Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 510: The Zhiyun People with High Ambition
In the conference room of a large domestic Internet company, the company's president personally presided over the meeting, and his subordinates were the heads of several core business departments of the company.

While these people were thinking, they were looking at a young man in front of them who was explaining a PPT.

"At present, the development of our first large-scale virtual game "Dream Journey to the West" has entered a high-speed development stage. The game content has largely borrowed from some of the company's existing successful Journey to the West-themed works!"

"We have completed the construction of the key combat numerical system and the economic system, as well as the construction of the early plot!"

"We have abundant data reserves and experienced talents in this regard, so it is quite easy to do!"

"We have currently completed the development of thirteen main characters and the modeling and development of more than one hundred and eighty monsters!"

"Four hundred and thirty props have been initially developed!"

"In terms of maps, we have also completed the preliminary development of the novice map, the main city map, and the first world map!"

“At this stage, our development work is mainly focused on the second world map and the dungeon map!”

"In terms of graphics, you can take a look at our current rendering. With the Zhiyun Simulation Game Engine, the quality of the graphics is already as good as that of Kingdom Come. The physical effects still need to be improved, but we still lack sufficient senior technical talents in this area, so we can only spend a lot of time to polish it slowly!"

“According to our expectations, in about three months, we will be able to complete the first phase of development and make the game initially playable for internal testing!”

"But now we have many difficulties. The first is the shortage of technical talents. Virtual games are different from traditional computer and mobile games, and the requirements for talents are also different. In particular, the development of virtual games requires the use of Zhiyun's various special development software. The use of these virtual development software is also quite complicated, and the quality requirements for talents are quite high!"

"After all, the virtual game we developed is not a simple small virtual game like Magic Light Demon Sword, so there are no requirements for image quality and physical simulation!"

"Our Dream Journey to the West is positioned as a large-scale virtual game, which has very high requirements for graphics and physical simulation. It must at least reach the level of the Kingdom's Peak, or even exceed it!"

"This requires us to make extensive use of many core functions in Zhiyun's simulation game engine. For example, in the key physical simulation system, if we want to achieve advanced physical characteristics like the doomsday battle, we also need to use the YC language specially developed by Zhiyun!"

“Although the dedicated design language developed by Zhiyun is simple and efficient, it is very difficult to learn and even more difficult to master.”

The person in charge was somewhat helpless when he said this: "The people who developed these virtual software at Zhiyun, especially the people who developed the YC language, seemed to have completely ignored the difficulty for ordinary people to learn and use this language!"

"Even the technical documentation is very simple, with words like 'easy to get' and 'easy to see' all over it, and it references a large number of cutting-edge papers and documents in the fields of mathematics and computer science. These documents are mixed with a large number of technical theories and mathematical tools that are not available in the outside world."

"Many of the cited papers and documents are from Zhiyun's internal publications!"

Zhiyun Group founded its internal scientific research journal, Zhiyun Science, a long time ago, to publish some technical papers that can be made public... Therefore, some public papers written by technical personnel from Zhiyun Group and some other sister companies are not submitted to the outside world, but only to the company's own Zhiyun Science.

Although Zhiyun Science is only an internal journal, its value is very high, especially in the fields of mathematics, computers, artificial intelligence, communication technology, batteries, semiconductors, artificial intelligence materials, etc.

The company under Xu Shenxue is engaged in these areas, and its technology is among the best in the world. The papers he publishes also represent the current cutting-edge technology.

Zhiyun Science, Zhiyun's internal scientific journal, has become one of the top scientific journals in China and even in the world, with heavyweight papers appearing frequently!

In recent years, we have also started to accept paper submissions from external researchers, making our influence even greater.

It is worth noting that these papers that can be published in Zhiyun Science are actually technologies that have passed the confidentiality period... The real top technologies are hidden and will never be written into papers for publication.

For example, in the field of artificial intelligence, the technologies described in some of the papers published now are actually relatively early technologies, and are mainly concentrated in the field of generative AI, and they all talk about things that can be said publicly.

As for Zhiyun Group's core technologies in the field of artificial intelligence technology, such as terminal AI used in robots and virtual devices, the AI ​​of this technical route has never been made public, and there is not even a paper on it!
The outside world doesn’t even know what theory is!
"Many technologies in the development process of virtual games have cited a large number of scientific literature, which is very difficult for our technical staff to learn!"

"It involves several core technologies of physical simulation, and the latest mathematical theoretical framework described in a paper by Professor Lin Antong of Zhiyun Artificial Intelligence Research Institute is cited... Although this paper is only a public paper of Professor Lin, it is considered in the mathematical community that this kind of paper is relatively easy to understand among Professor Lin's papers. However, in our company, including me, there are only eight people who can understand the paper!"

