What is the Metaverse?
The Metaverse is a virtual world that combines physical reality and digital virtual worlds into a continuous and persistent multi-user environment.
The Metaverse is built on the fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies to enable multimodal interaction of digital objects, virtual environments, and people. As such, the Metaverse is a mass platform that combines immersive, social, and transactional networks.
Currently, Microsoft and Meta are two of the major companies developing technologies for interacting with virtual worlds, but they are not the only development organizations. Many companies around the world are constructing and creating the components and infrastructure needed for a better and more functional metaverse in the future, such as Baidu’s Hiron.
How does the metaverse work?
Renowned entrepreneur, author, and game designer Jon Radoff has proposed a seven-layer conceptual framework to define the value chain of the metaverse marketplace.
According to the framework, the metaverse consists of seven layers which are: experience, discovery, creator economy, spatial computing, decentralization, human-computer interaction, and infrastructure.
The seven-layered structure of the Metaverse
1.Experience
The Metaverse will provide us with a wealth of three-dimensional (3D) visual effects as well as immersive experiences that we can not currently enjoy in a two-dimensional world.
2. Discovery
This has both inbound and outbound aspects. When people search for information in the metaverse, this is called inbound discovery. At the same time, sending information to the outside world is called outbound discovery, whether it is actively sent or passively sent.
3. Creator Economy
In the early versions of the internet, creators needed some programming knowledge to design and build web programs. However, thanks to the technologies brought by Web3.0, it is now possible to develop Web3.0 applications without coding. This will rapidly increase the number of network creators, and many meaningful finished products will form valuable network economies.
4. Spatial Computing refers
This refers to the technological combination of VR and AR. Microsoft’s HoloLens (a commercial mixed reality technology) is a good example of this technology. If you haven’t touched a Hololens yet, you can also use face filters on Instagram (META’s video distribution platform) as a simplified version of spatial computing.
5. Decentralization
Metaverse stores data in a distributed manner through blockchain technology provides artificial intelligence services and decentralized transaction services to achieve the functions of data immutability and privacy protection.
6. Human-Computer Interaction
Through a combination of spatial computing and human-computer interfaces, users can simply look around the physical world to receive information about their surroundings and send environmental information to the metaverse to build shared AR experiences.
7. Infrastructure
Technical infrastructure is critical for the existence of other layers. It includes 5G and 6G data transfers to reduce network congestion and increase network bandwidth.
Spatial computing is combined with human-computer interaction technology to implement remote surgery.
What technology does the Metaverse use?
The most basic technological applications for building the metaverse include: Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), 3D modeling, as well as spatial and edge computing.
Artificial Intelligence
The combination of artificial intelligence and metaverse technology ensures the stability of the metaverse infrastructure while also providing actionable information to the upper layers, with practical applications including speech recognition, social interaction, human-computer interaction, intelligent imaging, etc.
The Internet of Things
The Internet of Things will allow the Metaverse to learn and interact with the real world, while it will also serve as a 3D user interface for IoT devices, providing a more personalized experience for IoT-connected devices. Metaverse’s IoT will enable the most accurate application data with the least amount of experimental work.
Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
Metaverse environments combine technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and virtual reality to bring users into virtual worlds. For example, augmented reality technology can be used to embed virtual items into the actual environment. Likewise, VR helps you immerse yourself in a 3D virtual environment or use 3D modeling tools for 3D reconstruction.
VR will become an essential part of the virtual environment. If you’ve ever wondered how to enter the metaverse, the answer is that augmented and virtual reality technology are one way to enter a dynamic 3D digital world.
3D modeling
This is a method of computational three-dimensional graphics for creating a 3D digital image of any object. The 3D environment of the Metaverse is critical to the comfort of the user experience.
Spatial and edge computing
The method of utilizing physical space for virtual space computing is called spatial computing. With its HoloLens and other technologies, Microsoft has become a leader in the field of Metaverse spatial computing, providing users with the same experience as in the real world…allowing Metaverse users to engage in immersive social interaction and space travel in the Metaverse.
In contrast, edge computing is a network-based cloud computing and service delivery model. Compute, storage, data, and application solutions are provided by Edge to end users. Simply put, edge computing will provide users with high-speed data processing and information feedback services, such as real-time data feedback from associated devices in the Internet of Things.
