EU Looks to Take Lead in Metaverse World, Avoid Big Tech Dominance

EU Wants to take on the Metaverse, never saw them as interested, look forward to see what they want to do.  Shaped on  'EU digital rights and principles'   Specific countries most interested? Will try to follow up?

ACM TECHNEWS

EU Looks to Take Lead in Metaverse World, Avoid Big Tech Dominance

By Reuters, July 14, 2023

European Union flags flutter outside the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.

The scheme includes bringing together creators, media companies, and others to create an industrial ecosystem, setting up regulatory sandboxes, and rolling out skills development programs and virtual public services.

Credit: Yves Herman/Reuters

The European Commission (EC) has outlined a strategy for the European Union (EU) to assume a lead role in the metaverse sector and block its domination by technology giants.

The group said its goal is to develop an accessible, interoperable EU metaverse through an industrial ecosystem established by creators, media companies, and other stakeholders.

These collaborators would help companies evaluate the metaverse and launch skills development initiatives and virtual public services by creating regulatory testbeds.

Said EC vice president Margrethe Vestager, "We need to have people at the center and shape it according to our EU digital rights and principles, to address the risks regarding privacy or disinformation. We want to make sure Web 4.0 becomes an open, secure, trustworthy, fair, and inclusive digital environment for all."

From Reuters

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VR Suit Could Help You 'Feel' Things in the Metaverse

Talked this from a customer perspective.

VR Suit Could Help You 'Feel' Things in the Metaverse

By EuroNews, June 26, 2023

A test subject in the immersive reality suit.

The suit's artificial muscles feel similar to human muscles and send haptic feedback to the suit so the wearer can ‘feel’ the virtual environment.

Credit: ETH Zurich

Engineers at Switzerland's ETH Zurich constructed a full-body tactile suit to amplify immersive virtual reality (VR) experiences.

ETH Zurich's Maximilan Eberlein said the Meta Suit's sensors and hydraulically amplified self-healing electrostatic actuator (Hasel) muscles are designed to make VR interaction more natural.

The muscles contract and expand with an electrical current to transmit haptic feedback so the wearer can "feel" the VR environment.

Said Eberlein, "You have pouches that are filled with a special fluid and you spray electrodes on them and you apply a voltage on these electrodes so that these muscles zip together and this leads to a contraction of the muscle.

From EuroNews

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A New Metaverse Network plots an Escape from Meta’s ‘walled gardens’

Walling it off, or not?  Not sure.   Our own experiment was clearly walled.

A new metaverse network plots an escape from Meta’s ‘walled gardens’

STORY BY   Thomas Macaulay  In  TheNextWeb

Improbable wants open borders between virtual worlds

June 21, 2023 - 11:54 am

Two years after Mark Zuckerberg launched it into orbit, the metaverse is crashing back to Earth. As the hype sparked by Facebook’s rebrand fades amid jaw-dropping losses, risible selfies, and the generative AI boom, reality is setting in — which is when things start getting interesting.

Metaverse stalwarts are now fighting for competing visions.

On one side are the centralised platforms owned by the likes of Meta and Roblox. Under the control of all-powerful tech giants, these virtual worlds exist in siloes.

On the other side stand advocates for open, interconnected, and decentralised metaverses. In these utopian realms, users can freely traverse spaces and take ownership of their experiences.

Crystals, jets, and magnets — is this how to make cooling greener?

Improbable has firmly planted its flag in the latter camp. The company spent a decade building immersive virtual worlds, from military simulations to K-pop parties, before pivoting to building metaverse infrastructure. While the unicorn’s focus (and fortunes) have fluctuated, Improbable’s faith in open spaces has persisted.

“We have seen how walled gardens and closed networks exploit the people that spend time on the services for the benefit of few,” Herman Narula, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said last year '

More recently, Narula has been pitching an alternative.

“We want to contribute to ensuring the metaverse holds its promise of being a network of meaning that unlocks creativity, social interaction, and economic opportunities, free from gatekeepers,” he said last month.  To bring this vision to (virtual) life, Improbable has launched a new venture: MSquared, a network of metaverses.

The lay of the land

Today’s virtual worlds are ringfenced. In Roblox, for instance, you can use build games, buy weapons, and spend the Robux currency. But you can’t take any of that into Fortnite.

