Let’s start with a definition, that of the excellent Grand Dictionnaire terminologique. The metaverse is a “virtual, immersive and persistent world, which allows the virtualization of human activities, in particular social, recreational, cultural and commercial”.
If the word “persistent” makes you wonder, no worries. It means “a virtual world that exists, evolves and develops continuously and autonomously, independent of the presence of users”.
So it’s not a virtual world that you activate like you turn your game console on or off. It’s an always-on virtual world, like a big city that never sleeps.
How do we access it? Using a virtual reality headset and controllers or his computer connected to the Internet.
Why does Facebook care so much about it? Because by offering its virtual reality equipment, the Meta group (new name for Facebook which is becoming a commercial brand) will be able to reign over a universe that it controls from start to finish, very similar to real life, with the great advantage to detach from third-party hardware and systems; read Apple, Microsoft and Google. Look around, the devices you are logging into Facebook with now are Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, Chrome, Windows, etc. And the big boss of Meta no longer wants to depend on it, hence his ambition to create this animated metaverse world on his servers and with his hardware. As early as 2014, Facebook bought the headset manufacturer Oculus to democratize virtual reality.
Like a new version of the internet
It’s telecommuting, e-commerce, tourism, entertainment, gaming and society in general on electronic steroids, all from the comfort of home.
From this virtual and collective space which will have its own independent virtual economy equipped with digital currencies – think of non-fungible NFT tokens – the firm Gartner predicts that by 2026, 25% of people will spend at least one hour a day there to work , shop, learn, network or have fun.
For example, you can “visit” new apartments for sale, or discover the virtual version that your architect will have imagined for your new home.
Even stronger, big brands will establish themselves there by buying with real dollars the best locations to attract virtual customers.
Impossible to achieve without artificial intelligence
As it will be practically impossible to codify everything in order to recreate these virtual worlds, the systems will have to rely on artificial intelligence – namely neural systems capable of adapting to every request, every moment.
For example, there will not only be real people virtualized behind their virtual reality headsets, there will also be real computer-generated individuals in this metaverse with whom you can chat or play the latest games.
These virtual and very photorealistic characters that took months to design can be created in minutes thanks to artificial intelligence. You will have in front of you digital characters able to recognize our gestures, feel our emotions, decode body language in general and even follow our eye movements.
As each of you is different, the machine characters will have to adapt instantly.
All of this will take time to happen, specialists speak of 2030. Will the general population board the metaverse train? It is still too early to tell.
Even in the best of cases, can the metaverse replace the beach, the sea and the warm sand? Of course not. But the rest is very doable.
Metaverse video with Mark Zuckerberg on monetizing virtual worlds