Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of those in the technology community have imagined a future state of, if not quasi-successor to, the Internet – called the “Metaverse”. Metverse is a vision of the future networking that sounds fantastical. The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space[1] including the sum of all virtual worlds and the Internet. The idea is to create a space similar to the internet, but one that users (via digital avatars) can walk around inside of and where they can interact with one another in real time. Keeping it simple, the metaverse is a potentially vast three-dimensional online world where people can meet up and interact virtually.
The metaverse was originally conceived as the setting for dystopian science fiction novels, where virtual universes provide an escape from crumbling societies. Now, the idea has transformed into a moonshot goal for Silicon Valley, and become a favorite talking point among startups, venture capitalists and tech giants. Imagine a world where you could sit on the same couch as a friend who lives thousands of miles away, or conjure up a virtual version of your workplace while at the beach.
Tech titans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are betting on as the next great leap in the evolution of the internet. Although the full vision for the Metaverse remains hard to define, seemingly fantastical, and decades away, the pieces have started to feel very real. Metaverse has become the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants. Big companies joining the discussion now may simply want to reassure investors that they won’t miss out on what could be the next big thing, or that their investments in VR, which has yet to gain broad commercial appeal, will eventually pay off.
‘Metaverse’: the next internet revolution? article tells that metaverse is the stuff of science-fiction: the term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, in which people don virtual reality headsets to interact inside a game-like digital world.
Facebook Wants Us to Live in the Metaverse. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “What is the metaverse? It’s a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces. You can kind of think of this as an embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at.” Metaverse vision was the driver behind Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR and its newly announced Horizon virtual world/meeting space, among many, many other projects, such as AR glasses and brain-to-machine communications. In a high-tech plan to Facebookify the world advertisements will likely be a key source of revenue in the metaverse, just as they are for the company today.
Term Metaverse was created by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 dystopian novel “Snow Crash” to describe a virtual space where people interact with one another through user-controlled avatars. That “Snow Crash” novel coined the terms “Metaverse” and “Avatar”.
Venture capitalist Matthew Ball has also written extensively on what he believes are the main attributes of a metaverse: a full-functioning economy, real-time persistence (no pausing), and interoperability of digital “belongings” such as clothing across multiple platforms. Experts working in the space tend to agree on a few key aspects of the metaverse, including the idea that users will experience a sense of “embodiment” or “presence.”. Read more at The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite and Big Tech has its eyes set on the metaverse. Here’s what that means
Proponents of the metaverse say there could eventually be huge business potential — a whole new platform on which to sell digital goods and services. If metaverse could be properly realized and catches on some future year, it is believed that metaverse would revolutionize not just the infrastructure layer of the digital world, but also much of the physical one, as well as all the services and platforms atop them, how they work, and what they sell. It is believed that verifiable, immutable ownership of digital goods and currency will be an essential component of the metaverse.
Did you hear? Facebook Inc. is going to become a metaverse company. At least that’s the story its management wants everyone to believe after a flurry of interviews and announcements over the past couple of weeks. Zuckerberg is turning trillion-dollar Facebook into a ‘metaverse’ company, he tells investors article tells that after release of Facebook’s earnings CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a moment to zoom out and wax on the company’s future goals, specifically calling out his ambitions to turn Facebook into “a metaverse company.”
Some pieces of the metaverse already exist. Services like Fortnite, an online game in which users can compete, socialize and build virtual worlds with millions of other players, can give users an early sense of how it will work. And some people have already spent thousands of dollars on virtual homes, staking out their piece of metaverse real estate.
Who will be big if metaverse catches on. Bloomberg article Who Will Win the Metaverse? Not Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook article claims the social networking giant and its CEO have vast ambitions to dominate the next big thing in computing, but other tech giants are in a better position to turn the hype into reality. Facebook’s actual track record on VR tells a story that has not been very promising. The two critical components needed for companies to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise from any potential metaverse are advanced semiconductors and software tools. Facebook is not strong on either front.
There are many other companies with Metaverse visions. For example Oculus’s technology has been surpassed by smaller competitors such as Valve Index, which offers better fidelity. Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella said last week that his company is working on building the “enterprise metaverse.” Epic Games announced a $1 billion funding round in April to support its metaverse ambitions. Companies like graphics chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) and gaming platform Roblox (RBLX) are also playing Metaverse game.
Despite the current hype cycle, the idea is still amorphous, and a fully functioning metaverse is probably years and billions of dollars away — if it happens at all. Another question is are we emotionally evolved enough for it? There is a host of concerns about how the metaverse could be used or exploited. “Are we safe to start interacting at a more person-to-person level, or are the a**holes still going to ruin it for everybody?” “If you can now replace somebody’s entire reality with an alternate reality, you can make them believe almost anything,”
Keep in mind that the metaverse is a relatively old idea that seems to gain momentum every few years, only to fade from the conversation in lieu of more immediate opportunities. Though “Fortnite” and “Roblox” are often described as precursors to the Metaverse, the most significant precursor to the Metaverse is the internet itself.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE:
Nvidia makes Omniverse, a real-time collaborative design tool, generally available, and now allows developers to create hyper-realistic, interactive AI avatars
Nvidia brings highly realistic, walking, talking AI avatars to its Omniverse design tool
https://siliconangle.com/2021/11/09/nvidia-brings-highly-realistic-walking-talking-ai-avatars-omniverse-design-tool/
Nvidia Corp. is expanding its hyper-realistic graphics collaboration platform and ecosystem Nvidia Omniverse with a new tool for generating interactive artificial intelligence avatars.
The company also announced a new synthetic data-generation engine that can generate physically simulated synthetic data for training deep neural networks. The new capabilities, announced at Nvidia GTC 2021 today, are designed to expand the usefulness of the Omniverse platform and enable the creation of a new breed of AI models.
Nvidia Omniverse is a real-time collaboration tool that’s designed to bring together graphics artists, designers and engineers to create realistic, complex simulations for a variety of purposes. Industry professionals from aerospace, architecture, construction, media and entertainment, manufacturing and gaming all use the software.
The platform has been available in beta for a couple of years, and today it finally launches into general availability.
NVIDIA Omniverse
Creating and Connecting Virtual Worlds
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/omniverse/
NVIDIA Omniverse™ is an easily extensible, open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation. Creators, designers, researchers, and engineers can connect major design tools, assets, and projects to collaborate and iterate in a shared virtual space. Developers and software providers can also easily build and sell Extensions, Apps, Connectors, and Microservices on Omniverse’s modular platform to expand its functionality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Stephen Nellis / Reuters:
AMD touts Meta as a data center chip customer, as it targets Nvidia with new chips like MI200, a family of server accelerators to boost ML and other workloads — Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) on Monday said it has won Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) as a data center chip customer …
AMD lands Meta as customer and takes on Nvidia, sending shares up 11%
https://www.reuters.com/technology/amd-lands-meta-customer-takes-aim-nvidia-with-new-supercomputing-chips-2021-11-08/
taken on November 2, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Nov 8 (Reuters) – Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) on Monday said it has won Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) as a data center chip customer, sending AMD shares up more than 11%as it cemented some of its gains against Intel Corp (INTC.O).
It also announced a range of new chips aimed at taking on larger rivals such as Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) in supercomputing markets, as well as smaller competitors, including Ampere Computing in the cloud computing market.
n taken on November 2, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Nov 8 (Reuters) – Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) on Monday said it has won Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) as a data center chip customer, sending AMD shares up more than 11%as it cemented some of its gains against Intel Corp (INTC.O).
It also announced a range of new chips aimed at taking on larger rivals such as Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) in supercomputing markets, as well as smaller competitors, including Ampere Computing in the cloud computing market.
After years of trailing the much larger Intel in the market for x86 processor chips, AMD has steadily gained market share since 2017, when a comeback plan spearheaded by Chief Executive Lisa Su put the company on a course to its present position of having faster chips than Intel’s.
AMD now has nearly a quarter of the market for x86 chips, according to Mercury Research.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:
Unpacking some key aspects of what constitutes a metaverse, such as making and owning virtual property, 3D telepresence in a persistent world, and more — Will we all live in the metaverse soon? Or is the idea just Second Life redux? — These days it seems like everybody …
So what is “the metaverse,” exactly?
Will we all live in the metaverse soon? Or is the idea just Second Life redux?
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/11/everyone-pitching-the-metaverse-has-a-different-idea-of-what-it-is/
These days it seems like everybody and their corporate parent company is talking about “the metaverse” as the next big thing that’s going to revolutionize our online lives. But everyone seems to have their own idea of what “the metaverse” means—that is, if they have any real idea what it means at all.
The term “metaverse” was originally coined in Neal Stephenson’s seminal 1992 cyberpunk novel, Snow Crash. In the book, the Metaverse (always capitalized in Stephenson’s fiction) is a shared “imaginary place” that’s “made available to the public over the worldwide fiber-optics network” and projected onto virtual reality goggles. In it, developers can “build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows, special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored, and free-combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other.”
