What Is the Metaverse and Why Should You Care?.
The Metaverse is a vision of the future of the Internet, in which many different permanent virtual worlds are connected and coexist. The Metaverse turns the modern Internet into a place where you can live an embodied life using immersive technologies such as virtual and mixed reality.
The Metaverse is also a somewhat vague idea adopted by prominent figures in technology. Thus, its meaning is still changing, although in all iterations the general idea is to unite the Internet into a common virtual space in which we can live at least part of our lives.
Where Did the Term “Metaverse†Come From?
Like many technological terms, the “metaverse” was first coined by noted science fiction writer Neil Stevenson in his novel Snow Crash. The Snow Crash metaverse appears to users as an urban environment. This is a road 100 meters wide, covering the entire faceless virtual planet. That’s over 40,000 miles of virtual road!
Users can buy real estate in the metaverse and then develop their virtual buildings. Users can appear as avatars of any shape, except for size restrictions. People are connecting to the metaverse from VR terminals in their homes. Some users never leave the metaverse and carry portable virtual reality equipment with them at all times.
One of the most striking on-screen depictions of the metaverse is Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One. Based on the novel of the same name by author Ernest Kline, the characters spend most of their time in OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation).
OASIS is a rich and complex virtual world that brings everything together. Users move freely from one place to another, as if everything is part of a single reality. OASIS is notable for both a shared virtual world and a multiplayer video game with a shared score and goals.
Metaverse-like virtual worlds are the backbone of cyberpunk fiction. In the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (based on the tabletop RPG franchise), “web runners” experience the online world as a physical space.
Even The Matrix from the 1999 film of the same name starring Keanu Reeves as Neo is essentially a metaverse. The difference is that the people in the simulation don’t know it’s a simulation.
After all, the concept of the metaverse predates the term itself, and the people who run the big tech companies today grew up with the idea of ​​the metaverse as an important part of science fiction.
The Metaverse We Already Have
Depending on how important you consider certain aspects of the metaverse concepts, we have already encountered the metaverse in various forms over the years. Text-based multiplayer dungeons (MUDs), which originated in Colossal Cave Adventure in 1975, can be considered the forerunner of the metaverse.
MUDs are at least a definite precursor to modern MMORPGs like Everquest or World of Warcraft. These are sustainable networked worlds where users can live a different life. So the spirit of the metaverse is there, despite the fact that MMORPGs are central to one provider.
Today, we have games and apps that give us a closer look at the metaverse, at least in part.
Video games
We’ve already mentioned online games like World of Warcraft as examples of a metaverse-like experience, but some games are more direct about it. The hyper-popular game Fortnite Battle Royale has already begun to outgrow its roots. The game is the result of Epic Games’ attempt to create a GaaS (games as a service) game and it was a huge success.
Fortnite is more than an online game. This’. It’s a cultural phenomenon and a place where people just hang out. Epic has begun to connect with other franchises and brands in Fortnite, which is very reminiscent of Reader Player One.
The game began hosting major events, including several successful virtual concerts with big-name artists.
Fortnite is now officially adding “Party Worlds“. They are “designed as places for players to hang out, play fun mini-games, and make new friends.” Only time will tell if this turns Fortnite into a true metaverse, but given how it’s evolved over the years, it might stand the best chance.
That’s not to say that other popular games aren’t trying to get in on the action. Roblox may have the best pedigree as a metaverse as it allows users to create their own worlds and experiences.
Virtual Reality Social Platforms
Second Life is undoubtedly the most prominent example of a real-life metaverse. In Second Life, you can buy real estate and virtual items to place in your virtual home or business. People walk around like their avatars and play, explore, flirt and generally do pretty much the same things as they do in real life.
Second Life was launched back in 2003, and while not as popular today as it once was, it has retained a loyal following. With the VR revolution, there were plans to bring Second Life into the VR era with a spin-off, but the idea was abandoned. At the time, we didn’t yet have affordable yet powerful VR headsets like the Quest 2, so VR penetration was low. Now that people are buying more of them, it’s easier to justify the resource investment.
According to Second Life co-founder Philip Rosedale, the “iPhone moment†for VR headsets may not be far off. However, with renewed interest in the metaverse idea, Rosedale is working to develop Second Life for the future.
In the meantime, we have VR-focused social platforms like VRChat that bypass the VR requirement by making VR optional. You can access the platform in “desktop mode” using the normal screen. This looks like a user from Snow Crash who used cheaper terminals. They could still participate, but to a limited extent.
Facebook’s Vision of the Metaverse
When Facebook bought virtual reality giant Oculus, the company already had a clear idea of ​​why they wanted to invest in virtual reality. While social media has brought significant success to the company, the market has become competitive. Facebook has also begun to see a shrinking user base and the loss of teenage users.
The company has decided to rename itself “Meta”, another strong nod to its plans for the metaverse. Mark Zuckerberg said that the company now plans to build a metaverse connecting various systems and products for a single digital world. The success of the Oculus Quest means it could have a solid user base to lure into this metaverse, although they have dropped Facebook’s requirement for Quest users.
While Facebook’s metaverse plans are still in their early stages, there’s already a Horizon Worlds app for Oculus Rift S or Quest 2 users. Formerly known as Facebook Horizons, it’s actually a metaverse platform with perhaps a more pronounced gaming focus. Facebook has experimented with apps like Oculus Rooms, Oculus Venues, and Facebook spaces. Some of these could be accessed through the discontinued Oculus Go. Horizons is an interactive motion-capture world created from user-generated content.
