MetaMundo Launches Pioneering 3D Marketplace for the Metaverse

MetaMundo has launched the first 3D marketplace for collecting metaverse scenes and assets.

By Max Antony Rapkin

Scenes such as 3D galleries, villas, music venues, parks, avatars and vehicles will be sold as NFTs on the marketplace by leading artists, architects, and designers.

Crucially, all 3D NFTs on the marketplace will be compatible with multiple metaverse platforms, such as The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, Decentraland and Spatial.

“MetaMundo’s vision is to facilitate a beautifully designed, interoperable, and open metaverse – an immersive 3D social internet, where everyone can own and build parts of it through blockchain technology. The marketplace launch is our first major step towards realizing this vision,” said Finn Hansen, co-founder of MetaMundo. “For the first time, we have enabled metaverse users to collect high-quality 3D scenes—minted as NFTs—for use across many virtual environments.

Now, users can visit the marketplace and enjoy an immersive exploration of two scenes built by leading 3D creators Dutchtide, and the American modernist architect Luis Fernandez.

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Meta’s latest VR headset prototypes could help it pass the ‘Visual Turing test’

They’re focusing on delivering HDR, higher resolution screens and more to make VR truly realistic.

By D. Hardawar@devindra

Meta wants to make it clear it’s not giving up on high-end VR experiences yet. So, in a rare move, the company is spilling the beans on several VR headset prototypes at once. The goal, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is to eventually craft something that could pass the “visual Turing Test,” or the point where virtual reality is practically indistinguishable from the real world. That’s the Holy Grail for VR enthusiasts, but for Meta’s critics, it’s another troubling sign that the company wants to own reality (even if Zuckerberg says he doesn’t want to completely own the metaverse).

As explained by Zuckerberg and Michael Abrash, Chief Scientist of Meta’s Reality Labs, creating the perfect VR headset involves perfecting four basic concepts. First, they need to reach a high resolution so you can have 20/20 VR vision (with no need for prescription glasses). Additionally, headsets need variable focal depth and eye tracking, so you can easily focus on nearby and far away objects; as well as fix optical distortions inherent in current lenses. (We’ve seen this tech in the Half Dome prototypes.) Finally, Meta needs to bring HDR, or high dynamic range, into headsets to deliver more realistic brightness, shadows and color depth. More so than resolution, HDR is a major reason why modern TVs and computer monitors look better than LCDs from a decade ago.

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18 people spent a week working in the metaverse. 2 dropped out and the rest felt frustrated and said their eyes hurt, study finds.

The idea of the Metaverse as the future of work has gained traction since Mark Zuckerberg renamed Facebook as Meta.

By Stephen Jones

  • 18 volunteers experimented by spending a week working in the metaverse, using virtual reality.
  • Two dropped out in hours, while the rest reported feeling more anxious and frustrated by the end. 
  • The study lays groundwork for subsequent research into the potential of the metaverse for work. 

The concept of the metaverse has been hailed by evangelists as the future of work, meetings and even the way that companies recruit workers. 

Yet the results of a recent experiment suggest that could still be a long way from reality. 

18 university staff logged into the metaverse for an entire working week. Two of them had to drop out due to nausea, while the rest reported feeling more frustrated, anxious and said their eyes hurt by the end, New Scientist reported.  

Continue reading… “18 people spent a week working in the metaverse. 2 dropped out and the rest felt frustrated and said their eyes hurt, study finds.”
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‘Bored Ape’ Unicorn Raises $320M By Selling Virtual Land In Its Metaverse

By Marlize van Romburghmarlizevr

The startup behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs has raised as much as $320 million in cryptocurrency by selling 55,000 plots of virtual land in its metaverse. The virtual real estate buying frenzy over the weekend reportedly was so intense that it crashed the Ethereum network and sent fees on the blockchain system soaring. 

The land sale offered buyers the chance to buy a plot in the Otherside metaverse for around $5,800, plus transaction fees. The virtual land sale is believed to be the largest of its kind, according to Bloomberg, which calculated the total proceeds at $320 million. Reuters pinned the number at closer to $285 million, based on the price of the ApeCoin virtual currency. 

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Epic announces the RealityScan iPhone app for turning real things into 3D objects

People can create 3D objects out of whatever they point their iPhone at.

By OLIVER HASLAM

  • RealityScan is a new app for creating 3D models of objects.
  • Epic Games is making a beta version of RealityScan available for testing.

Epic Games has today announced a new iPhone app dubbed RealityScan — the aim of which is to scan objects in the real world and then turn them into 3D objects in the virtual one.

The app is now available in limited beta and those interested in taking it for a spin can get it via TestFlight now. With the app installed, people can use their iPhone’s camera to capture a 3D model of whatever it’s pointing at. The app comes by the way of a collaboration with Capturing Reality.

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Meta AI Labs Introduces BuilderBot, a Voice Control Builder for Virtual Worlds

By Daniel Dominguez

Meta’s latest AI research introduces BuilderBot, a new tool to fuel creativity in the metaverse capable of generating immersive objects through voice commands only.

