TO HEAR IT TECH CEOs such as Satya Nadella and Mark Zuckerberg talk about the metaverse. It is the future of the internet. It could be a videogame, or perhaps it’s a more uncomfortable and worse Zoom. It’s difficult to say.

It has been nine months since Facebook declared it was rebranding itself to Meta. The meaning of that term has not changed in the meantime. Meta is creating a VR social network. Roblox is facilitating player-generated video games. Some companies offer little more than broken worlds with NFTs attached.

From niche startups to tech giants, advocates have claimed that the lack of coherence is due to the fact that the metaverse is still being constructed and it is too difficult to define. For example, the internet was not all that we thought it would look like in the 1970s.

However, marketing hype and money are involved in selling the idea that “the metaverse” exists. Apple’s decision to limit ad tracking has had a devastating impact on the company’s bottom line. It is difficult to distinguish Facebook’s vision of a future where everyone has access to a digital wardrobe and the fact that Facebook wants to make money selling virtual clothes. Facebook is not the only company that can benefit from metaverse hype.

With all of that in mind, let’s get started.

What does “Metaverse” mean?

Here’s a mental exercise to help you understand how complex and vague the term “the Metaverse” can be. When we mentally replace “the metaverse”, with “cyberspace,”. Ninety percent will not notice any significant changes. The term “the metaverse” doesn’t refer to any particular type of technology but rather to a wide (and sometimes speculative!) shift in the way we interact with technology. It’s possible that the term itself could become obsolete, even if the technology it describes becomes more common.

The technologies companies refer to as “the metaverse” includes virtual reality–as well as AR which combines aspects of the physical and digital worlds. It doesn’t necessarily require that these spaces can only be accessed via AR or VR. Virtual worlds (such as Fortnite aspects that can be accessed via PCs, gaming consoles, and even smartphones) have been called “the metaverse.”  

Many companies who have joined the metaverse train also see a new digital economy where people can buy, sell, and create goods. It’s interoperable. This allows you to transfer virtual goods like clothes and cars from one platform to another. However, this vision is more realistic than it sounds. Some advocates believe that NFTs will enable portable digital assets. This is not true. It is extremely difficult to transfer items from one virtual world or video game to another.

It can be difficult to understand what this all means. Fortnite offers virtual experiences such as concerts or an exhibit in which Rick Sanchez can learn more about MLK Jr. An Oculus headset can be worn to create your virtual home. What does “the metaverse” really mean? These are just some of the new video games.

Yes and no. Google isn’t the whole internet. It builds parts of it, from data centers to the security layer.

While tech giants such as Microsoft and meta are focused on developing technology that allows users to interact with virtual worlds through their websites, they’re not the only ones. Nvidia and Roblox are just a few of the large companies that are working on creating virtual worlds that closely resemble our real life.

Epic, for example, has bought a number of companies that help create and distribute digital resources in order to strengthen its Unreal Engine 5. Unreal is a platform for video games, but it’s also used in the movie industry. This could make it easier to create virtual experiences. The realm of digital world-building is seeing some exciting and tangible developments.

The idea of a Ready Player One-like single place called ” the metaverse” remains largely unrealized. This is partly because such a world would require companies to cooperate in ways that aren’t financially or desirable. Fortnite has no incentive to provide players with a portal to jump over to World of Warcraft. Also, it could be far away than we think.

This has led to slightly different terminology. Many companies and advocates now refer to any one game or platform as “a metaverse.” Others call the collection of different metaverses ” multiverses.” Or, maybe we live in an ” hybridverse.”

These words could also refer to anything. Coca-Cola launched the flavor in the metaverse, alongside and a Fortnite tie-in game. There are no rules.

Although we have a general idea of the current state of things, we can sort of reference to the metaverse as if we modify the word definitions in the right way. We know what companies are investing in this idea, but there is no agreement on it. Meta believes it will have fake houses that you can invite your friends to. Microsoft appears to believe it could include virtual meeting room for training new employees or chatting with remote coworkers.

These visions of the future are presented in a variety of optimistic and fan-fiction pitches. The company presented a scenario where a young woman scrolls through Instagram while she watches a video that a friend had posted about a concert taking place halfway around the globe.

The video cuts to the concert where the woman appears in an Avengers-style hologram. Her friend is able to see her, she can make eye contact, they can hear the concert and they can both see floating text above the stage. Although it seems very cool, this is not advertising any real product or a future one. It actually brings up the greatest problem with “the Metaverse”.

What is the Use of Holograms in Metaverse?

The internet was born with several technological innovations. These included the ability for computers to communicate over long distances and the ability to link between web pages. These technological features were the foundations of the web, which were used to create the complex structures that we now know as websites, apps, social media networks, and all other things that depend on them. This is not to mention the convergence of interface innovations that aren’t necessarily part of the internet, but are still essential to make it work.

The metaverse has many new building blocks. For example, the ability to host hundreds upon hundreds of people on a single server (idealistic metaverse prediction supposes this will increase to thousands, or even millions), or motion-tracking software that can identify where someone is looking and where they are holding their hand. These technologies are exciting and futuristic.

