The Metaverse: Powering products for today and the future

Are we ready for the Metaverse and its next-gen use cases?

One term has captured the attention of many minds and companies, the "Metaverse” – likely derived from the Greek word 'meta ta physika' referring to an idea or experience that is a posited reality outside of human sense perception". And this enhanced augmented or virtual reality world transforming human perception and experiences is the guiding principle behind all Metaverse product use cases.

There has been immense hype surrounding the Metaverse since 2020 as companies have changed their positioning, naming and complete offerings around the term. You might imagine that there are now many technologies that constitute multiple use cases for the Metaverse but there are still not many mass-market practical uses for the new technology. This article explores both current and potential product uses for the Metaverse and discusses the various barriers that prevent customers from bringing the Metaverse into the mainstream.

Metaverse use cases

Let’s dive a little deeper into some practical use cases for the Metaverse that I believe could have the most impact in our real world.

Metaverse for work and collaboration

One powerful use case of the Metaverse often talked about is the blending of virtual remote work settings with real-life like environments. With Covid ongoing, Facebook changed its name to Meta and Zoom became a multi-billion dollar company touting virtual ways of working. While Zoom innovated remote workplace productivity collaboration, the next level could be augmenting home / office workspaces with real office pod virtual environments. This could allow you to project yourself into reality to meet with colleagues sitting elsewhere, rather than staring into endless Zoom calls.This was something the world saw when Mark Zuckerberg showed when he announced Facebook would be renamed Meta.

The practical considerations remain. While I wouldn't wear an intrusive headset for my virtual work, I would consider attending meetings with a Google Glass-style lightweight device. Perhaps the blending of a Matterport style 3D office environment would work. Instead of avatars in the Metaverse, you could put on a Metaverse-enabled device, see real people and augment Zoom-like video experiences in a 3D space.

Meta, Apple and others are looking at these types of futuristic use cases. This is at a time where return to home is still a possibility and not all of the workforce wants to embrace a full return to office.

The Metaverse could be the answer to blend the best of working from home and making sure we are still connected to office culture.

Metaverse for education and learning

I haven't seen a lot of Metaverse hype in the field of education.

From understanding and recreating historical artifacts and architecture in a 3D environment, to explaining deep concepts in math, space and science, children and young adults may be the most receptive to engaging in learning with an augmented reality / VR headset.

Using the Metaverse to help recreate multiple storylines of past, history and even the future, could help visualize what we typically learn about from textbooks.

Consumer apps and commerce

Think of how the Metaverse can accelerate buying decisions of products in a virtual setting. If you want to see the interiors of a car, try out new products in e-commerce or even imagine in 3D how a product may look or feel, there is huge potential for AR / VR to make an impact. Buying cars, buying houses, buying furniture or trying out dresses may all be possible using a combination of consumer apps that are aided by Metaverse devices.

Facebook did a full pivot to align itself to the Metaverse with its new name and the company is now acquiring products such as Oculus VR and considering the acquisition of similar products such as Magic Leap.

Industrial metaverse – a promising enterprise use case 

There were a few industrial and technology companies including Dassault, PTC and Autodesk working on using AR/VR for industrial use cases before the term Metaverse was coined. Imagine scenarios of trained technicians at factories improving their productivity by augmenting work instructions. Now think of workforce training magnified at scale through the Metaverse. With the combination of Microsoft Hololens and other VR goggles, many companies have been trying to use the Metaverse to transpose physical and digital renderings into a real-world setting. The closest that I have seen include the industrial use cases built by PTC and Dassault but other companies may catch up soon to build B2B Metaverse industrial use cases. This could be in the form of augmenting digital instructions for work, factory training and assembly lines for manufacturing. In this case, blending with IoT sensor data for real-time updates may have the most promise.

Movies and entertainment

The multibillion dollar entertainment and movie industry is perhaps where businesses and consumers will get their best return on AR/VR experiences. Imagine immersing yourself as a spectator within an action movie sequence of the next Mission Impossible series, or being inside Jurassic Park.The entertainment industry could see the largest influx of Metaverse devices, notwithstanding the growing interest even across the adult entertainment industry.

Gaming will drive the first adoptions in Metaverse

The Metaverse as we know it today has been most popular in the gaming industry. Companies such as Roblox, Unity and other major players have created virtual worlds and ecosystems. There was also the concept of Metaverse coins in crypto. Games such as Decentraland and Sandbox created a furore in the gaming world as they allowed players to buy and sell assets, which led to their valuations soaring right after Facebook became Meta. There was also talk about using Metaverse crypto currency as the standard for transactions, essentially blurring the value of money within the real and virtual worlds. This will continue to get the most value for the foreseeable future.

Metaverse for fitness

There is a lot of promise for Metaverse to innovate in the fitness industry too. Consider how Peloton, Life Fitness and multiple gyms today offer life-like videos of running and biking screens on monitors attached to stationary equipment. Now imagine the transformation if you were able to insert yourself into studios that show a 3D rendering of those real-life locations as you jog or bike around the most beautiful places in the world with the help of AR/VR aids. There is definitely potential to improve the market rather than just attaching video screens and tablet style monitors to a stationary bike or a treadmill. The answer to more immersive exercising and fitness routines perhaps lies in a Metaverse aided setting.

Healthcare applications

Telehealth and virtual healthcare took off during Covid. There are already immense improvements in how physicians and surgeons use AR/VR in remote surgeries and patient settings. In addition, there are now companies which can provide an augmented reality setup that accelerates medical procedures and enhances emergency response as doctors or EMS arrive at the scene of treating patients. Healthcare could definitely be the next frontier for the Metaverse.

Military applications

For a lot of military operations, especially those involving UAVs and simulators, there are already plenty of AR/VR training programs that accelerate the training of military personnel for battle ready situations. Also, it may become commonplace for a combination of robotics and augmented real-time AR visualizations to assist in responding to unfortunate or unpredictable situations on the field. Although, it remains to be seen as to how technologically advanced modern day soldiers could become when they are fed real-time information about combat situations with AR/VR aids.

The barriers

Weight

Sergey Brin may have been ahead of his time with Google Glass but the practical difficulty of leveraging the Metaverse in reality today is that many of these VR headsets are bulky and even claustrophobic. Things may change when a lightweight VR set is created.

Price barrier vs utility

I don't mind paying high dollars for a smartphone as it provides all of the features that I want to use continuously, all the time. However, I don't see the utility of investing in a costly VR headset that I may not use for a long time. Also, its utility diminishes purely based on the fact that I can't use it for more than a certain period of time. At the moment, I'd rather go spend time in real nature.

Do I have personalization? 

Perhaps with the advent of AI / LLMs, one futuristic proposition and attraction for consumers could be whether they can train or use their own treasure trove of data. If an individual's social media, web history and personal interests could be used to create a personalized VR/AR experience, entering the Metaverse would become both a desirable and unique experience.

Although the Metaverse is a popular buzzword, there are some barriers that we need to jump before the Metaverse enters the mainstream. However, there is a lot of promise in the way we could transform our world and extend the limits of human perception and imagination.