How will businesses use the metaverse?

[Music] imagine a virtual world that mirrors our own in it you meet colleagues travel to foreign cities and even get your pilot's license this world is coming and you've probably heard of it it's called the metaverse would allow that virtual space to operate like the real world does for everyone at the same time with infinite memory and history but if you thought the metaverse was all about gaming gigs and virtual meetings think again it could transform numerous aspects of our daily lives heat is unbelievable from firefighting and filmmaking we're going to see people spending more time in immersive experiences to manufacturing and Medicine using augmented reality and there's an opportunity for us to to do things better a whole new world is emerging and with it multi-trillion dollar opportunities you think the web transformed Our Lives the 3D world is going to do much more foreign [Music] s that we've created at ilm is what we call stagecraft the stagecraft LED wall which is this immersive environment which filmmakers can use to create their Productions industrial Light and Magic is a groundbreaking visual effects company famous for recent shows like Disney's Obi-Wan Kenobi where is he in the past it would have taken an army of set design as months to build a set like this now with ilm's stagecraft technology set can be designed virtually revolutionizing the production process stagecraft is ilm's virtual production toolkit and it's really an end-to-end solution so what you see on that led wall is actually what goes straight into the show this is the technology which underpins the metaverse the ability to conjure up realistic computer-generated worlds in real time but what exactly is the metaverse ask a lot of people and some might tell you it's about nfts or donning a VR headset and jumping into an online world like the game Second Life but for companies and professionals working in the field the metaverse is something far more significant Matthew ball is a leading Authority on the metaverse for some it is a future state of today's internet but which operates in a more decentralized fashion but for most especially those which operate big Tech today they imagine it as a parallel plane of existence a 3D virtual simulacra of the Earth but with many fictional elements allowing us to do what is not possible the term metaverse was first coined in Neil Stevenson's 1992 novel snow crash [Music] but the metaverse has its roots in the early gaming industry of the 1970s the player can improve the machine's ability by revising its program for decades the video game industry has been developing software and Hardware to create simulations initially these were very limited these experiences began with multi-user-shared hallucinations with your own rules for real-time collaboration with others to choose and tell your own story but of course it unfolded purely in text largely without color in the decades that followed we saw persistent improvements in visual Fidelity in the number of people who engaged in these worlds their cultural impact as well as their economic value the Advent of 3D Graphics technology transformed video games and fueled the growth of the gaming industry worth 13 billion in 1997 this Rose to 214 billion dollars in 2021 today this technology has come of age Graphics software can now create a simulated world's rules logic and physics it's already opening up New Frontiers for creativity in the film and television industry thank you and background action [Music] I'm able to put actors and cameras in this environment and we can see it and play in it and live in it ilm's film set was originally powered by unreal a 3D computer Graphics engine built by epic games one of the world's largest game makers ilm has since developed its own real-time cinematic render engine called Helios and some of the biggest names in the movie business are buying into it we could actually get in-camera finished visual effects that would really help us with the quick turnaround that television requires so the first time we got to create and use stagecraft was for John favreau's show the Mandalorian and he really wanted to advance the state of the art even though it was going to be a TV show he wanted it to feel like the movies this new technology can also make the business of Film Production more efficient we've done an analysis and about half the shots we shoot they just go straight into the show now the other half sometimes they need touch-ups or fixes so have to work still needs to be done in post but when you're talking about thousands of shots that can be a pretty significant streamlining and reduction in that post-production process foreign the vast opportunities emerging with metaverse Technologies are drawing the interest of some of the world's biggest companies Facebook is so excited it's changed its name our company is now meta hey oh hey Mark hey what's going on and meta spent 10 billion dollars on metaverse related Technologies in 2021 alone and in January 2022 Microsoft announced it would buy Activision Blizzard a gaming company for 69 billion dollars to strengthen its position in this emerging market in the first five months of 2022 private Equity firms Venture capitalists and corporations invested over 120 billion dollars in the metaverse more than double the total in 2021 but it's not only Tech Giants and big corporations that are set to profit from the metaverse it offers Financial opportunities for small would-be entrepreneurs wherever they are on the planet sometimes in places you might not expect you don't have to be in San Francisco yeah go to program computer games Simon Burgess and Max Entwistle are two developers