Omicrono Facebook presents the metaverse: a virtual society in which you can do anything

Despite all the difficulties that Facebook has faced this year (especially in recent months), Mark Zuckerberg's firm is still determined to unleash his most ambitious project: the metaverse. The metaverse is a virtual universe, an 'evolution' of the Internet that serves for leisure and work. That is, to lead a life like the one we would normally lead but in that world.

At the 2021 Facebook Connect event, Facebook has dedicated itself to presenting not only news at the virtual reality and mixed reality level, but also a few more brushstrokes of what this metaverse will be. A metaverse that, according to Zuckerberg, would also turn Facebook into a 'metaverse' company and not so much a social networking company.

So much so that Facebook has followed in the footsteps of Google and has announced that the company behind the mythical social network is renamed Meta, in clear reference to the metaverse project that Mark Zuckerberg has arranged to detail.

The Facebook Metaverse

The metaverse, as Mark Zuckerberg himself has stated, is mainly based on experiences that emulate those we would live in the real world but seeking social interaction and immersion in them. The first that Zuckerberg mentions is social interaction, in addition to interoperability and some of the details that Zuckerberg specifies what the spaces in which we will interact, our home in the metaverse or the avatar we use will be like.

But interoperability is just one of the concepts that the metaverse will be based on. Among them we find concepts such as presence, digital avatars, the home space, teleportation (which Zuckerberg defines as if we were clicking on an internet link), privacy and security, virtual goods and, above all, natural interfaces.

Interoperability involves, for example, being able to easily integrate multimedia files within the metaverse and being able to consume them with simple interfaces without the need for a dedicated device. And that is only an example.

Horizon Experiences

Horizon Home is one of the first novelties of the metaverse. It is established as a set of features to establish not only spaces in which to socialize with your friends, but also includes the creation of specific spaces such as worlds, rooms or even work rooms. Horizon includes Horizon Home, Horizon Worlds, and Horizon Workrooms. Spaces that users can customize and modify to their liking.

Some of the experiences that the metaverse and Horizon include, for example, buying NFTs as well as virtual merchandise or attending a concert with your friends without even having to leave your home, in these spaces. The latter, by the way, is thanks to Horizon Venues, to gain access to this kind of activity.

To do this, Facebook will make tools available to developers and creators for different purposes, such as placing tangible objects in the metaverse with which we can interact, as well as augmented reality experiences such as guided tours.

For example, in Horizon Home Facebook has announced a new editable workspace environment, to customize it to our liking and later this year a more complete collection of environments will be released.

In addition to all this, a whole series of applications such as Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram or Slack will be added to Horizon Home in a personalized 2D panel. In these environments we can, among other things, chat with our work colleagues, access company files

It also touches the field of gaming, with immersive experiences developed through different technologies, such as virtual reality using these objects as well as virtual outfits. To do this, Facebook will use its virtual reality platform with Oculus and integration with some of its most important titles, such as Beat Saber. By the way, the SDK will be released for Unity in December, with Unreal Engine 4.

Fitness also has a bearing on the metaverse, with the arrival of dedicated fitness experiences coming next year. In addition, Facebook will create specific packs for Oculus with accessories to facilitate fitness, such as the Active Pack for Quest 2. This pack, in particular, will include new controls with touch panels to maintain control, including a new facial interface.

The metaverse will also include direct integration with tools designed for work with Horizon Workrooms. For example, we will have access to collaborative tools with our team to present joint projects or be able to customize our work rooms, in addition to being able to interact directly with the members of said rooms.

In fact, Facebook has announced Quest for Business, a set of functions designed for companies that use Quest 2. From this platform, workers will be able to use their own work accounts, access productivity applications (such as Horizon Workrooms itself) and more. This feature will launch in closed beta this year and will be released in 2023.

In addition to all this, Facebook has announced that it will bring Messenger audio calls to virtual reality. From any virtual reality platform, users will be able to make calls from the Facebook call application.

The same thing happens with education. The Facebook metaverse will include virtual educational spaces with which to learn about different topics through virtual and augmented reality, with platforms such as Spark AR, TransfrVR or Alchemy Immersive. In fact, Facebook will invest 150 million dollars over 3 years to train creators and developers to create such immersive environments.

Facebook has announced the collaboration to create Unity game engines to create mixed reality environments. Some of these learning experiences are carried out together with institutions such as VictoryXR or BYJU's FutureSchool.

Together with the developers

But of course, Facebook needs collaboration to carry out this project. In fact, Facebook itself admits that billions of dollars will be invested over the years until the metaverse reaches the scale that the company wants. Facebook assures that they will seek, as far as possible, that the metaverse becomes a profitable business for developers.

In the presentation, Facebook talks about the creation of the Presence Platform, a platform with which creators and developers can create experiences in mixed reality as well as interactions within said experiences. They will do so thanks to a series of development kits (SDK) and APIs designed specifically for developers.

Facebook has wanted to dedicate a part of the presentation to privacy and security within the metaverse and to the mechanisms that will be established for when it achieves the scale it needs. Facebook ensures that the metaverse will be built on these values ​​from the outset, also seeking to prioritize users above all else.

The company has made it clear that because the metaverse is currently being built on mixed reality, the firm is trying to make its virtual and augmented reality headsets comfortable enough for users to wear continuously, with the goal of packing as much technology as possible into the form factor of an eyewear.

Regarding avatars, Facebook has shown the technological advances it is making to try to ensure that the digital avatars that we will use in the multiverse are as faithful as possible to reality, achieving high levels of fidelity both in the physical aspect of the avatars themselves and in the animations and details related to the physical objects of the metaverse and its worlds (clothes, furniture, household items, etc.).

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