Visiting Baidu's "Xirang" Metaverse: Frequent Lag and Bugs, Officially Described as Currently in "Version -6.0"

Author: Wang Xin

On December 27, 2021, the Baidu AI Developer Conference was held at Baidu's metaverse product "Xirang," marking the official launch of "Xirang" after a week of internal testing, open to all users. Users can experience it through the mobile app, VR all-in-one machine, or PC desktop client. Baidu stated that Xirang has become "the first super venue in the metaverse that can accommodate 100,000 people for interactive experiences."

Xirang is the latest metaverse product launched by a well-known domestic company, following the Hongyu Universe introduced by Tianxiaxiu.

To further understand the image and experience of Xirang, Chain Catcher reporters downloaded the client and entered the Xirang metaverse space. They found that the product indeed created a multi-user interactive space that transcends virtual and real worlds and persists permanently, but there are also many bugs that need to be resolved, such as frequent misalignments and characters moving unsmoothly, and the content styles appear simple and dull.

1. Experiencing "Xirang": A Low-End Version of The Sims?

According to the official website, the Xirang world consists of wirelessly connected virtual spaces, each of which is a unique digital city where businesses or partners can create exclusive brand worlds using the Xirang app.

After players download Xirang, they can choose to "browse casually" or "create an account" to enter. After logging in and naming their character, they immediately enter Xirang's face customization system. The face customization system offers options for male and female characters and allows users to generate cartoon, anthropomorphic, or realistic character styles based on personal preferences. If dissatisfied, users can also adjust the face and accessories using the adjustment system.

It is worth mentioning that the entire process of using the face customization system did not meet expectations. The character generation process often suffers from unresponsive buttons, and the face models are rough and monotonous. Upon entering "Xirang," many characters were found to have "identical" faces.

After that, players can do two things in "Xirang": aimlessly explore and participate in the Baidu Create Conference.

In this space, there is a vast world with several transparent glass columns reaching up to the sky, buildings standing everywhere, and a platform where crowds gather, running around aimlessly and gazing into the distance. This is the intuitive feeling of experiencing "Xirang."

Currently, the large map of the Xirang world is centered around the birthplace Creator Tower, with the Baidu Technology Interactive Experience Area and Baidu Technology Center located in the northwest of the map; cultural buildings like Sanxingdui and Shaolin Temple are in the central eastern part; and institutions like Communication University of China and the Three-Body Pavilion are distributed in the central western part, with the overall layout taking shape.

From the experience perspective, creating virtual characters, moving between multiple scenes, real-time dialogue, and other social activities all exist in the Xirang world. Users can also set it to hear the voices of other characters within 5 meters. However, from an overall experience standpoint, both the character design and the intricacy of interactions and layouts in Xirang have not yet reached a mature stage and remain in a primary phase.

At the conference venue, perhaps due to the large number of attendees, there were frequent issues with slow loading and lag. If a close-up shot was selected, the speaker Li Yanhong appeared quite blurry.

After choosing to exit the venue, all users would appear in the same specific area, leading to situations where many users' bodies overlapped. While wandering outside the venue, instances of clipping occurred, where bodies penetrated buildings, land, and other elements that should not be penetrated.

It is worth noting that if the immersion of the "social metaverse" is not even better than that of 3D mobile games, then what is the significance of the metaverse? It is remembered that Roblox once mentioned in its prospectus the eight essential elements of a mature metaverse: low latency, immersion, diversity, accessibility, economy, identity, friends, and civilization. Thus, the aforementioned experience screenshots contradict this.

Regarding the numerous issues pointed out about Xirang, such as excessive bugs and monotonous scenes, Baidu Vice President Ma Jie stated that after more than a year of development and testing, the version number of Xirang is still negative, and there are many imperfections. It still has a huge growth space to reach the goals we envision. He views Xirang as a "version -6.0" metaverse product, meaning it will not be fully developed and officially launched until six years later.

Currently, the basic version of the "Xirang" app is available for download in the Huawei App Market and Apple App Store. However, from the application market ratings, the basic version of "Xirang" does not score highly. In the App Store, users have given it a score of 3.1, while the Huawei App Market currently has 429 ratings, with an overall score of only 2 points.

For Baidu, entering the social metaverse now is merely "feeling the way across the river."

2. "Xirang" and Other Metaverse Products Still Need to "Fly for a While"

At the Baidu Marketing Summit held on December 23, Baidu Marketing proposed to layout in future scenarios like the metaverse, reconstructing the marketing "people, goods, and venue" marketing scene. Through Baidu's metaverse, based on Baidu Xirang, the Baidu VR industrialization platform has been fully upgraded, allowing brands to connect with future scenarios.

Currently, Baidu Marketing has launched three major initiatives: first, the release of the Du Xingxuan "Starlight Plan," which supports corporate content marketing through over 10 billion traffic and creator training camps; second, the upgrade of the "Jimu Fish" intelligent merchant management platform; and third, the upgrade of the marketing management platform.

At the same time, Baidu's Virtual Reality General Manager Ding Zhigang stated at the conference, "Through Xirang, we can move the stages from traffic acquisition to user conversion to content co-creation into the metaverse."

The Xirang official website also lists some specific application scenarios, including VR education, VR marketing, VR cloud exhibitions, VR training, and VR industrial parks, indicating that the focus of this landing will be on B-end businesses.

However, clearly, for the basic version of Xirang, taking on the official B-end business responsibilities is still premature. Building a mature metaverse community requires more worlds and human and material resources.

Baidu Vice President Ma Jie mentioned that "the current metaverse faces a series of technical bottlenecks, with vision, hearing, and interaction being three major challenges." This indicates that the challenges posed by technical difficulties are significant.

In fact, the current version of Xirang is merely an experimental product from Baidu, and internet products are a process of continuous refinement and optimization. Whether Xirang can bring a new dimensional experience in the future remains unknown. However, from release to experience, Xirang needs to listen to users' voices to make the next adjustments.

As the wave of the metaverse arrives, Baidu hopes to become a representative of the domestic metaverse by launching the Xirang app. However, given Baidu's current technological hardware strength and the fierce competition from peers, no one can predict whether Baidu will emerge as the winner.