Metaverse is the next step in the Internet’s evolution. It is the convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space/internet that you’re inside of, rather than one you’re merely looking at. While the Metaverse is still in its early stages of development, many businesses are already looking into its possibilities. Decentraland and The Sandbox are significant efforts in the crypto sector, but major corporations such as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Facebook are also getting involved. There isn’t a single industry that is gaining traction compared to others. The disruptive technology that combines AI, 5G, virtual Reality (VR), and Metaverses coming together could be the biggest sector in the future. Beyond video games and social media platforms as it develops, remote work, decentralized government, and digital identification are some of Metaverse’s possible features. For the Metaverse to become real, we need a critical mass of following interconnected technologies:
1. Virtual Reality (VR)
Virtual reality (VR)-based wearable can transport people to an alternate virtual world from the comfort of their own homes. VR is an experience that simulates realistic situations, the Metaverse can potentially disrupt various industries using this technology. Real-life use case can include gaming, social networking, education, and job training. It’s a collaboration experience that lets people come together to work in the same virtual room, regardless of physical distance. There are already multiple platforms that can allow you to connect with other VR users. Facebook horizons let you explore virtual worlds where you can connect with people across your world, participate in fun challenges, and even create your virtual worlds.
2. Augmented Reality (AR)
This is a technology that enhance parts of a user’s real and physical world with computer-generated world. AR contact lenses and AR eyeglasses could be used to augment the world around us and facilitate virtual assistants with the help of sophisticated AI that would help us navigate both the real and virtual worlds. Microsoft HoloLens and the Magic Leap One are the most notable augmented and mixed reality headsets on the market.
3. Blockchain
Blockchain is a shared database that allows multiple parties to access data and verify that data in real-time and in decentralized Metaverse, can facilitate quick and secure digital transactions. It enables a decentralized and transparent solution for digital evidence of ownership, digital collectability, value transfer, governance, accessibility, and interoperability. Various cryptocurrencies based on blockchain technology allow people to transfer value in the 3D digital environment while working and socializing.
4. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Without AI, it will be impossible to develop an interesting, authentic, and scalable Metaverse experience. AI technology can help streamline the creation of Metaverse assets such as characters, landscapes, buildings, character routines, and more. We may see a future where advanced AI capabilities are integrated with game engines such as Unreal Engine. Realistic-looking artificial intelligent technology can interact with us and each other. They could be programmed with their own life stories, motivations, and objectives. Several use case of AI in the Metaverse could be Accurate avatar creation, Digital humans, Multilingual accessibility, VR world expansion at scale, and Intuitive interfacing.
5. Brain Computer Interfaces Technology (BCI)
Brain-computer interfaces allow to control avatars, various objects and digital transactions with one’s brain signals. This technology is expected to gain an initial foothold in the video game and workforce productivity markets. This technology won’t play a major part in the early years of the Metaverse. However, by the mid-2030s, some early adopters might begin using brain-computer interfaces to connect to the neocortex. The neocortex is part of the human brain’s cerebral cortex, where higher cognitive functioning originated. Several companies are already developing brain-computer interfaces. Neurolink, NextMind and Neurable are among the most notable companies.
6. SW for Distributed Internet/Web 3.0
Web 1.0 refers to the first stage of the World Wide Web evolution, where there were only a few content creators with a huge majority of consumers of those content. Personal web pages were common, consisting mainly of static pages hosted on ISP-run web servers, or on free web hosting services. In this regard, Web 1.0 was a just content delivery network (CDN) that enabled the showcase of the information residing inside the web hosting servers.
Web 2.0 is an enhanced version of Web 1.0. and refers to state of World Wide Web which focuses on user-generated content, interactions, and interoperability. Web 2.0 is also called the participative social web that allows interaction and collaboration with each other in a social media dialogue as the creator of user-generated content in a virtual community. It modifies the way Web pages are designed and used. AJAX and JavaScript frameworks have become a very popular means of creating web 2.0 sites.
Web 3.0, called the Semantic Web, refers to the evolution of Web utilization and interaction which includes altering the WWW into a database. It enables the updating the back-end of the World Wide Web, after a long-running focus on the front-end in Web 2.0 with AJAX, tagging, and other front-end user-experience etc. In Web 3.0/Semantic Web, data isn’t owned but shared, where services show different views for the same back-end data. The Semantic Web (3.0) promises to establish “the world’s information” in a more reasonable way than Google can ever attain with their existing engine schema. Combining capability such as natural language processing (NLP), Web 3.0, computers can distinguish information like humans to provide faster and more relevant results. They become more intelligent to fulfill the requirements of users.
