Metaverse: Current Status And What To Come

The metaverse is a virtual universe that promises to give us an online experience like never before. Let's see which industries are among the first to adopt the metaverse, and what the future holds for it.

- Dr Anand Nayyar and Dr Magesh Kasthuri

The metaverse is well-known today. However, there are many misconceptions about it. These include: it is meant only for gaming, the banking sector is adopting metaverse faster, the metaverse is subject to many security threats, large investments are needed for its infrastructure (wearables, GPU-based systems), and so on.

Technologists claim that metaverse is digital nirvana, as it immerses users into the digital world and gives them a virtual experience of anything they do to interact with the platform. For CIOs and CTOs, the metaverse opens new business models and new ways of architecting solutions for an improved customer experience in a connected digital world.

The Gartner ‘Predicts 2022’ report claims that by 2026, 25 per cent of the world’s population will spend a minimum of one hour per day in the metaverse. Metaverse is a revolutionary technology that will open up new-age business models in healthcare (virtual hospital consultation, virtual advice for critical treatments), retail (3D immersive experience-based online stores), manufacturing (virtual quality checks and inspection), banking (branchless digital banks), insurance (digital avatar for marketing new insurance products, consultation for claims), and many more.

The technologies that make up the metaverse

Metaverse is not a technology in itself – it is an amalgamation of a range of technologies. Some of the important ones are listed below.

Augmented reality: This offers a virtual immersive user experience that combines digital and physical worlds to give a real-life experience using devices like a head-mounted display and HoloLens.

Virtual reality: This gives a virtual world experience to users (like a digital game) where they start feeling they are part of the virtual world.