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Fish and sheep from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit | Public Account QbitAI

Have you heard about Beijing's most popular citywalk route?Beijing Central AxisThe application for World Heritage status was successful~

And this time, it not only relied on its historical and cultural value to win the prize, but also showed off its full technological style.

For the first time in the world, gaming technology is used throughout the entire process of applying for World Cultural Heritage.

What kind of technology is this? Netizens' feedback be like:

After a careful investigation, we found that in order to increase public participation (now also an important assessment criterion for World Heritage application), the authorities simply moved the entire central axis to the cloud.

What did I say? Details and what not. Let’s look at the effect directly:

Even the growth of the tree branches was replicated one-to-one.

It is not just as simple as placing a few models. In this digital world created specifically for the new world cultural heritage, we can freely browse:

You can also "travel back" to the scenes in the museum's scrolls to experience real history more intuitively.

A new cyber travel artifact~

There is no need to turn on the computer. This product called "Digital Axis·Micro Universe" is produced by Tencent Games and is available atCloud Axis"Open the WeChat mini program and play anytime, anywhere.

Experience the Digital Axis · Microcosm

Without further ado, let’s take the family on an “on-site” exploration to see what’s different about this online cultural heritage tour experience.

The first stop is Xiannongtan.

Although it is an interactive game, Tencent has completely modeled the main buildings of the Xiannongtan Temple.

For example, the hip roof of the silk burning furnace, the Sumeru base, and every carved detail:

Every building room in every corner of reality can also be found in the game.

The experience of visiting Kamikura is as follows:

Interestingly, when you run across the lawn, you can hear the rustling sound of the grass.

At this point, old readers all know that the technical aspects involved are worth discussing.

QuantumBit learned that the Digital Axis Microcosm is built based on Unreal Engine 5.

existPhysical recovery levelIn accordance with the World Heritage application text, a 5-level map mode was adopted, with the maximum map area reaching 200km×200km.

The reason why the 5-level map mode is adopted is that the team hopes to ensure the realism of the core building area while improving the efficiency of research and development. Level 1 is the core data assets obtained through technical means such as photographic modeling and scanning.

That is, based on photos of the core buildings from various angles, algorithms are used to restore them with high precision in the digital world.

The Xiannongtan that we explored earlier, as well as the Wanning Bridge and Bell and Drum Tower on the central axis, all adopted this high-precision production standard.

Level 2 is about 1,000 meters around the core route of the game, using manually created digital assets. The assets along the central axis are of higher precision, while the complexity of the models and textures of non-key buildings has been downgraded.

Levels 3 to 5 are for buildings in non-key areas. Based on their importance and gameplay requirements, these digital assets are mixed manually and with PCG. PCG technology uses algorithms to automatically generate content.

Procedural generation of urban landscapes, or PCG, is a transition between maps and detailed modeling, and can provide realistic urban landscapes on a larger scale. For example, image recognition is used to extract information on 3,000 green belts, and a PCG generation solution is used to further fill in the entire scene.

In terms of road generation, detailed generation rules are set to make it conform to the road planning of Beijing's urban area as much as possible, while at the same time filling the map in a way that relatively saves performance loss.

It is worth mentioning that the total asset volume of Digital Axis Microcosm exceeds 15T, including 300,000 plants, 2.2 million buildings, and a total asset face value of 10.4 billion, with 542 iterations.

Oh, by the way, this doesn’t even include our protagonist – the hyper-realistic digital human.

You can see that the hair of the characters in the game is quite textured.

Behind the scenes, the technical team from Tencent Games R&D Performance Department used the self-developed Physion Groom real-time hair physics simulation UE plug-in.

Compared to Unreal Engine's native UE Groom, Physion Groom can show more dynamic details of hair, maintain better volume shape, achieve less hair collision and interlacing, and meet real-time standards in games.

A historical and cultural exhibition that combines reality and fiction

The full restoration of real-scene details is only the first layer of the digital central axis.

The more you play, the more you will understand why we should participate in the application for World Heritage status in the form of games.

The unique advantage of gaming technology is that it can not only reconstruct the “reality” of the physical world, but also integrate the “virtuality” of historical and cultural dimensions into the landscape in the most vivid form.

Here is a little knowledge: the concept of Beijing's "Central Axis" was first proposed by the famous architect Liang Sicheng. He believed that "Beijing's unique magnificent order was created by the establishment of this central axis", and the undulating buildings on the central axis are like "moving music" with a unique rhythmic beauty.

Such description is now more intuitively reflected in the digital axis:

Replay

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The Forbidden City’s “Sky-like Capital” can also be appreciated at first glance.

