What is the metaverse?
The metaverse is a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and focused on social and economic connection. Avatars socialising in the virtual world Second Life.
What is being in the metaverse?
Today, companies use the term metaverse to refer to many different types of enhanced online environments. These range from online video games like Fortnite to virtual workplaces like Microsoft Mesh or Meta’s Horizon Workrooms to virtual dressing rooms and virtual operating rooms.
Other Metaverse Technologies
Several other technologies, in addition to VR and AR, play a role in shaping the metaverse. A definitive list, however, has yet to crystallize. Industry watchers shy away from codifying the technologies that will power the metaverse. This is in part because the metaverse is evolving and partly because many of the tools driving the metaverse are themselves made up of multiple technologies.
The following technologies are generally expected to have the biggest impact on metaverse development over the next decade:
- Artificial intelligence.
- IoT.
- Extended reality, including VR, AR and mixed reality.
- Brain-computer interfaces.
- 3D modeling and reconstruction.
- Spatial and edge computing.
- Blockchain.