who create virtual experiences on the platform Roblox is a huge online virtual world with hundreds of thousands of different experiences for players to explore meet other people and role play [Music] Roblox which was launched in 2006 had 58 and a half million daily active users in July 2022 at the end of that month it was valued at 25 billion dollars there are more than 11 and a half million people developing games for Roblox Max and Simon are two of the more successful ones we met in about 2010 I think both as children we found each other in like a game on Roblox and just became friends through that basically their game shark bite developed using the free tools the platform provides has now been played over a hundred million times and it Nets these recent graduates an income of around 1 million dollars a year I remember I was on the plane to Frankfurt in Germany at the time um and I just saw the numbers in the game and getting up and up seeing more players joining the game and I was just absolutely awe it's completely redirected my life before I joined Roblox I never wanted to be a game developer I didn't think it could be possible the shark's currently taking out the back of the boat yeah yeah quick I got you Roblox has its own currency called Robux which users can buy with real money [Music] it may look like simple games with retro style graphics but this platform is a torch Bearer for the metaverse its creators promise Ultra immersive virtual experiences that digitally mirror those in the real world many people think Roblox is a gaming company we're not we are a technology platform that allows for people of all ages to be able to create and develop experiences born out of their own imagination and publish it out on our platform and then we share it out with Millions The Experience itself is we imagine the metaphors to be tens of millions of different interconnected Virtual Worlds all seamlessly integrated with who you are how you communicate your payment systems your virtual purchases the metaverse is already second nature for children across the world three out of four Americans age between 9 and 12 use roadblocks as the half of 10 year olds in Britain with that kind of popularity the platform has caught the attention of major Global brands we never say exactly this is when a technology went mainstream or proliferated but at least for Generation Z and Alpha it certainly appears to be the metaverse has found its place in the cultural Zeitgeist even if nobody knows what its final state will look like I feel like you could ask a million developers what the net of this is and everyone have a different definition we're still coming to grasp the concept of it and that um it's got a long way to go only a very small portion of the canvas has been painted so far the metaverse is starting to offer opportunities to a multitude of Industries and new ways to tackle pressing even deadly challenges into chaos oh foreign looking plane has some extraordinary technology on board developed by Lockheed Martin as it flies above the Colorado mountains the plane is digitally mapping the wildfires that rage below and it's changing how these types of fires are fought Lockheed Martin recognizes the impact that wildfires in particular are having on our lives on our economies and on the climate there are helicopters coming in and planes dropping water every few minutes so the capability that we're maturing is called cognitive Mission manager or CMM as the fire is spreading we're able to apply artificial intelligence to predict the firefront behavior and our goal is to have a 3D visualization available to those decision makers to those folks that are deciding how to suppress the fire so they can do so quickly and efficiently the project uses nvidia's Omniverse platform it's a tool that can create a precise digital version of something that exists in the real world known as a digital twin digital twins are a true to reality simulation of a virtual environment to the physical environment you can think of it as two parts of a journey the creation of things whether they're buildings factories products scenarios World Etc and then the operation of those things in a digital twin concept the way to think of it really is kind of like the operating system for the metaverse Nvidia was founded in 1993 and for the first 20 years made the tech that helped Usher in the 3D Revolution in gaming its microchips are suited to powering the hardware and software needed to create the increasingly sophisticated simulations of the metaverse as a result nvidia's chips are up this will be the first one trillion dollar semiconductor uh company value increased increased just under 18 billion dollars in January 2016 to just over 454 billion dollars in July 2022 with revenues growing by nearly 536 percent [Music] now building Earth 2 a supercomputer that is creating a digital twin of the weather across the planet the ability to predict the climate decades in advance could be crucial in adapting to the impacts of climate change but that's only just the start the metaverse is also set to transform manufacturing across a range of Industries Amazon Siemens and BMW are among the big companies that are using digital twin Technologies to recreate their processes down to the smallest detail the factory of the future is going to be more efficient it's going to be safer it's going to be higher degree of productivity you can understand how Parts need to come in and be moved around you can do other things like training the robots in those virtual factories before you commit to them in the physical sense we're starting to see digital twins not just of a single environment but multiple environments large-scale