"In other words, in our company's virtual game project team, out of a development team of more than 3,000 people, only eight people can write the code for the underlying physical simulation system, which results in very slow progress."

"So in the research and development of some core technologies of virtual games, especially those involving physical simulation, we are limited by the serious shortage of senior talents and the progress is relatively slow!"

As soon as these words were spoken, many managers with technical backgrounds sighed in admiration!
"Those evildoers at Zhiyun never considered the feelings of ordinary people. It's just a design language, but they made it so difficult!"

“When I mentioned these issues to the technical department before, I also shamelessly went to Zhiyun and tried to ask them to come up with a simpler technical description or tutorial. As a result, they said that this was already a simplified tutorial, the simplest one, and there was no way to simplify it any further!”

"You're asking me, is this difficult? It's quite simple!"

"I can't even tell whether they are looking down on me out of arrogance or if they really think it's easy!"

Someone else said: "Zhiyun people are so arrogant that they don't even care about ordinary people like us!"

Another person said: "I led a team to attend an AI technology lecture held by Zhiyun before. I have been away from the front line of technology for a long time, so it is normal that I can't understand the cutting-edge theories. However, the people I led were all core engineers in our AI department, and they also reported that it was very difficult to understand. Many of them were incomprehensible at the time, so we recorded the video and took it back to study it slowly."

"In order to promote artificial intelligence technology, they held public technical lectures and said a lot of incomprehensible words. I have no idea what they are thinking!"

"Hey, what can I do? I'm not as skilled as others!"

"If we want to go further in the virtual field, especially if we want to master some core technologies, we still need to introduce high-end talents!"

"We will step up our efforts in campus recruitment this year and try to attract as many top talents as possible, especially those in the three fields of mathematics, computer science and artificial intelligence!"

But as soon as this was said, others said: "It is too difficult to find top talents in these three fields. Let alone Zhiyun, we can't even compete with Yihai Group!"

"Every year, all the PhD students in computer science who graduate from Peking University and Tsinghua University will first attend Zhiyun's campus recruitment interview. Zhiyun will select them first. They will only consider other candidates if Zhiyun doesn't like them or their conditions don't match them!"

"For the remaining talents selected by Zhiyun, we will have to compete with Yihai, several other domestic competitors, and even with the R&D centers of overseas companies in China."

“It’s very difficult!”

"This was the case during the campus recruitment last year. Our HR took the initiative to contact many people, but they basically dragged their feet and refused to agree. It was not until Zhiyun's doctoral campus recruitment was over that someone contacted us. It took a lot of effort to recruit a few people!"

Someone immediately said, "It's impossible for Zhiyun to recruit all the top talents. If we can't compete with Zhiyun, can we compete with other companies? For example, Yihai has always surpassed us in campus recruitment every year. How many top talents have been recruited by them?"

"This year, the human resources department still needs to come up with a more complete strategy. Even if we can't win over Yi Hai, we can't be too far behind!"

These words directly pointed the finger at the human resources department... The person in charge of human resources next to him suddenly looked unhappy!

It’s a nice idea to compete with Yihai for talents... Although our company is also a first-class Internet enterprise in China, how can we compare with Yihai?
The treatment is not as good as others, the platform is not as good as others, and even the company's scientific research environment is not as good as others!
Not to mention all of the above, just the optimization of older talents has discouraged many top talents!

Do you really think that young people who graduated from top 985 universities are stupid? They can go to Yihai as long as the salary is not too different. They would be stupid to come to you!

Not to mention others, if Yi Hai sends me an invitation one day, I will run away in a minute!
If there is this opportunity, I will first go to Yihai Group to accumulate qualifications, and then I may be able to jump to Zhiyun Group to take a position... and even move up to Liuhe Investment and become a senior human resources manager in the Xu Group. In the future, I may even be able to succeed Luo Yinian and take charge of the human resources affairs of the entire Xu Group.

Among the top experts in human resources in China, who doesn’t want to be the second Luo Yinian? It’s a dream!
Luo Yinian is a person that most people don’t know in the outside world, but he is well-known in the field of human resources, a super boss…Xu Shenxue’s personal human resources expert.

