What is a Metaverse?

In the last period we have heard more and more often about metaverses, especially in relation to topics such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed. But what is a metaverse?

A metaverse is an interactive place, where real and imaginary people coexist and interact.

It can find applications – for example – in the gamingsector, in business,in social situations or online shopping and shoppingexperiences.

So what's the difference between a metaverse and VRexperiences?

Metaverse VS Virtual Reality

The difference between metaverse and virtual reality is that the former is able to convey the physical feeling of being in another place and share it with other people.

While in the case of VR there is an interaction with the online world through a controller or other hardware component (headphones, VR viewers…).

Adam Compton, director of strategy for Schneider Electric, sees the metaverse as acompletely immersive experience,partly real and partly digital, parallel to the physical world – defining it as:

"Something we don't recognize when we get in and out of the two spaces."

Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse

In August, Facebook announced the launch of Horizon Workrooms,a virtual meeting space that enables live meetings leveraging virtual reality.

The "workrooms" include exportable virtual whiteboards such as images, configurable room layouts, and the ability to use the computer via keyboard and the Oculus Remote Desktopapp.

In September 2021 – FB announced a $50 million investment for the construction of the metaverse.

Zuckerberg's metaverse currently under development would be close to reality and always active, it would have its own currency and the objects present would be interoperable.

The company will work with Howard University, Seoul National University and the University of Hong Kong to study concepts of safety, ethics, fairness and design and ensure that these do not fail.

Viewers to access the metaverse?

Based on the rapid technological advancement,when multiverses will be part of everyday reality, there will be no need for viewers or microphones.

For the moment to live an immersive experience in VR, AR or MR you need viewers such as

• Oculus Quest 2
• PlayStation VR
• HTC Vive
• HoloLens di Microsoft
• Magic Leap designed specifically for business realities

Metaverses in reality

What are the actual use cases of the metaverse?

Training is one of the most common use cases that has now entered everyday life.

Entertainment is one of the first sectors to offer virtual reality experiences for customers, today it is in fact increasingly common to participate in exhibitions and exhibitions in VR.

While manufacturing and healthcare were among the first to incorporate mixed reality and augmented reality experiences to facilitate work and implement productivity.

What hinders the development of the metaverse

Many specialists say that it is still early to develop immersive metaverses.

The causes are to be found mainly in the development of software and devices,still not very advanced and not suitable to support such a technology.

Another obstacle is the workforce: maintaining and generating a metaverse requires high computing power, an indefinite number of engineers and developers.

As the Wall Street Journalrecently reported, in fact, the job offer for cloud engineers has increased by 90% in the last year, without however finding a response in the request.