James Cameron has made the digital kingdom a top Hollywood special effects company. Titanic, Avatar, and the Avengers are all representative works. Now the company is making great strides in virtual reality. go ahead. In 2013, Xie An joined the digital realm. The first thing the helmsman faced was to solve financial problems. At this time, the virtual reality business began to be the mainstay of the "rejuvenation" of the digital kingdom. The first test of water was later called The "Animal" "resurrection Teresa" project. The picture shows the digital kingdom CEO Xie An In the following three years, the Digital Kingdom revitalized its business into four segments: special effects, virtual reality, avatars, and IP rights. It also conducted substantial capital acquisitions, including the acquisition of VR equipment company IMV and content platform Sprawly. Wait. The question is, why is a leading Hollywood special effects company aiming at turning the dilemma into virtual reality? Nothing to do with profits and DNA The digital kingdom has its presence in the special effects field in the Hollywood blockbusters of the past 10 years. In addition to the aforementioned, there are 300 works such as Speed ​​and Passion, The Lord of the Rings, etc. However, such a company is facing Bankruptcy. The Qianfang rumors are widely circulated in the movie industry. The profits of the general industry are 20% to 25%, but the special effects industry profits are only about 5%. I asked Xie An, “What is the reason for the digital kingdom turning to virtual reality?†and his answer is the digital kingdom. DNA. "We have a large library of digital models that can be introduced into virtual reality. This is a DNA, and VR is a matter of course." It is understood that James Cameron chose the 3D modelling effect from the beginning, including a large number of models such as aircraft and biology. The previously released Storm virtual reality application is a typical case. “There are tornadoes in our library, earthquakes. The system also has tsunami, disaster scenarios, and these technologies and resources have saved the digital realm to save a lot of investment in the virtual reality market. As for the profit of the special effects market in the later period, “the digital kingdom is receiving very high income,†Xie An said with a smile. Creativity, production and distribution Xie Ann said in a number of vendors that the digital kingdom is in contact with and determined to be the source of VR virtual reality is Oculus. "The first time was Oculus. They took us to cooperate with a prototype. At the time, we were very clunky, but then we thought that the digital kingdom was best suited to be VR." But at the time, the digital kingdom was not very comprehensive. "We It began to feel that V and R of VR virtual reality are separated, and only the V part is the late CG special effects." It is precisely because most of the manufacturers have focused their attention on this part of V so that the market represented by the panoramic camera is still to be developed, and the digital kingdom has begun to adjust its direction. In the process, it also spent USD 100 million to purchase the panoramic camera brand IMV. , And have launched Zeus, Kronos two generations of products. Interestingly, the Digital Kingdom’s two-generation spherical panorama cameras have not been sold to the outside world. Popularly speaking, they are self-produced and self-sufficient, but the burden is also very heavy. R&D costs are tens of times larger than the commercial mass production equipment that is commercially available. For this reason, the digital kingdom has established unique advantages in image mosaic. In addition to hardware, from ideas to shooting solutions, to post-editing, and even distribution, Digital Kingdom is creating a one-stop virtual reality solution. Xie An said, “Now we are a rare combination of V and R. Companies that are together should do their best and then build a complete ecosystem." Inserting a panoramic camera called VR is an insult to VR In terms of content production, the digital kingdom's two generations of products support 4K and 8K resolution video capture respectively. This level of quality is very good on the high-definition screen, but on the carrier such as mobile phones, due to the angle of field, equipment, The reason for the resolution, the actual viewing experience will be discounted, Xie An summed up this issue as "non-war crimes." As for the solution, "there can only be infinite expectations for breakthroughs in the level of hardware equipment," but Xie An has performed very sharply in content production. "If you plug in a camera where it is VR, it is actually insulting VR." Xie An compared past content production with virtual reality content production. “This is actually a brand new creative mode. Before movies and television, the directors used the camera to tell stories, and VR needed more ideas. †One of Xie An’s ideas is to use seats to divide “concert ticket seatsâ€. Users can obtain different virtual reality experiences in ordinary audience areas, star areas, stage, and even backstage through different price-based payment options. However, setting up a multi-camera is not an easy task. It needs to take into account the stage design. It also needs to consider the security of the performers, and even the mental obstacles. Of course, it is also necessary to consider the hardware and content distribution of the viewing equipment. Bandwidth, etc. This should also be the reason why Xie believes that "plugging a camera is VR." Should not care about the stock price In April, the Digital Kingdom released its annual report. The loss attributable to the company’s holders was HK$479 million, an increase of 2.07 times year-on-year. The stock price then dived. On April 12th, it fell from approximately 0.34 yuan to 0.26 yuan in just 15 minutes. The decrease was 18.92% in days and ended at 0.3 yuan. I asked Xie An. "Does this mean that the capital market is not optimistic about the digital realm's virtual reality business?" He has a very vague answer, "I have read a classic sentence, governing the country can not watch polls, Then, if you govern your business, you can't look at the stock price." Accurately, Xie An refers to a temporary stock price. In the medium to long term, Xie An’s market capitalization has been climbing steadily for the past four years in the digital kingdom. “From 200 million Hong Kong dollars to 7 billion Hong Kong dollars, what we are seeing is actually the paralysis of virtual reality.†Xie An is still very confident about past achievements. “At NAB today, many people are still talking about concepts. What we are looking at is the actual products. When we talk about the model, our commercialization model has also been explored. Out of it, we have all done it when we mentioned our advertisements and MVs." Doing is done, but the Digital Kingdom will have to consider the issue of profit. This is a long way. It takes time to see the cost and experience of the equipment. The commercial model of payment also needs long-term verification. Prior to this, for the VR live broadcast of Wang Fei’s live concert, at a price of RMB 30, the estimated pre-sale value of 1.8 million yuan was 54 million yuan, but the PO has shown that “12 On the 30th of the month, from 8pm to 10:30pm, over 100,000 viewers in all of China picked up their mobile phones and watched the live VR broadcast of Wang Fei's concert on the Internet. This means that actual revenue may be just over 3 million. yuan.