What is the Metaverse and why should we in the digital infrastructure industry care?

Over the past few months, it has been nigh impossible to escape talk about the metaverse. However, many of us are none the wiser about what the metaverse actually is (or rather, what it is likely to become) despite being bombarded with ads, articles, and interviews covering the very topic. Why’s that, you might ask. In my opinion, the core reason is that, at the moment, the question of what the metaverse will eventually look like and who will run it has not yet been answered. This means that almost every industry player (mostly on the application side) is campaigning for their own vision of the metaverse and trying to explain why their version of it will become THE metaverse.

However, I am convinced that the Metaverse, as the immersive Internet of the future, cannot be dominated by one single organization. In my opinion, the Internet of the future will be a virtual universe, an immersive simulation enabled by AI, VR, AR, and all manner of innovations in the realm of sensory perception, remote control, and real-time virtual experience. This digital world of the future promises a wealth of opportunities to do business, be entertained, be cared for and educated, and be connected with one another in an unimaginably vibrant and tactile form of cyberspace. This concept of the immersive Internet can only exist as a collaborative ecosystem.

If it’s all still in flux – one might ask – why should we care? The Internet, the largest infrastructure project in human history, has never been stagnant. New services have been created on top of it, it has adopted new standards, and as of today the Internet transcends all areas of business and personal life. And that is why it is vitally important to keep an eye on the future of the Internet and the Internet of the future, especially as it still is in formation.

In terms of business cases in the immersive Internet, the marketing and customization of luxury goods and lifestyle through VR and digital twinning will blaze the trail. Luxury brands already offer digital twins of their products in select virtual ecosystems or as unique, transferrable NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens), so extending this experience to a full-blown metaverse presence is no big step. The next industries to make this step will be entertainment, gaming, and the arts – these were also amongst the first sectors to offer consumer-facing VR (and to some extent AR) experiences in the past. At the same time, there are new services being tested that try to elevate the virtual collaboration experience by moving it into the immersive virtual world of the metaverse. The mass-product industry will follow shortly behind, enabling the mainstream audience to access these experiences. In the future, we will be trying on clothes virtually, feeling the textures of fabric; experiencing and customizing the interior of the new mid-priced car before purchase; even smelling a perfume through a virtual ad. Research is well underway into future generations of VR to simulate the full range of human perception.

Once in productive use, new VR generations and all the applications built upon them will lead to a massive increase in user expectations. Current digital applications may still offer an acceptable user experience with a latency somewhat shorter than the blink of an eye (100 milliseconds), but a great user experience requires more like a maximum of 35 milliseconds latency. With every innovation in virtual perception – tactile, visual, aural – the latency-sensitivity of applications increases. Because human perception itself is so incredibly fast:

·???????It takes the human brain as little as 20 milliseconds to perceive tactile information.

·???????The brain needs 13 milliseconds to process visual cues.

·???????To perceive auditory delays, it needs less than a single millisecond.

This means, creating a believable, authentic immersive environment will require replicating the fastest of these speeds, so that reactions and interactions in the metaverse can feel natural. This means applications need to perform seamlessly, efficiently, and very, very fast – even faster than our own brain – and do so everywhere. Having achieved this kind of technological breakthrough, as yet undreamed-of applications will become possible.

How we can achieve these speeds and latencies and what technologies will enable the immersive Internet of the future is something I will discuss in my next article.

Happy to have a chat about optimizing latency to make your business ready for the upcoming immersive Internet. Just get in touch!