It's been a brilliant year for the Industrial Metaverse...

For the April edition of XRToday’s ‘The Big News Show’, Demond Cureton asked us to reflect on the state of the #Metaverse. And my answer was ...

”It's been a brilliant 12 months, especially for the #IndustrialMetaverse”

Now before ye all shout out, 'But the metaverse is dead...”, let me explain.

It is correct to say that the Metaverse has not met the expectations many folks have had for it. If one bought in to all the hype from 12-18 months ago, then we should be living in ‘Ready Player One’ by now. Thankfully, we are not.

My point being, us 'humans' don't seem to learn. We are continuously over-estimating the impact of any new technology in the short term and underestimating it in the longer term. As I said 18 months ago, most of the short term expectations re the ‘Metaverse’ were off in “La La Land”... but IMO, the longer term expectations are still on track.

(And on the bright side, many of the ‘experts’ who overed hyped everything and have now been telling us that the “Metaverse is dead”, they have found a new bandwagon to jump on to, #GenerativeAI ??)

Look, don’t get me wrong. A lot of the hype around the Metaverse in the past 18 months was way, way over the top. It’s resulted in a huge deep ‘trough of disillusionment’ and this has consequences. Especially on many companies and colleagues out there, where investment has been lost, job losses across the industry continue, and start-ups have gone to the wall. It’s not been pretty.

So for the 'consumer' Metaverse, it’s been a very tough year. But when you look at what's going on re the Industrial Metaverse, well that's a very different story.

I’d go so far as to say that the short term Industrial Metaverse expectations I had 18 months ago have easily been exceeded.

So a few points for you to mull over;

Digitalization of Industry is not slowing down, with ‘Digital Twins’ leading the way.

The digitalization of industry, Industry 4.0, is accelerating with all sorts of advancements in tech. The convergence of 5G, edge computing, artificial intelligence (AI), improved Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) capabilities, better CPU’s/GPU’s/DPU’s and better interoperability breaking down ‘data silos’ is simply accelerating this digitalization. And it’s not just about technology for technology sake. All of this enables unprecedented levels of connectivity, data processing, and automation, all paving the way for innovative applications and driving more and more optimization.

And ‘Digital Twins’ are leading the way. Again some will say the Digital Twin is not new. Agreed. But that’s like saying computers are not new. They are not. But the capabilities of the Compaq PC’s I was off evangelizing about in the late 1990’s are very ‘different’ to the capabilities a 2023 computer provides today.

My point being, there are some excellent Digital Twin’s out there already. What’s different is the every expanding capabilities we’re adding, merging different digital twins, adding more physics based simulation, more interoperability, more real-time date ... This is a whole new generation of Digital Twin tech.

Just look at what was on show at Hannover Messe a few weeks back. The ‘Industrial Metaverse’ was a hot topic for Siemens, NVIDIA, BMW, Schneider Electric/AVEVA, Microsoft, Bosch, Dassault Systemes, Nokia, to name but a few... and ‘almost’ everyone had a ‘digital twin’ of something...

(I'll add some links via comments below ?? to some of the relevant #HM23 #IndustrialMetaverse announcements )

The Industrial Metaverse is a Strategic Imperative.

When you have the German Government, multiple international companies and the likes of BitKom all calling out that the implications of the Industrial Metaverse have to be considered as a strategic imperative for companies, for countries ... then there must be more to all this that simply hype and marketing.

The Metaverse enabling technologies allow us to build more immersive, real-time, interactive, and persistent Digital Twins of machines, factories, workflows, of complete supply chains. Whether you agree to call this the 'Industrial Metaverse' or Industry 4.98 is not the point. All of this is simply the next phase of digitalization and it is NOT going away.

And companies are not investing in this today just because it's cool tech. I have yet to meet a person or a company who is investing in all this so they can get to the ‘Industrial Metaverse'. They are doing it to be more resilient. And in today’s world, that's THE strategic imperative.

Barrier’s to Entry are coming down

Whether you are start-up, a scale-up, an SME or an Industry power house; designing, building, operating, maintaining, optimizing, and decommissioning factories or infrastructure is hard.

Knowledge and competence has been built up over decades, workflows and work practices have evolved. The laws of physics have not changed ... What has changed are the capabilities that ‘tools’ provide, and by tools I mean the range of Industrial S/W ‘tools’ from the likes of Dassault Systems, Bentley Systems, ABB, Siemens, NVIDIA, Schneider Electric / AVEVA, AutoDesk, Bosch etc etc.

However I personally often here from start-up’s or SME’s that;

“ .. it’s fine for the big manufacturing or Energy companies, they can ‘afford’ to get access to all the latest and greatest ‘tools’ from such tool suppliers, us small folks can’t as we don’t have the budget or the internal IT folks...”

This is changing. With almost ALL the Industrial S/W vendors now providing access to their tools and capabilities via a cloud / SaaS model, the ‘barrier to entry’ for many is getting lower and lower. Look at what you can now get from all the usual Industrial companies AND the likes of 3DS Experience, NVIDIA Omniverse, Unity Industry, EPIC’s TwinMotion ... This is opening up all sorts of capabilities and opportunities to folks who never had access to such tools before.

New Skills are coming into the Work Force

The demand for skills such as 3D modeling, physics modeling, and building photorealistic virtual worlds is and will continue to rise. Now some folks who have been working in engineering, manufacturing, construction etc will have such skills already, but not everyone does.

We need WAY more people to have such skills. So don't dismiss the potential impact of the younger generations, who are growing up creating their own virtual experiences via platforms like Minecraft, EPIC’s Fortnite Editor, Blender, Unity, Decentraland, Roblox Studio etc.

The influx of fresh talent who will have expertise in such 3D model creation, spatial awareness, and physics simulation really is a new phenomenon that bodes well for the future workforce. we need.

These folks will have a natural aptitude for immersive simulations and will likely introduce innovative new perspectives and ideas to industries across the board.

Now this does NOT mean that all our existing workflows will be thrown out the window and we all have to start again. This is about complementing the industry knowledge we have today with new skills and capabilities. This is a good thing.

Now two last thoughts’ for ye. All of the above does not take into consideration two other key drivers as to why it’s been a brilliant year for the Industrial Metaverse, and why 2023+ will be even better...

• The impact of GenerativeAI, further lowering the ‘barrier to entry’ for many.
• The need to accelerate the buildout of new Energy Transition infrastructure.

But there are topics for another day.

So, I really am convinced it's been a brilliant 12 months for the Industrial Metaverse.

Let me know if you agree or disagree ... ??

Anyway, buckle up. We’re just getting started.

Kev.

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P.S. For those of ye that know me, many would say I have my own unique 'style' of writing, with my Irish/English turn of phrase. So for transparency, all of the ideas and thoughts are mine, I wrote the entire draft and then I asked ChatGPT to 'clean up' 2 of the paragraphs above, the input being my 'wording' and I asked it to come back with the same number of words. And I then edited some of what it gave me as I felt if did not have my 'turn of phrase'.

So a question to ye? Did ye notice, do you care... Thoughts?