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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Music-based nonfungible tokens are an emerging frontier in the crypto and NFT space, but the first questions that come to mind are: What are they? And what are their utility?
Music NFTs are relatively new to the scene and cannot be pinned down by one definition. At the most basic level, however, they are verifiable digital collectibles, with a core component being the integration of a song.
One of the first collections was “Audioglyphs,” which cemented itself as revolutionizing the way users consume music, synthesizing an infinite stream of audio for each NFT. Creators and investors began to discover the novelty of music NFTs, as they lessened the barriers of access to artists and consumers.
Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been largely acquired as proof-of-profile pictures (PFPs) that represent a brand, embody culture or ultimately, reflect as a static status symbol. Blue-chip NFTs like the Bored Ape Yacht Club or Cool Cats were not originally backed by any tangible utility other than speculative value and hype, along with the promise of an illustrative roadmap, but in 2022, investors are looking for a little bit “more.”
However, nonfungible tokens are finding their use beyond branding and status symbols by attempting to build out an existence in the Metaverse and some are ambitious enough to start within it.
The Altered State Machine (ASM) Artificial Intelligence Football Association (AIFA) has introduced a novel concept to NFTs called nonfungible intelligence or NFI. By tokenizing artificial intelligence, the ASM AIFA has captured the attention of investors who are thinking long-term about the future of the Metaverse and decentralized play-to-earn (P2E) economies.
In fusing AI features to the three growing markets of gaming, decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs, the ASM AIFA has the potential to be a lucrative long-term bet.
As an investor, these are the strategies I’ve considered when thinking about investing in the ASM AIFA, while also factoring in the impending tokenomics that will be integrated into the nascent blockchain P2E game.
JPMorgan has released a report outlining several prospects associated with the Metaverse
According to the study, there is a $1 trillion market opportunity
In addition, JPMorgan has opened a lounge in Decentraland
JPMorgan took its first step into the Metaverse, becoming the first bank to open a virtual lounge in the popular blockchain-based realm, Decentraland.
The bank launched the “Onyx lounge” alongside a report explaining Metaverse-related corporate development potential and reasons for the bank’s “explosive interest.” Onyx lounge is the name for the bank’s suite of Ethereum-based services.
In the report published by the American investment bank, “Opportunities in the Metaverse: How businesses can explore the Metaverse and navigate the hype vs. reality,” managing directors Christine Moy and Adit Gadgil have sketched up a theoretical Metaverse future. They said in it that the Metaverse might be a $1 trillion yearly market potential as “it will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years.”
According to JPMorgan, the Metaverse offers a $1 trillion annual revenue market opportunity as artists use Web3 to commercialize their work innovatively.
According to the research, “This democratic ownership economy coupled with the possibility of interoperability, could unlock immense economic opportunities, whereby digital goods and services are no longer captive to a singular gaming platform or brand.”
According to statistics gained from four prominent Metaverse sites, the average price of virtual land increased from $6,000 to $12,000 in six months last year. According to the bank, in-game advertising spending will reach $18.4 billion by 2027.
An accessible, easy-to-use metaverse doesn’t require VR. We already have the technology to build virtual spaces in which people coexist, collaborate, and create together, said Kumail Jaffer, co-founder and CTO of Gather.Town during the GamesBeat ‘Into the Metaverse’ Summit.
Dean Takahashi, lead writer at GamesBeat, was able to tour through the Subpace’s virtual office, led by Jaffer and William King, co-founder and CTO of Subspace, a global network platform that allows real-time applications to route traffic on the fastest paths.
There are already so many practical, real-life applications for these virtual gathering spaces, Jaffer said — everything from remote work to hosting conferences, trade shows, or even weddings.ADVERTISEMENT
“Anything that benefits from having a space for people to naturally interact, that’s what we’re trying to create here at Gather,” he explained. “That’s what we think the power of the metaverse is, creating natural spaces for people to connect in.”
