The Metaverse has been receiving a lot of “buzz” lately. The reason for this is that Facebook has been sharing its Strategic Roadmap with the public and in this Roadmap, the Metaverse is one of its key strategies.
In this post, I will explain the basics of the Metaverse and how much impact this might have on our lives in the near future. I also explain what is required to make it a success.
What is the Metaverse?
As we speak, Facebook is hiring 10.000 people in Europe to create a Metaverse. You can compare the Metaverse with the Matrix. By creating a digital avatar of yourself and putting on a Virtual Reality (VR) headset you can step into a virtual world and interact with people in real-time. This means that doing things like shopping, work meetings, dancing, and studying can all be done in a virtual space by physical interaction with objects and people. In the end, this could mean that the real world might struggle to compete with the Metaverse.
Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the Metaverse is just a very natural evolution from the 2D internet to the 3D one. He says that you can see the Metaverse as an “embodied” internet: instead of viewing content, you are in the middle of it. You feel presence and connection with other people as if you are in a different place while having different experiences that you could not do on a 2D app or a web page. For instance things like dancing or doing exercises together with your friends.
The expectation is that the Metaverse is not going to be monopolized by Facebook. The idea is that users can move seamlessly from one virtual world into the other. You would “teleport” yourself from Facebook’s Metaverse to one of Google, Apple, Epic, Steam, and all other kinds of platforms.
In addition to this, all big players preach that the Metaverse should be fully open. Tim Sweeney of Epic Games is hammering on the importance of a big inclusive Metaverse for quite some time. He thinks it is very important to have a shared world in which everybody has full freedom to participate.
Ready Player One
If you want to get a general understanding of how these Metaverse platforms might look like in the near future, you should watch the movie Ready Player One. Ready Player One is a dystopian science fiction movie that is set in the near future (2045). In this movie, people escape from reality by projecting themselves in a Virtual Reality game (The Oasis). By wearing a VR headset, a VR suit, and by using a treadmill, the player can move to any location in this virtual world. These tools fully emerge an individual into the world of Oasis, experiencing the same physical sensations as in the real world. In other words: there is almost no difference between the real world and the VR world.
The interesting part is that all these tools, used in this movie (the VR headset, the VR suit, and the treadmill) don’t seem to be a far reach and are pretty close to our current technological capabilities.
Why doesn’t The Oasis exist yet?
If all the tools are within our current technological capabilities, the key question is of course why we are not using them on a mainstream level. The reason for this is that the technology as a whole is still fragmented and “clunky”. The key component of Virtual Reality is the VR headset. At this moment, most of these headsets are still not comfortable enough to use and most of the headsets are connected to a powerful computer with a cable. To most people, this setup is just too inconvenient: it takes too much time to connect with the virtual world and the quality of the world itself is below the standards of most people. Why go through all the hassle and extra costs for an uncomfortable experience? This is also the answer to the question of why a world like The Oasis does not exist yet: it’s too inconvenient for most people to step into it and the experience is limited.
Currently, it is not attractive for developers to invest heavily in VR applications: demand is just too low and the current business models are mainly focused on a select group of early adapters. Once popularity increases, business models (and funding) will start to focus on a market that is far more massive and that is the moment that the Metaverse and VR will be truly lifting off.
How to get massive user adaption
Facebook was launched in 2004. The below graph shows the number of users of Facebook over the course of the years. As you can see, the platform started off slowly. However, from 2007 onwards, the number of users started to take off. The reason for this (in my opinion) was the introduction of a tool that helped millions of people to access Facebook in a very easy way: the iPhone, which launched on June 29th, 2007.
Before the iPhone, Facebook users had to start up their computers and go to the Facebook site. After that, they had to log in with a username and a password. When this was done, they had to upload digital pictures on the computer in order to share them with their friends. All these steps were very inconvenient. For most people, the barrier was too big for using Facebook. With the introduction of the iPhone, iPad, and smart devices of other producers, the most important factor that people didn’t join Facebook was eliminated: the factor of inconvenience. In my opinion, without smartphones in general, Facebook wouldn’t have been such a great success.
