A previous post outlined several drivers of metaverse. While it is still in its nascent stages, metaverse would bring truly immersive environments whose applications would span beyond video games. With the trends in virtual and augmented reality, there are immense economic opportunities as well as implications.

Gaming: The most widely accepted and widely talked about application is, of course, gaming. Game developers have been creating virtual worlds for decades - so what is different now?. With advances in hardware accleration and Deep Learning algorithms, virtual world experience is becoming more and more realistic than in previous generations of games. For example, techniques like real-time ray tracing were known for a very long time. These are beginning to become practical and a commonplace only recently. So are techniques like super sampling techniques using Deep Learning, as well as other compression techniques that enable creating Bounding Volume Hierarchies (BVH) packing more details about the scene. With Deep Learning techniques playing an increasing important role in simulating physics, more interactive and immersive games can be developed that generate close to accurate physics (flames, movement, flow, etc.) making graphics more realistic. There is enough economic opportunity in gaming and with game streaming it has been growing at an accelerated pace. One can check out the Twitch Streaming Statistics and get convinced.

Advertising: If I am watching a live sports event on TV (like soccer) from San Francisco, I would see advertisements pertaining to the local (US) market, while the same game, in an Italian feed, will have advertisements tailored to the European market. This is already a well-known and mature technology called virtual replacement perimeter technology. Supponor is one of the leaders in this space. Metaverse would enable to take this a step further. The commercials would not only get specialized or tailored according to the local market where it is being broadcasted live but also according to each viewer’s personal preferences. Much like how Google’s digital advertising and the growth of mobile and social networks allowed personalized, targeted ads, metaverse would offer such opportunities in a more immersive arena. Technologies pioneered by companies like Mirriad for product placement would be extremely valuable and amenable to personalization, not just for live concerts and live sports but many varieties of content created for the metaverse. Of course, there needs to be sufficient guard-rails and transparency and there would also be renewed debates on native advertising.

Factory Automation: Like gaming, this is one of the other avenues being talked about. There is one major difference between the virtual world (metaverse) created for gaming and the one created for factory automation purposes. For gaming, the artifacts that make up the metaverse is completely upto the imagination of the creator. However, in the case of factory automation, the digital twin has to replicate a physical structure that already exists. Any change in structure or function created (imagine the direction of conveyor belt in an assembly line) in the physical world has to be reflected in the digital twin. There is also less freedom on what artifacts could to be in the digital twin (metaverse). If many factories have identical assembly lines (like many traditional automobile factories or soft-drink bottling units, etc.) one could work with a templated setup. This would involve creating the artifacts common to all these templates (using Graphics SW tools, videos of factory, AI, etc,.). Further even if many factories share common templated factory floors at a high-level, there might be efficiencies that are introduced at the micro level (kinds of robot-arms they use, kinds of automated inspection mechanisms, etc,.) and these would be the key differentiators leading to competitive advantage. There might be commodity goods made by manufacturers who have no apparent competitive advantage over other similar manufacturers (think of zippers, nails, bottle-caps, automotive brakes and lately some semiconductor components, etc,.) for whom creating a digital twin would be easier. But they are also the ones who would move slowly on such innovations as their business becomes more and more commoditized. On the other hand factories who have a great competitive advantage (in terms of operational efficiencies) can leapfrog by having a centralized view of global factories and bringing them all to the same efficient mode.

E-commerce: Advances in technologies like photogrammetry and depth-sensing cameras becoming a commonplace in most smartphones can bring about new innovations in e-commerce. Most of e-commerce today is centered around purchase based on reviews from trying the product offline. It becomes interesting when purchases of clothes and accessories are made as one has to trust the size, fit, etc,. Customers tend to purchase multiple sizes only to return some of them back. Though many never realize, the returns in brick-and-mortar stores is around 8-9% while online retailers can see as much as 30% of the products returned. It runs to billions of dollars worth of merchandise. Virtual trial rooms could pop up at many points of interests (shopping malls, cinemas, etc.) or even in your living room (using a VR head-set and a phone camera or a Kinect system) that would allow one to try out new clothes. It could be tied to other marketing avenues (cross-selling) like selecting a design from a fashion show or a TV series and trying them as and when watching those shows.

