As internet technology evolution goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies are finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases facilitating the industry’s growth at an exponential rate.
The Metaverse offers innovative opportunities to businesses. Here are some use cases in the Travel and Tourism industry.
Travel and Tourism
The tourism sector has suffered its greatest setback in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But with the promise of Metaverse, travel, and tourism companies are pivoting their strategies to provide novel and unique holiday experiences.
AR and VR for Virtual Tourism
The metaverse immersive experience uses AR and VR technologies to create a virtual holiday experience for users who are unable to travel to their chosen destinations.
The metaverse will allow people to travel to any part of the world irrespective of their physical location, and their well-being, and eliminate the time, effort, and expense spent on actual travel.
Digital avatars allow tourists to have an interactive traveling experience that comes to the physical world by exploring destinations with fellow tourists and moving together as a group.
Through the creation of virtual theme parks, virtual museums, and virtual zoos customers can enjoy an experience that is like the one that they would enjoy in real life. Besides, the hassles and costs associated with real-life museums, parks etc., can be avoided.
Digital avatars allow tourists to have an interactive traveling experience similar to the physical world by exploring destinations with fellow tourists and moving together as a group.
Google Earth VR, Overview Collection’s Escape Now, and Immerse from the Hydrous are examples of immersive tours and virtual travel experiences.
Use of VR to boost sales
The tourism industry can leverage Virtual Reality capabilities to boost real-world tour site sales too. Thomas Cook commissioned Visualise for its ‘Try before you Fly’ Campaign to produce a series of immersive 360 VR films. Potential tourists visited holiday destinations in virtual reality using Samsung Gear VR allowing them to decide whether they actually wanted to do a trip in real-time. The results were truly amazing, with a 190% increase in New York Excursion bookings after viewing the 5-minute VR holiday version.
Travel World VR offers immersive experiences to potential tourists by letting them try out accommodations and destinations before they book real-world tickets.
Agents and hotels encourage their clients to book their trips and holiday stays on Platforms like SkyNav and Amadeus that offer a VR experience where the clients get a 360-degree view of their hotels or holiday destinations, leading to an increase in reservations.
Visitor Experience at Online Trading Shows
Metaverse can help enhance visitor experience at trade shows, expositions, exhibitions with a greater sense of immersion through social interactions using digital avatars.
Virtual Booking process
Instead of using a traditional computer or a touch screen to make a booking, VR headsets can enable the entire booking process where potential customers can visit the hotel virtually. They can explore its facilities and make the booking all through the VR headset providing a smooth, convenient, and fast experience.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses. Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies and finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases with the industry growing at an exponential rate.
Metaverse offers innovative opportunities in business functions such as remote collaboration.
Metaverse can address the challenges of remote work by providing a 3D virtual work environment where employees in their digital avatars could communicate and collaborate remotely with the team in real-time, ensuring productivity.
It also provides users with some semblance of real-life by connecting, interacting, and relaxing with peers in virtual meeting rooms and lounges.
Holoportation is a term that defines employees located in different parts of the world and collaborating in a virtual room. Metaverse allows users to be a part of holographic experience in a collaborative interaction in virtual meetings from different physical locations.
Metaverse also provides the right setting for different kinds of meetings, for instance, the ambiance of a basic meeting room would be different from a town hall meeting or a traditional conference room, or a training room. It allows users to create fit-for-purpose rooms where they can superimpose themselves in the virtual world and create the surrounding that is appropriate for their requirement.
Global enterprises like Nike, McDonald’s, YouTube, and Walt Disney apart from brick-and-mortar structures also have invested in virtual offices.
eXp World a cloud-based real-estate brokerage and technology platform, operates its entire business in the metaverse with employees and clients collaborating irrespective of their geographical location.
