An introduction to Metaverse

If you are not able to explain it simply, you haven’t understood a problem

“The Metaverse is a massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users with an individual sense of presence, and with continuity of data, such as identity, history, entitlements, objects, communications, and payments.” - Matthew Ball

Feels a little difficult to understand? Let me put this in a simple way as if you are reading a story.

Imagine as if you are looking through a window, you see buildings, roads, cars, tree branches move due to the breeze, birds making some sounds as they fly, a bright sunny day which enlightens some objects and casts a shadow on few due to the angle of light. You see some people walking on the road and some inside coffee shops enjoying their favourite coffee. You see people carrying shopping bags as they come out of the stores.

Not only what other people you see are doing like walking, shopping, having coffee, going to the mall, watching their favourite movie in nearby multiplexes, meeting people, etc. you can do as well if you just come out of your home/office.

Excuse me! The window you are watching through is actually an XR headset (like?Oculus,?Hololens,?Magic leap, etc.), and the world you are looking at and immersing yourself in is real-time rendered virtual 3D worlds. The people you see roaming around are real humans represented by their 3D rendered avatars kinda memoji.

But the question is why do we humans want a virtual world? or meet people virtually, shop virtually, watch movies in virtual multiplexes, buy virtual real-estate, build virtual recreational spaces, play games, get training, etc.?

Yeah, I got you, very valid questions but do you remember we were locked down for months and some cities are locking down again right now due to the lethal pandemic spread of COVID-19?

We missed going out, going to offices, meeting our colleagues and friends, enjoying shopping, watching movies, attending parties and live concerts, visiting the Doctor, going to our religious places, going to schools and colleges, driving cars, and travelling via metros. In other words, life got confined to four walls of our homes and we had nothing much to do. And the outcomes were frustrations, stress, anger, broken relationships, fatigue, and what not!

I imagine what if we had Metaverse at that time, our abilities and experiences would have been different. I’m not saying that Metaverse is the solution to our lockdown problems only but it is really beyond that, it is just to make things easy for you. I know you ask how? Let me walk you through some real Metaverse possibilities and use cases.

Consider, Metaverse is already a massively scaled and interoperable network of 3D virtual worlds and we can immerse ourselves within just by wearing light-weight eyeglasses.

1. Imagine you are sitting at your home office desk and you find a meeting invite on your calendar to meet your team on Metaverse. Since you’re already wearing your XR glasses that also have prescription lenses, you join the meeting. You find yourself in a virtual meeting room including almost all the amenities that you expect an office meeting room to have. You find your team members walking and taking their seats and greeting each other. The movements, the sounds, the ambiance is in harmony that you don’t feel you are in a virtual meeting. No more getting stuck in traffic, no more long-haul business trips, no exposure to viruses when you can do it in Metaverse.?
2. Imagine there’s a product demo meeting in an hour expected to be attended by a larger group of the product team in a nearby virtual hotel but before that you feel like your virtual avatar should get a new outfit! With Metaverse, you can visit a virtual fashion store, go across aisles, select a few dresses to virtually try on your avatar. For example, you really like a black t-shirt and jeans and it goes well with your avatar making you look smart in the virtual world. When it comes to payment, you buy your dress by paying through your crypto-wallet. In the virtual world, you can walk into a Nike store, search through the latest shoes, select one, do some customization to fit your taste, and buy them. Remember you are paying through your crypto-wallet! Now you are all set to attend the demo meeting.
3. You walk into the hotel meeting hall and meet your colleagues. They notice your outfit and shoes and share good feedback. It surely is going to give your mood a good boost before the important meeting begins! Suppose, the product demo has started and the industrial design team is demonstrating a life-size prototype of a product to the attendees. You all could experience it as if it is just physically in front of you and due to this immersive experience resulting in a better understanding of the product, the industrial design team gets meaningful feedback and decides to do one more iteration of the prototype. The virtual hotel where you attended the meeting is built on virtual land and bought virtually by a builder through a crypto-wallet. Even your office could book this virtual hotel space through a crypto-wallet.
4. Recently you bought a German-made smart physical coffee maker but unfortunately, the instructions manual is in German language that you don’t understand. You switched to Metaverse and by voice commands asked how to use this coffee maker. The virtual instructor appeared from the same manufacturer and asked you to select your language. The instructor also brought a life-size coffee maker in front of you to demonstrate the working of the machine.
5. In another scenario, you have an appointment with your doctor today on Metaverse. You enter the doctor’s room and you are greeted by your doctor who is also joining through Metaverse. You are already using a smartphone and watch tracking your daily health data and your physical exercise activity. The doctor asks for your permission to access your health data from your smart devices and you agree to share. He now has the access to your current heart rate, oxygen concentration, blood pressure, sleeping, ECG, and physical exercise patterns etc. In the virtual world, you can get your health examined, pay the doctor’s fee, and order medicine using your crypto-wallet.

Similarly, on Metaverse you can play multiplayer games and visit the gym, recreational places, amusement parks, zoo, national library, museums, cities across the oceans, and take a roller coaster ride, learn how to fly an airplane, participate in hackathons, attend product launches, visit your favourite NGO, participate in wood-working or plumbing classes, and more. All of this can be realized the way it is in the physical world but in Metaverse you don’t need permissions and visas.

Earlier you bought a dress and Nike shoes to attend a meeting and did tons of customizations to these as you desired. The virtual world enables you to print your favourite art on your t-shirt or shoes and even give it to your favourite NGOs or to your friend because these are nothing but NFTs.

Civil architects could design our spaces with their wild thinking inside their heads but it was not possible in the physical world due to compliances, regulations, laws, public opinion, and materials. However, this is now possible in Metaverse. To some extent, architects are able to get through some phases of Metaverse already like providing virtual 3D tours to their clients before actually building it.

In future, you can buy haptic dresses like haptic gloves to experience the feel of touch and hug. We will see ourselves and other humans rendered as photo-realistic 3D avatars having fun in Metaverse.

Tourism(leisure/religious) got greatly affected by the pandemic and incurred heavy losses on their businesses but we could see people go on trips on Metaverse.

As per?Alan Smithson’s manifesto, the fundamental technologies of Metaverse would be:

• XR (Extended Reality)= 3D, Avatars, Communication, VR/AR/MR, Volumetric Capture, Haptics, Scent, Spatial Audio, Game Engines.
• AI (Artificial Intelligence)= Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Simultaneous Location And Mapping (SLAM), Automated Content Creation, Suggestion Algorithms.
• Blockchain?= Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s), Cryptocurrency (BTC, HBAR, ETH), Smart Contracts (ETH, HBAR,?, Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s), Digital Land, Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

What I dream about is that the Metaverse enables a visually-impaired person to witness the photo-realistic virtual world that he/she is not able to see in the physical world. It can also assist specially-abled people to do everything that they are not able to do in the physical world.

Further Reading:

Metaverse presentation by Meta — https://youtu.be/afdnbXXbBTg

Metaverse primer by Matthew Ball — https://www.matthewball.vc/the-metaverse-primer