High-end fashion is already experimenting with augmented reality. Who doesn’t want to go watch virtual French Open sitting next to friends from around the world while wearing your favorite Rafa Nike virutal t-shirt having the Raging Bull logo? Merchandises are already common in many video games and it could seamlessly get into fashion and other virutal events. Given the growth in influencer economy, it would also be an innovative way for amateur fashion designers to showcase their designs and their brand.

Healthcare and Bio-informatics: Over the last decade, we have seen increased adoption of robotic surgery - devices like DaVinci systems have been installed in several hospitals around the globe as it minimizes direct human contact during surgery and reduces infection rates. However, Da Vinci is a robotic arm controlled by a skilled surgeon along with mounted cameras and associated image processing software. With decreasing cost of sensors and advancements in software, a sophisticated array of sensors attached to the robotic arm could provide vital information overlaid (augmented reality) on the camera images of the surgery would provide real-time information that could aid in real-time and critical decision making. With advancements in 5G and networking bandwidths, Da Vinci like systems could one day make remote surgeries possible. Here’s where metaverse systems could play a huge role. Effectively collaborating with different expert surgeons connected to the robotic arm from different parts of the globe would require the image processing software to be capable of showing different views, different sets of vital information in real-time to different surgical experts and also keep each of the surgeons informed of what the other surgeon is trying to do. This requires a lot of image processing, processing data from different sensors in real-time, syncronizing the views of different surgeons and doing it all in real-time. Technologies such as these would also play a vital role in medical education, to train more professionals in places where such high-end technologies may not be very common.

MRI is another evolving technology with more and more software components, especially image fusion and augmented reality components, along with advances in physics. There is a very nice explanation of MRI in Canon’s webpage. A keen observer would be able to already notice the various places where imaging technology could be improved many folds using techniques like DLSS and the like. Image processing applications in a plethora of fields are getting better using Deep Learning techniques, including such medical imaging systems.

Research in genome sequencing has advanced leaps and bounds over the last decade. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) analyses developed using systems like Illumina provide a high-resolution base-by-base view of the genome. Softwares like TruSight combine the features used by different experts all in one dashboard and provide several ways of visualization and analysis. Softwares like these are testament to the convergence of hardware, system software, graphics and image processing and collaboration softwares as well as techniques like machine learning, all of which are required for research in areas like bio-informatics. With metaverse like platforms many experts can tap into the same analysis done in one molecular biology lab, and can sort them in different ways depending on the remote biologist’s expertise. While one might be an expert in variant filtering, the other might be an expert in evidence retrieval.

Fitness and Active Sports:

Though technologies in fitness got a big boost during the pandemic, mostly due to the interest in exercise equipments like Peloton bikes, sports science has been an active field of research by many global brands like Nike. Companies like Google have already mapped the many streets of the world, with popular places having more detailed maps. It would be great to integrate this information with a AR/VR headset that would allow one to do Giro d’Italia right from one’s living room on a stationary bike. It could even be possible for me to go on a ride with my friends (all of whom are in their stationary bikes probably in their living rooms or patios in different parts of the world), while turning around to talk to them or turning back to check on a slower rider. These require enormous graphics processing power (enabled by GPUs) combined with image processing software (enabled by AI) and a high bandwidth internet connectivity (enabled by 5G). For sports physicians, trainers and training apps this would also enable to monitor their customer’s vital information in real-time as and when they are working out and provide corrective information and guidance.

There are several business opportunities in the metaverse and several more would emerge. There are several challenges, especially around security of such systems. The success would however down to the right business model as well as focussed, deliberate execution. We might still see several companies getting on the metaverse bandwagon as did several newspaper companies thought internet was just about creating a website without understanding the distribution and personalization powers of the internet. There would be several “me-too” businesses trying to ride the “metaverse hype” without a sustainable business model, while a few who are deliberate would turn out to be the Amazons and Googles of the next decade.