On May 4, three virtual people appeared in the special program of May 4th Youth Day 2022 broadcast by CCTV. They can "dance fast" on the stage in the studio hall, or they can go through the realistic scenes of six universities and interact with college students, with natural and smooth movements and amazing results.
Modeling, binding and motion capture are the key links of virtual human production. In order to achieve efficient and high-quality 3D modeling, animation and real-time rendering, many game technologies must be used.
Nowadays, game technology has jumped out of the game product itself and played a role in more fields.
"Cross border" and "wall breaking" of game technology
Game is a "super complex interdisciplinary product". Entertainment is only one of its many functions and effects. At the technical level, the impact of games on other fields should be more "bottom" and "invisible".
Game technology is often used to talk about an application field is film and television.
In the 2019 Disney + hit series "Mandalorians", the production team conducted in-depth cooperation with the illusory engine (a tool for game development and production), realizing the effect of real-time camera synthesis - "directly seeing the final scene on the set". A few years ago, films such as player 1 and blade runner 2049 also used the unity game engine to help produce visual effects.
When watching movies or dramas, viewers hardly think of the game technology behind their shooting, but just have an obvious feeling that the film is better.
Source: Official stills of the first season of Mandalorians
The application of game technology is not only in the film and television industry, but also in the field of automatic driving.
A very important part of automatic driving is testing. Tencent has launched the automated driving virtual simulation system TAD SIM, which is used to efficiently build highly restored test scenarios and complete the closed-loop simulation test of autonomous vehicle perception, decision-making and control algorithms. In the scene construction of TAD SIM, game related technologies such as 3D reconstruction and game engine are applied.
Game technology spillover cases that make the public more aware appear more in the construction of social infrastructure.
For example, in the field of education, in some schools in remote areas, because they do not have enough equipment and resources to carry out some natural science experiments, game engine companies have developed application software to carry out experimental simulation in virtual scenes, so that students can "immersively" experience effects similar to real experiments.
Another example is the medical field. Previously, game companies cooperated with hospitals to develop a new digital therapy drug "attention intensive training system". It is understood that the system has been put into clinical trials for the treatment of children's attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
There is also the field of cultural relics protection. The mature photo scanning technology, 3D modeling and physical rendering technology of the game industry can not only preserve the cultural heritage in digital form and regain "vitality", but also the innovative interactive experience can also allow more people to have close contact with the cultural heritage.
According to pinplay observation, the application of game technology in other fields also includes smart city, aircraft maintenance and maintenance training, construction engineering and so on through various characteristics such as engine, algorithm, simulation interaction and feedback.
One trend reflected in these applications is that game technology is jumping out of the game industry and integrating into the real industry across borders. Game technology is increasingly close to social production and real economy.
In the game, there is also digital productivity
The value of game technology is being seen by more and more people, including some technology giants.
On January 18 this year, Microsoft officially announced the acquisition and development of Activision Blizzard, a well-known game manufacturer of popular game IP such as Warcraft series, Diablo and call of duty. The acquisition set a new record for the acquisition amount of the game industry and became the largest acquisition in business history in recent 20 years.
Most outsiders interpret this acquisition as a sign of Microsoft's strong entry into the game industry and seizing the beach of the meta universe. But if combined with the future trend, Microsoft is not only interested in Blizzard's game content, but also the company's game technology.
As mentioned in a comment on renmin.com: this acquisition represents the forward-looking judgment of the current global technology giants on the new round of industrial layout of the digital economy. The game is an important part of the digital economy, or there are digital productivity in the game.
We are now discussing the wide application of game technology. An important premise is that the development of game technology is often ahead of other industries and has the ability to support the development of other industries. In fact, we personally experience a new technology and new development scene in our life, which often starts from the game.
A typical example is that in the initial stage of the smartphone industry, games such as angry birds and fruit ninja not only made game practitioners realize that simple, casual and good at using fragmented time games can succeed on the mobile platform, but also promoted the rapid popularization of smartphones with their own success.
Similar paths also appear in the development of AR, VR and metauniverse.
According to statistics, 70% of the current applications of AR and VR technologies are games; The best experience entrance and important terminal scenes of the current normalized meta universe concept are also games. The game engine, 3D modeling and real-time rendering used in game research and development are considered to be important technologies to support the development of meta universe.
Many times, while stimulating technological innovation, the results of games are constantly radiating to other fields.
For example, the vibration feedback technology in the game, which was originally born to provide a better game experience, is now widely used in the field of accessibility - visually impaired children can learn different knowledge in different vibration sets; When visually impaired people use the Internet, they can perform different operations such as confirmation, cancellation and selection through vibration; When traveling, visually impaired people can also define different vibration sets according to the size, density and shape of the objects they encounter, so as to avoid danger.
The cross industry application of game underlying technology just reflects the digital productivity contained in the game. In other words, game technology has become an important tool to promote the integration of digital and real industries and build digital twins.
All this points to the fact that games are becoming a test field and incubator for future technologies.
The technical ability and value boundary of games will continue to expand, and will really change people's lives.