MSquared hopes to dismantle these barriers. Using a suite of technologies, services, and standards — as well as $150m (€138m) in funding — the project promises to power a nexus of interlinked worlds. 

If all goes to plan, the virtual experiences will extend across multiple platforms and an interoperable economy.

“I’m going to get shouted at for calling it this, but one way to describe it is a ‘meta-metaverse’,” Rob Whitehead, Improbable’s co-founder and chief product officer, told TNW.

Whitehead compares the concept to international travel. In this analogy, virtual worlds are akin to individual nations with open borders. If you want to visit a new country, you just bring your wallet and possessions with you. 

Upon arrival, your digital assets could be accessed through blockchain-enabled decentralised identities and cryptocurrencies, or traditional Web2 log-ins and digital goods, like Fortnite outfits and tools.

“We’re the layer that connects those different worlds together,” said Whitehead. “And it’s agnostic as to whether that metaverse is using crypto or non-crypto stuff.”   ... ' 

Metaverses get a Chip

Meta is developing its own AI chip - here's hoping it goes better than the Metaverse

By Muskaan Saxena published 26 days ago

Anything is better than the Metaverse (?)

Meta has announced the development of a new chip, specifically designed to run AI models. The company is known for its family of apps including Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram – and, of course, its attempts to get the Metaverse off the ground – but has recently started investing a lot into AI.

Meta’s VP and Head of Infrastructure, Santosh Janardhan shared details of the progress made in a recent blog post. The company has expressed a significant growth in interest in AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying the company “sees an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people that will be useful and meaningful”.

The chip and other infrastructure plans revealed in the post will be crucial tools for Meta to compete with other tech giants such as Google and Microsoft, who have already invested heavily in AI in the form of Google Bard and Bing’s ChatGPT interface.

Meta’s new MTIA chip (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator) is an “in-house, custom accelerator chup family targeting inference workloads”. The chip will provide greater computing power and efficiency that is customized to Meta’s workloads. So, MTIA chips paired with GPUs will allow Meta to “deliver better performance, decreased latency and greater efficiency for each workload”.

Why does this matter? Well, the MTIA chips could be a huge boost for Meta given the increasingly high demand for AI computation power. As it is made ‘in-house’ it will be designed to perfectly match Meta’s workload and demands and will free the company from from relying on other companies. The MTIA chip is still a long way away according to TechCrunch, reporting that we won’t see the chip until at least 2025.

Too Little Too Late?

We’ve already seen what kind of grind a company has to go through when even a little late to the AI game (looking at you, Google), so not seeing the chip for at least another two years does give me doubts about Meta’s place in an increasingly AI-populated digital landscape.... '

Metaverse Education Blossoms in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Interesting, but have by doubts on ultimate efficiency.

Metaverse Education Blossoms in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Nikkei Asia (Japan)

Dylan Loh, May 8, 2023

Schools and other organizations in Asia are using the metaverse as an instructional tool. South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), for instance, hopes to become a "metaversity," where cyber training courses are held in metaverse classrooms. POSTECH's Moo Hwan Kim said, "Virtual reality (VR) technology can be applied in fields that are difficult to access in reality, such as outer space and the nanoworld. In the long run, it will be able to replace classes that require more hands-on experiences or training in dangerous environments." Meanwhile, 7,000 students at online N and S high schools in Japan are using VR headsets in the classroom as part of an effort to learn in an immersive environment without physical constraints. Among other initiatives, South Korea's science ministry plans to develop a "Metaverse Academy" as it works to build a metaverse ecosystem.... 

Metaverse education blossoms in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Still wondering the ultimate value of the Meta.   Have seen simple examples, but not the strongest. 

Metaverse education blossoms in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Teaching taps VR even as emerging tech's mass adoption remains in doubt

South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology wants to become a "metaversity" with digital classrooms.   © Photo courtesy of Pohang University of Science and Technology

DYLAN LOH, Nikkei staff writer

May 8, 2023 11:29 JST

SINGAPORE -- Educators in Asia are dipping their toes into the metaverse, the much-hyped virtual reality where humans can interact socially in cyberspace, even as emerging technology in this space grapples with finding its place in the real world.

