How tech vendors leverage their long standing 3D engagement in the Metaverse.
- Kyle Price, chief of staff & head of corporate development, Roblox
- Paul Wiedmeier, head of industry, fashion ecom platforms, DACH, Meta
- Marc Pollefeys, Partner director of science, Microsoft HoloLens
Roblox has a long standing 3D history
Roblox has been working on Metaverse-type concepts for more than 10 years.
Communication and stories are at the intersection of the current developments. Both have changed over time, but now gaming, the entertainment industry as well as social influence the trends massively.
The human co-experience is now enabled via a virtual identity in meta spaces. The need to self-express has not gone away. It’s also still important to make friends.
Doing things together with people fosters stronger connections than simply chatting.
Immersive experiences are also stronger than just staring at a screen.
Roblox offers a studio product for 3D services.
The variety of user generated content UGC is big on Roblox with millions of developers making money on the platform.
Civility is another major aspect Roblox puts their focus on.
Brands on Roblox
Roblox› vision is to bring users together in new ways. User growth is the biggest in the 13-15 years bracket.
Roblox sits at the intersection of gaming and social.
Brands like the NFL, Gucci and many more build experiences on Roblox.
Branded items and experiences exist in the context of games and races.
The Roblox universe encompasses 40 mio experiences around your personalized avatar.
Experiences are created by independent 3d developers, e.g. Gucci built a Gucci garden. You can visualize your brand in completely new ways and new context.
Going forward, Roblox seeks to ease creation even more. Instead of development environments, in-game creation based on low-code or now-code interfaces are becoming more and more popular.
How Meta seeks deeper connections
Paul Wiedmeier, head of industry, fashion ecom platforms, DACH, Meta
Meta predicts the emergence of a 3D internet, the metaverse. Currently the metaverse is going through the disillusionment phase, though.
Nevertheless, analysts predict the metaverse economy can become as big as the US economy.
Meta is very active in the AI field, too. Their LLMs are very popular open source tools. But AI drives also Meta’s underlying services like Facebook’s recommendation engine, the ad engine, etc.
$30-33bn or 30% of Meta’s revenue goes into research, offering the base for internal as well as external developers working on the Metaverse ecosystem.
Meta sees a huge use case in learning, e.g. for medical students. But also remote working rewiring is a big topic based on virtual board meetings and avatars.
Avatars are deemed to complement our digital identities. They are expected to unlock new business opportunities.
In the fashion industry, a photorealistic avatar helps fitting clothes.
Cupra came up with an immersive virtual test drive. Lufthansa shared their latest business class setup in VR with journalists.
AR experiences are also available on smartphones.
Meta stresses the point that the Metaverse will not be built by a single company but by the community.
AR applications with Microsoft's HoloLens
Marc Pollefeys, partner director of science, Microsoft HoloLens, Microsoft.
Marc has been researching 3D environments for 25 years.
People care about communication and to learn about the world around us.
The «real world» Metaverse includes AR, that helps mechanics or doctors to cope with local issues, supported by remote experts (remote assist).
Standard procedures are another use case where recorded AR supports new employees learning complex processes.
Currently, 3d research interprets first-person interaction: Which object was manipulated by whom, how did they do, in what time? The AI automatically detects the steps involved in a procedure and helps beginners improve on the task. And it reports to performance to management.
The distance cameras of the HoloLens enable 3D mapping of spaces by simply walking around and scanning the space by looking around. And you may as well send robots to walk around depending on the conditions in the location.
