What:  The metaverse allows people to immerse themselves in any digital surrounding, and participate in any physical reality, at any time – offering endless opportunities for companies to extend themselves into the space.

Why it is important: Tech companies are racing to enter the metaverse to offer enterprise level products and services with an immersive experience, although the future of this technology is yet to be defined.

Venture capitalist, Matthew Ball, has studied the metaverse closely and categorizes the metaverse into eight core features which can be thought of as a stack: hardware, compute, networking, virtual platforms, interchange tools & standards, payment services, and content, services & assets.

It is likely that the metaverse will have waves:

• The first wave: mixed reality hardware offers immersive experiences
• The second wave: fully immersive augmented reality glasses hit the market as the gateway to the metaverse, allowing personal avatars to show up as a hologram to someone else in their physical reality.

As virtual spaces rise and mature, offering the potential of a connected network across all platforms and spaces, this hope is less likely to happen as rivalries continue between the different companies that own these spaces (Apple, Epic..). But the metaverse has so much more to offer than just a connected gaming world, it has the potential to transform just about every industry.

Enterprise applications of the metaverse using VR and AR

• Google glasses allow workers to go hands-free, especially in industries that are heavy in logistics, manufacturing, or collaboration. The glasses can funnel information from the web to layer over your physical reality. Google Meet can even be held on the glasses. Google is continuing to work on projects to advance the glasses to blend physical and virtual realities.
• Meta (Facebook) is investing heavily in AR and VR across devices, and renamed their company, to show the importance of the metaverse in the future. Meta wants to harness the technology to put users directly into other experiences rather than augment the existing reality. They have come out with a VR headset and a VR platform with spaces for work, personal, and events. Meta is also developing a mixed reality (MR) headset that will allow sensors to pick up your surrounding to inject them into your VR experience.

Mixed reality

AR glasses and VR headsets both have limitations. With VR headsets, the user relinquishes their own reality, creating two mental framework that can be disorienting. AR glasses are complicated to get the lighting right as well as ensure the depth and focus are adjusted to the pupil. Therefore, mixed reality might be the best option until fully fledged AR arrives. While Google, Microsoft, Lenovo, Oppo, and Xiaomi work on AR glasses, Qualcomm has come up with chipsets for headsets. They have been building the way to bridge AR devices with phones, which is important for the short-term success of devices. The adoption of Qualcomm’s technology by big players implied that the space is converging around a basic infrastructure.

• Microsoft is offering the best immersive mixed reality experience so far with the HoloLens 2, which uses Microsoft Edge to allow you to do things like open up virtual browser tabs in front of you and reach out and scroll with your fingers.
• Apple is working on a MR headset in the short-term as a precursor to full-fledged AR glasses when. The app store has become a major source of friction as Apple continues to charge a 30% tax on revenues made from apps – which is higher than developers want. Apple has the power to slow things down considerably as it is very strict about operating systems and applications that can be used.

Other metaverse factors

Despite Apple’s efforts, the metaverse will not be owned by a single player. Hardware also plays a big part as it gives users access to the metaverse. Virtual native gaming companies such as Epic, Unity, and Roblox are strong contenders in the metaverse because they are helping thousands of developers build games that are fundamentally virtual. These gaming worlds connect users together in online spaces where digital products can be bought (clothes, skins..) with virtual currency.

Digital twin technology (creating a virtual twin from a physical original) is also gaining in popularity as an extension of the physical world into the metaverse. The number of companies that have launched digital twin simulations with gaming engines like Unity and Epic have increase with the need for remote workers to collaborate. Nvidia, another gaming company, has announced that they are going to build a digital twin of the entire earth, called Earth 2.0, which will be used to simulate and predict climate change. A fully digitalized earth will contribute to the advancement of the metaverse.

The metaverse: Where we are and where we’re headed