This example also strengthens my own conviction that the Metaverse will become a success once the inconvenience factor is eliminated. Once users can access the Metaverse within seconds, I think it will be massively adopted by the common public.
The VR headset
Like the iPhone in 2007, Apple might break through the barrier of technical limitations in order to create sufficient convenience to access the Metaverse.
The latest iPhones have the most powerful processors of any phone. This means that they are technically able to make a very powerful lightweight VR headset that offloads most of its work to an iPhone. This means you don’t need to put a huge piece of machinery, strapped onto your head that is connected to a computer with a cable. In addition to sight, you also need sound for a full experience. This is where Apple’s Airpod Pro comes into play. With spatial audio, you can hear where the sound is coming from. This is very important when you are moving freely in a virtual world. The Airpod Pro is wireless as well which also contributes to convenience.
I think that only the headset is key in order to make the Metaverse mainstream. Improving your experience with other tools next to a headset is optional as far as I can see it. Both the VR suit and treadmill, used in Ready Player One, might contribute but it’s not a must-have for mass adaption.
The VR suit
There are some suits on the market that but all these suits and gloves are still very clunky and its technology is very basic. In order to make a big jump forward, a manufacturer needs to step up and combine all kinds of sensor technologies into a suit. Personally, I think Apple will be a very good candidate in developing the first suit.
Apple can use its data collection for an even better experience in the Metaverse. By studying, for instance, oxygen levels and the heart rate from the Apple Watch it can monitor your reactions to VR games or exercises. This data can be obtained from millions of people that use their products. With all this data a haptic feedback suit can then be developed that can add many layers of immersion to the experience.
You might think that this will take ages, but the quality of the haptic feedback you get from their phones and watches is already of a very high standard. Based on this, I think that they are in a very good position to be able to make a suit in the near future.
One thing is clear about Apple: they will not produce a new product unless the technology has become mature enough and to produce that at scale. Personally, I think the suit technology is still a few years away looking into Apple’s approach and its general strategy.
The Treadmill
The last tool has to support you in walking around the Metaverse without bumping into any walls in, for instance, your living room. Otherwise, it would immediately throw you back from the Metaverse into the real world.
There is already a good piece of hardware around to cover this: the Virtuex Omni 1. It is used by strapping yourself into a vest that is connected to a platform: a low friction surface that you move on with special shoes or shoe covers. With the Virtuex Omni 1 you can run, crouch, and jump without moving in real-time.
In my opinion, the concept of the Virtuex Omni 1 is already better than the treadmill that is used in Ready Player One. Its technology will probably also improve over time and be less pricy (currently at about € 3.000), especially when demand increases and when other manufacturers jump in. This will be the case when (and if) the Metaverse is becoming more mainstream.
Final thoughts
Once the biggest roadblocks of inconvenience are taken away, the road will be paved for the Metaverse. However, it is important that all the different Metaverses will be easily connected into the same virtual world. I think in order to be successful, it can’t be fragmented by companies or parties with a special interest: there need to be open protocols.
Basically, the Metaverse is our name for The Oasis in Ready Player One. Once we enter this Metaverse the possibilities will be limitless. It would literally open a new world in which people can explore new ways of expressing their creativity.
I think within 10 years there might be a complete blurring of the lines between reality and Virtual Reality. This can only be done if it is interesting enough for investors and creators to heavily invest their resources in the development and evolution of the Metaverse. Critical in this is the most important of the 3 key tools: the headset. If this piece of hardware can be utilized in a proper way, the road to mass adoption will be wide open.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if you have any additional advice/tips about this subject. if you want to keep in the loop if I upload a new post, don’t forget to subscribe to receive a notification by e-mail.
