5 Difficult Metaverse Questions. Answered In Plain English

8 min readFeb 2, 2023

Neal Stephenson must have been gifted with unusual prescience. He coined the term ‘metaverse’ for his 1992 sci-fi novel Snow Crash.

Less than a decade had passed since Vincent Cerf and Bob Kahn had invented the ARPANET and it was not until 1993, a year after the novel, that Tim Berners Lee put together the first web page. The net as we know it was about five years away.

It took 30 years for the term to become commonplace. Not until 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of Facebook Inc to Meta Platforms Inc and told us he would spend billions to create a 3D world online, would Metaverse erupt in popularity.

As we kick off 2023, many are truly mystified by the Metaverse and what it means.

In this article, I demystify the five most important questions about Metaverse.

Five Questions About Metaverse You Always wanted To Ask

1. The Metaverse Vs Virtual Reality — Same Wine in New Bottle?

This is tricky, and there is no agreement. According to most, the difference is one of degree and not kind.

To put it simply, virtual reality is a simulated world. It involves some type of headset (the first was made by Sega and sold to arcades in the mid-90s) and, of course, headphones for an immersive experience.

VR is a complex audio-visual production that appears real. Possible experiences include video games and virtual walks through museums.

Metaverse is part of the next generation of the Web, known to many as Web 3.0

Web 3.0 comprises many important concepts (blockchain, decentralization, 3D worlds) of which Metaverse is one pillar. From being predominantly 2D, the web will become increasingly 3D based on the Metaverse.

While VR turned out to be a boon for the gaming industry (think of Half-Life: Alyx and Beat Saber), Metaverse would be about collaboration and remote work.

In short, the Metaverse would be able to do what VR could and a lot more.

There is another point. VR (gaming) is a mature industry. Hardware is available off the shelf and includes big names — Oculus, PlayStation VR, and Samsung Gear VR. The Metaverse is just getting defined and its contours would be clearly visible 3–5 years from now (circa 2026).

2. What is the Best Way to Get Into the Metaverse?

There is not one Metaverse but many. One day soon you will be able to build your own (just as you build a website with wordpress, Wix or others).

The biggest players at this moment are Meta (by Mark Zuckerberg), Roblox, NVIDIA, Epic Games, Decentraland, The Sandbox, and a few more.

Each is different. Each player has chosen a different tack. Most are in the prototype and alpha release of their first designs.

For example, in Decentraland, you can buy and sell (virtual) land with cryptocurrency. Each parcel of land is NFT-based and average plots sell for $3000.

In Meta’s Horizon Worlds, you can hang out with your friends, attend virtual concerts, play games and socialize.

No two Metaverses are going to be the same. Each would have a separate theme, a different storyline (if one could apply that term with the broadest connotation), and offer a novel experience.

What will you do on Metaverse? That depends since spaces inside the Metaverse are currently in a developmental stage.

Some, of course, would be fantasy (dragons and elves) but others might offer a more sobering experience. I have always wanted to visit the house in Conjuring and spend a night there. There must be a horror Metaverse someone would build.

I might also want to have every business meeting on the shores of Lake Lucerne. Sure beats Zoom calls from my bedroom.

Possible use cases of Metaverse:

These would be the obvious applications as the technology rolls out:

● Healthcare: The pandemic showed us how effective telemedicine can be. That was a shaky video over a 6-inch screen. Imagine what can be done with avatars in a virtual medical examination room. The best medical care can reach the remotest corners of the globe inside the metaverse.

● Real Estate: A study by research analyst DappRadar shows that $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency was spent in buying (virtual) land in the metaverse. Parcels of land have been sold in Decentraland valued at millions and esteemed companies such as Samsung and UPS have been the buyers.

● Education: Imagine being present at an MIT class on integrated processor design from a small town somewhere from a small country. In my opinion, this is the most promising aspect of the metaverse surpassing entertainment, gaming and office applications. Metaverse can make education truly democratic. The huge tuition and visa fees that used to hold back applicants from lesser-developed nations would cease to be a barrier. MOOCs would get a fresh lease on life.

3. What hardware does the metaverse demand?

You would need expensive hardware including a capable computer, gloves, and HMD (head-mounted display). Immersive sound could also cost a pretty penny.

A Valve Index would set you back by $1000 but a Sony PlayStation VR costs only $400 (you need to plug it into a PlayStation 4).

As we saw with gaming, the better the specs, the better the experience.

