The Metaverse is a 3D virtual reality universe that can be accessed by a personal terminal and virtual reality goggles. There is a wide range of possibilities to what users will be able to do in the metaverse, starting from buying virtual clothes for your avatar to doing meetings in a virtual office with your colleagues.
Although the virtual reality is not a new concept, the discussion of this technology was reignited again after Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of Facebook announced on October 28, 2021, that he will be changing his company name from Facebook to Meta to reflect the shift of focus from a social media company to a company which will be focused on the virtual reality world.
Some might say that this move by Facebook was in fact a way to change public opinion about the company due to lack of protection of users privacy and the freedom that the company gave to spread misinformation on it’s social apps, nonetheless, this move started a new race between many companies to build the first Metaverse.
Here are a few examples of several metaverses (Apart from Facebook):
- Roblox – Roblox metaverse is already live! Its metaverse is that kind of a place where you can enter their world and play different kinds of games that other developers created.
With over 43 Million active daily users which are entering the metaverse of Roblox, no doubt that this company is one of the pioneers in the metaverse.
- The Sandbox – The Sandbox started as a mobile game, where users could create their universe by using different elements that the game had to offer. In 2018 the game has evolved by Animoca Brands which acquired the game, and now users can use different crypto coins to buy land from other users and buy different NFT’s from different creators in the Sandbox universe. Although their world sounds pretty great, currently their metaverse is still under development.
- Mesh – Mesh is Microsoft’s vision for the metaverse, users would be able to interact with each other in virtual reality and augmented reality. Microsoft already integrated their metaverse to their “Teams” platform, making meetings more interactive. It’s still not clear what else Microsoft is planning to add to their Metaverse in the next few years, but it would be quite interesting to see.