The four challenges of Yuan Cosmic Education

Source | Zero One Finance

Author | Chenglin Pua

In September 2022, Meta and VictoryXR (virtual reality education startup headquarters in the United States) cooperated with and opened a virtual campus with 10 yuan universe. The project invested $ 150 million. Meta said that as part of its immersive learning project, the project aims to introduce education into a virtual reality environment.

Education is one of the biggest application directions of virtual reality and the technology of the Yuan universe. Meta is implementing this idea to help 10 universities to launch a virtual campus based on the Yuan universe. Although the Yuan Cosmic Education provides more possibilities and flexibility, in fact, the Yuan Cosmic Education still needs to overcome many problems. For example, the cost of time and funds, data privacy, and personal safety, lack of advanced infrastructure and potential legal issues.

01 time and cost of funds

The Yuan universe is a virtual world. However, the virtual world requires a lot of time and capital costs to build (including manpower, fiber cost, etc.). In addition, the later operation of the Yuan universe also requires a lot of resources to maintain its operation, such as the huge operating costs of the database, including power, water cooling resources, and related maintenance personnel.

Although to some extent, the Yuan universe provides a low -cost learning alternative. For example, building a laboratory requires millions of dollars and requires a lot of space and manual maintenance, and the virtual laboratory perfectly solves this problem. However, in fact, there are many hidden costs behind the Yuan universe.

In addition, related hardware costs actually increase the cost to the school. For example, VR content permits, the construction of digital twin campuses, VR headsets, and other investment costs, and so on. A meta -cosmic course license may cost at least $ 20,000, and the cost of digital twin campus may be as high as $ 100,000. VR (META is currently free of charge, but it is difficult to say after the popularization of the future; even if this cost, other related costs are huge for many schools) will also charge $ 200 per student for $ 200 per year. The subscription fee is to access its universe.

At the current price, the low -profile version of each Oculus Quest 2 is priced at $ 399.99. This is just the cost of buying equipment, and in fact there are more maintenance costs. The school must also invite people to maintain the above equipment, which has increased costs virtually. The school also needs to spend a lot of time to let students adapt to these equipment. After all, it takes a long time to face the electronic screen, which may cause eye fatigue and so on.

Finally, the relevant textbooks of the Yuan universe. Different from traditional textbooks, most of the textbooks of the Yuan universe are three -dimensional and dynamic. In this case, teachers need to rewrite the textbooks. However, the reality is that most educators are currently unable to create their own Yuan -universe teaching materials, which may involve merging video, static images, audio, text, and interactive elements into an online experience.

02 Data privacy and personal security issues

Earlier, the 01 blockchain wrote a "Seven Challenges of the Yuan Universe", which includes disputes on intellectual property rights, data protection and privacy, legal challenges, currency and payment system challenges, technical challenges, public acceptance Degree and high investment and commercial monopoly. When the new technology came out, the protection of privacy data was always one of the most concerned issues in the real world, and attracted the attention of all sectors of society. The Internet we use today involves a lot of data and privacy protection issues, let alone the Yuan universe. The data involved in the Yuan universe and privacy are more inevitable than the Internet. In the future, the Yuan universe is most likely a virtual space created by multiple companies together. For consumers or users, how to coordinate protection data between companies and how to ensure the security of privacy data must be the most concerned issue.

The number and richness of personal data collected by the Yuan universe will be unprecedented, including personal physiological reactions, exercise, and may even be brain wavelet data. Will these data hire a special security company to be responsible for its data security? If the user's personal data is stolen or abused in the Yuan universe, who will be responsible, what impact will it affect the real world users. In the construction of the Yuan universe, each company should strictly consider the privacy issues of such personal information and set up good mechanisms to prevent the leakage of personal data.

The research institution Center for International Governance Innovation and IPSOS found in a questionnaire that about 57%of global consumers express their extreme (31%) or (26%) to worry about the privacy of the Internet. This survey interviewed Internet users with more than 24,000 years between 16-64 years old, spreading in 24 countries. In fact, at least half of the Internet users in each region express their concerns about privacy.

Global users expressing concerns about online privacy and security survey results

Source: CENTREFOR International Governance Innovation and IPSOS research report

The business model of the company that develops Yuan Cosmic Technology depends on the detailed personal data of collecting users. For example, those who want to use Meta Oculus Quest 2 must have a Facebook account and so on. VR headsets can collect highly personal and sensitive data, such as the location of students, the physical characteristics, movements, and sound of the students. But Meta did not promise to keep these data confidential or restricting advertisers' access to it. In addition, Meta is developing a high -end VR header named Project Cambria, which has a more advanced function. The sensor in the device will allow the virtual into the body to maintain vision and make facial expressions such as the user's eyeball. These data information can help advertisers to measure users' attention and push personalized advertisements for their behavior. If the professor and students know that their every move, speaking, and even facial expressions are monitored by schools and a large technology company, they may not be free to participate in class discussion. After all, schools or education institutions should not be monitored.

