What is the Metaverse

 

What is the Metaverse: Where are we and where are we heading?

Since Facebook rebranded to Meta on October 28, 2021, the vague concepts that influenced the new name have been a hot topic. The

 Metaverse may appear to be the product of Meta's ambitions, but it is not. Some  argue that the metaverse that Mark Zuckerberg spent a lot of time in the keynote of the Connect 2021 conference  already exists, while others are known as the next evolution of the Internet, known as Web 3 or Web 3.0.

 This can mean that the metaverse varies from person to person, but it is also due to the unrecognizable blurring of the line between the virtual world and reality.

What is the Metaverse concept? Where the concept did came from?

The term Metaverse can be traced back to Neil Stephenson and his dystopian cyberpunk novel "Snow Crash." This novel was published in 1992 and is considered the norm of this genre, along with William Gibson's Neuromancer, who describes the Virtual Reality Data Room called The Matrix. Snow Crash Metaverse is a 3D virtual reality space that can be accessed from personal devices and virtual reality goggles, and has much in common with  Oculus Quest and other VR headset. To the user, this 3D space looks like an urban environment created along a single street 100 meters wide. Stevenson writes:

 Like anywhere else in reality, the streets are the subject of development. Developers can build their own small roads away from the arterial roads. You can build buildings, parks, signs, etc. that don't really exist, such as huge floating light shows, special neighborhoods where the rules of 3D space-time are ignored, and free-to-play zones where people can go. Kill each other.

If Stevenson's vision for the Metaverse sounds familiar, it's because large multiplayer online games (MMOGs, or more generally MMOs) share many of their features. For example, in Second Life (released in 2003),  users can customize realistic avatars, meet  other players, create virtual products, own virtual spaces, and exchange goods and services. I can do it. Virtual experiences such as Second Life are sometimes referred to as the Proto Metaverse. Why  prefix? Because they exist in isolation, each is a digital island, and its inhabitants and  virtual assets never leave them. The Metaverse that Mark Zuckerberg wants to create is not a virtual experience, but the next version of the Internet.

 "We've moved from desktop to web to mobile. From text to photos and to video. He said that this is not end of the story. "The next platform is even more immersive. It's a materialized web that goes beyond seeing the experience, but jumping into it. We call it the Metaverse and it affects every product we build."

 Does the Metaverse concept already exist?

 In order for the Metaverse to become a reified Internet, it must have certain characteristics that are different from isolated virtual reality experiences like 2nd Life.


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Let`s list down the properties of the metaverse for better clarity:

 Massively scaled

 Interoperable

 Real-time rendered

 3D virtual worlds

 Synchronous

 Persistent

 Unlimited number of users

 Individual sense of presence

 Continuity of data

 Metaverse: A Futuristic Retail Example

 In practice, the metaverse will exist when a user can enter a  virtual shopping mall that can be experience by as many people as the virtual space can be fit, purchase a unique digital product, and then sell the same digital product after a few week inside a complete different virtual world—or perhaps on Twitter, eBay, or OpenSea.  Some might  say, wait a minute; I have already seen this movie.

 The movie Ready Player One  was first a book written by Ernest Cline and published by Random House in 2011 and directed by Steven Spielberg and may be the best visual example we have currently of what the metaverse could conceptually looks like.

 The movie has some fundamental differences from expert views of the soon-to-come metaverse, including that there is only major platform in the movie, the Oasis, that makes up the metaverse created by the fictional game company Gregarious Games. Another important difference is the predominant use of VR hardware for interaction in the movie version of the Metaverse. Some experts believe that VR isn't fully utilized overall  compared to AR hardware (not highlighted in the movie).

 What would powers the Metaverse?

 Metaverse leverages a variety of forms of technology, including cloud infrastructure, software tools, platforms, applications, user-generated content, and hardware. In addition to  technical requirements, Metaverse includes a variety of user experiences such as entertainment, games, commerce, researches, social interaction and education.

When will the Metaverse come?

The question is  how long does it take to move from the various proto metaverses to the grand metaverse? Mark Zuckerberg believes that  will happen by the end of the decade, but it could  be even faster as the basic elements are already in place.  The infrastructure behind the Internet today allows a large number of people to gather in a virtual environment, such as when more than 12.3 million players attend a VR concert at Fortnite with Travis Scott. This current infrastructure is very impressive, but it will  need to evolve  to support the  experts in the Metaverse industry.

 There is also  hardware for rendering realistic 3D virtual environments and avatars. Meta owns Oculus, a leading manufacturer of virtual reality headsets. Since its first release in 2016, Microsoft has been using mixed reality smart glasses HoloLens to support a variety of enterprise use cases. In addition, Apple is rumored to release  VR and AR headset in 2022. HTC, Pico, MagicLeap, and other manufacturers are rapidly advancing various hardware platforms, and the Cascade Technology architecture is shifting different workloads to edge devices through the back-end server infrastructure. ..

Unity's Furioos is a prime example of streaming a fully interactive real-time 3D environment, and the heavy duty of rendering the environment is handled by the auto-scaling GPU server infrastructure. Metaverse is a ubiquitous computing experience that allows users to leverage traditional devices such as computers and mobile devices while  enhancing the new immersive AR and VR wearable experience.

 Finally, the same innovative technology that has revolutionized the financial services industry since the existence of the Bitcoin network  in January 2009 can be used to achieve Metaverse data continuity. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a great example of how blockchain technology can be used to verify  ownership of digital assets, and there are already 3D virtual reality platforms that take advantage of these benefits. .. In a recent interview, Marc Petit, vice president and general manager of Unreal Engine at

 EPIC Games, explained that the Metaverse needs a "persistent shared virtual world." This means that users need to be able to move from universe to universe using digital items to achieve the ideal customer experience. As an example of this, the future  user NFT shoes

 purchased by Nike will be available as avatars in Meta's Horizontal platform and other virtual worlds such as Fortnite and Minecraft.

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 Another example, Decentraland, is a completely decentralized world without central governance. The world is built on the Ethereum blockchain and is controlled by Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. Through this organization and voting, players can control the policies governing the behavior of

s around the world. Decentraland also has a decentralized currency, MANA, which can be exchanged  for other currencies via the cryptocurrency exchange

. In the future, Decentraland could become one of the many decentralized worlds that make up part of the Metaverse, as people living in different countries of the real world exchange fiat money for physical goods. Similarly, digital assets and currencies flow between them.

 No one owns the Metaverse itself, but just as no one owns the Internet today, there are certainly  many major players in the field, Meta, Microsoft, Companies like Unity, Epic Games,  and Roblox are among them, so they're spending billions of dollars to realize their sci-fi dreams. The

 Metaverse is the  idea  first described by science fiction writer Neil Stephenson in his novel "Snow Crash." It could be a reality soon, and many big tech companies are betting that it will be as big as the Internet today. Those who don't want to wait for individual virtual experiences to form the world of a huge world can join platforms like Decentraland, Human Workrooms,  Roblox and at least know what the future holds.