Wednesday, 1 December, 2021 UTC
Summary
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash
After having written about Knowledge Graphs, Decentralization, and the Semantic Web in one of my last articles, it is time to dedicate myself to the Metaverse. Through the master course Content Strategy at the FH Joanneum and the course on Web 3.0 by Teodora Petkova, my interest in this topic was aroused.
Recently, several news headlines about the name change of the tech giant Facebook to Meta have been circulating through the media all over the world. Within this announcement, Mark Zuckerberg also described plans for the so-called “Metaverse”.
Read about what that will look like, who builds it, and how it works in this article!
https://medium.com/media/0bf0f1ac3b0a7926640e06260b89b623/hrefWhat is the Metaverse?
Shopping, meeting friends, experiencing live concerts, going to university, collaborating with colleagues in the office building, and relaxing on a tropical Caribbean beach — all without leaving the house. No, we’re not trapped in a sci-fi movie — even if it sounds like it. With advances in the metaverse, this could soon be exactly what happens.
“Metaverse is an embodied Internet where you don’t just look at content, you’re inside it and experience it directly via virtual reality” — Mark Zuckerberg
The Metaverse brings the real world together with augmented reality and virtual reality in a digital space and ultimately, should be accessible via mobile, computer, and VR glasses.
Photo by Patrick Schneider on UnsplashVirtual reality, as the name suggests, allows users to immerse themselves in an artificially created world that appears real.
At the moment, VR is often only associated with gaming, but it is much more than that. The focus is and will be on people and their interactions.
Augmented reality is the extension of our perception of reality with the help of technology.
AR brings digital content and information into the real world. For example, people are able to try on clothes digitally or take guitar lessons in a shared 3D space, without leaving their apartment. The use cases seem sheer endless.
The “virtual reality world” that is made out of VR & AR should be a place of social interactions. People will be represented by avatars and can play, create things, discover, and gamble together.
Mark Zuckerberg creating his avatar.Zuckerberg describes the Metaverse as “the next chapter of social connection” and wants to transform social networks from 2D spaces to 3D worlds.
Through Facebook’s virtual reality platform ‘Horizon’ the old newsfeed as we know it is mapped through different spaces around different interests and topics. Worlds are created, people collaborate with others, events are held, digital meetings are organized — just with avatars instead of real people.
https://medium.com/media/903adece57bd545f6ba74bcd7faae088/hrefThrough Facebook’s virtual reality platform ‘Horizon’ the old newsfeed as we know it is mapped through different spaces around different interests and topics. Worlds are created, people collaborate with others, events are held, digital meetings are organized — just with avatars instead of real people.
All these virtual 3D worlds are supposed to be interoperable, allowing users to jump from one world to another. Users can create content and worlds that other users can also use.
Trending AR VR Articles:
1. How VR could bring transhumanism to the masses
2. How Augmented Reality (AR) is Reshaping the Food Service Industry
3. ExpiCulture — Developing an Original World-Traveling VR Experience
4. Enterprise AR: 7 real-world use cases for 2021
Who builds the Metaverse?
Facebook is not the only entity involved in the metaverse. Rather, it’s about a shared space within digital worlds that is created and built upon by many different entities.
Zuckerberg describes it as decentralized, but many critics see it quite differently. Facebook itself has also been heavily criticized since the beginning and is generally considered controversial. However, I would like to go into this debate in one of my next blog articles, as otherwise, it would go beyond the scope of this article.
Large companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Valve, Epic Games, Roblox as well as smaller startups are working on creating products for the Metaverse as we speak.
If you are further interested in the main players of this process, I suggest you have a look at these articles:
- Who's building the metaverse?
- The Metaverse is already here: 5 companies building our virtual reality future
How does that even work?
There are many factors at play here: Technologies like the Unreal Engine, which makes it possible to project real-time graphics onto LED screens, cameras that are up to the task, and platforms that bring all this to the user. Those mentioned engines are real-time 3D creation tools, which are also used to create video games and graphic effects. In recent years, however, game engines have evolved many times over and are capable of much more.
Here is an example of how the legendary car brand Ferrari uses the Unreal Engine from Epic Games to implement one of their sports cars 1:1 in the game Fortnite.
https://medium.com/media/e64e0dea26c3c26fe10f7b7f07cf479a/hrefIs the technology even being used yet?
This technology is still in its infancy, but the potential is huge. According to a survey by emarketer.com, nearly 85 million people in the U.S. alone are expected to use virtual reality or augmented reality at least once a month in 2021. The numbers are increasing every year and virtual reality, as well as augmented reality, is becoming more and more popular and beginner-friendly.
85 million people in the US are using VR or AR at least once per month in 2021.Right now, the metaverse is both seen by experts as the great future of social interaction and also viewed very critically. In my next articles, I’d like to jump into the roles of proponents and opponents, respectively, and highlight advantages as well as disadvantages. Stay tuned!
Additional resources:
- Mark Zuckerberg is betting Facebook's future on the metaverse
- Apparently, it's the next big thing. What is the metaverse?
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https://medium.com/media/1e1f2ee7654748bb938735cbca6f0fd3/hrefScience Fiction or reality? What is the metaverse? was originally published in AR/VR Journey: Augmented & Virtual Reality Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.