addicted to a game of table tennis.
"I played table tennis for a few years, and playing this game feels like a real game." One player said that the hitting feel of this game is very close to reality.
"Fans who haven't touched the ball for a year because of the epidemic finally found a substitute here." Some players commented, "I can't find anyone to play in reality, and this game just satisfies me."
This is a game called Eleven Table Tennis (ETT for short), and its official introduction reads: "We are obsessed with creating the most realistic VR table tennis simulator the world has ever seen. After 5 years and countless hours of Working hard, we believe we have achieved this goal."
This is a table tennis simulation VR game with realistic physics. Smash, backhand, spin, the game will map your every move.
77% of ETT reviews on the Oculus Quest store are 5-star reviews. On Steam, the game received 2,647 reviews, the vast majority of which were positive.
In the ETT world, you can customize the racket, table position, avatar, scene, etc. For example, the scene is divided into three categories: mountain top cabin, studio, and arena.
Games are divided into single-player games, multi-player games and mini-games. Single-player games are AI games. Multi-player games are divided into ranking games and amateur games. Mini-games include ball machine contact, bowling ball challenges, etc.
Right now, the most engaged should be in ranked matches in multiplayer. Everyone starts at 1500 points, and when playing ranked matches, the points gained or lost are also weighted according to how good you are compared to your opponents - if you beat someone higher than you, you may gain more than normal More points and vice versa.
"Friends who have a wireless VR all-in-one machine know that the current racket VR game is the best experience, such as table tennis is the leader in this category." Zhihu user "Load Circle VR" said.
"The enthusiastic brother in the multiplayer battle will take the initiative to teach you to serve after discovering that you are a rookie, and will applaud you if you succeed. This is the first warm experience for young people." Some players commented.
In the midst of a pandemic, VR games may be a good way to break down the barriers.
" reality"
The almost unanimous feedback from many players is that ETT's physics engine is very realistic.
Compared with flat sports games (such as Switch), what makes sports VR special is the sense of authenticity and experience. "If you are playing this kind of sports game in the traditional plane dimension, practice makes perfect, and you can completely abuse computer AI of various difficulties, but VR will not work, because VR will consume your real physical strength, even if you are familiar with the game mechanism, once Your physical strength can’t keep up, and you will lose even against the simplest game AI.” said “Loading Circle VR”.
ETT was released in June 2016 by a small team called For Fun Labs, and many physics engines were not perfect at the time, such as lift, swipe, and fastball. At the time, many people reported that the game was not very good for force simulation.
"It is very difficult and complicated to simulate the motion physics after the exercise ball is stressed, and it is already playable." In June 2016, a player named Hehn on Steam said.
After thousands of update iterations, the game effect of ETT is close to reality.
It is reported that ETT utilizes Meta's "phase synchronization" technology, which is supposed to reduce the perceived delay in games by a few milliseconds. The update should allow players to make minor corrections to their fastest swings and see those moves more accurately match up in-game.
Compared with other ball VR games, ETT has the following advantages:
The multiplayer game has players of all levels from various countries.
A table tennis VR game similar to ETT is Racket Fury: Table Tennis VR. It can choose simulation or arcade difficulty. Some players say that the physics engine and gameplay are better than ETT, but there are too few users to match. ETT has 6,600 reviews on the Oculus website, while Table Tennis VR has only 1,215.
"This game is so real. I didn't expect to be able to play table tennis after so many years. As soon as I played the game at night, I was matched with a Syrian old man, playing ball all night, chatting all night, and virtual reality really changed. The future." Comments on Steam Community "Small Car".
In the process of playing ETT, the author also met players from Australia, Japan, South Korea, India and other countries. (Of course, most are Chinese)
There are AI and ball machines for training.
No longer obsessed with picking up the ball. For many table tennis lovers, picking up the ball may be the biggest pain point.
Of course, it's not all good. "When you play table tennis without picking up the ball, you will find that the amount of exercise is much less." Steam user "2022" commented.
Also, for newcomers to ETT or other VR games, difficulty distinguishing between real and virtual is a common condition.
In the process of playing the game, the author encountered players who said that "the smash almost smashed the TV", "almost hit the cabinet beside me, and I dare not exert force".
There are also players who want to lie on the ping pong table in the middle, or put the racket/handle on the virtual table, and try to support it on the table after playing, but they are empty.
In addition, "the weight of various handles and adapters is heavier than real rackets, and the grip is very unfriendly to straight players." Steam player HHD said.
