Technologies and hardware that Power on the Metaverse

Introduction

The idea of a metaverse originated from Neal Stephenson in 1992. His science fiction novel Snow Crash envisioned an online world where people could use digital avatars to explore and escape from the real world. Decades later, big technology companies have started to build their own versions of a futuristic metaverse. What is the metaverse, and how are big companies approaching it on the technology front? let’s discuss what technologies and hardware are used in metaverse

What is the metaverse?

The metaverse is a concept of an online 3D digital world with virtual land and objects. Imagine a world in which you can work remotely, visit virtual museums to see the latest artworks, or join your fellow rock band fans at a virtual concert, all from the comfort of your home.

Key technologies that power the metaverse

To make the metaverse experience more immersive, companies are using cutting-edge technologies like blockchain, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), 3D reconstruction, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of things (IoT) to power the 3D world.

Blockchain and cryptocurrency

Blockchain technology provides a decentralized and transparent solution for digital proof of ownership, digital collectibility, transfer of value, governance, accessibility, and interoperability. Cryptocurrencies enable users to transfer value while they work and socialize in the 3D digital world. 

In the future, crypto can potentially incentivize people to actually work in the metaverse. As more companies take their offices online for remote working, we might see metaverse-related jobs being offered.For a more in-depth 

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR)

AR uses digital visual elements and characters to morph the real world. It’s more accessible than VR and can be used on almost any smartphone or digital device with a camera. Through AR applications, users can view their surroundings with interactive digital visuals, similar to what we have in the mobile game Pokémon GO. When players open the camera on their phones, they can see Pokémons in the real-world environment.

VR works differently. Much like the metaverse concept, it produces an entirely computer-generated virtual environment. Users can then explore it using VR headsets, gloves, and sensors.

The way AR and VR work shows an early model of the metaverse. VR is already creating a digital world that incorporates fictional visual content. As its technology becomes more mature, VR can expand the metaverse experience to involve physical simulations with VR equipment. Users will be able to feel, hear and interact with people from other parts of the world.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been widely applied in our lives in recent years: business strategy planning, decision making, facial recognition, faster computing, and more. More recently, AI experts have been studying the possibilities of applying AI to the creation of immersive metaverses. 

AI has the potential to process a lot of data at lightning speed. Combined with machine learning techniques, AI algorithms can learn from previous iterations, taking into account historical data to come up with unique outputs and insights. 

Within the metaverse, AI can be applied to the non-player characters (NPCs) in different scenarios. NPCs exist in almost every game; they are a part of the gaming environment designed to react and respond to players’ actions. With AI’s processing abilities, NPCs can be placed across the 3D spaces to facilitate lifelike conversations with users or perform other specific tasks. Unlike a human user, an AI NPC can run on its own and be used by millions of players at the same time. It can also work in several different languages.

3D reconstruction

While this is not new technology, the use of 3D reconstruction has been rising during the pandemic, especially in the real estate industry, as lockdowns prevented potential buyers from visiting properties in person. Therefore, some agencies adopted 3D reconstruction technology to generate virtual property tours. Much like the metaverse we imagined, buyers could look around potential new homes from anywhere and make purchases without even having stepped foot inside.

One of the challenges for the metaverse is to create a digital environment that appears as close to our real world as possible. With the help of 3D reconstruction, it can create realistic and natural-looking spaces. Through special 3D cameras, we can take our world online by rendering accurate 3D photorealistic models of buildings, physical locations, and objects. The 3D spatial data and 4K HD photography are then passed to computers to process and generate a virtual replica in the metaverse for users to experience. These virtual replicas of physical world objects can also be referred to as digital twins.

Internet of things (IoT)

 IoT is a system that takes everything in our physical world and connects them to the Internet through sensors and devices. After connecting to the Internet, these devices will have a unique identifier and the ability to send or receive information automatically. Today, IoT is connecting thermostats, voice-activated speakers, medical devices, and much more to a wide range of data.

One of the applications of IoT on the metaverse is to collect and provide data from the physical world. This would increase the accuracy of the digital representations. For example, IoT data feeds could change the way certain metaverse objects function based on the current weather or other conditions. 

The Hardware Of The Metaverse

A metaverse – no matter which company will be the first to launch one – will be a fully immersive digital environment, a world within our world where our avatars can walk around, play games and interact with each other, browse the web or check out the odds at Superbet if we so wish. And for this, it will need hardware on several levels.

VR (and/or AR) headgear

No matter if we are looking at full immersion or just a digital layer between the real world and our eyes, the metaverse will need some type of headgear. The range of headsets to choose from is constantly growing: if at first, we could choose from Oculus (and that was about it), today there are several options available – most of them are aimed at gamers.

Oculus is still among the leading choices for those looking for a lightweight, standalone headset – and Meta’s (you know, the company formerly known as Facebook) metaverse will likely have native support for it. Meta’s upcoming headset (which, for now, only exists in a prototype form) will be even smaller and lighter and will add better cameras for a much better AR experience to the mix.

Handwear

If you walk around the metaverse, you will want to interact with the things and avatars you find there. Using a VR controller is pretty nice… but still unnatural for anything that’s not a stick, a sword or an axe. For full immersion, you’ll need to grab things – and for that, you need gloves with haptic technology.

Fortunately, haptic gloves are not science fiction – they have been around for quite some time. When it comes to their price tag, in turn, things are a bit hair-raising at this point: a high-quality pair of haptic gloves that can accurately track the movement of your fingers in VR can set you back quite a few thousand dollars or euros, depending on where you live.

Bodywear and treadmills

In the movie “Ready Player One”, Wade Watts put on a full-body haptic suit to beam himself into Oasis and turn into Parzival. As you might expect, this technology is also already available – for the right price, that is.

bHaptics’ TacSuit X16 comes with 16 haptic feedback points to turn your gaming into a more realistic one – you can feel the bullets hit you, for example. Its big brother, the TacSuit X40 is better and more expensive. Both of these products are great for gaming – but won’t measure up in a metaverse.

The Teslasuit is a much more serious device, covering the entire body, with sensors that collect biometric data and can even be used for motion capture, performance training, and – probably – gaming, too. If you can afford it, that is – this summer, one of the available Testlasuits was sold for 10 wrapped Ethereum – that’s around $46000 today.

Treadmills, in turn, which allows you to walk around in the metaverse, will likely be much more affordable. Virtuix’s Omni, the omnidirectional treadmill simulator that came to be after a successful Kickstarter campaign in the mid-2010s, is selling for around $2000 – the price of a decent gaming PC.

The metaverse is on our doorstep. For full immersion, in turn, we will probably have to wait for a while – until at least the price of hardware drops to an acceptable level.

Read more: Metaverse-The rising technology