The Gather meeting space is a virtual map you can navigate in your old-school JRPG style videogame avatar. Proximity chat gives you the feeling that you’re running into coworkers in the hall — when you’re close to someone, you can see and hear their audio and video feed; the video disappears and sound drops and mutes as you move away, letting you move fluidly between conversations. You can tap co-workers on the shoulder to chat over text or video, set up meetings, collaborate, and more.
It’s designed to bridge the gap between real-life interactions and virtual interactions in a way that most video meeting technology can’t, Jaffer says. For instance, on a Zoom call, you’re in a single conversation; at a party or any event or conference in the real world, you move fluidly between conversation groups.ADVERTISEMENT
“When COVID started we realized that things like this were missing, these natural interactions you get from a physical space,” he said. “That’s where we saw that we could provide some value. We could create a tool for creating these spaces, in which you could have more natural interactions.”
The whole excitement around the metaverse, a virtual world that is projected to be the centre of attraction for social interactions in the future, is arguably not dying down soon, as Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been declared as a fan.
Per the local media channel, the DailySabah, the President has instructed officials of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) to conduct work on new developments, including metaverse, cryptocurrencies, and social media, a move that mimics some of South Korea’s politician’s interest in crypto and the metaverse.
Per the reports, the President tasked the key people in the party to explore the listed industry offshoots and analyze their implications for the future. The president is particularly interested in the capabilities of the metaverse and he wants a forum to be organized in the virtual world where he will also be a guest.
Nations adopting innovations hinged on blockchain technology is always good for the industry, and while Turkey may not rank as one with a globally renowned economy, President Erdoğan is a respected leader around the world, and his potential endorsement of the metaverse as a technological revolution can lend a massive upliftment to the niche as a whole.
Big numbers coming. Microsoft’s US$75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard has landed – true to Call of Duty vernacular – “like a bomb” on the $200 billion revenue video games industry.
It heavily arms the Xbox giant for its vision of the metaverse, in which gaming is the marketing adrenaline of this much-touted online future that is to be experienced immersively through virtual reality (VR) headsets or augmented reality (AR) glasses. The stock market knocked $10 billion off Playstation maker Sony’s valuation on the news.
The metaverse was also a big noise at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, branded “tech’s hottest trend” by Variety magazine. Product launches included Samsung’s new VR world My House, offering virtual home makeovers; and US beauty tech group Perfect Corp’s AR-driven virtual beauty makeover range, which lets people experiment with cosmetics and accessories using AR.
Certainly the metaverse has been fast-moving, even since (in October 2021) Facebook renamed itself Meta – a bold step when VR only brings in about 3% of the company’s current revenue. But Bloomberg is predicting that the overall metaverse will be generating revenues of $800 billion as soon as 2024 (compared to $500 billion in 2020), so the prize is huge.
About half of that 2024 projection is expected from video games, while a substantial remainder is from live entertainment – and major artists like Ariana Grande and Marshmello have already been holding concerts in the virtual world.
Yet besides niche attractions for early adopters, what about the rest of us? Will we sign up for virtual interaction en masse when the technology is ready in a few years time? Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg thinks that the metaverse will allow people “to feel present – like we’re right there … no matter how far apart we actually are.”
Meta is going above and beyond with its ambitious immersive metaverse plans with a new mechanical eyeball that can track human eye movements that will be sent to AR/VR hardware for testing.
Lately, meta has been heavily investing in robotics and showcasing how far ahead they are when it comes to scheming immersive metaverse experiences. Last year, Meta demonstrated a haptic glove prototype meant to let users feel virtual objects in the metaverse.
Just recently, Facebook showed off a thin synthetic skin called ReSkin, which could be used to generate human-like sensations for robotic limbs.The Gorgeous Danube Delta in 4k – from Tulcea Romania
Using the synthetic skin, robot parts can handle items as thin as 1mm in width without the worry of damaging them. It can also detect force as small as 0.1 Newton on objects as thin as 1mm.
Now, new patents from Facebook describe a human-like eyeball device coated in a skin-like layer, called “Two-Axis Mechanical Rotatable Eyeball.”