How awesome is Luo Yinian? He poached so many people that he was banned from entering several countries... First, South Korea banned him from entering. Later, when he was working on semiconductor consumables, he poached people everywhere in Japan, even entire teams. Because he poached too much, Japan also found an excuse to ban him from entering... If he is not banned again, Luo Yinian will take away a team every time he goes to Japan. If he continues like this, he will be able to poach all the professional talents in semiconductor consumables in Japan!
The rapid development of semiconductor consumables from Xiannvshan Holdings in recent years has a lot to do with Luo Yinian's poaching from Japan, South Korea and other places. Japan is the leader in various semiconductor consumables, and the companies under Xiannvshan Holdings have recruited a large number of technical talents in the field of semiconductor consumables from Japan.

Last year, they poached a top supply chain expert from the fruit company, which made Cook so angry that he publicly scolded Luo Yinian for being shameless and engaging in malicious competition.

The fruit supply chain was not as good as Zhiyun’s to begin with, but we have been catching up over the years and have trained some top supply chain talents. However, Luo Yinian poaches one every one or two years, just like cutting leeks!
I trained a top supply chain expert. It's not easy for me...

In addition to internal discovery and training of top talents, Luo Yinian's favorite thing to do is to carry a hoe all day long and recruit top talents from all over the world. His methods of recruiting are not very authentic, and he uses all kinds of threats and inducements... How many companies have gritted their teeth!
If human resources can achieve this level, it is enough to make countless human resources experts’ eyes light up!

Of course, to achieve Luo Yinian's level, you also need the support of a large platform... It is not easy to recruit top talents. Without the top name of Xu Shenxue and the rich treatment provided by Zhiyun and other companies under Xu Shenxue, why would top talents follow you?

Just relying on your mouth?
To recruit such top talents, we need to pay them real money and provide them with generous remuneration, as well as a top platform for them to display their talents!
Therefore, not only technical talents want to go to large companies like Zhiyun and Yihai, but even top talents in liberal arts fields such as human resources, marketing, corporate legal affairs, and administrative management also want to go to large companies under Xu Shenxue such as Zhiyun, Yihai, and HaiLan!
------

The lack of top talent is one of the main factors limiting many large Internet companies from engaging in virtual games.

Of course, this limitation does not mean that virtual games cannot be made, but it means that it is impossible to make very good virtual games. If it is just an ordinary virtual game like Magic Light Demon Sword, then there is no problem.

Many large Internet companies have launched some small virtual games, but basically none of them can reach the level of Doomsday Battle. At most, they are only at the level of Kingdom Come.

But even if it’s difficult, they’ll do it!

If the previous success of Top of the Kingdom made them see the huge potential market of virtual games, then the fact that such an inconspicuous little game like Magic Light Sword could also be a huge success gave them hope that they could do it too.

Fang Junli's small startup company has only a hundred-plus people, some of whom are involved in mobile game projects as well as company administration and marketing staff.

At most, there are only about a hundred technical personnel participating in the development of the Magic Light Demon Sword project.

A team of a hundred people can create a magic sword, why can't we? We can do it too!

Therefore, the launch and success of Light of Devil's Blade has, to some extent, had a greater impact on the gaming industry than the explosive popularity of Peak of Kingdoms.

Kingdom of Heroes is a work of Yihai Technology Group, and it was released together with the Yun VW virtual machine, which naturally gave it a huge advantage. Its success is natural to some extent. Its success is not even the success of the game itself, but the success of the virtual device.

But the Magic Light Demon Sword is different. Its success means the success of the Internet industry's entry into the virtual industry!

At that time, countless people were analyzing the Magic Light Demon Sword project, and quite a few were trying to poach people. Almost all medium and large Internet companies in the industry tried to poach people.

However, Fang Junli responded promptly and spent a lot of money to retain people, which resulted in no loss of key technical talent in the project team.

After the initial stability, Fang Junli immediately increased his efforts to recruit people, including campus recruitment and social recruitment. In short, he recruited people everywhere, trying to expand the project team to hundreds of people.

The success of Magic Light Blade was somewhat accidental, and even the elements that made it popular were different from what Fang Junli and his team had planned at the beginning. Who would have thought that an action game that mainly focused on dungeon clearance would become popular because of the main world PK!

This also means that a lot of work needs to be done. Various PK content mechanisms need to be launched and updated quickly, which is a huge workload.

The workload is large, and the requirement for the number of people is naturally high, so large-scale expansion of the team is very necessary.

When Fang Junli's company was recruiting on a large scale to expand, other companies followed suit and accelerated the research and development of virtual games.

Of course, this has little impact on Yihai Technology, the leading company in the virtual gaming field, and will not affect Yihai Technology's layout in the virtual gaming field.

"The core of our project is still the top of the kingdom and mortals!"