While Horizon Worlds is a place to socialize and play, Horizon Workrooms also offers virtual meeting rooms and integration with video calling technology. Given the pandemic-driven work-from-home trend, it seems clear that apps like Workrooms will compete directly with apps like Skype and Zoom.
Microsoft’s Vision of the Metaverse
Microsoft is another major player in the metaverse that cannot be left out. Thanks to technologies such as Microsoft Hololens and Windows Mixed Reality headsets, they have already established themselves at the technology level. Not to mention their vast resources and knowledge of the Azure data center. Microsoft also has experience in developing games from the history of the PC and, of course, the Xbox consoles. However, VR is strangely missing from Xbox despite Sony’s latest two PlayStations having VR options.
Microsoft has announced Metaverse plans for its major video game franchises such as Minecraft and Halo. The company has been remarkably open about how it sees the metaverse. At the end of 2021, they published a video on YouTube titled “What is the Microsoft Metaverse?”
This video lays it all out, Microsoft is just saying that they see the metaverse as a digital place where people meet, play and work. It is “the internet you can interact with”. Microsoft emphasizes that its goal is to create avatar systems that will allow you to fully embody humanity in the metaverse. Some early examples of this include projecting Microsoft Teams members into a virtual classroom.
Microsoft also believes that technologies such as real-time translation are essential to help people in the metaverse work, communicate, and play together. As our physical distance from each other becomes irrelevant in the metaverse, it goes without saying that other barriers, such as language, will now come into play.
Mixed Reality Is the Key to the Metaverse
We are still beginning to develop the technology and software that will make the metaverse possible. While VR technology has taken a big leap since the commercial release of the Oculus Rift in 2016, VR systems are not the best way to integrate the Metaverse into our lives.
Mixed reality is the true technology of the metaverse. Here you can move on a spectrum from full virtual reality to augmented reality, where the virtual environment and the physical world blend seamlessly. This means we need wearable equipment that is small and light enough to wear for hours a day or even all the time. Think of something the physical size of Google Glass but more advanced than Quest 2 or Hololens 2.
Most classic metaverse concepts tend to look like virtual reality. However, it is becoming clear that mixed reality offers the flexibility needed to seamlessly switch between the physical world and the metaverse, or live in a hybrid space in between. Future headsets will be much lighter so that they can be worn all day, and in the long run, technology that allows you to immerse yourself in virtual spaces may well become implantable.
Metaverse Network Infrastructure
For the metaverse as envisioned here to work, you need to move massive amounts of data across local and wide area networks. These networks must be reliable and have very low latency. After all, being in the metaverse means interacting with other people in the virtual world in real time. A second or two delays in a Skype call is already bad, but imagine people in your immersive virtual world out of sync with you for a few seconds!
We don’t yet have the network infrastructure to make a global true metaverse possible. Millimeter wave 5G mesh technology is probably the closest we have. However, this technology is only available in a select few places and it will be many years before it becomes commonplace.
5G mesh networks are designed to serve both bandwidth intensive applications and those requiring low latency feedback. For example, imagine a fleet of delivery drones flying around the city. Using the 5G mesh, all of these drones can be controlled remotely in real time. This aspect of 5G networks also makes them ideal for the Internet of Things, where millions of devices are connected to the Internet and exchange data.
In the embodied metaverses, networks will have to transmit not only audio and video data, but also movement, spatial mapping, and much more.
Web3 and the Metaverse
Another new buzzword added to the hype around the metaverse in the form of “Web3”. This is not Web 3.0, which you may have heard about, but a description of a new Internet architecture built on top of decentralized systems. Instead of huge centralized data centers, the Internet is distributed among nodes throughout the network. You can combine the computing power and storage of all computers to do all the work required to provide online services.
NFTs (non-fungible tokens), cryptocurrencies, blockchain, smart contracts and dApps (decentralized applications) are all examples of Web3 technology. While people like Mark Zuckerberg see the metaverse as the unification of the centralized online resources of all the tech giants, it may turn out that the real metaverse will exist in the form of distributed Web3 simulations. At the very least, cryptocurrency can become the working currency of the virtual world of the metaverse.
The Metaverse Could be a Utopia or Dystopia
There are many concerns about what the true metaverse could mean for individuals and society. This may not come as a surprise as other technologies such as social media or robotic automation are also of concern. Of course, it’s good to be wary of new technologies, and many of the questions raised are of real value.
For example, what if people started to prefer relationships with AI or virtual agents in the metaverse? Are there opportunities for new types of cyberbullying or scams? Will people become even more sedentary than today’s technology?
On the utopian side of the fence, the metaverse can be a mind-expanding place where people can live in a form of reality that is friendlier than the real world, with the physical body safe in the physical world. As with current virtual reality, many metaverse implementations will involve physical movement of your body. So, perhaps, the problem of a sedentary lifestyle can be solved.
When it comes to social change, it is always difficult to predict what effect technology will have. For better or worse, our society has already adapted to the world of social media and smart devices everywhere. In the long term, brain implant technology such as the experimental Neuralink may also increase certain types of psychological and even physical risk, but only time will tell.
Delving Deeper Into the Metaverse
Whichever vision of the metaverse gets closer to the metaverse we’re actually getting, you can expect to hear more and more about that idea as key technologies develop. When a company like Apple finally releases its augmented reality hearing headset, and the upcoming Oculus Quest becomes so cheap that everyone can afford it, there will be many competitors from the metaverse vying for your attention.
If you want to delve into the technical, social, and business aspects of the Metaverse, we recommend reading the nine-part Metaverse Primer by Matthew Ball. This is a great resource to help you understand the key concepts and scope of the metaverse without the need for a degree.
What Is the Metaverse and Why Should You Care?
What Is the Metaverse and Why Should You Care?