Meta (formerly Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues mentioned the word “metaverse” 80+ times in under 90 minutes during last week’s Facebook Connect keynote presentation, where the company announced its new name. But Stephenson has made it abundantly clear that “there has been zero communication between me and FB & no biz relationship.” That means Facebook’s interpretation of “the metaverse” might end up being quite different from what Stephenson originally described.
While Meta’s rebranding drives most of the metaverse conversation these days, the nearly 30 years since Snow Crash appeared have seen plenty of online networks that embody some or most of what Stephenson’s book describes. These efforts to create “the metaverse” have included numerous online games and gathering places that captured some of the metaverse’s most important concepts without ever using the term.
“But here we are,” as Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack recently put it. “Mark Zuckerberg has decided that now is the time to build the metaverse, so enormous wheels are turning and resources are flowing and the effort is definitely going to be made.”
So is the metaverse the next big advance that will revolutionize the way we all connect with each other? Is it just a repackaging of existing technologies into a new catch-all concept? Or is it just the latest buzzword marketing term?
The answer to that depends on what you mean by “metaverse.”
Defining the metaverse
In his Facebook Connect keynote last week, Zuckerberg said that “the best way to understand the metaverse is to experience it yourself, but it’s a little tough because it doesn’t fully exist yet.” From where we’re sitting, asking people to try out some nonexistent thing doesn’t seem like the best way to convey a full understanding of your bold new corporate direction.
Elsewhere in the keynote, Zuckerberg described a grandiose vision of the metaverse as an “even more immersive and embodied internet” where “you’re gonna be able to do almost anything you can imagine—get together with friends and family, work, learn, play, shop, create—as well as entirely new categories that don’t really fit how we think about computers or phones today.” That helps a bit, but any description that includes the words “almost anything you can imagine” is so broad as to be almost meaningless.
we’ve identified the following elements that, taken together, seem to define a metaverse. Anything that has any business using the term will include one or all of the following:
A shared social space with avatars to represent users
This basic building block of the metaverse concept is what Zuckerberg is talking about when he calls for a more “embodied” Internet. On a web site or social media network, you might be represented by a username or thumbnail picture. In the metaverse, you’re represented by a customizable avatar that can move, speak, and/or perform animated actions.
A persistent “world” for the avatars to inhabit and interact with
In some cases, this means a virtual world that mimics the space constraints and land scarcity of the real world, as seen in Second Life’s discrete plots of land. In other cases, it just means users sharing specially created spaces for a particular game or a special time-sensitive event, like recent multimedia concerts held in Fortnite.
The ability to own virtual property as you would physical property
This can mean anything from a Neopets JPG that’s associated with your account to a collection of powerful gear in World of Warcraft. In either case, your virtual property stays linked to you and doesn’t disappear between sessions.
Recently, people have tried to use non-fungible tokens as a decentralized way to track and establish ownership of virtual goods, independent of any controlling authority or corporate server. In theory, such NFTs could allow virtual goods to be moved freely between metaverses controlled by different companies. In practice, the level of standard-setting and inter-corporate cooperation necessary for this kind of portability writ large remains a pipe dream.
The ability to create your own virtual property
Allowing users to make their own metaverse content can be seen as a boon both for users—who get to shape the virtual world to their whims—and for the metaverse makers—who don’t have to spend a lot of time and effort creating every single virtual object from scratch. Games like Minecraft and Roblox show how metaverses that provide relatively simple building blocks can harness network effects and player creativity to produce a huge variety of in-world creations.
But filling a metaverse with virtual objects isn’t as simple as just saying “let the users do it.” Questions of control, moderation, and copyright infringement can take on outsized importance here, especially if your metaverse is controlled by a corporation that wants to draw value from all that user-generated work (and if the users want to share the profits).
The ability to exchange and/or sell your virtual property
This can range from things like no-longer-grey-market currency exchanges for World of Warcraft gold farming to strictly regulated full in-universe economies like those in EVE Online. Somewhere in the middle you have games like Second Life, where disagreements over player “ownership” of the virtual land created by publisher Linden Labs have been argued in US courts.
A shared universe of IP from multiple major companies
This element of the metaverse idea was heavily popularized by Ready Player One, the 2011 novel and 2018 movie featuring a virtual world that combined elements of countless nostalgic media properties, from Joust and Dungeons and Dragons to WarGames and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Media consolidation aids this concept, allowing for virtual worlds where Gandalf could fight Bugs Bunny through the unexpected largesse of common corporate parent Warner Bros. But crossovers that reach past a single corporate walled garden are becoming more common, too: characters from Nintendo, Microsoft, Sega, Square Enix, Capcom, Namco, Konami, and more all interact in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, for instance. Meanwhile, Fortnite has played host to official crossovers from Disney/Marvel/Star Wars, John Wick, DC Comics, Ghostbusters, God of War, Halo, the NFL, and many more.
Full 3D telepresence via VR or AR glasses
This is seen by many as the last step in achieving a “full” metaverse. Virtual and augmented reality could allow us to advance past the “magic windows” of our flat screens to a world where one actually feels a sense of “presence” with other 3D avatars occupying the same location. “It’ll feel like you’re right in the room together making eye contact, having a shared sense of space and not just looking at a grid of faces on a screen,” as Meta put it in its keynote.
Early efforts like VRChat and Meta’s own Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workplaces already serve as strong proof-of-concept examples of how this could work. But sharing a room with 16 other avatars in Horizon is “a far cry from the metaverse of our visions,” as Carmack pointed out last week. Many technical problems will need to be overcome to have a VR metaverse with “thousands of people milling about” and wandering in and out of virtual rooms at will, as Carmack envisions.
Whose metaverse is it, anyway?
Besides these generalized building blocks, it’s also important to differentiate between “a metaverse” and “The Metaverse.” While they sound similar, changing the article preceding “metaverse” can heavily impact the meaning.
The difference has to do with control. Broadly speaking, any corporate entity or group of programmers can create “a metaverse” that meets any or all of the above criteria, just as anyone can create a social network. In these cases, a single entity manages the servers, polices user conduct, and sets rules for how the virtual world works.
On the other end of the spectrum is a completely open architecture, where different entities and interoperable servers connect to a single shared Metaverse—the Metaverse—via a shared set of broadly agreed-upon standards. Successes like the world wide web and email show how this is possible in the wider online world, but similar efforts to establish metaverse standards have mostly failed to catch on.
Stephenson’s Snow Crash described something of a hybrid approach between these two poles.
While plenty of companies are building “a metaverse” of sorts, the end goal for many of them seems to be taking control of “The Metaverse,” the singular place where everyone shares their online lives. Right now, it seems vanishingly unlikely that any single corporate-controlled metaverse will become that popular, though. Absent some sort of workable decentralized standard emerging, we’ll likely see dozens of balkanized metaverses fighting for mind share and market share without allowing for much interaction between them.
What problem are you solving?
Depending on how strict you are with the above definitions, there are plenty of existing online structures that could be described as metaverses. Many have grown out of the world of gaming, where the idea of sharing a virtual space with other characters represented by avatars is a long-established fact of life.
Clive Thompson argues persuasively that Minecraft is already a metaverse in every way that matters. Epic’s Tim Sweeney sees Fortnite as the central pillar of the company’s own metaverse. The multi-billion dollar Roblox lets users create millions of shared public “experiences” (don’t call them “games”) under a single standard. A lucky few Roblox creators even make a full-time living creating those spaces (which include unofficial Squid Game recreations that skirt IP laws deftly).
Second Life, VRChat, and EVE Online could all be considered metaverses in their own right. Even a simpler online game like Grand Theft Auto Online is a metaverse in a sense.
In this sense, “the metaverse” isn’t some amorphous futuristic idea that nobody can really understand. It’s just something that countless companies are building today.
When Meta and others talk about “The Metaverse,” though, they’re going a bit beyond that basic definition. The metaverse of Zuckerberg’s vision isn’t just a place for people to hang out as avatars but a full-blown revolution of the online experience
This vision of the metaverse has been relatively common in fiction for decades now. And there are some signs that younger generations are more comfortable replacing real-world gatherings with virtualized ones; just ask the 12 million people who saw a Travis Scott concert in Fortnite last year.
But for any online or real-world function that you think will occur in a future metaverse, you first have to ask what problem the metaverse solves for users. Yes, holding a corporate meeting with VR avatars could offer some utility over the awkward video wall of today’s Zoom meetings (or the travel needed for real-world meetings). But even with likely advances in the comfort of VR headsets and the verisimilitude of VR avatars, that sort of all-encompassing VR gathering might seem overwhelming to employees used to tabbing away to other tasks during Zoom meetings.