From South Korea to Taiwan, schools and other organizations are tapping the metaverse as a tool for instruction, experimenting with VR applications to bring teaching beyond the classroom and devise new ways of imparting knowledge and skill.

Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea is working to become a "metaversity" where classrooms are digitalized into the metaverse, offering training courses in cyberspace.

The university, known as POSTECH, serves 1,400 undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students who work with 450 faculty members and 820 researchers in fields like energy, materials, basic science, information communications technology and health.

"Virtual reality technology can be applied in fields that are difficult to access in reality, such as outer space and the nanoworld," Moo Hwan Kim, the university's president, told Nikkei Asia. "In the long run, it will be able to replace classes that require more hands-on experiences or training in dangerous environments."

POSTECH said it invests $300,000 a year to buy equipment and develop educational programs for students and has pooled $500,000 to build classrooms that tap the metaverse.

In Japan, at N and S high schools, the largest online high schools in the country, 7,000 students learn through VR headsets.

Director Riichiro Sono told Nikkei that the organization took to the metaverse to conduct lessons without physical constraints while providing an immersive environment for individual learning.

The schools surveyed the VR participants last year and found a satisfaction rate of 98.5%, he said, but noted that "it can take time for users to get accustomed to a VR environment" and that "the additional weight of a VR headset can be a deterrent" for some users.  ... '

Chinese Metaverse About Work

Very different.

China's Metaverse Is All About Work

By Wired, May 4, 2023

What’s emerging in China is very different from the metaverses envisioned in the West.

China's government aims to build a metaverse that supports the economy, while its Western counterparts are focused on consumers.

Said Siri Chen at Chinese augmented reality company HiAR, "At the current stage, everyone emphasizes industrial applications from education, medical, travel, and industrial development."

Digital twins, mixed reality, and blockchain were the core technologies forming the metaverse as defined by China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection in 2021, although the government's cryptocurrency ban eliminated the third component.

The ban's decoupling of virtual spaces and digital assets advanced the Chinese metaverse model of centralized regulation, according to Zhengyuan Bo at China-oriented research firm Plenum.

Digital twins remain a key element of the government's metaverse, with five ministries having pledged to grow the virtual reality industry to 350 billion yuan ($51 billion) by 2025.

From Wired

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Consumer Goods: Unilever, Kimberly Clark, KC -- Jumping Into AI

Used to analyze what Unilever was doing in applications of Advanced tech.  Here related: 

How Unilever Expedites Product Innovation With AI, Automation, and Robots

04/21/2023 By Liz Dominguez Managing Editor,   in Consumergoods

Robots are having a heavy hand in product innovation at Unilever, thanks in large part to the efforts being implemented at the company’s Materials Innovation Factory (MIF) in Liverpool, according to a recent blog post. 

These innovations are having a global impact, influencing product discovery, research, and manufacturing in not just the U.K., but across the sea in the U.S. as well. There’s three special “ladies” to thank, per Unilever, and they’re named Ariana, Shirley, and Gwen. 

These three robots are working alongside 250 R&D experts at Unilever’s 120,000-square-foot facility to help develop science-backed products through the power of automation. 

According to Unilever, MIF has the highest concentration of robots doing material chemistry in the world, and each machine is designed to crunch “colossal amounts of data and maintain consistency across samples and testing.”

The company makes it clear, however, that it isn’t looking to replace human efforts; it’s merely freeing up time by reducing time-consuming, repetitive jobs so that experts can focus on invention and exploration.

“The MIF’s purpose is to create a community of talented future research leaders, exchanging ideas with academic colleagues and accelerating the discovery process,” said Unilever. “Our partnership here allows us to tap into the best minds and resources in robotics, which strengthens our insights and capabilities to power next-level innovation, scientific discovery, and produce products with superior performance.”

Will robot management be a job of the future? CGT thinks so. Find out more.

Meet the Robots

Beauty bot Ariana is preparing mass amounts of hair fiber samples in mere seconds in order to create hair products for Unilever’s brands, including Dove’s Intensive Repair line. Using a patented Fiber Repair Actives technology, Unilever can help consumers reconstruct inner hair fibers to reduce breakage and repair from within the hair strand. 

