Look to the near future. Imagine a global network of virtual worlds, whose inhabitants can buy and sell goods and services. Engage in science and creativity, meet, chat, play and start a family. It's not about science fiction: the metaverse is the "next Internet". It is a technological and social concept that will soon radically change our lives online and even offline. Former Amazon Studios executive, venture capitalist, and Metaverse evangelist are confident in Metaverse. They say it will soon revolutionize every industry and profession. From video games and social media to finance and urban planning.

 

Explore the role of Web 3.0, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and NFT markets in the development of the metaverse. Here we start with our knowledge.

 

Defining the Metaverse: What is Metaverse actually?

 

Having completed all the important preliminaries, we can now move on to a specific conversation about what the Metaverse is. Despite conflicting definitions and the complexity of the subject, we believe it is possible. Providing a clear, comprehensive, and useful definition of the term even at this early stage in the history of the metaverse.

 

So, the metaverse is a large-scale interoperable network of 3D virtual worlds rendered in real-time. Users can have a synchronous and continuous experience with a sense of personal presence and continuity of data. Such as identity, history, rights, objects, communications, and payments.

 

Here, we'll look at each element of that definition. And the process seeks to understand not only what the metaverse is, but how the metaverse differs from today's Internet, what it takes to create it, and when it might happen.

 

What is Virtual World?

A virtual world is an artificial environment created using computer technology. These can be 3D immersive environments, 2.5D, 2D, or augmented reality on top of the real world. Or pure text environments like MUD and non-gaming MUSH from the 1970s. Such worlds may not have individual users, as in Pixar films or virtual simulations of the ecosphere for biology classes. In other cases, they may be for a single user, such as in the Legend of Zelda games, or for multi-user cooperation, such as in the Call of Duty games. Users can interact with the virtual world through different devices. Such as a keyboard, a motion sensor, or even a motion-tracking video camera.

 

Stylistically, virtual worlds can faithfully reproduce the real world (so-called digital twins). Or they may represent an artistically imagined version of reality (such as New Donk City in Super Mario Odyssey or Manhattan in Marvel's 2018 Spider-Man game for PlayStation). Or depict a completely fictional reality where the impossible becomes possible. A virtual world may have a game goal, such as winning, killing, scoring, overcoming, or solving a puzzle, or a non-game goal related to education, training, commerce, communication, meditation, fitness, etc.

 

3D

 

Although virtual worlds can exist in different dimensions, 3D is a key feature of the metaverse. Without 3D, the Metaverse would be no different from today's Internet. After all, forums, chat rooms, website builders, image platforms, and interconnected content networks have been around and popular for decades.

 

It's not just that 3D ushers in a new era. Metaverse theorists argue that a 3D environment is necessary for the transition of human culture and work from the physical world to the digital. For example, according to Mark Zuckerberg, 3D is inherently a more intuitive interaction model for people than 2D websites, apps, and video calls, especially when used for social purposes. After all, humans haven't had thousands of years of evolution to interact with flat touch screens.

 

 

We must consider the changing nature of online communities and the online experience over the last few decades. In the 1980s - early 1990s. The Internet was originally a text-based medium. Internet users present their identity through a username, email address, or text profile. Besides this, they expressed themselves through chat rooms and message boards.

 

Late 1990s - early 2000s. Personal computers became capable of storing large files, and the speed of the Internet made it possible to upload and download them. Accordingly, most Internet users begin to identify themselves online through photographs or graphics. Some offer private websites that contain several low-resolution images and sometimes even audio clips. Eventually, the first public social networks emerged, such as MySpace and Facebook.

 

From the late 2000s - early 2010s. Entirely new forms of online socialization began to emerge. Gone are the days of rarely updated personal blogs or Facebook pages. Instead of consisting of a profile photo and a series of old text status updates, users began to express themselves through an almost continuous stream of high-resolution photos and even videos. Many of them were taken on the go for the sole purpose of sharing what they were doing, eating, or thinking at the moment. This trend was facilitated by the emergence of new types of social networks such as YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok.

 

Realtime rendering

 

Rendering is the process of creating a 2D or 3D object or environment using a computer program. Basically, the task of this program is to solve an equation that contains various inputs, data, and rules. It helps determine what should be rendered. Uses different computing resources, such as a graphics processing unit (GPU) and a central processing unit. (CPU). Here, as in any mathematical problem, the more resources available, the more complex the equation can be solved and the more detailed the solution will be.

 

Take Pixar's 2013 animated film Monsters University. Even with an industrial-grade computing processor, each of the more than 120,000 frames took an average of 29 hours to render. In total, it took more than two years to render the entire file. And even then, provided that a single render and a scene change are not required. Considering the scale of the task, Pixar built a data center of 2,000 interconnected industrial-grade computers with a combined 24,000 cores that, when fully loaded, are capable of rendering a frame in about 7 seconds. Of course, most companies cannot afford such powerful supercomputers, so they have to spend a lot of time on rendering.

 

Interoperable network

 

Central to the concept of the metaverse is the user's ability to transfer virtual content. Whether it's an avatar or a backpack, from one virtual world to another, where that content can be swapped, sold, or combined with something else. For example, if we buy clothes in Minecraft, we can wear them in Roblox. Or we can wear a hat bought in Minecraft with a sweater won on Roblox while participating in a virtual sports match hosted by FIFA. Or, if the participants of this match find a special souvenir in it, they can take it with them from this virtual world. Also, transfer it to other worlds and even sell it on third-party platforms, as if it were an original 1969 Woodstock jersey.

 

Also, in the Metaverse, wherever users go and whatever they do, their achievements, history, and even meaning must be recognized across the virtual world crowd. The closest real-world counterparts are passports, local credit scores, and national identification systems.

 

To realize this vision, virtual worlds must be interoperable. It means the ability of computer systems or software to exchange information and use data received from each other.

 

Almost all popular virtual worlds today use their own engine for rendering. Many developers even use different engines. They store information about players. Their objects and textures are in different file formats, and leave only the necessary information for this particular game. They have no mechanism by which data can be exchanged with other virtual worlds.

 

As a result, existing virtual worlds cannot simply "see" each other. They do not have a common language in which they can communicate with each other, not to mention how to communicate smoothly, safely, and comprehensively with each other.

 

This isolation and fragmentation are due to the fact that today's virtual world creators do not set interoperability as a goal when developing their systems. Instead, such worlds were designed as closed systems with fully regulated economies - and optimized accordingly.