And sure, shopping in a simulated virtual world holds some promise, whether it’s test-driving a car in Fortnite or simply buying artificially rare virtual goods as an online status symbol.
Some foresee a metaverse where everyone can make money via play-to-earn schemes or boutique virtual item creation. But examples like Roblox show us that virtual worlds usually have the same economic stratification as the real world, where only top-tier creators (or those who got in on the ground floor) can actually make a decent living.
Right now, companies are following their FOMO and looking for that first-mover advantage in the coming metaverse, staking a claim to a brave new virtual world before the scaffolding for it is even fully built
Tomi Engdahl says:
John Carmack issues some words of warning for Meta and its metaverse plans
“But here we are, Mark Zuckerberg has decided that now is the time…”
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/10/john-carmack-sounds-a-skeptical-note-over-metas-metaverse-plans/
Oculus consulting CTO John Carmack has been bullish on the idea of “the metaverse” for a long time, as he’ll be among the first to point out. But the id Software co-founder spent a good chunk of his wide-ranging Connect keynote Thursday sounding pretty skeptical of plans by the newly rebranded Meta (formerly Facebook) to actually build that metaverse.
“I really do care about [the metaverse], and I buy into the vision,” Carmack said, before quickly adding, “I have been pretty actively arguing against every single metaverse effort that we have tried to spin up internally in the company from even pre-acquisition times.” The reason for that seeming contradiction is a somewhat ironic one, as Carmack puts it: “I have pretty good reasons to believe that setting out to build the metaverse is not actually the best way to wind up with the metaverse.”
Today, Carmack said, “The most obvious path to the metaverse is that you have one single universal app, something like Roblox.” That said, Carmack added, “I doubt a single application will get to that level of taking over everything.” That’s because a single bad decision by the creators of that walled-garden metaverse can cut off too many possibilities for users and makers. “I just don’t believe that one player—one company—winds up making all the right decisions for this,” he said.
The idea of the metaverse, Carmack says, can be “a honeypot trap for ‘architecture astronauts.’” Those are the programmers and designers who “want to only look at things from the very highest levels,” he said, while skipping the “nuts and bolts details” of how these things actually work.
“But here we are,” Carmack continued. “Mark Zuckerberg has decided that now is the time to build the metaverse, so enormous wheels are turning and resources are flowing and the effort is definitely going to be made.”
Build products, not architecture
Carmack used his own experience creating Doom as an example of the value of concrete, product-based thinking. Rather than simply writing abstract game engines, he wrote games where “some of the technology… turned out to be reusable enough to be applied to other things,” he said. “But it was always driven by the technology itself, and the technology was what enabled the product and then almost accidentally enabled some other things after it.”
Building pure infrastructure and focusing on the “future-proofing and planning for broad generalizations of things,” on the other hand, risks “making it harder to do the things that you’re trying to do today in the name of things you hope to do tomorrow, and [then] it’s not actually there or doesn’t actually work right when you get around to wanting to do that,” he said.
To that end, Carmack spoke somewhat approvingly of concrete Meta products like Horizon Worlds and Horizon Workrooms, which can be clearly judged on how much value they’re bringing to users. I
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.oculus.com/facebook-horizon/?utm_source=rakuten&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=TnL5HPStwNw-jvuIn1z0X954m8sPiNJd0Q&MID=43993&LSNSUBSITE=Omitted_TnL5HPStwNw&utm_term=exclusive&utm_content=ad
https://www.oculus.com/workrooms/?utm_source=rakuten&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=TnL5HPStwNw-E0tv970NCrGnnPdY2MWQRQ&MID=43993&LSNSUBSITE=Omitted_TnL5HPStwNw&utm_term=exclusive&utm_content=ad
Tomi Engdahl says:
Qualcomm has announced the launch of Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, which it says will make it considerably easier to build experiences for head-worn augmented reality systems.
Qualcomm Launches Snapdragon Spaces Augmented Reality Developer Platform
https://www.hackster.io/news/qualcomm-launches-snapdragon-spaces-augmented-reality-developer-platform-60f2942dac21
Designed around nine key features, this dev platform is expected to pass the Khronos Group’s OpenXR conformance testing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Experts warn Facebook’s metaverse poses ‘terrifying dangers’
https://www.the-sun.com/tech/4004503/facebooks-metaverse-danger-warning/
Facebook’s metaverse poses “terrifying dangers” and needs to be policed, according to an expert.
The immersive virtual world was recently revealed as one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s top priorities but critics are skeptical about how good it will actually be.
Dr. David Reid, Professor of AI and Spatial Computing at Liverpool Hope University, thinks it will change our lives just like the internet did.
He’s also very worried about potential dangers.
He said: “The metaverse has huge implications – it comes with fantastic advantages and terrifying dangers.”
“And we need a highly robust system in place to police the metaverse.”
“We’re clearly in the very early stages but we need to start talking about these problems now before we go down a route we can’t reverse away from. It’s crucial for the future.”
Professor Reid is concerned about the vast amount of data that could be collected from the metaverse and who controls it.
He also fears that avatars could be hacked and you could end up interacting with cybercriminals rather than people you know and trust.
Reid explained: “The metaverse’s ultimate aim is not just virtual reality or augmented reality, it’s mixed reality (MR). It’s blending the digital and the real world together. Ultimately this blend may be so good, and so pervasive, that the virtual and the real become indistinguishable. “
“And the market for that is gigantic. Whoever controls it, will basically have control over your entire reality. “
“The data this will generate will be vast…..and extremely valuable.”
“And that’s why we need a system in place to police it. No single company should ever exert control – it’s simply too important for that to happen.”
He suggests that the metaverse should be a collaborative effort with a standard set for everyone to follow.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Verge:
Qualcomm unveils Snapdragon Spaces XR Developer Platform, with hardware agnostic APIs and support for Unreal Engine 4 and Unity — AR as a ‘second screen’ feature or through dedicated headsets and glasses — While a lot of talk about the metaverse has focused on virtual reality experiences …
Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Spaces try to make it easier to get apps ready for augmented reality
AR as a ‘second screen’ feature or through dedicated headsets and glasses
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/9/22771850/qualcomm-ar-sdk-snapdragon-spaces-mixed-reality-metaverse?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Tomi Engdahl says:
Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Unity to acquire Peter Jackson’s visual effects company Weta Digital, including 275+ engineers, for $1.625B; Weta Digital’s FTX artists will form a new entity — Unity has just announced its intent to acquire Weta Digital, the legendary visual effects company co-founded by Peter Jackson, for a massive $1.625 billion.
Unity is buying Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for over $1.6B
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/09/unity-is-buying-peter-jacksons-weta-digital-for-over-1-6b/
Unity has just announced its intent to acquire Weta Digital, the legendary visual effects company co-founded by Peter Jackson, for a massive $1.625 billion.
Whether or not you recognize the name, you’ve seen Weta Digital’s work. From “Lord of the Rings” to “Avatar” to “Shang-Chi,” if its the kind of movie where people say “you should really see it in theaters,” there’s a good chance Weta Digital played a huge role in the VFX.
Leading into this deal, Weta Digital was both a team of artists creating visual effects and a team of engineers developing many of the tools those artists use. It’s those tools and engineering teams, specifically, that Unity is acquiring; the visual effects artistry team, meanwhile, will be split off into its own new thing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft and Meta partner to integrate Workplace content into Teams and plan to integrate Teams video meetings into Workplace groups by early 2022 — Microsoft Teams is integrating into Workplace — Microsoft is partnering with Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook …
Microsoft partners with Meta to integrate Teams into its Facebook-like Workplace
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/10/22774059/microsoft-teams-meta-facebook-workplace-integration?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Microsoft Teams is integrating into Workplace
Microsoft is partnering with Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, to integrate Microsoft Teams into Zuckerberg’s Workplace platform. Facebook Workplace, or Workplace by Meta as it’s now been rebranded, will soon integrate Microsoft Teams to livestream video into Workplace groups.
The Microsoft Teams integration into Workplace will also allow employees using Teams or Workplace to view, comment, and react to meetings in real time without having to switch between apps.
Microsoft is also integrating Workplace into Teams, which will enable Teams users to access Workplace content through an app within Teams. The app can be optionally pinned to the Teams navigation bar and will include a homepage of Workplace content. Microsoft Teams admins will also be able to mark content as important to showcase it in the Workplace app.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tencent shares its metaverse vision for the first time
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/11/tencent-metaverse/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
How could Tencent not jump on the metaverse bandwagon when Facebook is hinging its future on the new buzzword?
At this stage, Tencent’s approach seems more measured than Facebook’s $10 billion investment into its metaverse division. But any early hint from the Chinese social media and gaming giant will provide enough fodder for investor speculation.
During its earnings call on Wednesday, Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma unveiled the firm’s musings on metaverse for the first time:
Anything that makes the virtual world more real and the real world more rich with virtual experiences can become part of the metaverse.
