on the physical globe. It’s an interconnected world where all kinds of services and activities exist as they would in the real world. It’s a place where you can exist as an alter ego and live a virtual life. A true metaverse would have to be global and interoperable, we can’t have sperate metaverses, that would be about as helpful as deploying different internets. ARE VIRTUAL EVENTS AND EVENTS IN THE METAVERSE THE SAME THING? There is no real difference. A metaverse event is just a different expression of a virtual event, which in turn is just an event, right?
per cent believable. Our brains would be fooled. That’s where events in the metaverse can really shine. HOW CAN PLANNERS GET TO GRIPS WITH THE METAVERSE? On a smaller scale, the idea of the metaverse is an immersive environment where you can join, and that’s been around for 20 years. It’s called gaming. So, if you want to experiment with the metaverse, you don’t need to spend a ton of money, just explore the gaming world and how those communities interact. The events industry prides itself on its creativity and its ability to make otherwise serious people more playful and gregarious. Those are the things we associate with great event planners. That might mean sending your best clients a bunch of PlayStations with some of these immersive fantasy games already pre-installed and deployed. There are many games that are beautiful and have immersive worlds. You can organise events inside the game and even concerts – some of the world’s most attended concerts have happened inside video games. WHAT ARE THE COST IMPLICATIONS OF EVENTS IN THE METAVERSE? There is a democratisation of technology happening, both hardware and software are getting ever more powerful while they’re also getting cheaper. So in 10 years from now the immersive, high-definition virtual reality headsets will be much more widespread. The issue is with computer processing power and latency – the time it takes for a signal to travel, and there is no near-term solution for this. As an example, for the metaverse to be truly global and interoperable, everyone who can see my avatar would have to be able to see the tree I’m chopping down, not just me. So, all that data has to be pushed around in real time. The current limits of internet and infrastructure as they are today, would require an entire upgrade of systems. IS THE METAVERSE HERE TO STAY OR IS IT A FAD? Yes, it’s here to stay, but it’s not here yet. Does anyone know what form it will take? No.
HOW WILL IT ENHANCE VIRTUAL EVENTS?
The metaverse has the potential to dramatically enhance events. If the metaverse manifests, and it’s a high-resolution, high-definition virtual environment that can be shaped according to the imagination of creators in any sense they like. The metaverse will reach a stage where it is film-industry quality with amazing virtual, visual effects. It will be like watching a high-budget movie in the cinema, the only difference being, you’ll be in that world. Through this world creation, there is going to be an enormous influx of the capabilities of the events industry to create these incredible, beautiful environments and events or experiences, So, event planners can organise events in a completely immersive, fantasy environment, where you can do things that you could simply never do in the real world, and that’s where the events industry can shine and really help shape the metaverse. Right now, the metaverse consists of blocky little avatars that walk around an environment modelled on our own world. But our world is our world and we’re not going to improve on that, we shouldn’t try. Instead, the metaverse should be about creating this incredible abstract world, where, for example, we could go skydiving together, infinitely because we’re never going to hit the ground. We could have meetings and discussions while surrounded by waterfalls or surrounded by beautiful animals. We could have a meeting on Mars and it would be 100
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