‘Viceverse’ is a metaverse-based headquarters created for the Vice Media Group in collaboration with the architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group with meetings, briefing sessions, demos, presentations, etc. being held in this virtual office. Viceverse serves as the agency’s virtual innovation lab allowing clients to experiment with NFTs, DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and Web 3.0.
Virtuworx offers a hybrid VR and MR environment with customization solutions to different requirement settings for events, offices, conferences, virtual training, and trade shows to users participating in their digital avatars.
Facebook Horizon’s Workrooms is another example of employees collaborating in the Virtual Reality space.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses. Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers, and companies and finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases with the industry growing at an exponential rate.
Metaverse offers innovative opportunities in manufacturing.
The metaverse has tremendous potential to transform the manufacturing industry as it exists today. The most obvious use case is that of digital twins – virtual replicas of physical entities – of the industrial and manufacturing spaces which offer users both a macro and a micro visualization of their plants and facilities. At an enterprise or macro level, it could offer a holistic and complete insight into the functioning of the organization in real-time. At a micro level, shop floor employees could use the metaverse space to monitor performance and identify and fix issues of individual equipment with its components, as if they were physically present there.
The world’s largest brewer, Anheuser-Busch InBev, is using the Metaverse to enhance its operations by using Azure Digital Twins to create breweries and supply chain digital models that are synced to the physical environment in real-time. The benefits of this archetype are fine-tuning the brewing process and quality control.
Research states that training in Metaverse results in students learning 4 times faster than they would in a traditional classroom environment.
The immersive learning process in the Metaverse has far better outcomes than in a traditional classroom setting and students learn better and faster in a VR environment.
Training in the Metaverse environment for the manufacturing industry implies safe and risk-free training in a safe virtual environment. In a real-world environment, an apprentice undergoing training with heavy physical equipment might face risks in a potentially hazardous setting.
Companies like JetBlue use VR technology to train their technicians. A real-life scenario of training technicians with real aircraft would be expensive and time-consuming and potentially risky. The company used VR sets for its technicians and in collaboration with Strivr deployed a solution that simulated a real-life setting and eliminated the time, expense, and risk of a physical environment. Also, training in a VR metaverse allows a trainee to make mistakes in a secure environment without undesirable consequences.
The Engineering and Aerospace conglomerate, Honeywell, uses AR and VR in its training efforts. VR and Mixed Reality can be used to provide remote assistance and collaboration in the resolution of complex repair and maintenance issues. Technicians in the BMW facility use AR glasses to provide a hands-free video overlay and at the same time connect with support teams sitting many miles away to fix the issues.
Manufacturers can also benefit from Metaverse simulations of their facilities to test possible factory scenarios which will then enable them to develop methods to automate and optimize their plants. Before creating its actual factory in Bavaria, BMW in its virtual factory, replicated its complete production workflow digitally to ensure that all processes were optimized and operated smoothly.
Metaverse can benefit manufacturers by facilitating improved consumer decision making too. For e.g.: automotive manufacturers can enable prospective buyers to “touch and feel” a car and even customize it to their tastes before they buy it. This simulation and visualization of the actual car help manufacturers understand the customer’s requirements the first time and minimize the effort and expense involved in rework. The metaverse can help car dealerships by facilitating test drives from the comfort of a prospective customer’s home, helping sell cars, and broadening the dealerships’ reach. Opportunities in this space include establishing a virtual dealership for customers to ask the dealer questions about their vehicles, take a test drive, or even just view vehicles.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has created a world of online and offline convergence with the manufacturing industry being a major part of it. The industrial metaverse aims to bring digital experiences to inherently physical processes, taking digital transformation and “Industry 4.0” to a new level. The industrial metaverse starts with a digital experience before translating it to physical operations, rather than using IoT or building digital platforms to bring machines online. This is useful in areas such as predictive maintenance and asset monitoring and can be done remotely. The metaverse also offers significant advantages in Industry 4.0 regarding training employees and accessing data.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses.
Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology evolution goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies are finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases facilitating the industry’s growth at an exponential rate.