Staircase to metaverse
The most obvious path to metaverse is video games, the firm’s largest revenue driver. It could be highly interactive games, multiple games under one common IP, or infrastructure that enables users to make games, according to Ma.
Some of these ideas have already started to take shape at Tencent’s portfolio companies, such as Epic Games, Roblox, and Discord. Yes, Tencent doesn’t try to do everything itself but has backed hundreds of businesses in which it finds strategic value.
“So it’s Fortnite together with Rocket League in the Epic example, or multiple different so-called game experiences within the Roblox example,”
The second pathway, according to Ma, could be a social network that is “gamified and supports much more programmable experiences.”
Such a social network needs a suite of tools. “One needs to both provide the 3D graphics capabilities… the one with the server-based community” and “provide the UGC and PGC tools that the game companies need,” explained Mitchell.
“So while social networks such as Meta itself and Snap have the most capital resources, they also have a good amount of work to do,” he added.
Another iteration of the path could be “real-world experience but augmented by augmented reality and virtual reality,” noted Ma.
The company didn’t share a timeline for when its metaverse will materialize, but Lau admitted it will “probably take longer than people expected and would probably need a number of iterations.”
Lau believed “hardware will probably be an assisting condition but not the necessary condition” for metaverse.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google reorg moves AR, VR, Starline and Area 120 into new ‘Labs’ team
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/11/google-reorg-moves-ar-vr-starline-and-area-120-into-new-labs-team-reporting-directly-to-sundar-pichai/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
Google Labs is back, but this time around, it’s not a consumer-facing brand delivering a range of experimental products. Instead, it’s the internal name given to a new team at Google created under a reorganization that aims to gather the company’s many innovative projects and long-term bets under one roof. The new group will be led by Clay Bavor, a veteran Googler and VP whose most recent role has seen him leading the company’s forward-looking efforts in virtual and augmented reality, including its cutting-edge holographic videoconferencing project known as Project Starline.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lauren Goode / Wired:
A look at VR meeting startup Spatial, which in January pivoted to hosting NFT auctions in virtual spaces
How a VR Company Became the Airbnb for NFTs
Yes, that’s really a thing now.
https://www.wired.com/story/spatial-airbnb-for-nfts/
But on Wednesday of last week, Loewenstein launched into a presentation on NFTs, virtual art houses, the Utah Jazz NBA team, and the curse of having been christened a “future of work” app.
“This is kind of a weird situation,” Loewenstein began. “For those of you who have used Spatial, you might be wondering, ‘WTF? What has Spatial become? How many more buzzwords can they throw out …’ And the answer is, infinitely more buzzwords if it helps us make money. Just kidding.”
Loewenstein may have couched the company’s money-making goals in humor, but Spatial really is following the money. Right now, that happens to be in the direction of the much-hyped NFT art market. NFT refers to “non-fungible tokens,” often described as certificates of ownership of digital assets. Some individual artists are raking in millions by selling not just a piece of digital art itself, but that tokenized proof of ownership. The token is managed on a blockchain, which means crypto is the default currency. According to a recent Bloomberg report, the crypto art market generated $3.5 billion in sales in the first nine months of 2021.
“The industry seems to be rallying around this idea of an interoperable, NFT-driven metaverse, which we think we serve in a unique, super-simple, and fast way,” says Anand Agarawala, Spatial’s cofounder and chief executive, in an email to WIRED. Spatial’s rapid transition from hosting VR board meetings to hosting NFT auctions is emblematic of the fast moves many tech startups have to make if they hope to sell a product that’s better and cheaper than what larger competitors could offer. But for Spatial, which had aligned itself with partners like Microsoft and was selling its software to clients like Mattel and Pfizer, the doughnut drift into the notoriously volatile world of NFT art seems especially risky.
Meta Masterpieces
Agarwala and Loewenstein say the change was more of an evolution than a pivot, to use the Silicon Valley parlance; their users dictated what Spatial would become. Sure, being able to appear as an avatar in a “holographic office” was useful, especially as the white-collar world embraced remote work during quarantine. Some office leaders had been using Spatial to host virtual team events, to give remote workers a sense of presence with one another.
But something odd happened. When the Spatial app first launched on the Quest 2 headset in 2020, the majority of its users were accessing the app in VR. The company thought maybe the moment had arrived—given that the world was living through a pandemic—where people would be more comfortable wearing a VR headset for extended periods of time. Not so much. Spatial started to receive feedback that people didn’t actually want to take endless meetings in VR and would rather have the option to just click a link and join on the web like they might join a Zoom meeting. So the company built a mobile app and became web-friendly. Now 75 percent of people using Spatial’s virtual reality meeting rooms aren’t using a VR headset at all.
“It’s almost entirely on a desktop computer, sometimes on mobile,” Loewenstein says. “So during this month, when the metaverse has been the most talked-about ever … what most people relate to is not a headset-based experience.”
Then, in January of 2021, something else happened. A Parisian artist named Yacine Aït Kaci had been tasked with building a virtual museum to celebrate the tenth anniversary of ELYX, an entirely digital, genderless, nation-agnostic ambassador created by the United Nations. The artist, who sometimes goes by YAK, chose to host the virtual museum event in the Spatial app.
A few months later, the visual designer Jarlan Perez and contemporary video producer and sculptor Federico Clapis—whose sculptures of babies holding iPhones in utero and VR-headset-clad mothers holding invisible children are a jarring interpretation of the modern world—got into Spatial too. They took the virtual spaces Spatial had built for giant corporations to go over PowerPoints or fiddle with 3D product renderings and created galleries for their artwork instead. And then they began to sell NFTs.
The whole notion is stunningly abstract: Showcasing digital art, a beautiful or beautifully bizarre assemblage of ones and zeros, in an entirely virtual atelier, also a series of ones and zeroes, and then selling it as a blockchain-based non-fungible token to a buyer who may not physically possess the art, but can, at least to a certain audience, prove they own a unique copy of it. No matter: Soon, 90 percent of Spatial’s users were NFT artists using the app’s virtual environments as exhibition spaces.
The Spatial team reacted fast, building what they claim are one-click options for artists to integrate Ethereum wallets, pull in their NFTs, and choose one of the many galleries to host an event in. The app became a virtual Airbnb for artists selling NFTs.
New Money
A business model in which multibillion-dollar sports franchises are utilizing your software may not be a bad one for Spatial—and perhaps not all that different from selling your software to Fortune 500 companies. In the future, Spatial plans to sell its own custom-designed virtual spaces as NFTs, or it might build out an affiliate business where it gets a cut of the art it sells, Loewenstein said.
But there’s enough well-founded skepticism around the NFT art market right now to ponder whether Spatial’s pivot could be an ill-fated one. Some artists have suggested that their fellow creators are being sold on speculative value and the promise of prestige more than anything else. Others have expressed concern about the real environmental toll crypto-fueled art could have. At the AWE conference, where Loewenstein was presenting his case, some metaverse developers were less than enthused.
“There’s definitely a lot of hype in the NFT art space right now,” says Brielle Garcia, an experienced AR and VR developer. “I think it’s great that some artists are getting well-compensated for their work, but I think many of the real technical advantages that NFT and blockchain provide are being lost in the current gold rush.” (Garcia also spoke to me during a panel about AR at last week’s conference.) The technical value of an NFT is in the token itself, Garcia says, and with art projects the art gets conflated with the token.
“Even if the value of Ethereum crashes or a bunch of the top NFTs go down in value, creators are bought in,” Loewenstein says. “They’re not all making tons of money, but they are making money, and no one’s taking it from them.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Meta details a haptic glove prototype that uses air pockets to simulate touching objects in VR and has been in development for seven years — A new sci-fi interface for the metaverse — You cannot pet a dog in Meta’s new, high-tech virtual reality gloves. But researchers are getting closer.
Meta’s sci-fi haptic glove prototype lets you feel VR objects using air pockets
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22782860/meta-facebook-reality-labs-soft-robotics-haptic-glove-prototype?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
A new sci-fi interface for the metaverse
You cannot pet a dog in Meta’s new, high-tech virtual reality gloves. But researchers are getting closer.
Meta (formerly Facebook) is known for its high-profile moves into virtual and augmented reality. For seven years, though, it’s been quietly working on one of its most ambitious projects yet: a haptic glove that reproduces sensations like grasping an object or running your hand along a surface. While Meta’s not letting the glove out of its Reality Labs research division, the company is showing it off for the first time today, and it sees the device — alongside other wearable tech — as the future of VR and AR interaction.
