Metaverse - from Employee Meetings to Manufacturing Line Efficiencies; from Digital Twins to Avatars.

Metaverse is a massive topic at present and is disruptive in bringing the physical and digital worlds together to create new sources of Business value. But this is not VR alone, or XR or AR or MR or NFTs or EMG gesture control or BCI (brain computing interface), or Digital Twins alone. Its a combination of things and it is the layer of digital content that connects the virtual 3D world with the real world, that can be accessible from VR headsets, AR/MR headsets, mobile phones, laptops and desktops. Of course, for highly immersive experiences, it is ideal to have a visual optical experience and hence a huge amount of research is also being done by the Tech Titans (like Google and Facebook) on optical technologies - how do you build the thinnest and the most fashionable eyewear and EMG handwear that will allow you the "Beyond experience" The transformational use cases are still evolving, and true to the term META which means BEYOND, the topic is constantly evolving, growing massively. What is estimated about the Metaverse growth, is as it is about People being the centre of Technology more than anything else, the growth will be what history may not have witnessed before, and with 5G bandwidth enablement, expected to touch 5B users and have an impact of around 10 Trillion USD by 2030, the penetration currently is less than 30%. A few use cases that we can see already being used are: 1) Effective onboarding of employees when remote, and when large scale growth reducing inefficiencies, time and cost, build deeper connections with new hires. The efficiencies, the immersiveness and the impact the Metaverse platform has had on employees is proven by some companies already. 2) Creating Digital Twins of physical spaces, meeting rooms, offices that would allow you to view and take vantage decisions that were hitherto not possible. 3) Employee collaboration with digital avatars moving onto common virtual spaces that are digital twins of the conference room of your office, or any other place you want all the avatars to meet in an immersive experience. 4) Training and Learning experiences in a Digital twin environment (for example a digital twin of shop floor or on the interior of the Aircraft) takes learning and retention of knowledge to a whole new level of experience. 5) Having a digital twin of Manufacturing lines allows efficiencies, to identify issues in the shopfloor, or supplier chain issues resulting in a pileup. 6) Interaction with customers can be done at a completely new level new-gen Business, for example a car manufacturer through digital assets (NFT) can have the complete history of the car tracked, and when the car is being transferred to the next customer can have a share of the revenue. The use cases are just endless. 7) NFT based economy from digital real estates to Art collections is opening a completely new unforeseen world of opportunities. 8) Having digital twins of real estate properties, and virtual visiting of places with an immersive collaborative experience where people can interact will take the business-client relationship to a positively higher level. The advantages are visible and significant, if organisations can start small, start experimenting and when the tip of the transformation happens such organisations will be ahead of the curve from a strategic, technology and business know-how point of view. Underlying Technologies are data and AI based technologies, data modelling, data Engineering, AI/ML/DL, computer vision, AR/VR/MR, holography, NLP, Blockchain and data science/Metaverse platforms such as Microsoft Mesh & Space, Unity3D, Unreal Engine, Amazon Sumerian, SparkAR, Cybernetics among others. The Metaverse is indeed a place of infinite possibilities.

METAVERSE

The metaverse, first depicted in the iconic The Matrix movie more than 20 years ago, is becoming a reality as brands look to merge the real and digital worlds into one, driving Web 3.0. The difference between Augemented Reality and Reality is reducing rapidly. Just what is the metaverse? It is a vision for a new environment to interact with other humans and bots to play games, conduct business, socialize and shop. Best described as a 3D World Wide Web, the metaverse aims to mimic the physical world with a digital facsimile and combines a myriad of technologies including but not limited to augmented reality, mixed reality, livestreaming, cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. The metaverse moved from Hollywood fare to front-page news when Mark Zuckerberg declared Facebook a “metaverse company.” Microsoft laid out its “metaverse tech stack” to facilitate metaverse app development while Epic Games announced $1 billion of funding to support its long-term metaverse strategy. Now available on the New York Stock Exchange, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that the market size for metaverse could reach $800 billion by 2024. While the metaverse may still be only a buzzword (only 38% of global consumers are familiar with the concept, according to a Wunderman Thompson Intelligence report), the time is now for brands to establish its roadmap for entry in this new CX universe. Wunderson Thompson breaks down the metaverse into four primary categories: MetaLives, which constitute ideas such as digital ownership and content creation through formats like digital art and nonfungible tokens; MetaSpaces, virtual venues or activations that blend aspects of the virtual world with the real one; MetaBusinesses, including the rise of “gamevertising,” where brands appear within the realm of VR/AR/MR MetaSocieties characterized by people closely wedding their real-life identities with channels like social media and cultivating “hyper-real identities online.” Metaverse Teleporatation Teleportation in the Metaverse is the act of users moving from one place to another without having to be physically there or use any physical means of transportation how we join Zoom meeting via a link but we’re doing that from our respective homes? Well, in the metaverse, instead of joining such meeting from our respective homes, we’ll actually be together in one space created by the host in the metaverse the host created this party space or gaming space, then invite his/her friends to join in the party or playing the games. Now, the friends won’t physically be there but they’ll turn up using their virtual reality device and appear. Since users will have their own avatar, the experience will feel so real that it seems they’re actually physically with the host in the space created by the host.