The Metaverse offers innovative opportunities to businesses. Here are some use cases where it can favorably impact the healthcare delivery model in the following areas:
Telepresence
Metaverse in healthcare has introduced new avenues for offering treatments at subsidized rates and in geographical locations that health providers may not be able to visit through telepresence. Virtual 3D clinics offer an easy and convenient way for patients and doctors to interact with each other. They are especially effective in the case of minor health conditions where a doctor could diagnose a patient without any physical examination and all that is needed is for the patient and doctor to have headsets.
Mental health is another area where metaverse could prove beneficial. Through immersive VR experiences, psychiatrists could treat disorders like PTS (post-traumatic stress), Anxiety, Delusions, Eating disorders, and so on.
gameChange is a landmark Virtual Reality Therapy that treats patients who suffer from psychosis – it targets the extreme anxiety that keeps patients from participating in day-to-day activities. The trial results showed that the treatment was effective and extremely popular among patients with high uptake rates.
Decentralized storage through Blockchain
Blockchain is a key technology that drives the metaverse. The management and security of highly sensitive and valuable health data is the most significant application of Blockchain in healthcare. Blockchains allow for data to be stored securely through decentralized, distributed, and encrypted databases. When a patient’s health records are stored on a blockchain, it makes them difficult to hack. They are also easily accessible when a patient gives consent to a doctor to review his records just with the click of a button.
Digital Twins
Digital twins are virtual models or simulations of any process, system, or object that generate real-world data with the purpose of learning more about the real-world counterpart. In the metaverse, Digital twins can be used to create ‘test dummies’ for individuals which can be used to predict outcomes, e.g.: response to specific medications, recovery from surgery and illness, and so on. Med-tech companies like Siemens Healthineers and GE Healthcare are investing in digital twin technology.
Precision Surgery through AR/VR
Immersive Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and AI technologies are helping surgeons to perform minimally invasive and more precise surgeries by getting a 3D view of the patient’s body which helps them to plan and perform operations.
Moreover, the data gathered from the patient’s digital twin will help them to predict recovery duration, possible complications, and prescribed treatments if complications arise post the surgical procedure.
Zimmer Biomet’s OptiVu Mixed Reality platform uses Microsoft Hololens2 to offer a mixed-reality world that offers innovative solutions to streamline surgical planning and workflow and offers real-time support that enables surgeons and care teams to collaborate and improve patient outcomes.
Training
Traditional medical training offers limited resources for the practice of surgeries partly because dissection procedures on cadavers prove to be costly for hospitals. With VR, students can train in a simulated environment at a significantly lower cost.
Dissection on a virtual cadaver improves learning outcomes as it enables students to work individually. It enhances students’ technical capabilities such as precision and decision-making skills and is cost-effective too.
Collaboration
Instant sharing of information between doctors and support staff will ultimately lead to quicker diagnosis and quality healthcare service.
Veyond Metaverse offers XR technology solutions that augment and improve medical education and training, surgical planning and procedures, and diagnosis and treatments through its proprietary cloud communication platform.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses.
Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
As internet technology evolution goes through its next iteration with the Metaverse coming into its own in the past few years, there is a great deal of excitement in the tech world about its potential and possibilities.
With Metaverse gaining traction, developers and companies are finding novel ways of applying it to real-life use cases facilitating the industry’s growth at an exponential rate.
The Metaverse offers innovative opportunities to businesses. Here are some use cases in the Real Estate industry.
Real Estate
The metaverse not only transforms the way real estate agents buy and sell properties, but it also allows investors to purchase land in the metaverse itself.
Immersive Site visits
Through Immersive Extended Reality (XR) tours, the typical aggravations associated with house hunting are eliminated. Prospective buyers can take a virtual tour of the property, go through the floor plans in detail, and explore it thoroughly to come to informed decisions from the comfort of their homes and at their convenience.