At a simplified level, Meta’s haptics prototype is a glove lined with around 15 ridged and inflatable plastic pads known as actuators. The pads are arranged to fit along the wearer’s palm, the underside of their fingers, and their fingertips. The glove also acts as a VR controller. The back features small white markers that let cameras track how the fingers move through space, and it’s got internal sensors that capture how the wearer’s fingers are bending.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nicole Wetsman / The Verge:
The FDA authorizes AppliedVR’s EaseVRx as a prescription VR treatment for chronic lower back pain in adults — It joins a handful of other digital therapeutics — The Food and Drug Administration authorized a virtual reality system as a prescription treatment for chronic back pain, the agency announced today.
VR treatment for chronic pain gets FDA authorization
It joins a handful of other digital therapeutics
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22785609/vr-chronic-pain-fda?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
The Food and Drug Administration authorized a virtual reality system as a prescription treatment for chronic back pain, the agency announced today. The therapy, called EaseVRx, joins the short list of digital therapeutics cleared by the agency over the past few years.
EaseVRx includes a VR headset and a device that amplifies the sound of the user’s breath to assist in breathing exercises. It uses principles from cognitive behavior therapy, which aims to help people recognize and understand various thought patterns and emotions. The program addresses pain through relaxation, distraction, and improved awareness of internal signals, the FDA said in its statement.
The FDA authorized EaseVRx based on data from an eight-week study in 179 people with low back pain that had lasted six months or longer. Half used the EaseVRx program and half participated in another, two-dimensional virtual reality program that did not use cognitive behavioral therapy methods. Around two-thirds of participants using EaseVRx said they had more than 30 percent reduction in pain, while only 41 percent of the control group had a similar reduction.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“We think we can use this tech not to escape the world into VR, but to build a better real world.”
Metaverse Offers Chance to Get Technology Right
Niantic CEO urges AR industry to learn from mistakes of today’s tech
https://spectrum.ieee.org/metaverse-niantic-augmented-reality?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&socialux=facebook&share_id=6782915&utm_medium=social&utm_content=IEEE+Spectrum&utm_source=facebook
Today, the tech industry is facing its most important moment in 20 years, a moment in which decisions are going to be made that affect the future of technology—and humanity.
That was the message John Hanke, CEO of Niantic, gave AR and VR developers attending Augmented World Expo 2021 last week. Niantic is the company behind Pokémon Go and other augmented reality apps, and is currently developing AR glasses.
Hanke was, of course, talking about the coming metaverse, the term pushed center stage by Facebook (now Meta) as a description of the era of wearable, always available, augmented reality technology. The term metaverse comes from the futuristic 1992 novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson.
“I love [Stephenson's] work,” said Hanke, “but we all know how those stories go. In the fictional future, the world has become such a mess, things have gone so horribly wrong, that people have to escape into a virtual reality.”
“That’s not the future I want,” Hanke said, “it’s not the future we believe we will happen. We think we can use this tech not to escape the world into VR, but to build a better real world, preserve the real world as a place of purpose and novelty and community.”
Company executives and developers, he said, need to now focus on building the metaverse responsibly, learning from what has been going on in tech industry for past ten years—including the spread of misinformation, political division, and loss of privacy.
Hanke looked back at the last big platform change—the emergence of the smartphone.
“We put a small computer in the hands of billions of people around the world, and it changed how all of us lead our lives,” he said. “It’s been transformative for humanity. But we’ve seen the downsides, in terms of tracking, privacy, and the behaviors that the platforms and applications encouraged in us.”
The metaverse, Hanke says, will potentially have all the problems we have now with social media. But, because it will combine with the real world, developers will have even greater responsibility to protect users from these downsides.
“Think about a wearable device, with you all day long, on your head,” Hanke said. “It probably knows where you are looking most of the time. Maybe it knows other things, like your heart rate. If you see an advertisement, did your heart rate go up? When you see a person [it identifies], what did your heartrate do? Did your pupils dilate? What about your emotions? Are you happy, sad, anxious?”
“This is not science fiction,”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why the Metaverse Needs to Be Open
Making virtual worlds as interconnected as the internet will be tough
https://spectrum.ieee.org/open-metaverse
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zuck didn’t invent the metaverse, but he’s started a fight to control it
Begun, the Metaverse Wars have. And the metaverse will fight Facebook’s attempts at domination
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/11/the_metaverse_wars/
The further we get from the sudden and spectacular pivot-and-rename of Facebook, the more it looks like the most spectacularly ill-conceived business decision of the 21st century.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Magic In VR That Depends On Your Actual State Of Mind
https://hackaday.com/2021/11/21/magic-in-vr-that-depends-on-your-actual-state-of-mind/
[Cangar]’s excitement is palpable in his release of a working brain-computer interface (BCI) mod for Skyrim VR, in which the magic system in the game is modified so that spell effectiveness is significantly boosted when the player is in a focused mental state. [Cangar] isn’t just messing around, either. He’s a neuroscientist whose research focuses on assessing mental states during task performance. Luckily for us, he’s also an enthusiastic VR gamer, and this project of his has several interesting aspects that he’s happy to show off in a couple of videos.
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/58489
Tomi Engdahl says:
ICYMI: The creator of Pokémon GO, Niantic, raises $300M at a $9B valuation to build the ‘real-world metaverse’
https://tcrn.ch/30ZEDb6
https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/22/niantic-raises-300m-at-a-9b-valuation-to-build-the-real-world-metaverse/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.sijoitustieto.fi/sijoitusartikkelit/microsoft-ja-meta-aloittivat-teknojattien-metaverse-kilpailun
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 15 Metaverse Coins With a Unit Price of Under $1
https://thevrsoldier.com/top-15-metaverse-coins-with-a-unit-price-of-under-1/
Metaverse coins are the current hype in crypto, and many people are looking to make significant gains on their investments by buying a relatively unknown and undervalued project. In this article, we hand pick 7 Metaverse coins that have a great long-term potential and a price of under $1. The Metaverse coins below are listed based on unit price, lowest to highest.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/19/nvidia-ceo-says-the-metaverse-could-save-companies-billions.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/20/executives-wax-poetic-on-the-metaverse-during-q3-earnings-calls.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s centralized metaverse a threat to the decentralized ecosystem?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/facebook-s-centralized-metaverse-a-threat-to-the-decentralized-ecosystem
Facebook’s metaverse plans have caused discomfort in the crypto community, but there’s every reason to believe in a decentralized future for metaverses.
Renaming the parent company to Meta was perhaps the biggest, boldest statement of intent the firm could make. Suddenly, major news outlets were awash with explainer articles, while finance websites have been bubbling with excitement about the investment opportunities in this newly emerging sector.
However, within the crypto sphere, the response has been understandably more muted. After all, decentralized versions of the metaverse have been in development around these parts for several years now. Even worse, the tech giants’ cavalier attitude to user privacy and data harvesting has informed many of the most cherished principles in the blockchain and crypto sector.
Nevertheless, metaverse tokens such as Decentraland (MANA) and Sandbox (SAND), enjoyed extensive rallies on the back of the news, and within a few days of Facebook’s announcement, decentralized metaverse project The Sandbox received $93 million in funding from investors, including Softbank.
But now that the dust has settled, do the company-formerly-known-as-Facebook’s plans represent good news for nonfungible token (NFT) and metaverse projects in crypto? Or does Meta have the potential to sink this still-nascent sector?
What is known so far?
Facebook hasn’t released many details about what can be expected from its version of the metaverse.
based on precedent and what is known, some distinctions can be made between what Facebook is likely to be planning and the established decentralized metaverse projects.
Facebook has some form when it comes to questions over whether it will adopt decentralized infrastructure based on its efforts to launch a cryptocurrency. Diem, formerly Libra, is a currency run by a permissioned network of centralized companies. David Marcus, who heads up Diem, has also confirmed that the project, and by extension Facebook, is also considering NFTs integrated with Novi, the Diem-compatible wallet.
Based on all this, it’s fair to say that the Facebook metaverse would have an economy centered around the Diem currency, with NFT-based assets issued on the permissioned Diem network.
The biggest difference between Facebook’s metaverse, and crypto’s metaverse projects, is that the latter operates on open, permissionless, blockchain architecture. Any developer can come and build a metaverse application on an open blockchain, and any user can acquire their own virtual real estate and engage with virtual assets.
Critically, one of the biggest benefits of a decentralized, open architecture is that users can join and move around barrier-free between different metaverses. Interoperability protocols reduce friction between blockchains, allowing assets, including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, utility tokens, NFTs, loyalty points, or anything else to be transferable across chains.
So the most crucial question regarding Facebook’s plans is around the extent to which the company plans for its metaverse to be interoperable, and metaverse assets to be fungible with other, non-Facebook issued assets.
From the standpoint of the decentralized metaverse, it doesn’t necessarily sound like great news. After all, Meta’s global user base dwarfs crypto’s.
“Even if [Meta] decides to pursue a closed ecosystem, it is still a fundamental core admission of the value that digital ownership provides — and the fact that the most valuable battleground of the future will be who owns the infrastructure of digital universes.”