03 Lack of advanced infrastructure

In the future, people will enter the Yuan universe through VR/AR connection, which can solve the problem of the virtual world "to a certain extent." But now this technology can only provide visual and auditory information, other perception capabilities, but the sense of touch, smell, and taste cannot be provided. A realistic virtual world allows us to experience other perception capabilities and increase the sense of truth. How to make people appreciate other perceptions is a technical problem that needs to be solved.

In addition, we also need to enter parameters to the virtual world, such as voice, gestures, movements, and so on. Today's VR/AR relies on holding sensors (or wearing gloves) to enter parameters to the virtual world. This reduces the sense of reality, compared to our real world does not need to hold a sensor in hand. Although there are some gestures based on machine vision today, posture recognition technology has begun to be applied, but many realistic problems have also been encountered, such as the field of vision range and obstruction.

VR/AR device holding a sensor

Touch feedback is also a technical problem. How to make our hands and body feel the objects in the virtual world, it seems that technology is still unsolvable for the time being. Among the number of players in the movie, players mainly rely on clothing feedback that they all wear strength to perceive objects and perceptions in the virtual world. Even though everyone is willing to wear the whole body equipment to experience the universe, it is still a technical challenge to use such clothing to achieve the sense of body body. It is also a question of whether people are willing to buy this clothing to experience the universe.

The clothing in the "Number Player" movie

The high requirements of the Yuan universe are also a technical challenge for computing power. Computers need to run the simulation of the physical world, the rendering of the scene, the interaction with other characters (including real characters and virtual characters), etc. These require a huge amount of calculation. It is also a big challenge to develop the computing power required to match the operation of the universe. The huge computing power comes with the problem of energy consumption. The higher the computing power means higher energy consumption, and the cost of high energy consumption will also be passed on to users, which eventually leads to the increase in the threshold of people entering the universe.

Most of the applications of the universe, such as 3D videos, are broadband and dense. They need high -speed data networks to process all information between the sensors across virtual and physical space and the flow of users, and they have high requirements for related network infrastructure. Although most cities have good network infrastructure; however, the countryside is not necessarily. For example, 97%of the population living in the United States can use high -speed connections, while this ratio of rural areas and tribal areas is 65%and 60%, respectively.

Although Yuan Cosmic Education provides more possibilities for offline education. However, perhaps it also added a threshold to people in some areas to prevent them from joining the Yuan universe for education.

04 Potential legal issues

Although we have entered the 21st century, it is undeniable that there are still some prejudices. For example, gender bias, race or ideology, etc. The above prejudice may be magnified in the Yuan universe. Because after all, whether the prejudice in the Yuan universe can be restricted by the law firm is unknown. For example, if a person opens gender discrimination in the Yuan universe, will he be punished by response?

In the real world, we dare not do this because there will be social pressure. However, the Yuan universe is a new world, and many people can speak freely. For example, there are many prejudices that are impossible to appear in the Internet world, or discriminatory remarks, etc., because people need to pay less. Today, the Internet has profoundly affected the younger generation of students, and the difficulty of protecting the Yuan universe will not have a more negative impact on students.

Then there are issues such as crime. For example, on June 2, 2022, on the Horizon Worlds platform of Meta, a female psychotherapist had encountered sexual assault and described his experience on the forum. This woman was harassing and sexual harassment by three or four players with male voices less than 60 seconds. They "gang raped" her virtual image and took pictures. The woman said it was a nightmare. She was frightened in place, and even had no time to set up a security barrier.

The Extended Mind (a strategic research institution of a virtual reality) showed in a 2018 report that they visited more than 600 VR users' social experience on virtual reality.The results of the survey report showed that 36%of them and 49%of women who often used VR technology have experienced sexual harassment.It can be seen that problems such as sexual harassment will continue to exist in the virtual world and even the Yuan universe, and even worsen even more than the real world.Campus violence is a social problem that is difficult to eliminate.However, there will be many restrictions in the real world, and there is no in the universe.Will campus violence, discrimination, bullying and other issues be amplified in the Yuan universe. This problem may take time to further be verified.And how to prevent and subsequent punishment require further thinking at the school level.

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