Ready to go: 2023 has just begun, and we are still dealing with last year's waste. Get over it: some things will stay with us, regardless of any New Year's resolution. The Metaverse Debate, for example. One of the most used and searched words of 2022: the "technological revolution" that bit the brakes under the blows that slowed down Big Tech and Meta.
What we all understood about the metaverse is that at the moment the metaverse does not exist. Or rather: it is a series of more or less closed platforms (therefore the ideological opposite of what a metaverse should be), full of ridiculous avatars, or people who want to sell "virtual houses" and NFTs. “It's not a good start,” Alessandro Borghese would say.
Yet, if/when it comes, the Metaverse is an idea that truly has transformative potential for society: but we need to be aware of the challenges we will face to make the most of this potential. Pushing ourselves beyond the cartoonish virtual worlds we see today, creating immersive, realistic and artistic experiences. Focus on developing creativity and productivity, not on creating closed platforms, or bubbles like current NFTs.
Above all, we must free ourselves from an idea: that according to which we should live a future perpetually within virtual worlds, far from our physical environment. Of course, there will be places where people spend hours in an "asocial" sociality. The evolution of current social platforms, so to speak, with an extra touch of immersion. The TRUE metaverse, however, will be contiguous to our reality: in some ways, complementary. It will expand our daily lives with digital content, gradually distancing us from the screens we currently hunch over for hours.
Keep an eye on mixed reality
In a few years, the world of mixed reality will undergo a revolution. And already in this 2023 we will see the signs, with a new wave of products. Zuckerberg himself revealed the trend to us, running (badly) for cover with his new viewer. MetaQuest Pro uses cameras that show the wearer the real world, and combine it with virtual content: they are already, in fact, the embryo of mixed reality platforms.
Although the potential of Meta Quest Pro is enormous, however, there is currently very little software capable of fully exploiting its capabilities. And the device costs too much, it is not aimed at the public but at the business world. This year, however, new programs and new devices will emerge and will act as an "activator" allowing more and more people to understand what the theme is.
Knights and platforms of the “new” metaverse
HTC is preparing the launch of its own viewer in 2023 (which promises to be more powerful than the Meta Quest Pro). It will be presented this week at CES2023 and will have guess what? Color passthrough cameras that will allow you to look around and see graphics superimposed on reality.
What about Apple? She should throw too your viewer in 2023. Obviously "the best viewer ever", at least in Cupertino they always say so. We'll talk about it mid-year, and guess what? It will have high-quality passthrough cameras and (maybe) LiDAR sensors to measure distances in the real world. If the rumors about LiDAR sensors are true, the Apple headset will be the first to develop true mixed reality content.
It seems like an arms race. Platforms and companies compete to prepare the ground, and this is worth more than a few clues. In 2023, the customs clearance of something that perhaps some will no longer want to call a "metaverse" will begin but which will represent the near future.
Why?
Simple: because, even if someone thinks otherwise, we human beings don't like being excluded from physical reality. Yes, we can put on a viewer and stay in it for one, even two hours, but then we will be alienated. And not like one can be alienated after hours and hours, or days, locked up in a room. I'm talking about real discomfort. A real conflict between different mental models, which could cause serious pathologies.
To solve this problem we need an immersive experience in which our visual, spatial and physical senses are perfectly aligned, allowing us to interact with the real and the virtual as if we inhabited the same perceptual reality. I made the spitting image of mixed reality. It's about that, nothing more.
Believe me, we are only at the beginning. Mixed reality can really blow up. Companies like Meta, HTC, Apple, Magic Leap, Snap, Microsoft, Google, Lenovo, Unreal and Unity do not randomly move in unison. We will have platforms for video games (a classic), for military use (unfortunately), for medical applications. Everything and more.