Shirley

This robot is helping to expedite and mimic the process of hair washing and rising, running through 120 samples of hair every 24 hours. Shirley can rise, detangle, and blow dry hair, speeding up the analysis process so researchers can create accurate haircare product formulas, such as for the TRESemmé’s Colour Radiance Booste product line. The range of products uses tech that Shirley helped invent in order to better protect hair surfaces and keep color vibrant longer within hair fibers.

Gwen 

Robot Gwen plays an important role in the sensory aspect of products, generating, measuring, and analyzing foam. As Unilever uses foam in many of its products to deliver ingredients, the company said it’s important it can accurately attribute performance related to the amount, quality, and type of bubbles and froth. 

“Understanding its physical, chemical and consumer relevance is important in product development,” said the company. 

The Role of AI and Data

Along with robotics, the company has also heavily invested in artificial intelligence, an advance that it said allows Unilever to parse through “vast quantities of data in record time” in order to make discoveries and create new formulas. 

For example, for the company’s Hourglass Confession Red Zero lipstick, Unilever used AI to quickly analyze different color combinations before landing on a specific pigment — a research process that would normally take millions of physical experiments to replicate. 

The company has filed more than 200 patents between 2022 and 2022 using this type of invaluable data, investing more than 100 million euro into its innovation hub in order to benefit from these types of technologies.

“We are nothing without our science-backed products,” said Samantha Samaras, head of science and technology, Unilever Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care, in a statement.

Unilever’s relationship with data-powered innovation only grows stronger, as showcased by the company’s commitment to improve digital organization and data warehousing across the enterprise by moving entirely to the cloud. 

Under the new leadership of CEO Hein Schumacher, who has a long track record of transforming supply chains with sustainable and automated technology, it’s expected that Unilever will continue on this path.

An Industry-Wide Effort?

Automation and artificial intelligence go hand-in-hand, and a growing number of consumer goods companies are implementing both as they scale their supply chain transformations, focusing on either end-to-end reinvention or putting special emphasis on a particular area. 

One such area? According to IDC’s Futurescape report, by 2023, 50% of all supply chain forecasts will be automated through the use of artificial Intelligence.

Read more: Building the Supply Chain of the Future: 5 Consumer Goods Companies Investing in Innovative Approaches

Other areas of focus include supply chain workforce, merchandising, fulfillment, and more. 

Take, for example, Kimberly-Clark, which is leveraging an AI-enabled tool to automate the distribution planning and deployment process, as well as improve scheduling. Additionally, Mondelez International chief sales and marketing officer Martin Renaud said earlier this year that more than 1 million stores have access to its automated intelligence-enabled “suggested other” function, which has so far freed up representatives to engage 45% of more time in robust selling vs. administrative tasks. 

More Robotics News

ChatGPT: Do These Transformative Consumer Goods Use Cases Outweigh Concerns?

In this edited webinar transcript, Albert Guffanti, VP of the Retail Technology Group at Ensemble IQ, leads a discussion on the topic of generative AI, touching on use cases and reasons why the consumer goods industry should embrace the tech.

ChatGPT

Henkel To Shift Entire Digital Infrastructure to the Cloud

Henkel has announced plans to migrate fully to the cloud over the upcoming months.

Coty Launches Internal Upskilling Metaverse for Global Workforce

Beauty company Coty has stepped into the metaverse, launching a virtual campus designed to upskill its global workforce.  ....'

Backing off the Metaverse

I would like to see another take at the Metaverse,  but its not ready.  Will it ever be?     The alternative direction is guessable.   But they has been working AI for some time.  Recall Jarvis?

Mark Zuckerberg Abandons Metaverse for a new Shiny Toy   in Futurism

Poor, poor, Horizon Worlds. According to Facebook-turned-Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, the company's metaverse of dead-eyed avatars has been all but abandoned by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who, in an added blow, is instead said to be spending the bulk of his time chasing the investor-appeasing Silicon Valley squirrel that is generative AI.

"We've been investing in artificial intelligence for over a decade, and have one of the leading research institutes in the world," Bosworth told Nikkei Asia in an interview on Wednesday. "We certainly have a large research organization, hundreds of people."

"We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy," he added. "It's probably the area that I'm spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox."

That sound you just heard in the distance? A single, pixelated tear, hitting the deserted Horizon Worlds' floor.

