Key technology drivers powering the Metaverse

Ever since Facebook Inc’s rebrand as Meta, the term Metaverse has become the new buzzword in the tech space.

Riding on this wave, several companies pioneering the development of the Metaverse have gained momentum, significantly fast-tracking the development of this new frontier.

Simply put, the end goal is an immersive virtual world where people live, work, and socialise connected to a virtual reality (VR) device in the comforts of their own home

However, with core technologies like 5G, affordable augmented reality (AR) and VR technology and edge computing still in its infancy, a fully-fledged metaverse might be years away from fruition.

Looking ahead, the concept of Metaverse has gone through several iterations, improving exponentially at each stage, making us closer to an immersive reality as we advance the tech that powers it into the future.

Here's what you need to know about the key technological drivers powering the Metaverse.

In this article:

Blockchain

At the top of the food chain, blockchain technology is bound to play a crucial role in the development of the Metaverse providing a decentralised, as well as a transparent infrastructure, which is key to the success of the Metaverse.

Blockchain stalwarts like cryptocurrency, NFTs and smart contracts will be critical in providing digital proof of ownership, digital collectability, transfer of value, governance, accessibility and interoperability within the environment.

For example, crypto can be used to buy virtual lands in Decentraland (a metaverse project), where players can purchase land parcels in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with the game’s cryptocurrency MANA.

Goldman Sachs Group senior equity analyst Rod Hall said that blockchain is the only technology that can “uniquely identify any virtual object independent of a central authority”, and this ability to identify and track ownership will be crucial to how the metaverse functions.

Interestingly, this will allow like-minded individuals to form communities that share experiences, develop parallel economies, and create content together.

Augmented reality and virtual reality

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies provide us with a gateway to the metaverse, enabling the immersion into its 3D constructed world.

AR uses visual cues, digital elements and characters to morph the real world — remember Pokemon GO?

VR, on the other hand, much like the metaverse concept, produces an entirely computer-generated virtual environment where users can then explore using VR headsets, haptic gloves and other sensory devices.

However, the VR experience requires expensive equipment such as a virtual reality headset, which is not the most affordable piece of technology.

Thankfully, we already have AR technology inbuilt on most smartphones, which also has the potential to become an alternative driving force behind the development of the Metaverse.

In fact, Pokemon GO developer Niantic has an AR alternative to the Metaverse already on its cards

5G

The Metaverse is all about connecting virtual experiences, but networking with VR devices can take a toll on the bandwidth of our network infrastructure, especially when VR streaming is a resource-intensive process.

Constructing fully interactive 3D Metaverses, filled with textured media from video and immersive sound, relies on heavy digital files far denser than file types required for video or other content.

Coming to the rescue is 5G technology, which is gradually being implemented across the world, will provide the speed and bandwidth necessary for real-time data transfers in the Metaverse

Following suit, mobile hardware companies are also developing 5G-enabled chips and devices capable of powering technologies and running software unlike any we have on the market right now.

Artificial intelligence

With huge chunks of data coming at you at lightning speeds, you need to process it in real-time – and that is where artificial intelligence (AI) comes into play.

Combined with machine learning techniques, AI algorithms can learn from previous experiences and historical data to deduce unique outputs and insights.

Meta’s vice president of AI, Jérôme Pesenti, said that AI is one of the keys to the metaverse and the Meta AI is moving to another self-supervised approach, where AI can learn data without any human supervision.

Pesenti adds: “For example, when dealing with language, the AI system can remove words from the input text and try to get them by inferring patterns in the surrounding words

“As the AI system gets better, it also improves its understanding of the meaning and structure of language.

“This is one of the biggest advantages of this self-supervised model: It’s task-independent, such that a single model can be leveraged with minimal fine-tuning to perform several downstream tasks.

“The model can help to do things like identifying hate speech, while also ensuring your news feed in search results won’t run events.”, said Pesenti

Today, AI use cases are already prevalent in the Metaverse, which is centred around optimising engagement and advertising.

Many Metaverse designs also target digital beings as companions and friends and AI is critical for more complex forms for input, processing, gestures, voice generation, and expressions.

Looking ahead, artificial intelligence is not only going to change experiences but the interaction model and collaboration paradigms as well.

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