Centralization could be the most limiting factor
Based on the fact that Diem is already a closed system, it seems likely that the Facebook metaverse will also be a closed ecosystem that won’t necessarily allow direct or easy interaction with decentralized metaverses. Such a “walled garden” approach would suit the company’s monopolistic tendencies but limit the potential for growth or Facebook-issued NFTs to attain any real-world value.
So it seems evident that a closed Facebook metaverse will be limited to the point that it will be a completely different value proposition to what the decentralized metaverse projects are trying to achieve.
Meanwhile, decentralized digital platforms are already building and thriving. Does that mean there’s a risk that blockchain-based platforms could fall prey to the same fate as Instagram and WhatsApp, and get swallowed up as part of a Meta acquisition spree?
A metaverse operated by tech giants?
Rather than attempting to dominate, Facebook may decide to integrate with established metaverses, games and crypto financial protocols — a potentially far more disruptive scenario.
The most likely outcome seems to be that Facebook will attempt to play with established centralized tech and finance firms to bring value into its metaverse. Microsoft has already announced its own foray into the metaverse, but perhaps not as a direct competitor to what Facebook is attempting to achieve. Microsoft’s metaverse is focused on enhancing the “Teams” experience in comparison to Facebook’s VR-centric approach.
Make hay while the sun shines
Just as Libra created a lot of hype, which ultimately became muted by regulators, it seems likely that the development of a Facebook metaverse can play out in the same way with regards to its impact on the cryptocurrency sector.
Regulators will limit Facebook’s ability to get involved with money or finance, and the company isn’t likely to develop a sudden desire for open-source, decentralized, solutions.
In this respect, there are plenty of opportunities for decentralized metaverse projects to muscle into the limelight with their own offerings and showcase how decentralized solutions are already delivering what Facebook is still developing.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Someone Paid $650,000 for a Nonexistent Yacht in the Metaverse
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fthe-byte%2F650000-nft-yacht-metaverse&h=AT2OpxWMRDyInMaqbVE3h2OALCKHM0edw5Bf-GSL79qSem5X7eK2zTo3EeJQh8W6cTYJILmG99znB4KfdVh3bVfhQXvCgBupEmuQBCxnztkqYELHl_OPI9kyDiAe495H8w
Listen, we’re not here to lecture you about how you should and shouldn’t spend your money — but you definitely should never spend more than half a million dollars on a make-believe yacht you’ll never be able to physically step foot on.
And yet, it happened. Somebody paid roughly $650,000 in ethereum for an NFT yacht that only exists in an also-ran metaverse platform last week.
The sale was made by metaverse and NFT developer Republic Realm for the metaverse platform The Sandbox, first spotted by Hypebeast. The yacht — dubbed “The Metaflower Super Mega Yacht” — sold for 149 ETH, making it the most expensive NFT asset on the platform.
‘The Metaflower Super Mega Yacht’ NFT Sells for a Record $650,000 USD
https://hypebeast.com/2021/11/the-metaflower-super-mega-yacht-nft-sells-for-a-record-650000-usd
The most expensive NFT item in The Sandbox metaverse.
Metaverse developer Republic Realm has successfully sold The Metaflower Super Mega Yacht for 149 ETH (approximately $650,000 USD), making the digital yacht the most expensive NFT asset in The Sandbox.
The Sandbox is currently one of the leading metaverse games boasting collaborations with brands and personalities such as adidas, Atari, Bored Ape Yacht Club, Binance, Snoop Dogg, The Smurfs, DeadMau5 and others. Republic Realm has developed a series of “Fantasy Islands” on the platform consisting of 100 private islands.
The collection of islands, which consist of villas built on top of NFT land, sold out in under 24 hours, and has a current floor price of 63.9 ETH (approximately $280,000 USD)
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hypebeast.com/tags/The-Sandbox
Tomi Engdahl says:
metaverse light show
Light Control Mod
https://ficsit.app/mod/ABX1uLFx48bVvY
This mod allows to control the build-in lights with ArtNet/DMX, a popular protocol used in stage lighting. There is no playable content added with this mod. It is a techdemo to do small light shows within Satisfactory. External software is required to program a light show. Further, light names need to be extracted form the savegame to configure this mod. Therefore, some basic knowlege in savegame hacking is required.
https://github.com/moritz-h/satisfactory-lightcontrol
Tomi Engdahl says:
A metaverse ETF has seen inflows surge 548% since Facebook’s name change. Here are its top 10 holdings.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/etf/metaverse-etf-aum-soars-facebook-name-change-top-ten-holdings-2021-12
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 7 Metaverse Coins With a Unit Price of Under $0.1
https://thevrsoldier.com/top-7-metaverse-coins-with-a-unit-price-of-under-0-1/
With cryptocurrency markets correcting recently, there are a lot of fantastic Metaverse coins currently on sale. This article looks at the top seven Metaverse coins with a unit value of under $0.1, ordered by price, lowest to highest.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Andrew Hayward / Decrypt:
Ubisoft will add NFT items into its games, starting with Ghost Recon Breakpoint on the Tezos blockchain, becoming the first major gaming company to do so — In brief — Major game publisher Ubisoft will implement in-game NFT items into its games, starting with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Ubisoft Becomes First Major Gaming Company to Launch In-Game NFTs
https://decrypt.co/87752/ubisoft-first-major-gaming-company-launch-in-game-nfts
After years of dabbling in the crypto and the NFT space, game industry giant Ubisoft is taking things to the next level.
Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon will now have in-game NFTs. Image: Ubisoft
In brief
Major game publisher Ubisoft will implement in-game NFT items into its games, starting with Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint.
Ubisoft’s Quartz NFT platform runs on Tezos, a proof-of-stake blockchain platform.
Today, the publisher behind Assassin’s Creed and Just Dance revealed Ubisoft Quartz, a platform that lets players earn and purchase in-game items that are tokenized as NFTs on the Tezos blockchain
. Quartz will launch first in the PC version of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the latest online game in the long-running tactical shooter series.
Ubisoft is referring to its NFT drops as “Digits” and plans to release free NFTs for early adopters on December 9, 12, and 15, with further drops planned for 2022. An infographic shows items such as weapon skins and unique armor and apparel, along with a message that teases future initiatives: “This is just the beginning…”
An NFT effectively serves as a receipt for a provably scarce digital item, and while digital illustrations and profile pictures have been popular, they can also represent video game items. Ethereum-powered monster-battling game Axie Infinity is currently the biggest player in the space, racking up more than $3.6 billion in trading volume to date, per CryptoSlam.
“Ubisoft Quartz is the first building block in our ambitious vision for developing a true metaverse,” said Nicolas Pouard, VP of Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab, in a release. “And it can’t come to life without overcoming blockchain’s early-form limitations for gaming, including scalability and energy consumption.”
Much of Ubisoft’s announcement today highlights the difference in environmental impact between the proof-of-stake Tezos blockchain and the energy-intensive Bitcoin.
Tezos claims that a single transaction on its network uses “more than 2 million times less energy” than Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency. It also suggests that a single Tezos transaction uses about as much energy as a 30-second streaming video, whereas a Bitcoin transaction is estimated to measure up to the environmental impact of a full, uninterrupted year of streaming video footage.
The perceived environmental impact of blockchain technology has created backlash within the traditional video game market in the past
Ubisoft first began exploring the crypto and NFT space years back, developing a Minecraft-like game prototype called HashCraft that Decrypt first covered in early 2019. Since then, Ubisoft has worked with numerous crypto startups
Tomi Engdahl says:
The beta of Meta’s social virtual reality game is now available for free to all American and Canadian users ages 18 and older.
Facebook Dives Deeper Into The Metaverse Two Months After Meta Name Change
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2021/12/09/facebook-dives-deeper-into-the-metaverse-two-months-after-meta-name-change/?utm_campaign=forbes&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_term=Gordie&sh=692c31961f7b
Two months after its buzzy name change from Facebook, Meta announced a further leap into the “metaverse” Thursday, making the beta version of its multiplayer virtual reality game downloadable to all American and Canadian adults for free.
Meta describes “Horizon World” as a “social VR experience where you can create and explore together,” representing a key component of the company’s expansion into the metaverse.
The metaverse is a vague term, but it represents a shift into augmented and virtual reality spaces on the Internet — including VR gaming — and Meta’s website dubs it the “the next evolution of social connection.
“Horizon Worlds” is available on Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 VR headset (Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion in 2014).
The “Horizon Worlds” beta had previously been downloadable on an invite-only basis.