To be fair, as Bosworth noted, Facebook has been working on AI R&D for years, and their large language model (LLM), LLaMa, is rumored to be quite powerful. The CTO also threw the metaverse a generative AI-laced bone elsewhere in the Nikkei Asia interview, explaining that Meta hopes that AI will ultimately make its beleaguered metaverse better.

"Previously, if I wanted to create a 3D world, I needed to learn a lot of computer graphics and programming," Bosworth told the outlet. "In the future, you might be able to just describe the world you want to create and have the large language model generate that world for you."

In the short term, though? Meta, per Bosworth's comments, is unsurprisingly gearing up to deploy AI in its advertising machine, the channel where the company makes the vast majority of its money — as opposed to the metaverse, which at this point is a multibillion-dollar money pit. (Get ready for those hyper-targeted, AI-generated ads, y'all. Cheers to living in hell!)  ... ' 

Meta Still Happening

 Needs better design, communications, Sensible value, AI that really helps.

Meta Declares the Metaverse Is Still Happening, but It Might 'Take a While'

The company's head of global affairs recently doubled down on the company's commitment to creating the 'next big thing' in computing.

By Josh Norem March 31, 2023   in Extremetech

f anyone was wondering whether the company that changed its name to Meta recently was about to ditch the metaverse like other recent tech companies have, it's not. One of its top executives held a virtual press conference this week in -- where else? -- the company's metaverse to let reporters know it's still working on it.

The meeting featured Nick Clegg, head of global affairs for Meta, and various Washington D.C. reporters. All of the meeting's attendees appeared as avatars, and the reporters obviously had to borrow their headsets. Also, only Clegg's avatar looked like him, according to Bloomberg. With the avatars gathered around a large wooden table, Glegg declared the company was still all in on the metaverse. "We’re going to stick with it," he said, "because we really believe, all the early evidence suggests, that something like this will be the heart of the new computing platform.” However, he added, “But it’s going to take a while.”   ... '  

Disney Scraps Metaverse?

 It would seem a natural thing  for Disney to experiment seriously with Metaverses.

Disney reportedly scraps its metaverse unit

Disney appears to be the latest company to pull back the metaverse, as CEO Bob Iger reverses more decisions from his predecessor.

By Chris Morris in FastCompany

Disney has a long history of creating fantastical worlds, but even the Mouse House now seems to be pulling back from the metaverse.

The entertainment giant’s metaverse team has reportedly been eliminated as part of the ongoing round of job cuts at Disney. The Wall Street Journal reports all 50 team members who were developing the company’s metaverse strategies have been let go.

The metaverse was a pet project of former CEO Bob Chapek, who called it “the next great storytelling frontier.”

Last February, he told employees the goal of the metaverse unit was to “create an entirely new paradigm for how audiences experience and engage with our stories.” Among his ideas were a virtual Haunted Mansion ride where people could get off the ride and explore some of the special effects. He also envisioned a world where people who went to the physical parks, if they gave permission, could have their Disney+ experience programmed, not according to what they watched last or the habits of other views, but on what they experienced while at the park in an Amazon Prime-like program.

That specific idea, the Journal reports, has been abandoned.

And as early as 2021, Josh D’Amaro, chairman of parks, experiences, and products at Disney, had mentioned bringing a metaverse to Disney World’s Main Street, which would combine the park’s entryway with digital assets, ideally creating a deeper storytelling experience.

“We’re proud of our legacy,” he said at the time. “But at the same time, we have an obligation to defy that—and push our theme park experience into the future. What we’ve shown ourselves in the past year [is] we can flex. We can be pretty quick and pretty bold in our decision-making.”

Last November, however, Chapek was unceremoniously dismissed from Disney. And Bob Iger returned to the CEO role, quickly reversing several of Chapek’s decisions.

The metaverse ambitions appear to be the latest to be targeted by Iger. Despite the many ideas that were publicly floated, the metaverse unit had apparently not made much progress on the new technology and did not have many clear plans in place.

Mike White, a former Disney consumer-products executive who headed the metaverse team, is reportedly still with the company.  ... '

Persistent Computing and Virtual Worlds

 Worked a number of virtual world projects, never considered them persistent computing.  Useful thought.

