WeChat Metaverse is here!

The future: Metaverse for everyone? Facing the future era of Metaverse, WeChat is quietly developing towards Metaverse. Come and take a look!

WeChat Mini Program is currently testing the XR framework.

XR (AR/VR/MR) literally means extended reality, and it is also the most direct product form of the currently popular metaverse concept. According to people familiar with the matter, this new framework is regarded by the industry as the latest big move. Before the WeChat Open Class in January 2023, the XR applet function will be fully launched and become a core function that merchants pay attention to.

Subsequently, the WeChat official team released an announcement in the open community, confirming the fact that the XR mini program will be launched soon. On December 7, with the version update of the mini program basic library, the XR framework added a lot of new features. It is understood that this new feature is used in the display of e-commerce mini programs. Existing merchant brand mini programs can provide users with additional XR service experience in the form of half-screen mini programs.

Caption: An experience case demonstrated by the WeChat team. Users can send the experience to friends in the form of a short video by long pressing the photo frame.

A mini-program service provider told Yibang: "WeChat Moments launched out-of-circle advertising last year, and the effect is very good. However, only a small number of brand advertisers can afford out-of-circle advertising. The benefit of XR is to help businesses achieve more visual wonders at a low cost. Of course, there is also a traffic dividend."

1. What does the WeChat Metaverse look like?

According to the official announcement guidelines, open the mini program example and enter the interactive animation, where merchants can find a high-performance XR solution called “XR Frame”.

Yibang Research found that in addition to supporting basic graphics, multiple light sources, particle systems, textures, interactions and other technical indicators, WeChat XR mini-programs also include camera rendering, plane recognition (face, hand, body AR recognition), 2D plane scanning and other experience functions.

In simple terms, through XR Frame, virtual 3D people, 3D objects, and 3D scenes can all be perfectly presented in the mini program. Users have been enjoying AR face-changing, scanning planes to get AR games, scanning specific pictures to get AR interactions, etc., which can all be realized in the mini program.

However, due to the product form of mini programs, WeChat XR currently does not support large-scale AR gaming experience. Therefore, in terms of commercialization, e-commerce is very likely to have ample room for development.

According to people familiar with the matter, brand WeChat mini-programs may provide users with XR experience by calling half-screen mini-program services.

Caption: Tencent Huiju half-screen mini program. In the future, the half-screen mini program product display window will be able to directly pull up the XR photo frame to get the metaverse display experience.

Half-screen mini-programs are a new feature launched by WeChat in 2021. In March this year, WeChat lifted the category restrictions on half-screen mini-programs, and the maximum number of half-screen mini-programs that can be opened for each mini-program increased from 2 to 10. This means that brands have more space to display 3D products.

A service provider who is developing cases based on XR Frame told Yibang: "Today, WeChat XR Framework can already support most of the mature XR application experiences. WeChat officials can integrate it into mini-programs, which is equivalent to issuing a ticket to the Metaverse to every brand."

2. Brands should focus on 3D modeling

The visual wonders brought by the new technology will bring a wave of eye-catching natural traffic to brand mini programs. However, according to feedback from some brand merchants, if they want to stand out in XR, the prerequisite is that the brand can afford the cost of 3D modeling of the product.

"The starting price for a single item is 5,000 yuan." A person engaged in the digital collectibles business said frankly that even if the hardware equipment is mature, the cost of 3D modeling of any physical product will not be less than 100 yuan in the short term, except for a few special products.

And what kind of products are suitable to be introduced into the metaverse?

In terms of different fields, AR makeup, AR clothing, and AR wear technologies have long been mature, but their commercialization efficiency has not been high. At the same time, due to the high threshold of related technologies, only platform companies are eligible to participate in the trial.

Although WeChat has opened relevant technologies to developers, entrants still need to compete with strength. At present, from the perspective of the entire network, the ones who have truly stepped into the door of Metaverse marketing are mostly high-priced, high-profit products. Luxury brands are the most enthusiastic.

For example, in the 3D experience space of the Tmall App, Swarovski necklaces cost thousands of yuan, and Graff couple rings cost nearly 20,000 yuan.

For consumer electronics products such as Xiaoai speakers and toys such as Lego blocks, the cost can be reduced to less than 1,000 yuan due to their standardized shapes and simple mapping process after equipment scanning and modeling. In addition, the modeling process of SKUs with different color designs can be integrated, which can further reduce costs.

For bags and jewelry with complex designs, because they involve fashion, customization and craftsmanship, the 3D modeling cost can easily reach tens of thousands of yuan. In particular, the labor consumption in the later mapping process becomes a bottomless pit.