SURPRISING FACT
Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicted that “most virtual meetings” will take place in the metaverse “within the next two or three years” in a Tuesday blog post. Microsoft has announced its own plans for the metaverse.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
A look back at tech’s three eras, from Bell Labs to Facebook, and why the metaverse is the fourth, defined by its bifurcation with the physical world — For the first several years of Stratechery I would write a year end article about “The State of Consumer Technology”; the last one I wrote …
The Great Bifurcation
https://stratechery.com/2021/the-great-bifurcation/
Tech 1.0: From Invention to IBM
The transistor, the foundation of modern computing, was invented at Bell Labs in 1947 by the solid state physics group led by William Shockley; nine years later Shockley moved to Mountain View, California to be close to his ailing mother in Palo Alto, where he started Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Eight of the researchers he hired, led by Bob Noyce, left the increasingly erratic Shockley a year later to found Fairchild Semiconductor, and in 1968 founded Intel with the support of Arthur Rock, one of the first venture capitalists.
Tech 2.0: King of the Hill
Notice those dates: by the time the Department of Justice sued IBM in 1969, Intel had already been founded; two years later an Intel engineer named Frederico Faggin designed the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, which shrunk many of the functions of IBM’s room-sized computers to a single chip. Ten years after that IBM released the IBM PC, powered by Intel’s 8088 microprocessor.
Tech 3.0: Software Eats the World
If Tech 1.0 was about hardware, and 2.0 software, 3.0 was about services. On the enterprise side this meant the development of the public cloud and software-as-a-service applications that required nothing more than a browser and a credit card
Social Networking 2.0
The argument in that piece is that Facebook and Twitter represented Social Networking 1.0, where you were expected to be your whole self online; that expectation, though, was like a legacy company using computers to run their analog business model: it may have been more efficient, but it wasn’t at all an optimal use of technology.
Tech 4.0: The Metaverse
One of the biggest topics of 2021 has been the Metaverse, thanks in large part to Facebook’s pivot to Meta (even if Microsoft was first). It has been tricky, though, to define exactly what the Metaverse is: everyone has a different definition.
Crypto’s Role
This also explains why crypto is interesting. Stephen Diehl, in a scathing article entitled Web3 is Bullshit, writes:
At its core web3 is a vapid marketing campaign that attempts to reframe the public’s negative associations of crypto assets into a false narrative about disruption of legacy tech company hegemony. It is a distraction in the pursuit of selling more coins and continuing the gravy train of evading securities regulation. We see this manifest in the circularity in which the crypto and web3 movement talks about itself. It’s not about solving real consumer problems. The only problem to be solved by web3 is how to post-hoc rationalize its own existence.
The Great Bifurcation
I noted above that the physical and digital worlds are bifurcating, and this is happening to tech as well. Yesterday Elon Musk was named TIME’s 2021 Person of the Year, and while he is known for his tweets about Dogecoin and on-and-off-again support of Bitcoin, his biggest contributions to the world — electrical cars and reusable rockets — are very much physical. In fact, you could make the case that Tesla and SpaceX aren’t tech companies at all, but rather another example of tech-first companies set on remaking industries that only ever saw computers as a tool, not the foundation.
The Metaverse, in contrast, is not about eating the world; it’s about creating an entirely new one, from entertainment to community to money to identity. If Elon Musk wants to go to the moon, Mark Zuckerberg wants to create entirely new moons in digital space. This is a place where LLCs make no sense, where regulations are an after-thought, easily circumvented even if they exist. This is a place with no need for traditional money, or traditional art; the native solution is obviously superior. To put it another way, “None of this real world stuff has any digital world value” — the critique goes both ways.
In the end, the most important connection between the Metaverse and the physical world will be you: right now you are in the Metaverse, reading this Article; perhaps you will linger on Twitter or get started with your remote work. And then you’ll stand up from your computer, or take off your headset, eat dinner and tuck in your kids, aware that their bifurcated future will be fundamentally different from your unitary past.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s Metaverse Is “Dystopian” And Poses “Terrifying Danger” To Humanity, Say Critics
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/facebooks-metaverse-is-dystopian-and-poses-terrifying-danger-to-humanity-say-critics/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Cannabis has gone digital, and then, come back to reality.
Higher Life CBD is one of the first cannabis brands to launch a real CBD dispensary in the metaverse.
Read more: https://trib.al/XNiW1KB
Tomi Engdahl says:
Buy Cannabis On A Blockchain Metaverse And Get It Delivered To Your Real Home
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2021/12/14/buy-cannabis-on-a-blockchain-metaverse-and-get-it-delivered-to-your-real-home-now-its-possible/?utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainFB&utm_source=ForbesMainFacebook&utm_medium=social&sh=2d4e1233703b
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta is nothing new, and nothing to crow about, either
Meta Offers Nothing New to the Metaverse Facebook’s got a new name, but a tired business model
https://spectrum.ieee.org/meta-offers-nothing-new-to-the-metaverse?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&socialux=facebook&share_id=6826873&utm_medium=social&utm_content=IEEE+Spectrum&utm_source=facebook
You may have heard that Facebook is owned by a company that is no longer called Facebook but, instead, Meta (officially Meta Platforms). CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailed the name change in a CGI-laden presentation that spanned an hour and 17 minutes. The metaverse, he says, is what’s next for the Internet.
“The next platform and medium will be even more immersive, an embodied Internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it,” he said.
Zuckerberg’s demo was basically a virtual reality hangout. It depicted a small group of people playing a game of cards in VR before one of Zuckerberg’s friends, taking the form of a robot, teleports him to a fantastic virtual forest. Zuckerberg is also shown admiring a VR art installation and using a video call to speak with friends in the “meataverse.”
The show might have impressed those who are new to augmented and virtual reality. But the tech-savvy certainly know that everything shown by Facebook—sorry, Meta—is possible right now and has been for several years. It’s not even that expensive.
An excellent VR setup with a Valve Index and fast PC costs about US $3,000. A passable setup with a Vive Pro 2 and a midrange PC is around $1,500. Or you can hop in with Meta’s Oculus Quest 2, which doesn’t require a PC and starts at $299
The experience doesn’t fall far below Meta’s demo. VRChat, a popular platform, has thousands of attractive 3D levels. The software can, if you opt for the more expensive VR setups, detect the movement of your limbs and face and animate your avatar to mimic your gestures and expressions. You can hang out with friends, play basic games, or explore virtual landscapes, as depicted in Meta’s demonstration.
VRChat is used by tens of thousands of people every day, and the number continues to grow.
The company plans to spend a lot of money on the metaverse. That could be hard to justify without signaling a shift away from Facebook.
Yet by focusing on what the metaverse can be in the future, Meta deflected from a question that cuts to the core of Zuckerberg’s vision. If that VR vision is already accessible on hardware that costs as little as a midrange Android smartphone, why aren’t consumers already eager to experience it?
That’s the trillion-dollar question—and I don’t think Meta has the answer.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ICYMI: Meta is nothing new, and nothing to crow about, either.
Meta Offers Nothing New to the Metaverse Facebook’s got a new name, but a tired business model
https://spectrum.ieee.org/meta-offers-nothing-new-to-the-metaverse
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bill Gates says the metaverse will host most of your office meetings within ‘two or three years’ — here’s what it will look like
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/09/bill-gates-metaverse-will-host-most-virtual-meetings-in-a-few-years.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
The metaverse needs aggressive regulation
https://venturebeat.com/2021/12/04/the-metaverse-needs-aggressive-regulation/
But what should we regulate?
Most importantly, we need to restrict the level of monitoring allowed in the metaverse. The platform providers will have access to where we go, what we look at, who we talk to, even what we reach out and touch. They should not be allowed to store this data for more than the short periods of time required to mediate whatever experience is being simulated. That will reduce the degree to which they can characterize our behaviors over time. In addition, they should be required to inform the public as to what’s being tracked and how long it’s retained.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Elon Musk Says the Metaverse Sucks and Neuralink Will Be Better
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Felon-musk-metaverse-sucks-neuralink-better&h=AT17Pw8EnY5BwFg336rG9sf1TdfwolX9zaADek48ZftD-uQhC2n20ZOKSMHMi2TCfTLFfac-CTgKs81uVrZUhFvxSRYJ9fVcGjqkSaNmvPftPHNjLHkF-3uyiADSVHBGa1Usbg44ttaP3Tu_xg
In a new interview with conservative satire website The Babylon Bee, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took a stab at the concept of the Metaverse, the quirky virtual world Facebook-now-known-as-Meta says will supplant our boring two-dimensional screens.
“Sure you can put a TV on your nose,” he added derisively. “I’m not sure that makes you ‘in the metaverse.’”
Musk, for one, is certainly not compelled by the idea of “strapping a frigging screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave.”
“It gets uncomfortable to have this thing strapped to your head the whole time,” he added. “I think we’re far from disappearing into the metaverse.”
Musk also offered what he sees as a far better alternative: a chip surgically implanted in your brain, courtesy of the brain-computer interface company Neuralink he co-founded.
