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Metaverse: A new lease of life with Apple’s “spatial computing”
The metaverse is essentially a 3D representation of physical assets in the real world -- an ecosystem with gaming, payments as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), buying and selling, and many more immersive experiences -- developed with the help of technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality (MR), software, content and, of course, hardware, including servers, headsets, etc. And many of the technologies are at least 3-4 decades old and have matured with time. It can be considered a subset of Web3 (you may liken it to machine learning, which is bandied about as artificial intelligence (AI) but is an AI technique or subset of AI).
Courtesy: Livemint
Last year, the metaverse rattled investors when Meta’s financial reports showed it had sunk $10-15 billion in its metaverse project. Yet, many CEOs appear keen on exploring the metaverse to get the first mover advantage, even as a fully immersive metaverse experience is not happening any time soon. There are many examples globally, including Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, Roblox, Snapchat, and Epic Games—Google does not seem to like the term ‘metaverse’, so it refers to the concept as ‘ambient computing’— working on metaverse concepts.
Closer home e-commerce company Flipkart recently announced a metaverse-based shopping platform called Flipverse in partnership with decentralized music and entertainment firm eDAO. A couple of months back, Harsh Goenka-run RPG Enterprises said it is in the process of implementing three metaverse projects besides developing agritech, medtech, blockchain- and artificial intelligence-powered platforms as part of its digital journey. Real estate company Hiranandani group, on its part, plans to invest about ₹3,500 crore over the next 2-3 years to expand into the metaverse market. Indian companies like Mahindra & Mahindra, Tanishq, Cadbury’s India, Tata Tea, and MakeMyTrip have ventured into the metaverse space.
Large Indian IT services companies are already in the metaverse play. Infosys launched a metaverse foundry in February and claimed to have developed over 100 “ready-to-apply use-cases and templates”, including an immersive retail experience for shoppers to explore a branded metaverse environment, buy products such as NFTs, and connect to a checkout counter to make purchases that are delivered in the real world. Likewise, Tech Mahindra has launched its metaverse called TechMVerse to help in areas of its car dealership, NFT marketplace, virtual bank, and gaming centre. You can read about other examples here.
I had written, then, in my newsletter, “Meta may not remain, but metaverses will live”, that despite concerns about metaverses and how Meta Platforms Inc. handles data privacy, I’m willing to stick my neck out and say that the metaverse is here to stay. There will be hundreds of metaverses in the next few years -- some of them private and others on open platforms like Sandbox and Decentraland. You may read the piece here.
Apple has done precisely that. It gave a new flavour to the metaverse by calling it “spatial computing” and refraining from mentioning the term ‘metaverse’. Spatial computing was coined in 2003 by Simon Greenwold to define “human interaction with a machine in which the machine retains and manipulates referents to real objects and spaces”.
Picture courtesy of Apple website
Vision Pro, which was launched by Apple at its annual WWDC conference this month, can transform any room into your personal theatre. It is also Apple’s first 3D camera with which you can capture spatial photos and spatial videos in 3D. A singular piece of three-dimensional laminated glass acts as an optical surface for the cameras and sensors. Apple also has a spatial operating system (OS) for its headset called Vision OS. Apple says: “In visionOS, apps can fill the space around you, beyond the boundaries of a display. They can be moved anywhere, scaled to the perfect size, react to the lighting in your room, and even cast shadows.” The custom micro‑OLED display system features 23 million pixels. A pair of high-resolution cameras transmit over one billion pixels per second to the displays, and the system also helps deliver precise head and hand tracking and real‑time 3D mapping.
Vision Pro will be launched in the US in early 2024 and cost $3,499, and will roll out to other countries shortly after. Bilawal Sidhu, an AI Creator and former Google employee (AR/VR, 3D Maps), tweeted after the launch: “Apple Vision Pro is everything we hoped for and then some. But at $3,499, you’re either an early adopter or an AR/VR developer. Yet two things changed after today: 1. “Metaverse” will stop being a bad word (even though Apple didn’t use the word) - sparking a resurgence in AR/VR investments. 2. VR media (360/180 video) has made a surprising comeback and will experience a revival. So yes, it’ll be an expensive toy or dev kit for the next cycle or two. But the spatial computing era has officially begun.”
