COLLABORATE AND CREATE IN METAVERSE
· Preface
As a race, humankind’s awareness about technology and its working has only improved with time. From the times when the first machine was built till we got the first computers; our race has made advances in leaps and bounds in the field of technology. As much as that today we are ushering into a new era of technology.
To understand the workings and visualizing how Metaverse would play out for users, we can give you examples of a movie by Walt Disney productions and a kid’s favorite — WRECK IT RALPH. This movie gives us a perspective of what happens to all game characters when the console of the arcade game is turned off. All the game characters inside the arcade are in another universe of their own — which can be perfectly referred to as a specific Metaverse. The characters have a separate story beyond the games as well.
· Definition of Metaverse
The Metaverse can be defined as a simulated digital environment that uses augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and blockchain, along with concepts from social media, to create spaces for rich user interaction mimicking the real world.
Avasant Labs describe Metaverse as — The Metaverse is simply a description of the collapse of the boundaries between real and virtual worlds.
Another definition from Wikipedia says — A Metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social connection. In futurism and science fiction, the term is often described as a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal virtual world that is facilitated using virtual and augmented reality headsets.
The Metaverse is also expected to have a strong connection with the real-world economy — and eventually become an extension of it through technologies like NFT /Blockchain.
· Virtual World
Virtual World is the most important characteristic of Metaverse. A virtual world is a computer-simulated representation of a world with specific spatial and physical characteristics, and users of virtual worlds interact with each other via representations of themselves called “avatars.” You can explore it using a computer, gaming console, mobile, wearable technology or other device, experiencing 3D graphics and sound along the way.
This is basically the foundation where Metaverse is created/structured. The virtual world becomes a very important factor to understand the working of Metaverse. As we go further, we will go deep into the importance of virtual world in the context of Metaverse.
· Connectedness
The Metaverse is social. The main motto of creating a Metaverse is to connect and rule out boundaries of the physical world. It is everything and more that today’s social media platforms have achieved in all ways. Lots of other people out there were represented as avatars. Some of these avatars might be bots, virtual agents, manifestations. You can hang out with other people or even do things together like connect, collaborate and create.
· Difference between Virtual world and Metaverse
The Metaverse is incomplete without the understanding of virtual and augmented reality. So, let’s go back to the basic definitions of these terms -
a) Augmented Reality — Augmented Reality allows user to see the world around him using his/her own device (phone/tablet) with digital images layered on top of it.
b) Virtual Reality — Virtual reality immerses the user in a virtual world using a headset with screen displaying a virtual environment.
And in Metaverse a virtual world is augmented onto the avatars of user experiencing it.
Metaverse will be available beyond just virtual reality, it can be accessed using augmented reality devices and can be accessed using device you are using to connect to the internet.
Virtual world, virtual reality and Metaverse are 3 different entities: each playing a significant role in the other entity. The only major difference in Metaverse is that it can also be experienced without involving virtual reality.
Now that we are good with the basics of Metaverse and its necessities, let’s dive deep into the use case that we find particularly unique with Metaverse.
· Various use cases of Metaverse
There are certainly impressive use-cases emerging from Metaverse that include making online gaming more interesting, providing healthcare professionals better tools to assess patient conditions, trading and buying virtual assets, plethora of use cases for BFSI etc. But we seem to have missed helping the technology world itself where the Metaverse idea originated.
The following are some technical areas which can be simplified using Metaverse -
Project Collaboration in the virtual world -
Current software project collaboration model/s
Data architects and administrators create and organize databases/systems to store and secure data. They run their queries (commands used to word with databases) and stored procedures, after having understood business functionality from business analysts. They work independently with change in data structure requiring massive timelines to understand the whole flow and implement. Developers understand schema (the skeleton structure that represents the logical view of the entire database) and connect normally through APIs, should they also need change in data structure, it goes through huge delays.
Project collaboration through Metaverse
Through Metaverse, the avatars of everyone involved in building the database can primarily visualize the database in Metaverse first, collaborate on the required changes and work simultaneously to create a more structured database with only time required by one of the parties involved. This decreases the OPEX of the whole project and the possibility of error reduces to very less.
Realistic presence is the key to Metaverse. You can visualize your database and other project structures (as decided prior to project start) as 3D objects, so you can edit and feel the changes you make. This view shall be visible to your teammates avatars too so they can suggest any other changes if required.
Imagine you have a database schema with 10 tables in it. It is the customer schema with their orders, complaints etc. You want a field in order table while maintaining referential integrity and existing data, not sure if the DBA and business will approve of it.
User can view the database in 3D and can tweak to see the change in schema in 3D where the data is seen in rows and columns as viewed in the image above.
In Metaverse, your avatar can touch the 3D database Metaverse object and make changes in it while he/she is discussing with his/her teammates’ avatar who is physically located in say, South Africa which is halfway across the world. Your Avatar can also discuss with another avatar/s (your teammates’ avatars) what if we want to add a particular field. Right after this discussion, the avatar can jump to another Metaverse where he/she would like to explain about their latest deep neural network.
Explainable AI -
Current creation of neural networks is done through layers using standard Python packages (such as pandas, scikit-learn), but how the data flows through various layers of the neural net (NN) is not intuitive; making it harder to explain the inferences made through the network. Neural networks act as black-box due to this complexity. There are packages/approaches created such as Responsible AI toolkit with tensorflow and SHAP with pyTorch, however their explanations are hard to understand for the inexperienced.
In this Metaverse, your avatar can visualize the inputs with corresponding functions in the following layer; thereby making it easier to understand the inferences created by the neural network.
· Conclusion
Metaverse is a very new technology for the whole world, and with that novelty the responsibility to utilize it for the betterment of our own system lies within the IT Industry. The above mentioned two use cases are mere examples of vast expanses in which the Metaverse can be explored and used for the benefit of our race as a whole
· Brief of Authors
Saket Apte— Saket is your true-blue geek who is an alumnus of University of Pennsylvania and has IT industry experience of 10+ years. He loves technology and specializes in AI and Machine Learning and working with Makers Lab of Tech Mahindra. Currently residing in Melbourne, Saket is a Cricket enthusiast” and in his free time loves to <do math. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.
Mehrose Tarannum Sheikh— Mehrose is an ambivert who loves working with people and is an alumnus of Gandhi Institute of Engineering & Technology. With 5+ years of experience in industry, she specializes in Innovation management at Makers Lab, Tech Mahindra. She loves music and currently resides in Pune, India. You can connect with her on LinkedIn here.
· References
o https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/what-is-the-metaverse-why-care/
o https://techstory.in/everything-you-need-to-know-about-metaverse/
