Korea’s leading ICT company, Lotte Data Communications (LDCC), will participate in the coming CES 2023 held in Las Vegas, USA. It will be showcasing differentiated metaverse technology at the main exhibition hall, Central Hall.

LDCC is a key affiliate of the Lotte Group in charge of DT (Digital Transformation). With total assets amounting to about 125 trillion won, Lotte Group is a global corporation that engages in various businesses such as distribution, chemicals, food, tourism, construction, and services, etc. in more than 30 countries around the world, including Korea, the United States, Japan, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Having drawn much interest with its first CES participation last year, LDCC will feature booth space three times larger than before this time round and offer richer and more developed experiential contents.

The final version that Lotte Metaverse aims for is a world where online and offline worlds are integrated, just like the movie ‘Ready Player One’. Products purchased within the metaverse can be used in the virtual world and also be delivered in the real world. To enable such a business model, LDCC created an immersive and realistic metaverse platform based on hyper-realistic content. This is because when browsing expensive items, consumers will not click on the purchase button if they are looking at unsophisticated product images in the form of game items.

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Combining real-life characters with graphic backgrounds created with the world-class graphic engine, ‘Unreal Engine 5’, Lotte Metaverse uses cutting-edge technologies such as three-dimensional real-time rendering technology, the best live-action VR shooting technology in the world, as well as ‘deep-interactive’ patents that allow users to realistically interact with objects or real-life characters in VR content, offering a strong feel of realism and immersion to shopping, entertainment and community experiences in the virtual world.

The LDCC exhibition booth at CES is made up of a ‘VR Zone’ where visitors may experience the virtual world through a head-mounted display (HMD) and a ‘3D Display Zone’ where visitors may enjoy the experience through 3D monitors. The ‘VR Zone’ is divided into a shopping area where users may purchase products such as fashion, cosmetics, and home appliances, as well as an entertainment area where users may watch movies, idol concerts, and EDM performances. For each area, about 20 visitors are allowed to access one virtual world and enjoy its contents together.

In addition, there is also a ‘Community Zone’ that offers a glimpse of the entire virtual world and its city planning, a ‘LOTTE Zone’ that offers an introduction to the Lotte Group, and a ‘Mobility Zone’ that promotes LDCC’s electric vehicle chargers.

Without any space restrictions, Lotte Metaverse is able to present products in a way more luxurious and grander than the real world. Fashion items may be displayed like works in an art gallery, whereas camping items may be showcased in an in-store forest. The virtual theater allows users to feel like they are in a real theater. By reproducing more than 65,000 spectators as digital humans, the concert hall gives users a sense of realism as if they are watching a performance with other people in front of them. This year, Korean idol group NMIXX and world-famous EDM DJ ALOK took part in the event and garnered great interest.

Lotte Metaverse aims to become a user-oriented, UGC (User-Generated Contents) based platform in the future. Rather than building a castle with blocks, users are able to buy a high-quality building in a well-planned city and luxuriously decorate their own space with luxury furniture and appliances just like in the real world. In addition, users may use their building space for various purposes, turning it into lesson and practice rooms, karaoke rooms, wedding halls, and they may even resell their buildings.

LDCC plans to launch a non-fungible token (NFT) series linked to the metaverse in the first half of this year and open an NFT marketplace and virtual asset wallet while drawing a rough sketch of the full-scale metaverse business ahead of the early access opening at the end of the year.

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