Combining the nature, culture, sports, and technology, the opening ceremony of the 19th Asian Games kicked off on the evening of Sept. 23 at China’s Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center Stadium.
The culmination of the ceremony saw Olympic champion swimmer Wang Shun and a digital torchbearer jointly light the Asian Games cauldron.
As six human torchbearers passed on the torch in the stadium, also known as “the Big Lotus,” the digital torchbearer – made up of over 100 million virtual sparks, each representing a participant of the online torch relay – took giant strides toward the cauldron. After the digital figure and Wang jointly lit the cauldron, the Asian Games flame gushed out from the fire pit inspired by the tidal bore of the Qiantang River.
It was the first digital ignition ceremony in the Asian Games’ history, and also the first one participated by over 100 million people. It highlighted the results of three years of deevelopment by the Games’ technology team, who conducted over 100,000 tests and wrote more than 200,000 lines of codes. The team integrated its independently developed Web3D interactive engine Galacean, AI figures, cloud services and block chain technology to build a digital platform able to accommodate more than 100 million users, fusing the virtual and real worlds.