It would not be wrong to say that Metaverse is the most popular topic of recent times. Many technology giants have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in this issue. Facebook, one of the largest companies in the world, changed its name to ‘Meta’ and announced that it would increase its metaverse projects.
As can be expected, this also affected the world’s largest technology fair, CES (Consumer Electronics Expo). Many companies introduced their new products in different sectors at CES 2022, which was held physically after a two-year break in the past days. Metaverse was also among the highlights of this fair.
“What is the metaverse if we can’t feel what we’re going through?”
Many products for the Metaverse were showcased at CES 2022. Spain-based company Owo also introduced its jacket equipped with sensors, which will provide an even more ‘realistic’ experience to virtual reality. The founder of the company, Jose Fuartes, said, “What is the metaverse if we can’t feel what we’re going through?” used the expressions and the experiences we live in a virtual universe; He stated that they designed a jacket that we can really feel, like hugs, being shot at games or the wind.
“Our aim is to make virtual worlds more realistic by using a ‘second body’,” Fuertes said about his jackets equipped with sensors. We can say that this $450 jacket, which will be released later this year, brings to mind ‘Ready Player One’, a dystopian novel and movie that perhaps best illustrates how the metaverse can be.
How long will it take for the Metaverse to reach the desired level?
Virtual reality technologies (VR) are now generally used in games. However, many tech giants want to change this situation and allow any person sitting at home to do different things through virtual or augmented reality. Of course, although companies such as Meta and HTC have a large investment in these technologies, VR sets are still not comfortable and light enough to be worn for long periods of time.
Paddy Cosgrave, who is at the head of the European Web Summit, is also very excited about virtual and augmented reality; however, he states that it may take more than ten years for the Metaverse to reach the desired level, and it is too early to get excited right now.
Still, Touchcast, a metaverse company, made an interesting introduction on the subject. Touchcast will be in the blockchain database, which will enable collaboration between companies. ‘com’ like ‘. introduced a platform with the address ‘metaverse’. Edo Segal, the founder of the company, also said about the metaverse, “Nothing can stop the metaverse. In 1999 we wouldn’t have believed we could shop online. And look now. Humanity is moving towards digital worlds. ”
“Realistic virtual experiences with a single costume”
Shiftall, a subsidiary of Panasonic, also introduced a product developed for the metaverse at CES 2022. Company CEO Takuma Iwasa, who plans to make virtual world visits more realistic through people’s avatars, introduced light, comfortable and high-resolution VR sets at the fair.
This set, which has an interesting design, was met with great interest at the fair. In his statements, Iwasa said, “In the future, there will be special skins and realistic metaverse experiences, as we saw in Ready Player One. However, current metaverse users will realize these with different products. Just like ‘cyborgs’,” he thought, in the future, people could visit virtual worlds in a real-life fashion through a single costume.
From such explanations and introduced products, we can say that the metaverse is developing rapidly. Still, many experts think and warn that many dangers may come into our lives through the metaverse, just like when the internet developed. Dan Günther, an augmented reality (XR) expert, also said about this situation, “Fake content and identities will take place in the metaverse. “The things we’ve seen and disturbed throughout the evolution of the Internet will be here, too,” he said.
