Metaverse Digest 2: The latest global, enterprise and industrial developments

This month sees another wide-ranging set of developments across many forms of metaverse technology. Terminologies such as "spatial computing" and "mixed reality" run through these, but they are all part of the same evolution of our digital interactions. Whether it is industrial evolution with Mercedes-Benz Group AG, country strategy with South Korea, multiple types of new headsets and smart glasses, or the next step in Microsoft Corp.'s Teams journey for productivity, there are many threads to pull at. This report is part of a new series of roundups and observations covering metaverse evolutions in industrial, enterprise business-to-business/consumer offerings, and the consumer and social spaces. You may also access our regular metaverse company and market sector coverage.

Metaverse is an overarching term that crosses many technologies and sectors. It can be confusing to hear virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality and spatial computing bounced around, but all these form part of a set of similar advances to the way we communicate with one another and interact with digital systems, but with some different form factors in display and interaction. All these terms share the attributes of place and space of content and things in keeping with our physical world interactions. A digital twin of a factory that can be used for training and operational management, an office meeting with a set of resources laid out around a room, or a game racing a car around a track all benefit from position and space cues and real-time interaction, which makes them metaverse applications.

Microsoft public preview of Mesh for Teams

October saw Microsoft move its mesh-based virtual meeting rooms and worlds from private beta to public preview. Users with access to preview will now have an additional view selection for a meeting that instantiates an avatar-based virtual world environment for that gathering, which includes mixing VR headset users and regular screen interactions. This more comprehensive virtual world development follows on from the May release of Avatars for Teams, which provides an animated digital representation of a user somewhere between a full webcam view and a camera-off image showing initials with a glowing circle when talking. Now users can position themselves in the 3D space and engage in richer interactions.

Meta releases mixed-reality Quest 3 and screen-free Ray-Bans

Meta Platforms Inc. released the next evolution of its stand-alone VR headset with Meta Quest 3. A key feature of this is "color passthrough," allowing the wearer to see the world around them, which can then be augmented with digital content, or the world can be replaced completely for a full VR experience. Meta also showed its new Ray-Ban-based smart glasses that do not use a projected display, but do have cameras, audio and in-built AI capability. These are covered in more detail in our report on the Meta Connect event.

CREAL light-field lenses

CREAL, a Swiss startup focused on display technology, announced its augmented reality (AR) light-field micro-display technology for other equipment and device manufacturers to create headsets based on its licensable hardware and software. Light-field displays recreate actual rays of light to form an image that our eyes see normally, and we can use our depth of field focus to view, rather than a typical two-flat-screen display that tricks us into seeing depth. We explored this technology in our report on the next wave of 3D displays.

Immersed 4K-only Visor headsets

Immersed, known for creating a virtual-desktop-sharing application to allow multiple virtual screens (instead of many physical monitors) to be accessed from a desktop machine, embarked on the creation of its Visor headset to support this use case. It announced two levels of display resolution and cost — one a 2.5K pixel and the other a high-end 4K display. Customer demand on preorders primarily for the 4K display (stated at 96%) has led to it removing the 2.5K from its lineup. The headset is aimed at replacing a monitor for daily work and is priced at about $750.

In September, Immersed announced that it would be going public via special purpose acquisition company Maquia Capital Acquisition Corp. Once the transaction closes, the resulting company will be known as Immersed Inc. and will trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker AIMR.

Bigscreen Beyond headset ships in US despite bottlenecks

Bigscreen began shipping its $999 tethered virtual reality headset to US customers in September and plans to start international shipments before the end of the year. The company missed its July shipment target and is still working through production bottlenecks. It hopes to start shipping headsets "within a couple weeks of ordering" by early 2024.

Beyond is a relatively slim form-factor headset with a resolution of 2,560 x 2,560 per eye and a refresh rate of 90 Hz. Customers are asked to scan their face at the time of purchase so that the headset can be fitted to the shape of their face.

Unity CEO steps down

Last month we described the confusion and volatility in the industry and developer community caused by the suggestion of a new pricing structure based on end users, as well as the more traditional development seats, by Unity Software Inc. After many clarifications and adjustments, this has led CEO and gaming veteran John Riccitiello to step down and retire, to be replaced by interim CEO James Whitehurst, who was previously CEO of Red Hat.

Epic Games cuts workforce, divests Bandcamp

In an effort CEO Tim Sweeney characterized as a move to solidify its role as a "leading metaverse company," Epic is laying off 830 employees. The company is also spinning off and selling SuperAwesome and Bandcamp, respectively, two of its pandemic-era acquisitions. The realignment comes as Epic tries to focus on Fortnite Creative as a growth driver.

K-Metaverse Pavilion and MWC USA

Six South Korean metaverse startups vetted and sponsored by the National IT Promotion Agency of South Korea gathered at the Las Vegas MWC event in their own K-Metaverse Pavilion. A stated aim in 2022, with ongoing government investment, is for South Korea to become the fifth-largest metaverse market by 2026. The companies represented were: AIPark, using AI to make text of everything in the world visible, such as speech-to-text and object description; Inventis, a global systems integrator and consultancy with its own metaverse platform; Coconut Silo, a cargo and logistics connector; from Seoul, a cross-platform avatar creation and management service; MetaVu, which offers remote collaboration and real-time field guides; and Studio W.Baba, an animation, content and IP delivery studio.

Lenovo Formula 1 VR slot car racing

Lenovo Group Ltd. is a title sponsor of the F1 Japanese and United States Grand Prix weekends. It has created a game used in its paddock hospitality to allow visitors to experience AR slot car racing with its ThinkReality VRX headset. The aim is to promote its wider portfolio and enterprise use of the ThinkReality ISV ecosystem, its cloud software platform and ThinkReality xR consulting services.

Ready Player Me geometry-aware generative AI

Cross-platform avatar creation and management service Ready Player Me has explored the use of generative AI to help users create new customer textures from text description, for avatar clothing and accessories. The initial experiment has now evolved from creating a basic print effect on a digital texture to what it calls "geometry-aware AI textures." This means the shape and style of an element of digital clothing is taken into consideration for the placement of changes; previously, a T-shirt might have had a repeating pattern, more like wallpaper, but now users can place an individual generated logo on the front, and some decoration just on the hem of a sleeve.

Mercedes-Benz implements NVIDIA Omniverse digital twins

Mercedes-Benz is implementing a digital-first approach for its next-generation vehicle production, starting with Germany, Hungary and China, creating an approach it plans to roll out to over 30 factories. Part of this approach is to create NVIDIA Omniverse-based digital twins using the Universal Scene Descriptor data format to design, simulate and then operate its plants. This also allows it to retool and adjust production lines more quickly with simulation evaluation first. Assembly line creation and optimization is a significant use emerging across the auto industry.

Arvizio, Taqtile update AR-based work platforms to detect errors

Arvizio is adopting an AI-enhanced visual inspection system to validate workflow procedures and detect errors. Arvizio's AR Instructor is an augmented-reality workflow tool that shows users step-by-step instructions for operating, configuring and repairing equipment. The platform works with augmented- and mixed-reality headsets, as well as phones and tablets.

In October, Taqtile announced a similar feature being added to its Manifest augmented-reality platform targeted at the inspection process for industrial and defense contractors.

S&P holds internal conference metaverse event with avatars and virtual worlds

As part of an internal global technical awareness conference called SPARK Summit, S&P Global Inc. hosted a range of events including an internal metaverse hackathon and avatar presentations of externally fielded survey results. It also included an expo and social event in MootUp, to share some experience of how this evolving technology can be used inside a global enterprise and for customer engagement.

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