Back to reality: getting over metaverse hype

When I told my 14-year old I was going to Austin to speak about metaverse, he said, "No. Don't." He needn't worry. My talk for the Industry IoT Consortium? / Digital Twin Consortium? Member Meeting last week was "Back to reality: getting over metaverse hype". I was focused on the exciting, current state of XR (AR, MR, VR) reality technologies and all of their possibilities. And, I presented a new model, the "digital scrim", which puts users at the center of the discussion.

Right now, I'm not inclined to speak directly and earnestly about the metaverse. (Or should I say "metaverses?") For one, too many think of metaverse as something far off in the future. But social VR provides plenty of metaverse benefits today on platforms like VRChat, AltspaceVR, Meta Horizon Worlds, and others.

Even on the completely immersive side of XR, social VR metaverse stuff is only one part of the story. For years, VR based training has proven its value for industry. Meanwhile, consumers work their hearts with Beat Saber and calm their minds with meditation apps like Healium. VR headsets are starting to show promise for creating idealized workspaces, complete with physical keyboards and multiple virtual monitors. If your work includes 3D modeling, VR is a natural fit. And there are plenty of niche use cases, like long haul in-flight entertainment.

Looking back at Milgram and Kishino's virtuality continuum from their 1994 paper, "A taxonomy of mixed reality visual displays" , these fully immersive applications are just one part of the story. A small part. Years prior to the October 2021 Meta announcement, some analysts saw a market where commercial and industrial AR applications would be dominant, while all of consumer VR, including gaming and socializing, would be a smaller piece of the pie.

Meta, the originator of the current metaverse buzz, seems to agree with Apple's Tim Cook about the importance of AR. In a recent UploadVR.com article, "Most Meta AR/VR Spending is Building AR Glasses, Horizon Less Than 10%" , David Heaney noted that Meta is putting much resource towards an AR headset. Meanwhile, Meta Horizons, their most specifically metaverse-y pursuit, is only seeing 10% of their overall XR budget.

Of course, AR headsets are becoming more immersive all the time. Magic Leap 2 has global and segmented dimming. And with video pass-through, VR headsets are becoming more AR. On Twitter, @bmfshow was able to run an errand in the physical world while wearing the Meta Quest Pro out in public.

But though the industry may be getting closer to one headset spanning all of mixed reality, the use cases across the continuum are very different. Bolting on all the AR use cases to the social and immersive metaverse paradigm wouldn't be easy. I used to face a similar dilemma with "Immersive Analytics," an IEEE initiative I embraced in 2016 for a couple of years. While it's a natural fit for data astronauts flying around networks of real-time data in VR, it's hard to include IdealBoard use cases for technicians that need small amounts of exactly the right info at the right time for their current task of fixing machines right in front of them. Both are XR, both need analytics, both types of users are immersed in something, but only one leaps easily to mind when you say "immersive" and "metaverse."

The virtual worlds of the metaverse are just one type of object that the XR reality tech industry can make. Digital twins are another. But these are objects. We would benefit from focusing on the subjects. Us. Users.

The reality industry is drowning in cool demos and far off concepts, without solid backing use cases. It's so bad it's cliché. Execs can depend on that cliché when making XR decisions for entire organizations without ever donning XR headsets. Or learning the reality of reality tech. Innovator's Dilemma.

We need to look at reality tech as something that surrounds the user, and helps them - in this world and any virtual world they desire.

The next diagram brings the focus to the user. XR gives them digital scrims - one you can wear on your head, and another you hold in your hand. Lacking a single device that covers all of mixed reality, you can switch out AR and VR scrims like regular prescription glasses and prescription sunglasses. The scrims can be layered - you can look at your smartphone while you are wearing an AR headset. VR can be augmented.

If you are just standing on the street looking up text directions on your phone, that fits in here as assisted reality. The handheld scrim has knowledge of world. If the app overlays some arrows on the view of the street, then it is reflecting knowledge of world and gets upgraded to mixed reality. There are some edge cases - like looking at a virtual world on your phone of a distant factory while standing in a similar factory, making comparisons - that force consideration of the bounds of reality in the context of reality's digital transformation.

The mobile and user-centered scrims are just one part of the story. Reality is improving beyond XR. The other dimension is simple physical reality digitalization -- any time digitalization is happening via stationary displays in physical reality. Digital road signs. All of those monitors on desks, rendering virtual worlds for games. 3D billboards. Spatial AR, projecting of digital light on to surfaces. Or spreadsheets, if that's your reality.

In the overlap, some displays can be user-centered but without being worn or toted. They can enhance a worker's reality using in camera effects like in Charlie Chaplin's roller skating scene from "Modern Times".

Chaplin was never at risk of falling of that edge, because there was no edge. The camera was stationary , and in front of it was a frame hanging a painting of the floors below. In reality, the floor spanned the open space behind him.

What looks like a dangerous stunt wasn't. Like the camera for this scene, workers are often stationary. A transparent OLED screen can be fitted in to their workspace that affords AR benefits without requiring AR headsets, while keeping them heads-up and hands-free, unlike smartphone AR. It can be on wheels so it can move with them - not as mobile as phones or headsets, but not stationary either.

XR gives us so much opportunity today. And, overall, all the metaverse talk has been positive. And adding social capability to VR is usually at least a "nice to have".

Revisiting the example VR apps from before, social functionality would be nice for most all of them. For training in a digital twin, it would be nice to have an instructor in the training reality with you. A meditation app could benefit from having an expert come in and guide you. Metaversing on long flights in coach - maybe not so much. Especially considering bandwidth consumption. But at the front of the plane, it might make more sense.

Social VR brings platform advantages, too. You don't have to figure out navigation. Wonderful, because if you get it wrong you make people sick. Users don't have to download and maintain the app - same advantage web apps have. And the platform can give you some foot traffic. In my VR pursuits, like metaversing the Stillhouse Compute 5G Appalachian hollow, my default is to do social VR.

For Stillhouse Compute's first phase, the main point is presence. Making you feel what its like to be in a high-energy environment at the base of steep forested slopes. Photos don't tell steep stories very well. Nor do videos. VR is the way to express such a very 3D environment. And why not enjoy it with friends in social VR?

I can call the Stillhouse Compute effort a metaverse project for the keyword searches. But really, it will be a digital twin that uses social VR for part of its user interface. If the platform I choose re-brands as a metaverse platform, then it will be on the metaverse. Or maybe on the enterprise metaverse. On "a" metaverse? Maybe a multi-metaverse deployment strategy? Something something metaverse.

Digital twins can be done today. Same with social VR. The metaverse? Maybe it is what everyone will call that future in the future. If "The Metaverse is the Internet," as the seven rules of the metaverse says , then maybe one day the words will be interchangeable. (But then why do we need two words?) Or it could be like Information Superhighway - a much discussed idea that dropped out of dialog, even though that talk predicted a lot what happened years and decades later.

But for now, we needn't postpone the dream of more intelligent realities to the far off future. XR gives us plenty to get started with right now. And social XR (yes, social AR is a thing) gives developers a great place to start. Today.

#xr #ar #mr #vr #digitaltwin #metaverse #socialvr #spatialcomputing #analytics