You’ve heard of the metaverse. Here’s what it looks like.

Metaverse is a 3D social network. Instead of a profile, you have an avatar, just like your friends. Instead of streaming news, you have social hubs where people gather to share news, gossip and play games.

Although the virtual environment looks like an animation, for Kiernan Pearce the post-universe brings to mind its own fascinating version of reality – one that, perhaps intuitively, can offer richer opportunities to meet and socialize with others than is usually the case. beyond the screen.

“I had more real experiences inside VR than I ever had outside,” said the meditation instructor.

“You are not alone in VR,” he added. “There is someone you can communicate with and talk to. And one of the things that happens, of course, is amazing communication and conversation.”

We met in a colorful, calm meditation world that Pearce built in VR. Smiling, Pearce’s image of life in the post-universe implies the meaning and social complexity that these early converts see in what they see as a natural step forward in the evolution of the Internet.

“We have comedy clubs, we have discos, we have meditations, we have people touring the world. On Wednesdays different creators show off all these amazing game worlds. You know there’s something for everyone here, not just the player. It’s not just about the individual. “He wants to attend events. We have AA meetings here, we have support from peers.”

What is the post-universe?

Most post-universe environments will be access to virtual and augmented reality. Several companies, including Apple, Sony, Microsoft and Facebook’s parent company Meta, are working on metaverse products. Experts predict that virtual reality, a $ 30 billion market in 2021, will more than triple to $ 300 billion by 2024.

Many other applications of technology are in the works. For example, Seoul, South Korea will build a virtual replica of the city as part of the Seoul Vision 2030 project. The virtual environment will be designed to help residents communicate with city officials, attend community events, and visit museums and reconstructed historical landmarks. The city says their meta-universe will take a decade to build and gain access to VR and AR headphones.

One of the most active post-compass environments is called Decentraland. It is easy to access with a regular web browser. There are currently around 300,000 active users, with some estimates showing that virtual space is gaining around 18,000 users per day. Samsung recently unveiled its latest smartphone in Decentraland and opened a virtual store.

Meta “Horizon Worlds” is in VR and has access with Oculus headphones. Much of the virtual environment is created by experienced video game developers. But in the virtual Meta universe everyone has access to the same tools, which means that anyone can create a virtual world to hangout or play.

“I’m a web developer by profession,” Pearce said. Coding skills are useful in the post-universe, but not necessary. “VR is more accessible. I can build a world that has a lot of effects on its appearance and sound. It’s a more immersive experience.”

Games, creators and a new virtual economy

Horizon Worlds is built with Unity, a common video game engine often used to program games for mobile devices. That means creating content on metaverse is relatively easy, Jason Rubin, founder of Naughty Dog video game publisher and vice president of Metaverse Content, told CBS MoneyWatch.

“Not only are the tools there for everyone to use, but everyone who is really interested in making games already has the basic structure and framework” to start a game and attract an audience, “Rubin said, adding that many of his colleagues who work in Horizon People have experience in making video games.

Meta also provides training to users in creating virtual worlds. The tools include a variety of shapes, text and sounds that users can staple together to create a 3D world. Advanced features allow users to add codes to behaviors in the world, such as making a football fly on the pitch when thrown.

John McLay said he learned to create a virtual world in a matter of days, but spent more time learning advanced tools for designing complex environments such as a moving train.

“I did not come from a planning background, but once I made a few discoveries in the script, it was just a smooth process from there,” McClay said.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week announced a new feature which will allow creators to use voice control in the process of creating a world. During a live presentation, the Facebook co-founder created a basic virtual world on a beach using only his voice.

Rubin said that “over time, the variety of things you can do will expand greatly” in the post-universe, adding that “it will slowly increase to the point where we become truly a fixating world.”

Meta spent $ 10 billion in 2021 manufacturing metaverse products such as virtual reality glasses and Horizon Worlds. In October, it announced a $ 10 million developer fund, encouraging fans like McLay and Pearce to continue building more worlds.

Apart from Horizon Worlds, games created by professional studios also make a great impression on users. Meta said consumers spent more than $ 1 billion on the Oculus video game store last year. Resident Evil, a popular zombie survival game created for the cube game nearly two decades ago, is now the fastest-selling game in the Oculus store, according to Rubin.

In addition, Meta said eight games generated more than $ 20 million in revenue in 2021, with more than 120 virtual reality games generating revenue in the millions – a number that has doubled since 2020.

Rubin said the next step is to give users more freedom to create and collaborate, while adding tools to monetize products designed by amateurs at Horizon Worlds. From clothes for avatars to cars for video games, creators should be able to benefit financially from the products they produce in the virtual world, he added.

“When we commit an economy to it, the ability to make money from doing it, I think we change the world,” Rubin said.

Privacy and security issues

As Meta works transition from a social networking platform to a virtual reality company, security and privacy experts are concerned that some of the same issues that haunt the company in the real world may be transferred to the post-universe. The company announced a change in its corporate name from Facebook to Meta in October, a few weeks after Frances Haugen’s complaint published thousands of internal documents which showed that company executives ignored the public damage caused by social networking platforms.

In a December interview with CBS News, warned Haugen that the same issues that plague social media are likely to hit the post-universe. Days later, a user reported being verbally and sexually harassed within minutes of using the Meta product. With such concerns in mind, Meta said earlier this month that everyone would have four feet of space around their avatar and that others would be prevented from entering that personal space.

“The worst case scenario is that we do not learn anything from previous versions of the Web and simply go beyond these business models and this way of life,” said Alexandra Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology. non-profit group focusing on issues such as privacy and digital rights.

More specifically, Givens raises concerns about how companies might seek to use biometric data collected from conversion users, such as daughter dilation or hand movements.

“We need to think about how this data is collected and what the regulatory landscape will look like,” he said.

What will follow?

In 2003, software developer Phillip Rosedale released a proto-transversal called Second Life. By 2005, hundreds of thousands of users had spent millions of hours creating content, marketing digital goods, and playing games in the virtual world. Second Life was so popular that it was on the cover of Business Week and the Reuters news agency set up a virtual office to cover events in the digital world.

Like many social networks, Second Life was hot until it was not. Users usually report sexual harassment. The developer, Linden Labs, also could not scale the technology infrastructure to meet demand, and the code had a number of security flaws. A decade after its release, Second Life was a virtual ghost town.

Meta’s Rubin is convinced that Horizon Worlds, Decentraland and other interconnection environments will not have a similar fate. “Now, almost everyone plays video games, but they do not necessarily call themselves gamers” because they play on their phone instead of a computer or console, he said.

As with any new technology, skeptics abound, he added. but in Rubin’s view VR and the post-universe will ultimately be inevitable.

“It’s important to understand that you do not have to want it or believe that you are [metaverse] type of person to find it secretly and make it just fun, useful or another part of your life. If you do not believe that the post-universe is going to happen, it does not matter. I will be here when it’s you. “

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