Building for the metaverse will require major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence. Meta AI labs is already making advancements in research and development as part of a long-term effort to enable the next era of computing.

According to Meta, BuilderBot enables you to describe a world and then it will generate aspects of that world for you, adding that as we advance this technology further, you’re going to be able to create nuanced worlds to explore and share experiences with others with just your voice.

BuilderBot is part of a larger AI project called Project CAIRaoke, which focuses on developing the conversational AI necessary to create these virtual worlds.

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Foodverse: World’s First Food Metaverse Where NFTs Can buy Food IRL

Foodverse: For the first time, chefs, food brands, and restaurants have their own foodverse. The potential for product placement is endless.

By Nicole Buckler 

  • A food metaverse is being launched that brings together the food and beverage industry and foodies
  • The commercial potential for in-metaverse advertising is bright
  • Users can swap NFTs from in the foodverse for real-life food rewards

Gaurav Gupta and Supreet Raju are a husband and wife team. They have created OneRare, the world’s first food metaverse. The Foodverse pulls together the food and beverage industry, and puts it on Web3.

The foodverse is the first-ever foodie platform on the blockchain. It is an opportunity for food businesses to explore new technology and leverage it for marketing, growth and social impact. In other words, the commercial potential for this metaverse is noteworthy.

Users of the foodverse can have virtual experiences, trade food NFTs, play games, and interact with foodies from around the world.

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The Real-World Metaverse belongs in the automotive cockpit

Maybe this is what the Metaverse would look like.

Chen-Ping Yu explores potential use cases of the ‘Real-world Metaverse’ in the vehicle cockpit as well as the tech that’s still missing to make it a reality.

“Metaverse” is one of the hottest topics these days, spearheaded by Meta Platforms Inc. (then Facebook) riding on the successes of its Oculus virtual reality (VR) headset. While the Metaverse is intimately related to VR, there is also the real-world version of Metaverse that has been generating quite a bit of excitement recently. Here we’ll explore the importance of the Real-World Metaverse, a critical technology that it needs but has been largely overlooked, and how automotive is an optimal platform to deploy the Real-World Metaverse.

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How the Metaverse is Transforming Real Estate

Investors have spent millions of dollars buying land in the Metaverse over the last few months

The term ‘Metaverse’ first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 book Snow Crash. For several years, it was primarily limited to science fiction and, to a degree, gaming platforms that tried to recreate an immersive replica of the real world on digital platforms.

Recently, the Metaverse has gained momentum due to the launch of several blockchain-driven apps that decentralized virtual worlds – with major implications for the real estate industry.

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Landlords, property taxes, and zoning permits in a virtual world

By Louis B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., CEO of Unanimous AI.

The concept of land ownership is so ingrained in our culture, it’s easy to forget that the practice has only been pervasive in North America for a few hundred years. For 10,000 years before that, the millions of people who lived on this continent felt no reason to think of land as something a person could own.Play Video

Why mention this in a piece about the metaverse?

Because land ownership, like many of the social norms that govern our lives, is a cultural choice, not an inherent requirement of a well-functioning society. And yet it is quickly becoming a central element of many metaverse worlds. 

Is this the right approach? Maybe, but it’s worth noting that land ownership has driven inequality throughout history, concentrating wealth and power within small groups of elites to the detriment of everyone else. And yet metaverse developers, who have the power to invent totally new worlds from scratch, have seized upon this old-world norm by selling NFT real estate. In fact, numerous developers have made the sale of virtual real estate a key premise of their platforms. 

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HOW TO FIND A PARTNER IN METAVERSE? DATING TAKES A VIRTUAL TURN

Can metaverse rescue the dating apps? Know how you can find a partner in this virtual world.

In this technology-driven world, you will always find something new taking place and providing new means to humanity. At present times, we have Metaverse, an online virtual reality that has caught everyone’s attention. The internet is evolving into the metaverse, and it will be driven by commerce, social interactions, and dating. Dating apps are drastically remodeling the dating landscape, including a multitude of new possibilities with which they captivate their customers. Virtual first dates that can take place anywhere in the world, avatars, or digital coins are a few of the latest features of such apps. Dating in the metaverse can take many forms, from people’s avatars moving around, participating in different activities, to joining others in diverse virtual locations to the possibility of private connections.

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SOUTH KOREA TO INVEST $187M IN NATIONAL METAVERSE PROJECT

The government will provide $186.7 million to stimulate the growth of a metaverse platform that it hopes businesses and industries will thrive in. 

By BRIAN NEWAR 

South Korea’s Ministry of ICT, Science, and Future Planning pledged 223.7 billion Korean won ($186.7 million) to create a broad metaverse ecosystem to support the growth of digital content and corporate growth within the country.

The ministry wrote in an official statement on Sunday that funds will be spent on completing four main objectives in creating what appears to be an all-encompassing metaverse ecosystem titled the “Expanded Virtual World.”

The government agency intends on using its metaverse as a platform for expanding the virtual industrial growth of cities, education and media.

Content creators will enjoy support on multiple fronts to attract the right talent to help build the platform. The ministry said that it will host community-oriented creative activities, a metaverse developer contest and a hackathon.

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