Yu Yuan on Building A Persistent Virtual World The IEEE Standards Association president discusses technology for the metaverse  by EDD GENT

Despite tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia investing billions of dollars in the development of the metaverse, it is still little more than a fantasy. Making it a reality is likely to require breakthroughs in a range of sectors such as storage, modeling, and communication.

To spur progress in the advancement of those technologies, the IEEE Standards Association has launched the Persistent Computing for Metaverse initiative. As part of the IEEE’s Industry Connections Program, it will bring together experts from both industry and academia to help map out the innovations that will be needed to make the metaverse a reality.

Although disparate virtual-reality experiences exist today, the metaverse represents a vision of an interconnected and always-on virtual world that can host thousands, if not millions, of people simultaneously. The ultimate goal is for the virtual world to become so realistic that it is almost indistinguishable from the real one.

Today’s technology is a long way from making that possible, says Yu Yuan, president of the IEEE Standards Association. The Institute spoke with Yuan to find out more about the initiative and the key challenges that need to be overcome. His answers have been edited for clarity.

The Institute: What is persistent computing?

Yu Yuan: I have been working in virtual reality and multimedia for more than 20 years, I just didn’t call my work metaverse. After metaverse became a buzzword, I asked myself, ‘What’s the difference between metaverse and VR?’ My answer is: persistence, or the ability to leave traces in a virtual world.

Persistent computing refers to the combination of all the technologies needed to support the development and operation of a persistent virtual world. In other words, a metaverse. There are different kinds of VR experiences, but many of them are one-time events. Similar to how video games work, every time a user logs in, the entire virtual world resets. But users in the metaverse can leave traces. For example, they can permanently change the virtual world by destroying a wall or building a new house. Those changes have to be long-lasting so there will be a meaningful virtual society or meaningful economy in that virtual world.

What are the key components that are required to make persistent computing possible?

Yuan: The first is storage. In most of today’s video games, users can destroy a building, only for it to be restored the next time the user logs in to the game. But in a persistent virtual world the current status of the virtual world needs to be stored constantly. Users can create or destroy something in that world and the next time they log in, those changes will still be there. These kinds of things have to be properly stored—which means a very large amount of data needs to be stored.   ... ' 

Bulletins via News from the Future: Gamers Win?

Office-verses and Gamers are here. 

From:  IFTF News from the Future  

IFTF Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen, Joseph Press, and Christine Bullen co-authored:  "Gamers Will Have An Edge In The Officeverse,"     for Chief Executive (2/6/23).

Driving Value with the Metaverse in the Enterprise

Irving talks some of the work that IBM did with the Virtual World  'Second Life' in the mid 2000's at IBM which we also participated in, a nice look with lots of interesting links.  This also fills me in on lots of later work, such as metaverse located meetings and task interactions.  Could not get our folks interested  Much of that was documented in this blog.  Is the addition can AI 'Enhancement' enough to make the proposition much more interesting?  Will search, examine these for later comment.

A collection of observations, news and resources on the changing nature of innovation, technology, leadership, and other subjects      By Irving Wladawsky-Berger 

Driving Value with the Metaverse in the Enterprise     (much more at the link)

A killer app is an IT application whose value to individuals and companies is relatively simple to explain, its use is fairly intuitive, and the application turns out to be so useful that it can singlehandedly propel the success of a new product or service. Word processing and spreadsheets, for example, were major factors in the widespread adoption of personal computers in the 1980s.

I got interested in 3D immersive environments in the mid-2000s when IBM launched an exploratory initiative on the topic. As part of these efforts, we conducted a number of experiments on Second Life, a platform that allowed its users to develop a variety of virtual world applications. We built a number of workplace applications, including virtual meetings, and online events, and even built a virtual replica of Beijing’s Forbidden City in partnership with the Palace Museum that was opened to the public. But, despite our high expectations, we couldn’t find any compelling enterprise killer apps, and after about three years, the project was dissolved. In the ensuing years, 3D immersive technologies and applications continued to advance, but mostly focused on video-games and related industries.