Nvidia AI scientist Jim Fan tweeted: “...Apple Vision Pro’s got a good shot at making AR mainstream, finally...Compute-wise: dual chip design, M2 + R1. R1 ingests input from 12 cameras, 5 sensors, and 6 microphones. It eliminates lag, and streams display rapidly to avoid motion sickness...I think Apple has a very strong visual foundation model team (“VisionOS”) that manages to stay under the radar...”
While developers build content for Vision Pro over the coming months, the true potential of the metaverse, or spatial computing as Apple wants us to say, will unfold. Watch this space.
But what’s up with Web3? Lots of promise but yet to deliver
In mid-2021, the term the so-called “Web3” term suddenly exploded into public consciousness. People scrambled to make the most of cryptocurrencies and NFTs, while venture capitalists (VCs) poured over $30 billion into Web3 startups before the year was out. In the same period, Indian crypto and blockchain startups raised over $600 million from global investors, an increase of more than 15 times the $37 million raised in 2020.
Broadly speaking, when you talk about Web3, you’re talking about blockchain and its derivative technologies like decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), cryptocurrencies, and more. Web3 uses blockchains, cryptocurrencies (bitcoins, Ethereum, Tether, Binance coin, XRP, etc.) and NFTs to give users a form of ownership.
For instance, do you remember the craze around the recorded version of Madhushala, curated by none other than Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan as a non-fungible token (NFT) in 2021? This is just a case in point. Digital artist Pak’s creation Merge became the most expensive NFT ever sold on 2 December 2021, with almost 30,000 collectors buying the tokens totalling $91.8 million. The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), on its part, is an exclusive community for the ape and mutant-themed NFT collections on Ethereum’s blockchain. Also known as Bored Apes, only 10,000 generative art pieces will ever be in existence (similar to the limited circulation of bitcoins). And the craze continues with Bored Ape #3611 having sold for 47.08 ETH or $85,091 this month.
In late 2022, JP Morgan was scouting for a vice president for JPM Payments, and it said that the potential candidate would be part of JPM’s “Web3, Crypto, Fintech, & Metaverse” industry sub-vertical. JP Morgan has a “lounge” (set up by Onyx -- the bank’s blockchain unit) in Decentraland (a 3D virtual world built on the blockchain) where visitors are greeted by a digital portrait of Jamie Dimon (which morphs into the image of the bank’s head of crypto) and a roaming tiger.
Closer home, the national blockchain roadmap proposed by MEITY (December 2021) recommended several NFT-related use cases, from land records, student certificates and patient health records. And the Telangana government said in August that it plans to launch a ‘Web 3.0 Regulatory Sandbox’ that aims at promoting and helping Web 3.0 startups to innovate in areas like blockchain, metaverse, and NFTs.
That said, the shroud of uncertainty over the acceptance of cryptocurrencies (blockchain is the technology that powers them) and taxation issues around them have marred the prospects of Web3. The volatility in the price of bitcoins added to the confusion, while the collapse of some big crypto exchanges also did not help the cause of crypto -- the Mt. Gox incident being one of the most notorious crypto exchange failures in the history of the cryptocurrency industry. In India, the WazirX-Binance spat over ownership further queered the crypto pitch. And the Indian government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have not supported crypto either.
Blockchain, the poster boy of the tech and finance world for a brief period, too, has come under a cloud. Experts note that centralized identity databases such as Aadhar and KYC regulations do not co-exist naturally with pseudonymous accounts on a blockchain. Moreover, Web3 cannot prevent cybercrimes. About $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from January to April 2022, with 97% of those crimes taking place on DeFi protocols, according to Chainanalysis. Last but not least, the valuations of Web3 startups are rising without any clear business models for monetization.
But blockchain is anything but dead. Just this month, JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it has tied up with six Indian banks to introduce a blockchain-based platform to settle interbank dollar transactions in Gift City. And on 1 December 2022, RBI launched a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), or e ₹-R, in a pilot scheme consisting of a closed user group of selected banks, merchants and customers. CBDC is a legal tender identical to physical currency but is issued and transacted digitally, and the CBDC pilot launched by the RBI in the retail segment has components based on blockchain technology.
So, just like the metaverse now being refurbished and presented as spatial computing, Web3 will resurrect in another form.
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