Hi everyone, welcome back to Seeker+ and our series on the Metaverse.
If you missed episode 1 that lays out exactly what the metaverse is, I’d say go back and
watch it because otherwise this episode isn’t going to make a lot of sense.
I’m going to talk about Fortnite and it’ll seem like it comes out of nowhere but I promise
it’s relevant.
Anyway, let’s jump back into the metaverse.
A lot of pieces required for this massive undertaking are in place today.
VR headsets are at a point where they can render scenes with high enough resolution
and frame-rate that they don’t cause motion-sickness, at least not as often.
Some don’t even need to be plugged into PC’s graphics cards to work; Facebook’s
Quest 2 uses a chip similar to what you might find in a smartphone.
Even smartphones could work, though dedicated headsets often have hand-held hardware for
interacting with virtual objects, but hand tracking does exist.
Foot-tracking controllers aren’t very widespread so often VR avatars are floating legless torsos.
It’s a bit immersion breaking.
Avatars also tend to lean to the cartoonish side, and if people want more true-to-life
looking ones there are some technical barriers developers are working on overcoming.
Human touches like matching lip syncing and appropriate facial expressions can be the
difference between having a pleasant VR chat with a good friend and talking to a soulless
inhuman impostor.
So companies are working on headsets with more sensors to track your face movements,
or AI algorithms that can take speech and convert it to 3D facial animation.
Full disclosure: I should mention at this point that I also work for Nvidia, a company
that’s working on metaverse technologies like this sort of AI.
The biggest question mark that’s looming over everything is how it's all going to work
together.
What standards and protocols will everyone universally adopt that makes everything run
smoothly.
This was a key part of getting the world wide web to, y’know, work.
Everyone adopted HTML that browsers can all use to decipher websites, standardized IP
addresses tell computers where to send data, a Domain Name System assigns IP addresses
to URLs that are easier for users to remember.
In the early days of the internet all of this had to be sorted out and it was a chaotic
process.
Most of us didn’t see it unfold though because the first internet users were academics who
were just looking for a way to share research and send messages.
Nobody tried to make their proprietary technology the key to the whole thing.
In fact the creator of HTML, a computer scientist based at CERN named Tim Berners-Lee, believed
that making his creation free to everyone was the key to a truly world-wide network.
It wasn’t until after the groundwork was established that private companies realized
this internet thing could catch on.
With the metaverse, companies are seeing an opportunity to make themselves essential for
the next internet.
A heavyweight title fight is brewing between some of the biggest names in tech, and each
has their strengths.
Facebook -dang it- “Meta,” has an enormous user base and if they can convince them that
the metaverse is A) worth partaking in and B)
best experienced in VR, their ownership of Oculus will be a huge advantage.
Epic Games not only has Fortnite, which we established is nearly a metaverse, they also
made the game engine Fortnite was built in, Unreal.
Unreal is free for developers to download and work in, Epic just takes a cut when the
game sells.
Because of this it’s become massively widespread.
It's even found users in the film industry; the Mandalorian was rendered with Unreal engine,
and it was used on set in real time for framing shots and placing actors.
That could set up Epic in a great spot to establish their software as a key piece that
enables interoperability.
Google has experience making augmented reality glasses and wearables, the company has mapped
entire cities which could be useful for making digital replicas, and their Android operating
system is the most widespread in the world.
Amazon’s primed to send people physical goods they’ll buy in the virtual world.
Microsoft has their mixed reality hololens headset and their established business software
suite.
Apple has their mobile devices and wearables and the app store.
Who's to say who, if anyone, will come out ahead.
This could go any number of ways, and some unknown dark horse could end up being the
savviest operator or breakthrough innovator.
Some developers don’t like the idea of a large company controlling too much so they’ve
created a decentralized digital world appropriately called Decentraland.
If I had to bet though, I think the most likely outcome is some of these big companies will
get a big slice of the pie, but they’ll still have to cooperate with each other in
the end.
Nvidia has developed something they call Omniverse, which allows proprietary programs to talk
to each other.
This lets 3D designers collaborate in real-time when they build a virtual world, but it’s
easy to see how something like this could be the interstitial glue holding the component
parts of the metaverse together.
Interoperability is partly a technical challenge, but it’s also a big design problem too.
Let’s say you’re in one part of the metaverse playing a single player game, and you unlock
a new weapon, let’s call it a Technoblade 9000, and you’re just mowing down mobs of
AI controlled enemies with this thing.
If there were no limits on interoperability, you’d be able to take it to another game
world, like a multiplayer game.
Here’s the thing though; game devs spend tons of time trying to balance weapons so
no single one becomes a must-pick.
If just anyone can show up all of a sudden with a Technoblade 9000 they could ruin the
game for everyone else.
This is already an issue today: Call of Duty is such a big IP multiple developers work
on different offshoots of the franchise.
In 2020 the series introduced a battle royale mode and later that year the mode incorporated
a bunch of weapons from another Call of Duty game, a couple of which were way overpowered.
Basically if you wanted to win, you had to use these two guns, and the game got stale
and frustrating.
To add to the confusion, both games had different versions of weapons with the same name.
Keep in mind these problems came from mixing two slightly different games, can you imagine
what would happen if you could literally show up to a sword fight with a gun?
Or a tank?
So maybe there should be limits on items players can bring from one part of the world to another,
but what about cosmetic items?
That might be more of a gray area, as some cosmetics can give players a competitive advantage.
Again my mind goes to Call of Duty when players could unlock a skin that covered them completely
in a solid shade of dark black.
A lot of players took advantage of this by hiding in dark corners and pouncing on enemies
who couldn’t see them.
If it wasn’t clear I feel personally victimized by Call of Duty.
But let’s imagine all these issues are solved.
We build a network infrastructure that can handle limitless people in a shared world
at once.
All the code and hardware works together seamlessly, and we’ve struck a nice balance of what’s
allowed anywhere and what’s kept in fenced-off areas.
What will our world look like at that point?
How will the metaverse change things for the better?
And how will it change things for the worse?
We’ll cover that in our next episode.
If you liked this one YouTube has created an incredible new button that heightens immersion
by allowing you to click “like” which will let me know that you liked it and I like
that.
They’ve also made a subscribe button, I’m sure it’s the first time you’re hearing
about this.
We’re two thirds of the way through the metaverse series so what’re your thoughts
so far?
How do you feel about the role big tech will play in it’s development?
Let us know in the comments, another innovative new feature that draws you into our shared
world of online video.
Thanks for watching and I’ll see you for episode 3.