In other words, to enter the metaverse seamlessly you need:

● A basic gaming laptop priced at ~$800. Something like HP — Victus 15.6" Gaming Laptop

● A VR headset e.g HP Reverb G2

● Haptic gloves. These are quite expensive ($4000 at least for those that work well) at the moment. Perhaps in a couple of years the price would come down to a reasonable $600 ish.

Note that headsets are both stand alone and PC/laptop dependent.

Universal Scene Description, developed by Pixar is one of the frontrunner specifications. It has been adopted by Nvidia, Apple and Autodesk for developing metaverse applications.

The OpenXR standard for AR and VR transmission has been adopted by many companies including Microsoft (HoloLens), Meta (Oculus), and HTC (Vive).

Metaverse would be heavily intertwined with cryptocurrency (we can’t carry dollars in there), AI, and IoT.

Since apart from gaming (and military uses) the Metaverse is under development, we cannot yet predict the shape of things to come.

That does not mean it is vaporware.

Think of it this way,

Remember Excel in 1992? All we had seen till then in spreadsheets was Lotus 1–2–3.

Autofill, Currency Formatting, and Number Formatting seemed strange and mysterious. Come 1994 we saw pivot tables and were wowed.

At that time no one could have foreseen (except a few visionaries) products such as Zoho Apps that can do everything Excel can and much more.

We are in “1992” now.

4. I heard the meta-hype 2 years back. Why isn’t it massive already?

Immature Technology

Mark Zuckerberg jumped the gun a little. Horizon Worlds has very few users, causing Meta to revise expected sign-ups from 500,000 to 280,000 per month. What is worse, most don’t log in after a month.

He had done the same with Libra (Facebook’s cryptocurrency).

In an internal memo dated September 15th, Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, said the project would remain in lockdown for the rest of the year as quality issues were dealt with.

One of the key issues, a rather embarrassing one for Shah and Zuckerberg, is that Meta’s own employees are shunning Meta!

Costly Gizmo

The other big issue is the cost of entry for users.

The smartphone caught on because Jobs persuaded big telecom companies to foot the bill for a $300 phone. Customers paid in installments.

Outside the USA, where such a deal was not possible, low-end phones made by Lenovo and Samsung which run on Android captured the market.

The gateway device was priced at $100. With Metaverse, that is closer to $1000 (whether a standalone top-end VR headset or gaming laptop, plus a plug-in VR headset).

We just emerged from Covid. Probably we are headed for a recession. Buying fancy hardware for flying around on dragons is a little problematic.

Lack of Appeal in Developing Nations

Furthermore, very few in the developing world (India, Philippines, Brazil) can afford this level of hardware. Mobile devices that are popular in these parts are low spec machines priced at $200 and not capable of anything more intensive than watching YouTube videos in HD.

Glitch-free code and cheap hardware are the two biggest roadblocks.

5. I’m a business owner. Can metaverse do something such that we can earn more by doing less?

With metaverse, you get better interactions.

No, I am not talking about the legless avatars in Meta.

Think of company meetings and calls that are almost real.

Metaverse technology would revolutionize the way we meet colleagues and customers. At least it would be far better than Zoom and less tiring than business travel.

More Immersion

Customer experience would be transformed beyond anything we can imagine.

No longer would we have to judge a dress by looking at high-resolution images on Amazon.

We can actually wander around an Amazon virtual showroom, and try on new clothes.

Better still, visit a location and hotel virtually in Metaverse before booking a vacation.

Revolutionary

Imagine being able to tutor a physics student about fusion from inside Chernobyl.

Imagine a young surgeon mastering the technique of cutting open the abdomen in a virtual operating theater.

None of us can explain it because our imagination ends where our language ends. All that is sure is that it will be unlike anything we have seen before. The scope of its transformative nature is something we have to wait and experience.

Last Words…

How far away is the killer app of Metaverse?

There are no certainties and no good guesses.

Many factors play a role.

If the Metaverse emerges as we envision it, the resulting rise in demand for 7 and 10-nanometer microprocessors would be more than vendors can manage (there are but three -Intel, TSMC, and Samsung).

Technologically, we should be able to see glitch-free Metaverse spaces emerge in as little as a year.

I along with our NeuroInteractive team at Neuronimbus is working through the possibilities for the real world and happy to connect with any business who wishes to get into this.

This is point is not well structured and is doesnt answer the question properly… for a business what is the best way to get into metaverse ?