The Metaverse Landscape
Metaverse Series: Part 1: The Metaverse Landscape| Part 2: The Metaverse Economy | Part 3: Gaming in the Metaverse
It’s Monday morning, and you’re dreading the prospect of getting out of your bed and having to put a suit on and drive to work. Your company phased out Zoom meetings, with the idea that collaboration was better in-person, and now you have to leave the comfort of your room. What if that collaboration could be recreated without having to leave your room? What if you could meet with coworkers, hang out with friends, and design products — all just by strapping on a virtual reality (VR) headset and immersing yourself in a virtual world? This is the metaverse, today.
Seeing the writing on the wall, numerous companies have invested in building their versions of the metaverse or things that may be a part of it someday. The goal of researching specific companies and the work they have done on building the metaverse is to understand the different methodologies and use cases that come with the research and use of the metaverse. For example, the metaverse can be used not just for gaming and trading, but for serious work, scientific research, design, and more. All of this serves to further our understanding of the metaverse, and lead us closer to a comprehensive definition of what it is. To understand the whole, first, we must take a look at the sum of its parts.
If you want to point to one specific company that appears to be going all-in on the metaverse and everything that comes with it, the company formerly known as Facebook might be your best bet. As their focus shifts away from social media and onto the technologies of the future, Meta is all about the metaverse.
On the whole, they have a large vision for what the metaverse can become, and predictably, it all revolves around their own company — starting with one of their arms, Oculus. Right now, Meta’s entire vision has to do with the VR environments that can be accessed through the use of Oculus headsets. They want a digital environment that you can interact with just as you would the real world. An environment in which you could sit around, do work at a desk, hang out with friends, play games, etc. Essentially, they want to recreate the world, but have you placed in it through a connection created by your computer, or someday even your phone.
Within Meta’s world, the first thing you’ll need is a presence — the virtual version of you, and an avatar to go along with that. This avatar will be able to walk around, explore other “worlds”, and more — but for Meta, the first key to the metaverse is having somewhere to come back home to. While this is not the “real estate of the metaverse” that this report will discuss in further detail, Meta’s Horizon Home is akin to the spawn area in a video game. This is where you appear first, and where you can stay if you so choose. However, they do not envision many staying, with all of the capabilities they envision their metaverse having. For one, gaming.
Meta is heavily focused on the video game side of the metaverse, hoping to have virtual worlds that gamers can physically (virtually) exist inside to play with their friends — if I may make an allusion to a popular work of animation, something similar to Sword Art Online. Gaming is without a doubt a part of any metaverse definition — just imagine the possibilities.
Of course, appeal to just gamers would not propel the metaverse to the level of the original Internet, and as such there are other plans for Meta’s systems. For example, the concept of bringing work (the office) to the metaverse. This would solve the problem of fruitless Zoom calls, awkward hybrid meetings, and more. This is Facebook’s vision — basically, putting our very real lives and worlds inside the metaverse, in a land of virtual homes, storefronts, and employment. For Meta, the plan is to have the metaverse permeate every facet of our reality.
Does that make defining the metaverse as simple as labeling it “our world, but virtual?” One point to note is that at least as of now, Mark Zuckerberg and Meta appear committed to making their metaverse one that is interoperable — accessible by all sorts of devices, rather than just by Meta-connected products.
Meta decided to chasten their company after the burgeoning metaverse. Nvidia, a company not nearly as committed to the concept, calls their version 2 the Omniverse. The Omniverse in its purest form is designed to be a platform that connects 3D worlds into a type of shared virtual universe, with easily-accessible hopping between worlds. This is similar to Meta’s iteration — they too plan to have virtual worlds that can be traveled between with ease. However, this is more or less where the similarities end.
Despite the obvious connection of Nvidia to gaming, they have cut out the gaming aspect of the metaverse in their platform entirely, claiming that the Omniverse was not built to be a game engine. They plan to have their worlds built by scientists, creators, and companies — they want to be a platform used for design, essentially. This, too, is something that the metaverse can be used for — to design and simulate situations and places that can not be so easily accessed in the real world. Nvidia was the first one to bring out the “Digital Twin” concept — that companies or designers can create digital twins or digital versions of what already exists in the physical world — but in the Omniverse.
Through the use of virtual and augmented reality, designers, creators, and factory managers (among others) can test things in a purely virtual world, making it easier to avoid accidents, optimize productivity and efficiency, and streamline training, engineering, etc. Leaving the simulations aside, the Omniverse is expected to be used as a platform to inspire interconnected design, as Nvidia is also committed to the idea of interoperability. With their platform, the goal is for someone designing in Adobe to have their work edited in real-time, inside a virtual world, by someone using Autodesk, which is a ludicrous thing to think about. While the Omniverse is still very much a work in progress, it adds yet another layer to what we must consider when we think about the metaverse — the possibilities for scientific research, design, and engineering that can be conducted in a virtual world.
Unlike the other two companies that I have named so far, Microsoft does not have a creative name nor have they taken efforts to change their name to reflect their growing involvement in the metaverse space. Microsoft’s Metaverse is all about connecting spaces with an entirely new platform layer (which hasn’t exactly been created entirely). Their plan for the metaverse is a lot closer to Nvidia’s rather than Facebook’s (Meta).
Microsoft wants to build a platform that can be built upon; a platform for creators, designers, and professionals, rather than something that is used for gaming and for entertainment. This makes sense, for Microsoft as a company is built for professionals on the whole, and as such, it is right that they would want to build a platform that further fuels the market they are already kings in. They also plan to have something akin to the “Digital Twin” concept — rather than looking at something through a camera, you can view the factory yourself, in a virtual world.
Though Microsoft already has the program Microsoft Teams, which is a method of connecting people through channels and video conferences, this “2D” method of connection is not enough for them. Their ultimate goal is to create a human presence in a work environment without actually putting flesh-and-blood people in the office. To achieve this, Microsoft has been working with a variety of consulting companies, such as Accenture. On the whole, they don’t have anything special or unique in terms of the metaverse, at least not yet. But we have seen great promise in AltspaceVR for large gatherings and Spatial for collaboration.