There are also some players who have reported to the bullshit that ETT's technology can only achieve enlightenment, entry and some advanced levels. If you really want to become a master, you still have to go offline.
More than one player said that playing the game was like being in The Matrix. "It's really like Matrix, NEO put this thing in the back of his head, and suddenly, he's in another world. He said, oh my god, are we in a computer software?" "PROTTVR" said.
"The increasingly mature VR will give many people the opportunity to experience things they will never try in their lifetime. With a VR headset, all physical limitations can be melted away." Zhihu user "Load Circle VR" Say.
Recently, ETT announced that it will support new Meta avatars, allowing players to use avatars with full upper body representations. In testing, no release date set yet.
With the implementation of the new Meta avatar system, players will have a full upper body and a more customizable look in ElevenTable Tennis, including moving arms and hands attached to your torso.
This may be a key step for ETT to move closer to the VR pixel universe. After all, avatars are an important part of the Metaverse.
metaverse
What do you think the metaverse represents?
Is it Meta, which was renamed by Facebook, or Microsoft's $68.7 billion acquisition of Blizzard Activision, or the rise of metaverse concept stocks?
Before we know it, the metaverse gradually seeps into our lives.
In November last year, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed that Meta's Oculus Quest 2 has sold more than 10 million units. (Oculus Quest is now Meta Quest.)
Last Christmas, Meta (Facebook)'s VR app Oculus topped the US App Store's free apps list.
Rec Room, an AR/VR metaverse social platform that just closed a $145 million funding round, announced that over a million VR players logged on to the platform over a 60-hour computing window over the Christmas period.
Dennis Kuhnert, developer of the VR simulator app Hand Physics Lab, said Christmas sales of the app were "unprecedented". He further shared a sales chart. As you can see, there was a huge spike in the Christmas period:
Domestically, in August 2021, ByteDance acquired Pico, a domestic head VR equipment manufacturer, for nearly 9 billion yuan. According to the results released by Pico recently, during the Spring Festival, Pico’s omni-channel exposure was 1.13 billion person-times, and its sales increased by 32 times year-on-year. The author found that Douyin’s opening advertisements for a few days are all Pico.
As mentioned in the previous evaluation of Whiplash, although the Pico Neo 3 has kept up with the mainstream Oculus Quest in terms of hardware, the application ecology is obviously lagging behind, especially in the case of poor game streaming experience, it is urgent to add more built-in resources .
And this tests the strength of ByteDance’s krypton gold. Last week, Facebook announced its first financial report after officially changing its name to Meta. Because of its huge investment in the Metaverse field, its operating profit in 2021 will decrease by about 10 billion US dollars, and its annual net loss will be 10.19 billion US dollars.
At the earnings conference, Meta made it clear that Reality Labs will not be profitable in the short term. Zuckerberg said he hopes to build Facebook into a metaverse company in about five years. This means that, based on this year's investment level, Meta will spend nearly 10 billion dollars each year on the Metaverse for the next five years.
Last month, Microsoft announced a deal to buy gaming giant Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. "Games are the most dynamic and exciting entertainment category of any platform today, and will play a key role in the evolution of the Metaverse platform," said Setya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
On the other hand, ByteDance does not have much chips in its hands. The game types of Pico Mall mainly include sports simulation, action shooting, adventure decryption, multiplayer online, etc. According to the PicoVR official forum, there are 48 all-in-one game applications, and only 3 streaming games are displayed. The layout of ByteDance in the game also failed.
The good thing is that the price of games on Pico is much cheaper than Occulus, which basically starts at $20, but the Pico game store is mostly around 40-50 yuan.
Perhaps, from the perspective of players and consumers, the metaverse is not only a tool for capital to make money, but it can also be what is actually happening around us.
Perhaps games like Legends brought the Internet boom, and these games will also inject traffic into the metaverse.
One player told Whiplash: “I used Oculus to match Pico users, and after playing the game, I went to the virtual theater to watch a movie together.”
What's more, a group of ETT fans greeted each other in the game and got together.
Zuckerberg, founder of Meta, has publicly stated that about 10 million people need to use and purchase VR content on a platform in order for developers to continue to develop and make profits, and once this threshold is exceeded, the content and ecosystem will achieve leaps and bounds development.
Now, this goal has been achieved. Behind the prosperity of VR games such as ETT is the rise of the metaverse world.