“Long term, a sophisticated Neuralink could put you fully, fully in a virtual reality thing,” he said.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, has made a huge VR push as of late, selling its Metaverse as a more meaningful way of connecting with others via a VR headset. But even the company’s own vice president for global affairs and communications Nick Clegg recently admitted the experience is still lacking.
But Musk stopped short from condemning the idea of the metaverse or Web3 outright. He argued there is “a danger” of not being able to “see a compelling metaverse situation,” comparing his perspective to David Letterman tearing apart the idea of the internet in a 1995 interview with Bill Gates, a video of which he shared earlier this week.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Metaverse property mogul touts 10-fold appreciation in virtual real estate portfolio: ‘It’s all about the location’
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/metaverse-property-tokenscom-andrew-kiguel-virtual-real-estate-investment-decentraland-2021-12
The CEO of Tokens.com in a USA Today report estimated his metaverse portfolio is valued at 10 times more than his purchase price.
Tokens.com’s Metaverse Group last month bought virtual land for a then-record $2.43 million.
Andrew Kiguel, Token.com’s CEO, said he plans to develop the virtual area into a destination for luxury brands.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Once fully implemented, you’ll never be able to leave the #metaverse.
Metaverse: Augmented reality pioneer warns it could be far worse than social media
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fbigthink.com%2Fthe-future%2Fmetaverse-augmented-reality-danger%2F%3Futm_medium%3DSocial%26utm_source%3DFacebook%23Echobox%3D1640208865&h=AT3IWxfYHemgKerDmOEKEAt93sRVyIOdKYU0lyvFq_Y_z320jA9x8WgXZ9IPB_KlR8vYSlAb4LRLKuxAuItFmPYPmVzMMUQigjlYoGmfR7cBIMw6kRRqF6WC9dqvBneh9cmBuxXOhtEWYh4otg
If used improperly, the metaverse could be more divisive than social media and an insidious threat to society and even reality itself.
At its core, augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse are media technologies that aim to present content in the most natural form possible — by seamlessly integrating simulated sights, sounds, and even feelings into our perception of the real world around us. This means AR, more than any form of media to date, has the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting how we interpret our direct daily experiences. In an augmented world, simply walking down the street will become a wild amalgamation of the physical and the virtual, merged so convincingly that the boundaries will disappear in our minds. Our surroundings will become filled with persons, places, objects, and activities that don’t actually exist, and yet they will seem deeply authentic to us.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A 28-year-old on Asia’s top metaverse platform makes six figures as a virtual fashion influencer
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/metaverse-fashion-designer-influencer-monica-quin-zepeto-six-figure-income-2021-12
A 28-year old Canadian woman is earning a “six-figure salary” selling digital clothes on the metaverse, the BBC reported Thursday.
Monica Louise, who designs and sells apparel for avatars, makes her money on Zepeto, Asia’s biggest metaverse platform.
More than 1.6 billion virtual fashion items have been sold on Zepeto, the BBC said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dan Gallagher / Wall Street Journal:
IDC: Oculus device sales in 2021 are estimated to be between 5.3M and 6.8M units, up from ~3.5M units in 2020
Metaverse Needs More Than VR Christmas Bump
Oculus headset sales are growing, but it still qualifies as a niche product relative to the Facebook parent’s ambitions
https://www.wsj.com/articles/metaverse-needs-more-than-vr-christmas-bump-11641135782?mod=djemalertNEWS
Among the drawbacks to Facebook’s recent rebranding as a “metaverse” company are that it is no longer enough just to make a solid videogame device.
The company now formally known as Meta Platforms FB +0.98% appears to have had a decent holiday season for its Oculus VR headset. Analysts for KeyBanc Capital and Jefferies both noted in reports last week that downloads of the Oculus app jumped over Christmas; Brent Thill of Jefferies added that daily active users of the app on Christmas Day were up 90% from the same day the previous year. Facebook has never regularly disclosed sales data for Oculus, which it acquired in 2014 for $2 billion. But IDC estimates that unit sales of the company’s VR devices in 2021 will come in between 5.3 million and 6.8 million, once the market research firm’s fourth-quarter data is finalized.
Either one would be a nice jump from the 3.5 million Oculus units estimated to have sold last year. And it is far better than the anemic sales from before the company put out its first Quest headset in mid-2019.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Anna Wiener / New Yorker:
If the metaverse takes off, it will take cues from today’s privatized, centralized, financialized tech ecosystem and echo the development of play-to-earn games — In a virtual world full of virtual goods, finance could get weird. — Years ago, while on vacation in the Northwest …
Money in the Metaverse
In a virtual world full of virtual goods, finance could get weird.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/money-in-the-metaverse
What they are saying is incredible, not least because it is entirely speculative. They suggest that the metaverse will be a “massively scaled and interoperable network of real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds which can be experienced synchronously and persistently by an effectively unlimited number of users” (the venture capitalist Matthew Ball). They offer that it might enable companies “to embed computing into the real world and to embed the real world into computing” (the Microsoft C.E.O., Satya Nadella)—and that it could make “the virtual world more real and the real world more rich with virtual experiences” (the Tencent C.E.O., Pony Ma). Tim Sweeney, the C.E.O. of Epic Games, has said that the metaverse may be “a multi-trillion-dollar part of the world economy”; Jensen Huang, the C.E.O. of Nvidia, thinks that it could create “a new economy that is larger than our current economy.” The over-all point is that it will be simultaneously a place for connection, community, and so on, and also a forum for transaction and extraction. For its makers, the metaverse will be stuffed with money—in every dimension, all the way down.
If the metaverse materializes, it will probably look and behave like a video game, at least for a little while. For millions of people, video games already serve as everyday, immersive virtual experiences; gaming companies provide infrastructure for Hollywood films, spatial visualizations, and live performances. Aesthetically, the metaverse could have the gauzy realism of 2019’s “The Lion King,” the anesthetized cheerfulness of The Sims, the pixel-art graphics of the sixteen-bit era, or any other vibe. Physically, it will probably be accessed through headgear—V.R. headsets, A.R. glasses—or simply a computer screen. Financially, it could look something like FarmVille, in which players spent millions of dollars on virtual windmills, fertilizer, farm animals, and water, tending to what Alenda Y. Chang, an associate professor of film and media studies at U.C. Santa Barbara, has called an “ecologically absurd” landscape, in which dying crops could be revived by “unwither” spray, and sheep produced wool sweaters after eating tomatoes.
The gaming industry’s business models tend to evolve on the heels of technological development. In the early two-thousands, premium games were sold as standalone products; like blockbuster films, they came with large marketing budgets, vivid advertising campaigns, and hotly anticipated release dates, around which the bulk of revenue was collected. But as personal computers grew faster and more powerful and the Internet became more reliable and ubiquitous, the model began to shift. Some games were no longer stored on disks or cartridges but in the cloud; often, people accessed them not on gaming consoles but through their smartphones. Massively multiplayer online games, such as World of Warcraft, brought small-scale, in-app purchases—known as microtransactions—into the mainstream. Microtransactions were most common in “free-to-play” games. These cost nothing to download, but grew increasingly complex—and, crucially, more fun—with every additional expenditure. Now game companies could charge for new levels, new features, and new things to buy, pushed directly to users’ devices.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Nvidia launches Omniverse out of beta, announces a free version, and says nearly 100K creators have downloaded the real-time collaborative design tool
https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/04/nvidia-unveils-free-version-of-omniverse-for-millions-of-creators-and-artists/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta’s Oculus VR companion app gained ~2M downloads since Christmas
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/06/meta-had-a-good-holiday-as-its-oculus-vr-companion-app-gained-2m-downloads-since-christmas/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
Tomi Engdahl says:
The price of the smallest plot in two of the most popular metaverse platforms has surpassed $13,000: https://bit.ly/3FTzlO9
The cheapest plots on popular metaverse platforms are already selling for more than $13,000
https://fortune.com/2022/01/05/cheapest-digital-land-metaverse-selling-more-than-13000/?utm_campaign=fortunemagazine&xid=soc_socialflow_facebook_FORTUNE&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com
As the metaverse land grab continues, prices for the cheapest available parcels of land on two popular platforms are retailing for more than $13,000, pricing out many would-be landowners.
The metaverse refers to different platforms on the internet that are creating an interactive world, complete with virtual entertainment and businesses. As of Wednesday, the cheapest price for a parcel of digital land in the Sandbox platform was 3.7 Ether, the equivalent of $14,099, and on Decentraland it was 3.46 Ether, the equivalent of $13,211, according to Meta Metric Solutions, a company that tracks digital real estate prices. A 1×1 parcel of land, the smallest size available, is equivalent to what the user’s avatar would experience as 96-by-96 “meters” in the Sandbox, and 16-by-16 “meters” in Decentraland
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/04/hyundai-plans-to-incorporate-robots-into-the-metaverse-to-help-users-reach-out-and-touch-someone/