The past few years have seen a surge of interest in the metaverse and extended reality. “After desktop computing, the consumer internet and the smartphone boom, the consumer-computing industry is past due its Next Big Thing,” wrote The Economist in  “A reality check for the metaverse is coming,” an article in its 2022 year-end issue. “[A]n internet which is still largely flat — based on two-dimensional text, images and video — is ripe for replacement with one that is three-dimensional and immersive.” ... ' 

Revealing Metaverse Identity by Moving

Metaverse identification

ACM TECHNEWS

In the Metaverse, Your Identity Can Be Revealed Just by Moving

By TechRadar, February 22, 2023

As the University of Calilfornia, Berkeley, research shows, all that's needed to identify a Metaverse participant is movement data for the user's head and hands.

University of California, Berkeley researchers found simple head and hand movements by participants in the Metaverse can expose their identities.

The researchers analyzed more than 50,000 subjects with more than 2.5 million virtual reality (VR) data recordings linked to them when playing the game Beat Saber in Meta's VR ecosystem.

The game requires near-constant hand movement and sometimes head movement.

Artificial intelligence analysis could identify individual players with 94% accuracy, as well as identifying more than half of the 50,000 participants using just two seconds' worth of data.

The researchers said the data also allowed them to determine each user’s dominant hand, height, and gender with a high degree of accuracy.

From TechRadar

View Full Article  

NVIDIA GTC Developer Conference: Metaverse

NVIDIA GTC  Developer Conference March 20-23, 2023

Keynote March 21, Metaverse/AI Developer sessions.

Here are short developer descriptions of developer sessions,  this is useful because if shows the breadth and kind of metaverse developments are  expected.  I am particularly interested in how these will be integrated with AI development. This appears informative, I may attend.  ... 

Turn 2D Images into Immersive 3D Scenes with NVIDIA Instant NeRF in VR

Preparing content for 3-D VR and more.  

Turn 2D Images into Immersive 3D Scenes with NVIDIA Instant NeRF in VR   By Thomas Müller

Tags: Image Processing, NeRF, News, NVIDIA Research

Thousands of developers and content creators have built stunning 3D visuals with NVIDIA Instant NeRF, a rendering tool that turns a set of static images into a realistic 3D scene. Now, it is also possible to navigate Instant NeRF in VR and step into 3D creations with the latest Instant NeRF software update.

Named by TIME Magazine as a top invention of 2022, Instant NeRF provides a glimpse into the future of photography, 3D graphics, and virtual worlds.

With Instant NeRF in VR, users can rapidly create virtual scenes using 2D images. Using advanced rendering techniques including foveation, dynamic scaling, NVIDIA DLSS, and, optionally, a second GPU, creators achieve desired frame rates and resolution targets across a wide range of budgets.

Create and share immersive virtual scenes

Traditionally, creating 3D and virtual scenes is a time-consuming, costly process requiring specialized equipment and expertise. But Instant NeRF enables users to create scenes in minutes with just a few 2D photos. The tool processes static images into rendered 3D scenes using an AI-based technology called neural radiance fields (NeRF).

Since Instant NeRF was released last year, developers and content creators around the world have downloaded the source code to create striking and realistic 3D scenes.

Now with the addition of VR, users can render these scenes from static images and virtually step inside the environment, moving freely inside the 3D space. Creators can use almost any image—whether from the real world or rendered—as source content. NeRFs can be created using images and video captured on smartphones, or rendered images and screenshots captured from games, design applications, and more. 

Instant NeRF in VR comes with the capability to clean up scenes easily in VR, making the creation of high-quality NeRF more intuitive than ever before. With precompiled executables now available, the creation of your own NeRF has become accessible to even more people.  ... ' 

What is Metaverse Crime?

Considering: 

And from Interpol's perspective, what is Metaverse Crime?

  ... What is a metaverse crime?  in the BBC.

Dr Madan Oberoi, Interpol's executive director of technology and innovation, said there are issues with defining a metaverse crime.

"There are crimes where I don't know whether it can still be called a crime or not," he said.

"For example, there have been reported cases of sexual harassment.

"If you look at the definitions of these crimes in physical space, and you try to apply it in the metaverse, there is a difficulty.

"We don't know whether we can call them a crime or not, but those threats are definitely there, so those issues are yet to be resolved."

He said one of the big challenges facing Interpol was raising awareness of these problems.

"My typically used example is that if you have to save a drowning person, you need to know swimming," he said.