There are some limitations that might be difficult to overcome. Meta and Microsoft often show fictionalized videos that depict their future visions, but they tend to overlook how people will interact in the metaverse. The VR headsets are still quite cumbersome and many people feel motion sickness or pain if they’re worn too long. Augmented reality glasses have a similar problem. There is also the issue of how they can be worn in public without making them look like big dorks. The accessibility issues of VR are something that many companies are ignoring for now.

How can tech companies showcase the idea their technology without having to show the reality of heavy headsets and bulky glasses? Their primary solution appears to be to make technology out of whole cloth. Meta’s presentation: The holographic woman? It’s impossible with any technology, even the most advanced, to discredit the illusion.

Motion-tracked digital avatars are somewhat janky at the moment, but may improve in the future. However, it is possible to make a three-dimensional image appear in midair with no control. Iron Man may not be able to tell you the truth. These images could be taken to mean that they are projected using glasses. The demo video shows two women wearing the same glasses. 

Video demos of the possible metaverse can often gloss over reality. Another Meta demo featured characters floating in space. Are they strapped to an aerial rig? Or are they simply sitting at a computer? A hologram of a person–is their headset on? If so, how are their faces being scanned? Points are when a person grabs virtual objects but holds them in what appears to be their actual hands.

This demo raises more questions than it answers.

This is acceptable to a certain extent. Microsoft, Meta, as well as every company that presents wild demos like these, are trying to show an artistic impression of the future, and not necessarily answer every technical question. This is a tradition that dates back to AT&T’s demonstration of a foldable voice-controlled phone that could erase images and create 3D models. All of this might have seemed impossible in the past.

The last few months tech giants and startups have metaverse pitches that relied heavily upon lofty visions that are far removed from reality. Chipotle’s metaverse was an advertisement disguised as a Roblox game. Stories about “the metaverse”, which refers to a buggy game with virtual land tokens , are essentially a description of .

People are often confused and disappointed by most “metaverse” projects. This is why a 2017 Walmart VR shopping demo became a trending video in January 2022. It also demonstrated how much of the metaverse conversation is based on hype. Walmart’s VR shopping demonstration has never been successful, and that is a good thing. Why should anyone think it’s the future, when Chipotle is doing it?

This leaves us in a place where it’s hard to pinpoint which aspects of the various visions of the metaverse (if any) will actually be real one day. VR and AR headsets will be affordable enough to make it practical for everyday use. This is a significant “if”. You could still play Tabletop Simulator via a Discord call .

AR and VR are often too flashy to see the simple ways in which our digital world can be improved. Tech companies could create, for example, an open digital avatar standard. This file would include any characteristics that you might input into a character creator, such as eye color,clothing options or hairstyle. It can be taken everywhere and interpreted by any game engine. It’s not necessary to create a more comfortable VR headset.

This is not so fun.

What is the Metaverse like Right Now?

The paradox of the metaverse is that to make it the future you must first define the past. There are already MMOs that have virtual worlds, virtual concerts, video calls with people all over the globe, online avatars and commerce platforms. These things can be sold as a new view of the world.

If you spend enough time discussing the metaverse, someone will undoubtedly (and exhaustingly!) refer to fictional stories such as Snow Crash –the 1992 novel that introduced the term “metaverse”- or Ready Player One which depicts a VR universe where everyone works, shops, and plays. These stories, along with the pop culture notion of holograms or heads-up displays (basically everything Iron Man used in his last 10 films), serve as a creative reference point for the metaverse–a metaverse tech companies might actually sell.

This kind of hype is more important to the idea that the metaverse exists than any technology. It is no surprise that people who promote NFTs, which are cryptographic tokens that can be used as certificates of ownership for a digital item, , are also latching on to the idea of the metaverse. While NFTs can be harmful to the environment and most public blockchains have huge privacy and security issues, tech companies can claim that they will provide the digital keys to your Roblox home. Your hobby buying memes has been transformed into an important piece of infrastructure for future internet development (and maybe increased the value of all the cryptocurrency you have).

This context is important because it’s easy to think that everything will improve and progress in a linear manner. It’s not certain that people will want VR or AR tech to become as ubiquitous as computers and smartphones.

The concept of “the Metaverse” has been a powerful tool for investors to repackage old tech and oversell the benefits of new technology in the months that have passed since Facebook’s rebrand. However, money flowing into a space does not necessarily indicate a paradigm shift. As everything can attest, 3D TVs, Google glass and Amazon’s delivery drones are proof. There are many examples of failed investments in tech’s history.

However, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything new in the future. The Quest 2 VR headset is now cheaper than ever, and can be used to replace expensive console or desktop rigs. It is becoming easier to create and design virtual worlds and video games. Personally, I believe the photogrammetry process of creating digital 3D objects from photos or video is a very cool tool for digital artists.

Futurism is a key ingredient of the tech industry. Selling a phone is fine. But selling the future can be more lucrative. It may be true that a real metaverse would consist of a few VR games and digital avatars in Zoom, but it is still what we think of as the Internet.