7. Edge Computing/Internet of Things (IoT)
The type of immersive experiences proponents of the Metaverse are talking about will need high-bandwidth and low-latency capabilities and that will require compute to be closer to the end user. The enterprise demand for highly realistic, real-time immersive experiences is ultimately going to draw computing power out of hyper-centralized data centers and into the world around us. One of the applications of Edge Computing on the Metaverse is to collect and provide data from the physical world, closer to the end user. IoT may connect the 3D environment to a vast number of real-world devices seamlessly. In the Metaverse, this allows to produce real-time simulations. Edge computing and IoT could employ AI and machine learning to handle the data it collects to enhance the Metaverse environment further.
8. Networking Infrastructure
Metaverse is the next generation of the Internet, allowing for real-time interactions. IT and networking infrastructure vendors are attempting to overcome the difficulties of delivering such a real-time, immersive virtual world. The Metaverse would require extremely high internet speeds, high bandwidth, and low latency, especially when the user enters a virtual world with highly detailed textures and unbelievably high polygon counts. 5G/6G enables extremely high frequencies at the millimeter wave spectrum, which opens up possibilities for better VR experiences that will include the sense of touch and AR experiences that let visitors have in-depth conversations with AI characters in real-time. Eventually, 6Gwill replace 5G. 6G isn’t an available technology right now. But several countries have already launched research initiatives. Some experts estimate that it could be one to two times faster than 5G, which equates to one terabyte per second. You could download 142 hours of Netflix movies in one second at that speed. According to a white paper by NTT Docomo, 6G would make it possible for cyberspace to support human thought and action in real-time. Sensory interfaces would feel and look just like real life through wearable devices and microdevices mounted on the human body.
9. Cloud Computing
The Metaverse will be a boon for Cloud Computing, considering the amount of storage and processing required to support a virtual reality universe. As more performance and details will be demanded, remote cloud-based computers will become a complementary and cost-effective way to solve that problem, along with Edge Computing. There will be two large areas of growth here. First, the Metaverse providers themselves, keeping in mind that we’re likely to see several pop up if technology investors view this as a true opportunity. Some of these will be built with private data centers and some with managed services, but most of these compute- and graphics-intensive systems will be built on public cloud providers. Access to on-demand compute and storage using pay-as-you-go models will be attractive to those charged with building out a virtual world. The larger draw of public cloud providers is that they can provide distributed points of presence around the world, thus removing some of the latency in sending rendered graphics back to the user so they can obtain a believable experience. Public cloud providers provide VR development systems today that are cheap enough to get some initial skills in how to build things in Metaverse.
10. Semiconductors & Silicon Processors
As the distributed nature of IT accelerates with the Metaverse, the edge and similar forces, hardware and software architectures will adapt. Intel says that for immersive computing to really hit its stride, we will need a 1000x increase in computation efficiency from today’s very best tools. There is increasing innovation around silicon, with the rise of chips optimized for AI, analytics, and other workloads and that can fuel the move to more composable systems. Metaverse would require small super-fast mobile processors that can be fitted on normal-looking glasses, VR devices, fast mobile processors to handle hyper-realistic graphics, low latency, high refresh rates, high frames per second, and so forth, as processes require more cores and components. Compute and data will be highly distributed in Metaverse, which will drive the need for a lot of processing capacity in core data centers, at the edge and at powerful PCs/other clients that come with accelerators, more memory and higher core counts. There will be a need for standards and open interfaces. We may also see the introduction of optical technologies that would work with standard Silicon components. This could result in hybrid attempts to increase and data transfer speeds.
At Service Ventures, we have been commenting about some of those key technologies for a while. We believe that the Metaverse, a parallel virtual realm, will become increasingly intertwined with our actual physical life. Metaverse will become more accessible to the broader world as we develop new types of connected devices and IT infrastructure. IT Infrastructure for the Internet of Things and 5G Mobile Networks is being heavily invested in and will continue to expand over the next decade. So are cutting-edge technologies like Blockchain, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), 3D Models, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Analytics, Semiconductors to create the Metaverse experience. In future articles, we explore some of the connections between these key underlying technologies and the viability of a broader Metaverse.
/Service Ventures Team
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