Meta (formerly Facebook) is placing a lot of importance on the “metaverse” – think of it like the Internet, but with presence or immersion, where you can work, play and socialize – and Vishal Shah, Vice President, Meta, spoke to Gadgets 360 at a press conference to explain what the Metaverse company is planning, and how it sees Metaverse expanding in India. Although Shah emphasized the importance of India to the metaverse and meta, if you’re hoping that this means the Oculus Quest line finally comes to India, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. Shah said, “We’re just getting started, but you can totally expect that as we launch new things and make them available exclusively because they cut across devices and get people to just VR headsets.” Helping you access more.”
Shah, Former Product Head instagram, said that although Meta aims to bring the hardware away, it couldn’t give a date for that, though. Oculus Quest 2 Was Launched in October 2020, over a year ago. But Shah also told meta key Focusing on the metaverse as a 15-year-long journey, it highlights how the company, which was synonymous with Facebook, sees itself transforming today.
“We truly believe that this is the successor to the mobile internet, not the new internet, not a new set of protocols, not a completely new premise, but a new way of experiencing the internet,” Shah said. back when it was still known as Facebook, the company was heavily criticized for its efforts to redefine the Internet. Free Basics For example, free internet access programs, criticized for infringement net neutrality, and in some parts of the world, the distinction between Facebook and the Internet was completely eliminated, sometimes to dangerous consequences,
That’s all far and away where Shah says the Metaverse is today. With VR being limited to just a few people with headsets, and augmented reality remains highly specialized in its application, standards are still being designed.
When Meta talks about the metaverse, it’s not just talking about a silo of Facebook-powered applications, but a wider Internet that other people can connect to. “This idea of co-presence ties in with a lot of what we’re trying to do,” Shah said. “But at the same time, this idea of continuity—the idea that, like in the physical world, if I go and buy a piece of clothing, and own that piece of clothing, I can wear it anywhere. Could have gone somewhere else, and I could wear the same but today the digital environment is not like that. If you buy a digital item, it is mostly limited to the place where you bought it.”
“The idea of sustainability, being able to move from space to space, and being able to take things with you is a very powerful construct, which will require a set of interoperable standards that we will create at the end of the day. When we Investing deeply in the space, we strongly believe that the Metaverse will not be built by a single company,” he said.
This can come in a number of ways, including the use of non-fungible tokens, or NFT, he suggested, “We’re making clear investments in adopting that ecosystem and giving people more control over the rules, over the commodities, and we’ll see how those things continue to develop.”
There is no such thing as JPEG for 3D
Several companies are now building experiences for the metaverse, although they may instead be called virtual reality experiences, depending on what stage of funding they are at now. Mozilla was an early leader in the open standard of WebVR (now WebXR, or mixed reality), and anyone with a browser can head to the Mozilla Hub to see what it could be like.
However, most companies are operating in their own sandbox, and their devices cannot talk to each other.
“I think some of the things we’re going to do will be open standards that many companies will adopt, that they become industry standards,” Shah said. “Some examples of this could be the work we’re doing with GLTF and some 3D object standards, you know, there’s no such thing as JPEG for 3D today. What’s the equivalent of that? So, just purely working in that direction from the point of view of the object.”
But the need for standards, he said, goes beyond technology, and how we interact with it. For example, pinch-to-zoom sounds very intuitive and clear today, but at the time it was first introduced, it was a powerful new idea and had a profound impact on the way we use our phones.
Likewise, some very basic questions in virtual reality still need to be answered. “Few things can be higher, travel standard. Travel in the sense of how you go and navigate from one place to another, like a URL,” Shah said. “It is very well understood that How can you navigate from one web page to another web page. [But] How do you go from one place to another? Even though it’s a completely different, 3D engine you’re really into. But a layer on top of that can be around more interoperable standards of sorts. How those objects represent the environment you are in, the avatars you have to represent yourself and how you move from space to space. ,
“And in fact, I expect that most of them can actually be implemented beyond the platforms Meta created because I think it is the best thing for both consumers and creators to make sure that their work.” to be widely used.” Shah added.
To this end, Meta has also begun promoting UGC-led experiences in the US and Canada, and they have also promised that in the next year or two, “Meta will continue to build VR-focused experiences, but they will need more Will bring more widely. across different devices. ”
,