Latest news: metaverse in mining

The metaverse is the next big theme in digital media, and VR and AR are crucial technologies driving its development. These two technologies will make the metaverse immersive and allow users to interact with virtual objects, people, and environments. Although both VR and AR are in nascent stages of development and the metaverse is still largely conceptual, AR will have edge over VR in the short run. This is due to AR’s accessibility through web browsers and smartphones compared to bulky VR headsets. 

Companies like Meta, Microsoft, and Lenovo are making heavy investments in developing metaverse-related VR and AR. In 2021, Meta invested $10bn in developing VR and AR hardware and software to achieve its metaverse vision. In April 2022, Lenovo announced a five-year plan to invest $15bn in metaverse research focused on VR and cloud services. 

On the consumer front, AR and VR metaverses are focused on gaming, ecommerce, social media, and live events. A fair share of the investments going into VR and AR over the next three years will be focused on developing metaverse experiences and platforms.

The metaverse is described by GlobalData social media research as a “virtual world where users share experiences and interact in real-time within simulated scenarios”. And for those who see a business future for the metaverse, 2020 was a breakout year: the year in which the metaverse began to gain traction beyond the entertainment sector and started to enter the mainstream. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants to build an “enterprise metaverse”, and Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook will become a metaverse company. 

So what’s actually happening to drive the metaverse as a business phenomenon – and what can we expect next? 

Before Facebook and Microsoft, perhaps the biggest company evangelising for the metaverse was Epic Games, the game platform which owns Fortnite – a gaming industry phenomenon with over 350 million users worldwide. Epic demonstrated that events such as virtual concerts in the game could attract huge audiences seeking entertainment in new formats and also serve as a channel for brands, advertisers and celebrities to engage with their customers and fans in real-time.

The buzz around AR has grown recently thanks to Facebook's expansion into the metaverse, a virtual world where users can share experiences and interact in real-time within simulated scenarios. This is made possible through AR applications and virtual reality (VR) headsets. 

Facebook is banking on the digital world enough to have renamed itself as Meta in October. The recent name change came alongside the company's pivot to becoming a metaverse company instead of a social media one (and an increasingly toxic social media brand at that). 

Name change or not, it seems insiders may have seen through the AR hype, according to GlobalData's polling. 

"The greater variation in perceptions of AI and AR noted in Q3 2021 could be because, like cybersecurity and cloud computing, both have a wide range of applications," explains Rupantar Guha, associate project manager of Thematics at GlobalData. "However, unlike cyber and cloud, deployment of AI and AR is at an early stage. 

"Regarding the metaverse, AR and VR are key technologies in this developing mega-theme. VR-based metaverses are arriving in the market, such as Meta’s Horizon Workrooms, and AR-based metaverses, such as Microsoft Mesh are also in development. 

"It is too early to say which technology will outpace the other in the short run, given that both are in nascent stages of development and the metaverse is still largely conceptual.”