The metaverse: Where we are and where we’re headed

The coming metaverse has provoked hype, confusion, and misinformation. For technophiles, the metaverse represents a nirvana: a place to immerse yourself in any digital surrounding, and participate in any physical reality, at any time – and also to be able to see and feel anything, even if you are thousands of miles away from that physical place.

In a future state, electromyography (EMG) movements and neural interfaces — triggered by only slight finger movements — will allow you to control devices, communicate, and collaborate with others almost as simple as thinking. Your eyes will exploit glasses that use complex sensors to see both your own reality, but virtual ones as well.

Some aspects of this apparent science fiction world are closer than we realize. Matthew Ball, a venture capitalist who has studied the metaverse closely, last year wrote a series of articles about where things are headed in the next decade. Ball breaks down the various technologies and protocols that need to come together to create the metaverse.

Ball categorizes the metaverse into eight core features, which can be thought of as a stack.

While Ball’s vision extends to the next decade, this article focuses on where the metaverse is headed in the next two or three years. It aims to review what most enterprise decision-makers need to know, whether they’re in the gaming industry – where the metaverse has had its most immersive form so far – or in the enterprise, where things are only now starting to take shape.

It’s clear that there will be a first big wave of innovation over the next 12 to 24 months, where “mixed reality” hardware produces breakthroughs for immersive experiences.

A second big wave is then likely somewhere in the next three or more years when fully immersive augmented reality (AR) glasses hit the market in a bigger way. This hardware is important because it’s the gateway to the metaverse.

What we’ve also learned is that key aspects of the metaverse – like allowing your personal avatar to show up as a hologram to someone else in their physical reality – may be pie in the sky as a practical technology right now. But not within the next three years. […]

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