"Similarly, if law enforcement is interested to help people who have been hurt in the metaverse, they need to know about the metaverse.

"And that is one of our objectives - to make sure law enforcement personnel start using the metaverse and they become aware.

"In that sense, it is very important."  .... '

Interpol Policing the Metaverse

Never seen this before,  Interpol involved in this kind of activity.  Has it been common?  Note mentions they are creating their own VR space. 

Interpol working out how to police the metaverse, In the BBC , By Marc Cieslak & Tom Gerken

Interpol secretary general Jurgen Stock says the global police agency is investigating how the organisation could police crime in the metaverse.

The metaverse is the widely-discussed, but not yet realised, concept that in the future people will be represented by 3D avatars in their online lives.

Interpol has built its own virtual reality (VR) space, where users can do training and attend virtual meetings.

Mr Stock said it is important for the agency to not get left behind.

"Criminals are sophisticated and professional in very quickly adapting to any new technological tool that is available to commit crime," he said., "We need to sufficiently respond to that. Sometimes lawmakers, police, and our societies are running a little bit behind., "We have seen if we are doing it too late, it already impacts trust in the tools we are using, and therefore the metaverse. In similar platforms that already exist, criminals are using it."

The environment, which can only be accessed through secure servers, enables police officers to experience what the metaverse could be, giving them a sense of the crimes that could occur, and how they could be policed.... ' 

A CEO’s guide to the Metaverse

 Fairly general overview

McKinsey Quarterly

A CEO’s guide to the metaverse

January 24, 2023 | Article  By  Homayoun Hatami, Eric Hazan, Hamza Khan,   and Kim Rants

It’s too big to ignore—yet its future is far from certain. Companies need to dip a toe in the water and plan to take the plunge should developments warrant.

Suddenly, the metaverse is in the zeitgeist, for better or worse. Investment more than doubled in 2022 powered by big moves (such as Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, now under antitrust review) and small ones (about $12 billion to $14 billion of venture capital and private equity investment). Everyone has heard about the successes racked up by some big gaming companies: Roblox reported more than 58 million daily active users in 2022,1 while Fortnite had more than 20 million in 2020 and generated more than $9 billion in sales between 2018 and 2019.2 And others are investing; Meta continues to spend at least $10 billion annually on metaverse development. Yet investors are asking questions of metaverse companies about when they can expect tangible, near-term results from these companies’ investments.3

How should CEOs view the metaverse? Is it a big opportunity or a big risk? Our answer: the opportunity is enormous—and the risk is not what you think it is. The companies that are building the metaverse see it as the next iteration of the internet (see this McKinsey Explainer for more). And as with any technology so vast and all-encompassing (it’s similar to AI in its scope), the potential is enormous. We estimate that the metaverse could generate $4 trillion to $5 trillion in value by 2030; see our report for all the details.

On the other hand, there are clear risks. Don’t be distracted by the debacles in crypto and nonfungible tokens (NFTs); those are Web3 technologies that are related but not exactly the same as the metaverse. Rather, the biggest risk is missing the wave of change that breakthrough technologies such as the original internet, AI, and the metaverse can unleash. In our April 2022 survey, some 95 percent of business leaders expect the metaverse to have a positive impact on their industry within five to ten years, and 61 percent expect it to change the way their industry operates.

In this article, we’ll briefly summarize the reasons for optimism and the factors that suggest the metaverse is truly a CEO issue. We’ll also look at the significant obstacles that will have to be overcome if the metaverse is to realize its full potential. We’ll conclude with a suggestion of three steps that CEOs in several sectors—both consumer and enterprise—could consider to make sure the metaverse train, if and when it gets going, does not leave the station without them.

The case for optimism

When we estimated the market value of metaverse activity in June 2022, we calculated that it was between $200 billion and $300 billion. It’s larger now, and in eight years or so, it could be $4 trillion to $5 trillion (exhibit), which is roughly the size of Japan’s economy, the third largest in the world. Exponential growth is possible because of an alignment of several forces: the metaverse’s appeal spans genders, geographies, and generations; consumers have already shown they are ready to spend on metaverse assets; they are open to adopting new technologies; companies are investing heavily in the required infrastructure; and brands experimenting in the metaverse are finding that customers are delighted. ... '