Savills, a prominent property adviser, uses VR to market its properties. The chance to visualize properties within natural surroundings creates a huge opportunity to not only improve the design process but also enhance customer engagement. Customers can compare options with the click of a button and view the proposed structure in 3D in different weather conditions, during the day or night. VR is also increasingly becoming advanced by allowing customers to visualize the minutest details like the texture of the walls, upholstery, and so on. All this can be done without the customers visiting the site, saving time and money for companies.
Sotheby’s uses AR and digitally overlays photos of empty rooms with furniture and other artifacts that suit a client’s preferences.
Virtual Estate deals
Purchasing land in the Metaverse is now a reality with celebrity rappers like Snoop Dogg and big brands like JP Morgan, HSBC, Gucci, Samsung, and Atari staking their claim on virtual land plots. The land rush is driving up the virtual estate costs where the average price for the smallest plot on two of the most popular metaverse platforms – Decentraland and Sandbox– last year was under $1,000 and today costs around $13,000.
Another example is a prime plot in the metaverse platform, Decentraland, that was purchased for the equivalent of $2.4 million in November 1991. Land can be bought in the Metaverse through cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, SAND – the currency associated with Sandbox, and MANA – the currency associated with Decentraland.
Land purchases can be made directly from the platform or through third-party resellers and the sales and ownership transactions are done through NFT transfers. In 2021 land sales in Metaverse were worth $500 million and are expected to double by 2022.
So, why are individuals and companies buying virtual estate?
Individuals can customize their property to their liking and use it as a means of income to promote products, play games, or host virtual events.
Brands can go beyond their current digital marketing approaches and devise opportunities that offer greater customer interaction and engagement. Through virtual launch events, concerts, and festivals, companies can improve brand awareness and retention and devise innovative revenue streams.
For instance, Adidas on their plot purchased on Sandbox launched their first NFT collection. They have also used it to host events like GamesBeat Summit 2022.
Entertainment in Metaverse Properties
Land in the metaverse is bought either as an investment or to be turned into a virtual home or a place for conducting business like Snoop Dogg’s SnoopVerse. SnoopVerse is an interactive metaverse world developed in Sandbox – a popular metaverse platform – which houses a virtual version of his actual mansion in California, and which will be used for hosting private virtual concerts, parties, art gallery exhibitions, and such like.
In fact, one of his fans is reported to have spent $450,000 on a virtual plot on Snoopverse to become his Metaverse neighbor.
Daler Mehndi, the popular Bhangra Indi-pop singer has become the first Indian artist to purchase land on PartyNite, an Indian Metaverse platform. It is called Balle Balle land and will be used for hosting concerts and selling merchandise in the form of NFTs through its virtual store.
In the first-ever Indian Metaverse concert, hosted on PartyNite, Daler Mehndi performed on the 73rd Republic Day of India which drew in 20 million fans from all over the world.
Metaverse has created a new and unique world full of possibilities and opportunities for a diverse variety of businesses.
Although the early adopters might need to prepare for the challenges it presents currently, they will certainly gain a competitive edge by leveraging the immense potential of this field.
Metaverse is a three-dimensional virtual world on the Web offering users an immersive experience where they interact with each other through their virtual avatars on various levels to do business or meet socially akin to our real physical world.
The history of the metaverse reads like a classic tale of life imitating art. The term Metaverse first appeared in the Sci-fi novel ‘Snow Crash’ by author Neal Stephenson in 1992 as a blend of words “meta” and “universe”.
However, it became the center of attention in recent years after Facebook, now Meta, and Microsoft announced several projects around it.
The global Metaverse Market size is estimated to reach USD 426.9 billion by 2027 at a 47.2% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). The market for metaverse was valued at USD 61.8 billion in 2022.
So, what makes Metaverse a path-breaking technology? The answer lies in its capabilities and features.
