We read in the news and on blogs about the metaverse’s awe and immersion as a virtual world in which people live, work, shop, and interact with others – all from the comfort of their couch in the physical world, which lacks the clear detail of the metaverse. We can’t see the future, but with the definition of our physical world, we can predict and have a clearer picture of this virtual world. I will dive a little deep into the tech and some details. I will show the difference between simple online video games and the metaverse, which some people notice, and some may not have thought about. Even the simplest of tasks we face in reality, that we do not even give a thought to, are a great challenge in this virtual world.
The number of people: In our online interactive world, we always create room for interaction with small groups of people. Fortnite Battle Royale is a player-versus-player game for up to 100 players. A regular Zoom meeting can accommodate up to 300 participants at the same time. It sounds like a lot but if we compare it to what 10 thousand people do every day in a stadium or a supermarket. Metaverse will increase the number of participants up to a billion in one place.
Physical simulation: In our video game we use fake simple physics to simulate this complex world. A simple representation of this world is made of the atom. The world in a video game is made up of polygons and created like origami. Everything is hollow from the inside, there is no solid in this world. When you cut the tomato in everyday life, it must reveal the structure inside, the hollow form, the seeds, and the different layers of the cell. The tomato juice is derived from the tomato. Every object needs a complex collision that shapes its structure. The mass, density, and transformation of an object occur when we heat it, apply force, and react to other materials. The growing nature of plants is so rich and complex in this world.
The fingerprints on the object: The detector can detect criminal activity by the marks they leave at the crime scene. When we enjoy sitting and putting our hands on the table, we don’t have to worry about the fingerprints we leave behind. For video games, nothing is going to be remembered. We fire a bullet at the wall, spawning a bullet hole decal on the wall. In a few seconds, the bullet hole will disappear, as will the footprint in the snow or mud. We are still unable to contain all this information for later players. A new player begins with a fresh new scene.
The origin of the object: In this world, everything has an origin, the transformation through time, the inheritance. We have historians on our planet, so do we on metaverse. An island forms by the natural activity of the earth’s surface, not by a sculptor artist. We can trace back to the age of dinosaurs from the fossil. The lack of this information makes this universe feel blank and meaningless.
Advances in sensory technology: people can’t fully immerse themselves in experiences that only the visual can provide. The sense of touch is really significant in everyday life. Some companies, like Senseglove, have developed a physical glove that can simulate the sense of touch. Improved weight sense and warm and cold temperatures for VR equipment. The invention of the Omni-directional treadmill enabled us to move freely, jump, swim, and fly without feeling attached.
The improvement of AI: The AI in our video games nowadays is unintelligent. It is just an asset that follows hard-coded instructions. They are not creative enough to make decisions by themselves. With the development of procedural animation and artificial intelligence, the AI character will be able to move naturally and be more adaptive to real-time situations without the need for mocap animation and simple instructions.
Procedural generated content: We are never going to be able to create and store all these details and contents. Just like No Man’s Sky can generate terrain for trillions of planets. We have to build the algorithm to generate the architecture for billions of buildings on our planet. It should follow the rules and functions of real-world architecture and be capable of arranging all the furniture in a room space. To reach the scale promised by the metaverse, objects must generate rather than be crafted by hand one by one.
In conclusion, there are enormous techs, from hardware to software that we have to build our foundation on to achieve a virtual world where we can hang out. We are a really lucky generation that can see and contribute to this development of the future.
What will the metaverse look like for your ideas?