environments Daisy chained together in a simulation creating a digital twin not just of a thing or a place but space itself but there is a potential problem as yet the metaverse lacks an agreed standard for connecting multiple Virtual Worlds [Music] something like the HTML protocol an agreed standard that defines the appearance and behavior of pages on the web when we think about the metaverse as a 3D elevation of the internet we require the same sorts of structures new standards for 3D information new hierarchies that allow one virtual world to know that another exists to then communicate and safely securely and consistently share information but almost none of that exists today the race is on to develop the metaverse equivalent of HTML thing that makes the metaverse so impactful for everyone is the seamless ability to go from virtual world to Virtual World in much the same way today we go from website to website doesn't matter the device the browser Etc once again it's Hollywood that is making the running Pixar needed a way for its animators to collaborate effectively despite working in different Studios and often with different tools so it developed its own software called Universal scene description or USD in 2016 USD was made open source free for anyone to use it's still early stages and it remains to be seen where the USD will become the universal protocol of the metaverse we saw this as the potential to be the HTML of 3D as we move forward into a 3D Centric web so now everybody has a common way of describing their 3D environment and you know companies are working together to advance the format like we did with HTML foreign as some companies focus on wiring up the metaverse others are busy developing devices to access it and turns science fiction into real commercial opportunity there's nowhere left to go except the Oasis headsets which can superimpose computer-generated imagery on the real world so-called augmented reality are opening ever more diverse applications for the metaverse we've got an exclusive look at one of the military's latest Investments it's a futuristic combat goggles that give soldiers a brand new way to see the battlefield in 2020 Microsoft agreed to supply the U.S military with ar technology in a deal that could be worth 22 billion dollars over 10 years not only can soldiers see in the dark but they can see through smoke and even Peak around corners new extended or mixed reality devices are essential to some functions enriching our experience in the metaverse and bringing it into more forms augmented reality devices are enabling metaverse Technologies to make a real difference to how vital services such as Medical Care are delivered this is our consent form for the procedure here at Johnson Hopkins University in America using AR devices in surgery is rapidly becoming routine we're going to be using a new augmented reality guided computer system that's mounted on a headset Professor Tim Witham is a pioneering surgeon who now uses augmented reality to help perform spinal surgery the the first procedure that we performed with this technology involved a woman in her 70s who had been suffering for years from low back pain during the surgery a marker is inserted into the patient's spine a CAT scan then creates an image of the spine in relation to the marker the data is then transferred to the augmented reality headset while I'm looking inside of the patient and putting the screw in I see a heads up display that has the computerized image that shows exactly where the screw is going it's almost like a GPS system [Music] the augmented reality allows Professor Witham to perform the surgery with a consistent accuracy that was previously hard to achieve I've subsequently done about 100 cases and we published data on our accuracy or success rate if you will and we've found that the device is about 98 accurate in the placement of spinal instrumentation or implants into the spine it was very rewarding to be able to see the development of this new technology and then be able to utilize it uh in real clinical use [Music] the metaverse is already starting to offer glimpses of its potential to drive change and to shape how we behave in profound ways I find it very hard to predict what the real Market opportunity will be the the one thing that I know for sure is that these new technologies will lead to new behaviors and those new behaviors will unlock markets that I can't predict but as the metaverse grows so do the challenges Intel estimates that we need a nearly thousand Factor Improvement in average computing power plus Myriad more Computing devices to begin with and for all its promise to transform how companies and people operate the metaverse is likely to share the pitfalls of the real world one thing seems certain the idea that the real world is limited to what is physically present nearby will see an increasingly bizarre I like to talk about the metaverse as more than just a tech wave but a societal one a multi-trillion dollar Economic Opportunity that will transform nearly every country industry and person's life global hello I'm Tom standage Deputy editor at The Economist if you'd like to learn more about this topic click on the link opposite and if you'd like to watch more of our now and next series click on the other link thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe

Channel: The Economist

Views: 424,322

Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, Politics, News, short-documentary, metaverse, what is the metaverse, facebook metaverse, what is metaverse, business, business news, meta business

Id: LEgHRAQ1HmE

Length: 21min 10sec (1270 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 24 2022