There are also many little easter eggs hidden in the game. For example, you can learn about the construction of the central axis by playing a mini-game like building a model of Zhengyang Gate.

You can ring the bells and drums in the Bell and Drum Tower (which you can no longer experience in real life) and understand how they played a role in urban management in the past.

"Eighteen fast, eighteen slow, eighteen neither fast nor slow," as the morning and evening change and the bells and drums ring, the spiritual and cultural core of the old Beijing city connected by the central axis seems to transmit a real echo from the digital world.

An interesting technical tip is that in this scene that changes day and night, the technical team did not directly use the built-in lighting system of Unreal Engine 5, but instead chose the real-time dynamic global illumination Smart GI plug-in developed by Tencent Game R&D Performance Department.

This is mainly because most of the game scenes in Digital Axis Microcosm are outdoors, and overly detailed lighting will lead to excessive resource consumption, while the lighting system that comes with Unreal Engine 5 currently has limited open interfaces and optimization space.

Smart GI provides a real-time dynamic global illumination solution for all platforms based on a hybrid architecture. While making lighting rendering reach the level of 3A masterpieces, it can achieve high frame rate real-time rendering in terms of performance.

From the actual effect, Smart GI can make the night scene lighting effects more realistic and its performance is better than Lumen.

In addition to focusing on optimizing each link in terms of resource consumption, the ability to cram such rich content into WeChat mini-programs also relies on the support of cloud gaming technology.

For example, Tencent Games has its own cloud gaming transmission flow control algorithm.

The audio and video streams of cloud games rendered in the cloud are transmitted through a protocol called WebRTC. This protocol is mainly for video calls, and its disadvantage is that it has limitations in ultra-high bit rate and ultra-low latency transmission.

In order to present the game graphics more vividly and at the same time ensure low latency and no lag, the technical team adopted Tencent's own GMCC adaptive control algorithm.

GMCC can be configured according to the game scene. In the digital central axis microcosm, the technical team chose a flow control algorithm that prioritizes image quality, trying to improve the quality of the game picture while providing a silky smooth control experience.

Gaming technology is changing the world

In fact, this is not the first time that games/digital technology have been combined with cultural heritage.

After all, if you really want to see all the precious cultural heritages in the world, the investment of time, energy and money is a high threshold for the general public.

Digitalization, on the other hand, has the ability to highly restore the physical world, historical truth, and cultural landscape. On the one hand, it can "archive" cultural heritage in a comprehensive and vivid way, and on the other hand, it also lowers the threshold for the public to understand and explore cultural heritage.

The classic example is "Assassin's Creed" which appeared in the Paris Olympics. In 2019, after the fire at Notre Dame de Paris, the French government wanted to rebuild the Gothic cathedral, but the intricate structure of Notre Dame de Paris made restoration difficult. "Assassin's Creed", known for its detailed scene restoration, brought a ray of hope. Ubisoft spent two years to reproduce almost every brick and stone in Notre Dame de Paris.

Not only that, teachers at home and abroad have used "Assassin's Creed" to teach history lessons to students, in the hope that students can gain more vivid cognition and experience in the relatively rough and boring history courses.

Technology giants such as Google and Microsoft have already invested in this.

For example, Microsoft is involved in the digital protection and restoration of the ruins of Ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

On the project’s official website, you can see that the historical external structure and original internal appearance of these architectural ruins have been clearly restored, and are also equipped with 3D or AR modes.

In this regard, Microsoft President Brad Smith said:

Digital preservation brings people and cutting-edge technology together to benefit the world, giving future generations new ways to explore history.

In addition, Microsoft's "Flight Simulator" also realistically restores major cities around the world in the game.

Based on the creative use of digital technology, Google has created Google Arts & Culture (GAC), a digital museum and digital heritage library with global influence.

From a longer-term perspective, the combination of digital technology and cultural heritage can essentially be seen as a form of information management.

Whether it is the accumulation of digital assets or the participation of more public, they are opening up new life and new value for real cultural assets.

And this is precisely an important criterion in the selection of world cultural heritage - "future".

It is conceivable that with the development of cutting-edge technologies such as large models and MR, such a model may bring greater changes to the display world.

Perhaps in future history classes, we can really transform into “Ready Player One” and travel the world in a completely immersed way, looking at the past and present.

One More Thing

Finally, pick a game easter egg.

If you are a contemporary junk collector like me, there are many collection elements in Digital Axis Microcosm, including ancient building knowledge, various auspicious beasts, cultural relics and so on.

If we add an AR function, wouldn't it be the Pokémon GO version of Beijing's Central Axis? (dog head)

- over-