"After half a year of updates, the overall game framework of Kingdom Peak is now relatively mature. What is needed in the future is continuous updates in content to further enrich the gameplay, especially in PK!"

"Our goal is very clear. The number of people in the Kingdom Summit will increase along with the growth of virtual devices. We strive to reach a maximum of 200,000 concurrent online users by the end of the year!"

"This goal is still very possible. At present, the shipment volume of virtual devices from Zhiyun Group is gradually increasing. I heard that the production capacity is expected to reach 50,000 units by the month, and there may be cheaper virtual devices. We have cooperated with them to test the new virtual devices. Although the performance has declined a lot, it can still drive our Kingdom's Peak."

"We expect that after entering July, with the launch of various youth versions of virtual machines, the production and sales volume of 50,000 virtual devices will not be a problem, and the subsequent virtual machine inventory will see a huge increase!"

"By the end of the year, the global stock of virtual machine devices is expected to reach 700,000!"

“About half of them will be individual users!”

"These individual users are also the main core users of our Kingdom Peak!"

This is also a major feature of virtual games, that is, there are relatively large differences in game selection between individual users and users of virtual experience centers.

Users of virtual experience halls tend to choose more shocking, better-quality images, and better physical simulation effects, because they mainly experience it for a short time. They almost represent the top level of virtual technology, the doomsday battle...

Although the gameplay is not very good and it is very tiring to play, most of the users of the virtual experience center are short-term users. They come here just to experience the shock of the virtual world, so it doesn't matter if they are a little tired.

On the contrary, individual users are different. After playing Doomsday Battle and feeling the shock, they are less willing to play it afterwards because all the actions are too tiring... Instead, they prefer the more relaxed and leisurely Kingdom of Kings.

Especially in April this year, the virtual equipment business department of Zhiyun Group launched a new universal treadmill sitting backpack device to the outside world, and provided free upgrade and modification services to existing users, which was a temporary measure.

The technical principle is actually quite simple. It is to add a pair of pants tied with a safety rope to the existing safety backpack. When the character wants to sit down, he can sit on it like a swing.

Although it has some flaws such as being pulled by a rope, causing it to shake and the sitting position not being very smooth, it is still better than having to stand while playing games.

And because it is made of fabric, it does not affect the various activities of the characters when standing up.

This temporary measure is only for emergency use because too many people have responded: It is too tiring to play with this crappy virtual device. You have to stand all the time, or just sit on the ground. Can't you make something for people to sit on?

Young Master, I am a billionaire, but I have to stand to play your virtual game? This is unreasonable!
However, this sitting posture system is a bit difficult to set up, especially since the virtual equipment project team wants to create a system that does not affect the character's free movement and allows people to sit down anytime and anywhere.

But the chassis of the omnidirectional treadmill is a movable part, and you cannot directly install a fixed chair on the omnidirectional treadmill.

Among the many technical solutions currently being proposed by the technical department, the most reliable one is to install a robotic arm with a seat on the side of the omnidirectional treadmill!

When the character does not need to sit, it can be folded aside without affecting the character's various activities on the universal treadmill.

When a person wants to sit down, the robotic arm directly places the seat under the user's buttocks, and it has to be suspended in the air and cannot come into contact with the movable components of the treadmill floor on the ground.

This involves a lot of technical issues... For example, how to confirm the user's willingness to sit down? The simplest way is to use the user's manual button operation, but it is too rigid and does not reflect the black technology attributes of Zhiyun Group.

What the researchers want is a suspended robotic arm seat that can be directly identified and judged by artificial intelligence in one step.

However, it is not easy to use artificial intelligence technology for identification and judgment. If something goes wrong and the user does not want to sit down, it will not work if you put a seat behind the user's buttocks.

Conversely, if the user wants to sit down and the seat is not in place, the user may fall directly... Although there is a safety rope for protection, it is not good to scare the user.

Artificial intelligence algorithms are also possible, and sensors can collect corresponding data, but you have to train them... This training is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it cannot be done in a short period of time.

The robotic arm itself does not have any technical difficulty. Although it is suspended in the air and carries a weight of one or two hundred kilograms, it is not a big problem. At most, it just requires using some better materials.

Currently, this robotic arm sitting system with some black-tech attributes is still under development by the technical department and is expected to be completed and launched in July.

Before that, it provides a temporary, transitional solution, and is also used to provide a cheap sitting system alternative for future virtual machines that do not have a robotic arm chair version.

Simply and crudely, users are given a large pair of pants safety backpack with a safety rope to pull the weight... Of course, this large pair of pants also has some technical content, and the design must be clever so that users can sit down.