The Metaverse is seen as an infinite world that keeps expanding and to enable this expansion, a high-speed, interface with low latency, and scalability, is required. This robust infrastructure is the mainstay for a seamless and rich user experience.
Immersiveness is the sense or the illusion that the user experiences, being present within the content rather than observing it from outside. Supporting this immersive experience are the Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and XR (Extended Reality) technologies.
Digital Avatars are key components of the Metaverse blueprint and digitally represent the users in the virtual world while gaming, shopping, working remotely, learning, and socializing. They significantly reinforce the interactive and immersive user experience in Metaverse.
Just like the real world, the Metaverse goes on and on and never rests. So, even if the user takes the VR headset off, this world persists.
Security is a vital feature in the metaverse, and ethical and privacy standards have been laid down to address cyber security concerns for the metaverse.
The Metaverse is still in its early stages, and the concern for security cannot be overstated as it needs high standards for user protection and user identities. Adherence to these standards will enhance user confidence and subsequently lead to more and more users adopting this world with robust user protection and hackproof user identities.
A thriving virtual economy drives the Metaverse and is largely built on cryptocurrencies like MANA, Sand, Ethereum, digital currencies like Robux, and digital goods and assets like nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Examples of NFTs include apparel, accessories, and works of art.
Underlying the rich and immersive Metaverse experience are cutting-edge technologies like Web 3; Blockchain; VR, AR, and XR; IoT; and AI/ML. Their specialties are:
The common challenges in a metaverse world include:
One of the main challenges is the vulnerability of data, as there is a huge amount of critical personal data that is transferred in the metaverse and could lead to its sale to interested parties by cybercriminals. The use of VR and AR headsets can cause privacy breaches where users’ personal data is compromised. The headsets come with camera capabilities and software that are vulnerable to hacking.
As of now, there are no universal guidelines for regulations in the Metaverse, and the privacy of the users depends on the metaverse platform and property owners. Cybercriminals in the Metaverse can easily impersonate a user by spoofing their identity and taking on their 3D avatar to commit fraud and cause damage to the user’s reputation.
The challenge of whether the person that the metaverse users are interacting with is genuine or not will always persist.
Metaverse may have an adverse effect on human relations with users choosing the virtual world over the real one. This results in fewer physical interactions in the real world and the virtual world becomes a haven for people who do not want to cope with the challenges of real life.
It can also lead to addiction issues, like gaming addiction. In fact, the issue may be compounded due to the immersive nature of the metaverse with kids and teenagers being most at risk. Users of this age group may also find it difficult to balance time between the real and the virtual world.
Interoperability is the ability to bring together various metaverse platforms, economies, and avatars under one umbrella.
With major players like Microsoft, Meta, and Apple investing massively, it is unlikely that we will see a unified Metaverse. The lack of interoperability might limit users’ access to the various metaverse platforms as different platforms might need different hardware for the users to enjoy an immersive experience. Moreover, questions arise about the possibility and ease of users traversing different metaverse platforms.
Just like HTML is the unifying protocol that allows users to access the internet from any browser, a similar protocol that enables movement and is compatible across devices is needed to traverse the metaverse.
As it is still early days for the Metaverse, the question of digital assets, and their ownership is still unclear as is the use of avatars in representing users as their digital twins could give rise to legal and ethical issues.
For instance, when avatars representing users interact in the Metaverse resulting in an altercation or even worse, an assault then what are the criminal laws that need to be applied to such a situation? These kinds of issues need regulations and laws in place to protect the avatar’s rights in the metaverse. This implies assigning a legal persona to an avatar with rights that allow them to sue and be sued.
The more difficult and thought-provoking issues are establishing standards and criteria that differentiate a legal avatar from the real-life person who owns the avatar.
With the Metaverse being touted as the next iteration of the Internet, enterprises will need to plan and strategize for its multiple challenges.
The Metaverse still has a long way to go and what appear as challenges today might well be opportunities that companies and users could leverage to their advantage.