(Yicai Global) Feb. 7 -- The spectacular opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics was held at the National Stadium, also known as the ‘Bird’s Nest,’ with just 3,000 performers on stage thanks to the help of high and new technologies such as artificial intelligence.

AI, fifth-generation mobile networks, augmented reality, autostereoscopy, cloud computing, digital twin, and simulation were all widely applied in the opening ceremony on the evening of Feb. 4. It was also the first time that 8K resolution technology was used for a big show broadcast live.

The visual effects team recreated the waters of the Yellow River in a light show. Led by Wang Zhiou, the team used image-processing algorithms to enable machine learning of traditional Chinese ink wash paintings to conjur “waters coming from the sky,” which slowly rose up into a giant ‘ice cube’ onto which the Winter Olympics’s logo and the Olympic rings were engraved with a laser.

“We made the world’s first 360-degree autostereoscopic digital device and conducted a large number of virtual and digitalized walkthroughs so that everyone can feel the ice cube’s luster as it rose,” Wang wrote on Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer website like Quora.

The images, which lighting technicians and engineers used to have to physically check overnight, are now digital engineering data, he added.

The team applied the simulation software and hardware used in the research and development of aerospace system products in the design of the stage machinery control system to control the optimized design of algorithms and execute the semi-physical simulation test. Beijing 2022’s stage system passed nearly a thousand ground tests.

The most eye-catching effect was the huge snowflake-shaped torch cauldron with over 550,000 light-emitting diodes, each of which is independently controlled by the single-signal channel of the driver chip. The digital programming algorithm was mapped into the device so that the lights change every second to achieve a “diamond-like sparkle,” Wang said.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Futura Costaglione