In addition, there are sensors inside to allow the system to sense the user's sitting posture, and then combined with external sensors, etc., so that the user's movements can be fed back in real time in the virtual space.

It’s impossible that the person in reality is sitting while the character in the virtual space is standing!
At the same time, it cannot be said that there is no place to sit in the virtual space. The character can sit down whenever he wants, and then it becomes a very strange state of sitting in mid-air.

For example, if the user wants to sit directly on the ground instead of on a stool, you cannot just pull the safety rope of your big pants. You have to let the user squat or sit down!

These all require data feedback!

So the safety rope of this Big Pants Safety Backpack is actually a movable part...it does require some technical skills.

However, since there were not many users in the early stage, and this cost was nothing compared to the high price of the virtual machine, we simply provided a free replacement and upgrade to all early users.

Of course, only the material cost and basic labor hours are free. If you send the equipment directly to us, the replacement will be free of charge, but if you want door-to-door replacement, labor costs will still be charged!

As for taking it back and replacing it yourself, that's not possible... the safety cannot be guaranteed, and there is also a data interface, which also requires special debugging of the data, so you can't replace it yourself.

This temporary big pants sitting system also provides a very good improvement to the current virtual machine equipment: users can finally sit down to experience various virtual worlds, especially when playing virtual games. When they are tired of walking or standing, they no longer have to sit directly on the ground as before, but can sit on various "stools".

This also provides more options for many virtual spaces and virtual games, allowing them to design various cars or similar means of transportation.

When the game character enters a scene such as a cafe, he can also find a chair to sit down instead of standing or sitting on the ground stupidly.

The seemingly simple and uncomfortable sitting system has won praise from many people.

Of course, most people actually expect Zhiyun Group to develop a real sitting system, rather than wearing a safety backpack with big pants like now...

This has also significantly increased the number of online players in the game Kingdom of the Peak.

The game "Top of the Kingdom" has also improved on this technology and launched a means of transportation called the Magic Car.

However, for Yihai Technology, although the game "Top of the Kingdom" is very good now and has prospects, it still cannot carry the ambitions of Yihai Technology's virtual game department!

Their ambition is to create "A Mortal's Journey to Immortality", a large-scale virtual game on the theme of cultivating immortals!

Top-notch picture quality, top-notch physical simulation, various gorgeous spell effects, plus perfect models of various characters, monsters, plants and world views.

They are preparing to create a truly large-scale virtual world!

Provide a top-level virtual world space for global users!

Its technology is even more complicated and difficult than Doomsday Battle!
However, it is very difficult to produce such a top-level virtual game. Conventional graphics, characters, and maps are secondary. The key is the top-level physical simulation system, which is the core factor that directly determines how real and immersive a virtual game is.

In order to develop this top-level virtual game, Yihai Technology has gathered more than 6,000 developers, and this number is still increasing.

Although its technical complexity is not as high as the virtual space that Zhiyun Group’s software and Internet division is developing, it is not much different.

"Given that the game Mortal Cultivation is technically complex and contains more content, we optimistically estimate that by next summer, we will be able to complete the first phase of development and conduct internal testing of a small portion of the content. This is already a very fast progress!"

"Before that, we still need to lay the foundation for the game Kingdom Peak, so that our Yi Hai virtual game can become famous all over the world!"

The top of the kingdom is the present, and the cultivation of immortals by mortals is the future. This is Yihai Technology’s main layout in the field of virtual games!

As for Doomsday Battle, Yihai Technology no longer has any hope for this game. This type of fighting game is inherently incompatible with the current virtual equipment and is too tiring to play. This has led to the game being well-received but not popular, and the cost-effectiveness is too poor compared to the revenue and R&D investment.

It would be more suitable to use it as training software after some minor modifications!

When a large number of Internet companies represented by Yihai Technology are striving for the virtual era.

Zhiyun Group and HaiLian Automobile have set off a new wave of technology!

Zhiyun Group will hold a joint press conference with HaiLan Auto for robots and HaiLan Auto, which will be hosted by Xu Shenxue himself.

And according to many information sources, Xu Shenxue will release a solid-state battery this time!
As soon as the news of solid-state batteries came out, it immediately attracted global attention!
This is a solid-state battery, which is more terrifying than the semi-solid-state battery released by Hailan Automobile before.

Although the previous semi-solid-state batteries were already outrageous, they were still considered within the range of liquid batteries and were a transition stage from liquid batteries to solid-state batteries. Although people were surprised, it was understandable.

But now, you, Xu Shenxue, have actually come up with a real solid-state battery, which makes many people doubt:
Are you bragging?
(End of this chapter)