Of course, there are also business models that combine the sale of virtual goods with physical goods. NFT is one of them. Although digital collectibles have experienced a roller coaster in the industry, due to their unique ownership attributes and trendy social attributes, they are still attracting a large number of young consumers and seeking new brands to join the market.

In addition, WeChat’s official restrictions on merchant applications are an unavoidable hurdle.

For example, WeChat has strict restrictions on the size of mini-program packages. Given that high-quality 3D modeling can easily exceed 10M in size, will the XR experience provided by the mini-programs be discounted? It is not yet known.

A technical development leader of a brand admitted that XR framework products are still in the adjustment period in 2023, and may even be launched as separate products in the future. Therefore, it is not suitable for merchants who just want to take advantage of the traffic to invest too early.

"From the operational experience of mini programs to enterprise WeChat and video accounts, the WeChat team will test every medium and large function. In addition, there will be multiple departments within Tencent competing for corresponding resources. It will take at least half a year and at most a year to wait for the official testing and competition to be completed. Early 2024 would be a good time for developers to enter the game." The above developer suggested.

He also pointed out that since the launch of mobile AR in 2015, apart from the two games Ingress and Pokemen Go, there have been few successful business models that continue to attract users. "XR gameplay is originally limited, and it is difficult to achieve the ultimate in visual experience or interactivity."

A serial entrepreneur in the field of computer vision expressed similar concerns. "The common problem of most XR frameworks is that they are more suitable for display rather than interaction. WeChat's biggest advantage is that it can improve the low-cost dissemination of XR through various social nodes in WeChat."

This has been proven by the fact that Video Account was able to catch up in the WeChat ecosystem, surpassing Douyin and Kuaishou and having a growth myth of 800 million monthly active users.

"There are already hundreds of mobile AR marketing solutions in the industry. However, due to the pandemic restrictions and the sluggish market in the past two years, there has been no substantial breakthrough in real large-scale commercial use." The above-mentioned person believes that in the second half of 2023, AR marketing may reach a turning point. This may also be an opportunity for the WeChat XR app to explode.

3. The next big version of WeChat: Everyone in the Metaverse?

The whistleblower said that before the WeChat Open Class in January 2023, the WeChat XR mini-program function will be fully launched and will become the core function of the next major version upgrade of WeChat.

By then, all businesses can configure the corresponding functions in their own mini-programs, and push XR to users through public account tweets and group chat forwarding.

It is understood that WeChat is currently cooperating with multiple brand mini-programs in different categories to implement different types of cases such as AR try-on and AR home decoration.

The brand founder who has participated in the internal test revealed that XR applications in the past were basically entertainment-oriented, but WeChat still wants to guide users to form a consumer mindset based on XR gameplay. After all, consumption is a large market comparable to games.

It is worth noting that the face-pinching and dressing-changing function common in the Metaverse has not yet appeared in this mini program. This also means that the XR mini program is not a Metaverse application for personal entertainment, but rather prioritizes to B merchant services to increase the participation of retail consumer companies.

Personal virtual images are also regarded as a unified account system in the metaverse ecosystem. This is related to the key layout of WeChat as a personal ID. WeChat is expected to introduce related services in the next major version. Selfie emojis and WeChat search emojis will be the entrances to the centralized presentation of related services.

WeChat's planning for the next generation of products is also more in-depth than expected. According to people familiar with the matter, the next major version of WeChat is expected to reconstruct the underlying interaction logic of WeChat for the Metaverse.

There were signs of these things a long time ago.

In August this year, WeChat began internal testing of a new mini-program UI interaction engine: the Skyline rendering engine. The Skyline rendering engine is a better UI rendering engine and a new XR service framework. Its functions and experience are close to native UI rendering capabilities, and it can produce animation effects comparable to Apple's native UI animation effects.

WeChat's investment in UI design is also to adapt to the increasing demand of ordinary users for App interaction design. "The previous minimalist interaction design that focused on information transmission can no longer meet users' pursuit of visual enjoyment."

In the future metaverse era, content has changed from concise information communication to a full range of five senses enjoyment. The era of emphasizing light, smell, sound, body and touch is coming.

The WeChat team has obviously experienced the passiveness of struggling to catch up with the trend of short videos. This time, it will not miss the Metaverse. After all, as early as 2020, Tencent was preparing its own "full-fledged Internet", which is the currently popular Metaverse.

Some developers suggested that while the WeChat team is busy reconstructing the underlying product, mobile AR marketing solutions based on high-quality 3D graphics, spatial audio and other content forms are what merchants and brands should pay more attention to.

"Just as short videos created the content era, all brands must attach importance to the construction of content systems and the driving effect of content on consumption. XR is still a 'pasture' full of imagination," the person said.

Author: Zhai Gengzhang

WeChat public account: Yibang Power