Digital Explorers' Diary #54
Today: The bright future of the Metaverse, Nintendo VR headset, Meta AI-driven privacy protection, and nice metrics about AR and e-commerce!
Welcome to the Digital Explorers' Diary #54!
A curated collection of thought-provoking topics about interactive technologies, AI, web3, sense-making, entrepreneurship, and psychology.
Executive summary:
The bright future of the Metaverse,
Nintendo VR headset,
Meta AI-driven privacy protection,
and nice metrics about AR and e-commerce!
The bright future of “Metaverse“ virtual worlds platforms
Last week, the annual Roblox Developer Conference was held in San Francisco. This is a perfect occasion for me to double-down on why I think Roblox, amongst others like Spatial, VRChat, or Zepeto are a new user engagement channel that brands, industries, and social companies must consider and why this is a new opportunity for a creator economy.
In short, these are platforms where, in theory, anyone can create a virtual world that everybody can access from their platform of choice. Pioneered 20 years ago with Second Life, these virtual worlds are what get the closest to a Metaverse.
Initially designed as social and gaming platforms, their success, accessibility, and ease of use gradually transform them into multi-purpose environments where work, shopping, social, and play cohabit perfectly. And it’s just a start!
During his keynote, Roblox's CEO gave 10 predictions for the next five years. Let’s look at them and analyze between the lines. I also created prediction markets on Manifold for each of these. It’s only been a day, so take the numbers with a grain of salt!
A Roblox developer will be valued at $1B (32%)
A musician will perform live to over 1 [million] people on Roblox, using a phone for motion capture (59%)
A top fashion designer will be discovered on Roblox, without having any experience in physical fashion (31%)
Roblox will be a frequent communication channel for my family (55%)
Some Roblox creators will make more money from selling physical merchandise on Roblox than virtual merchandise (34%)
We will share a universal civility metric, and show that for most players, it increases over time (63%)
Roblox employees will spend more time using Roblox for remote meetings than with video (56%)
For 17+ verified people in 17+ experiences: Thousands of adults will meet for the first time in Roblox dating experiences and subsequently form real-life relationships (42%)
A school will integrate a full K-12 curriculum with Roblox, including language classes with schools in other countries and virtual field trips (24%)
A Fortune 500 company will use a Roblox experience as part of their recruiting process (14%)
These predictions are brilliant, as they address a 360° tour of what could these virtual world platforms become. Let’s dive in:
Culture: Music, Art, and Fashion are already a big part of these experiences, and it’s a new diffusion channel to consider, with digital galleries and live events. (Prediction #2 and #3)
Creator economy: Most of these platforms already include ways for creators to include paywalls or NFTs and be rewarded for their work. (Prediction #1, #2, #3, and #5)
Social Platform: Age-gated virtual dating, video chat, meeting with friends, meetups based on interests… (Prediction #4 , #7 and #8)
Work & Industry: These platforms will be used for team meetings, team building activities, online events, and collaboration (Prediction #7 and #10)
Education: Remote by design, these experiences will act as interactive learning experiences accessible from anywhere, with blockchain-based verification of knowledge assessment. (Prediction #9)
Brands: Most of the major brands will have a presence on the Metaverse, and it will serve as a new communication channel for brand engagement, product release, user surveys, etc… (Prediction #3)
Safety and inclusion: Increasing security and identity verification will allow these platforms to be a secure place where the immersion acts as a helper for civility, inclusion, and non-violence, away from the toxicity of current social networks. (Prediction #6)
This looks very promising! You might be asking if these worlds are expensive to create. Most of these spaces come with either their own creation tools or are supporting Unity, one of the primary game engines. And, on top of that, let’s not forget Generative Artificial Intelligence, which will help during the creation process: Roblox paves the way with the announcement of their AI-powered word editor.
So, are you ready to dive into these fantastic worlds? Let’s chat!
This Week's News:
The gaming giant Nintendo is rumored to be working on a VR Headset. Apart from a potential collaboration with Google for the hardware, that’s the only thing we know. If true, the expectations are high for the brand. Will they succeed where Sony has mitigated results with their PlayStation VR? As for their gaming console, will they focus on usability and compromise on quality?
mixed-news As Augmented Reality becomes more accessible and easy to implement, many interesting metrics start to emerge.
Amazon Fashion ran a survey on their Virtual Try-On service, and 90% of users “find Virtual Try-On experiences easy to use and helpful in making a purchase.“
Bloomingdale’s used AR for their 150th-anniversary catalog, leading to a “22% higher conversion rate to shop and a 38% higher engagement rate”.
Amazon Fashion
With the increasing number of streaming cameras in public spaces and with smart glasses coming soon, many people are raising concerns about privacy protection. To that end, Meta is working on a real-time AI model that will blur faces or any other PII. That’s interesting, but I wonder how it will be actually used? Should it be enabled by default on all streaming devices? Or leave the decision to the user? Again, a situation where the technology exists, but the human in command might not use it…
Edward Miller on Linkedin
From the Podcast
Every week, I’m teaming up with Guillaume Brincin and Sébastien Spas on the Lost In Immersion podcast. This week:
We start with a video review of the Virtual Reality training solution created by Medical Realities. It’s the most complete and full-featured solution we have seen so far, with only one note – the rendering quality seems a bit low, which might play against its adoption. Still, it's a very promising use case!
Medical Realities We then dive into the multiple news that came from Meta. There are a lot of innovations and exciting demonstrations, but we still think that a more controlled and elaborated communication strategy would benefit the market; indeed, there are too many uncertainties, and the industry now needs clarity on what’s to come.
Is tapping on the desk the good way to simulate a Virtual Keyboard? Meta seems to think so, with this demo and a race between the CTO and Zuckerberg. Our initial thought is that tapping on a hard surface for hours might put a considerable strain on our fingers…
Mashable Legs are now available in the Meta Avatar SDK! Initially arguing that until there is a full-functional leg tracking, the users would be repelled by inaccurate lesg; they backed off. When one looks down in VR, and the avatar's movements do not reflect the ones of the real body, there is discomfort, but it’s not a blocker for most users.
Upload VR The Flamera prototype, which was showcased at Siggraph last month, is a tentative to fix the distortion that happens in all the current pass-through headsets. Indeed, the cameras are never placed in the exact same position as the eyes, necessitating a software process to adjust the video, leading to distortions. On Flamera, they used an array of lenses and apertures that fixed this problem. Unfortunately, it’s challenging to produce, and a hybrid software/hardware solution will likely be implemented for the mass market.
mixed-news Quest 3 is coming soon, in roughly a month, but we wonder why so little information has come out. My bet is on Meta Connect, which will be held in a couple of weeks, where they will probably reveal it all.
Meta
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