TECH SPEC
We could have a meeting on Mars and it would be 100 per cent believable. Our brains would be fooled
technology happening, both hardware and software are getting ever more powerful while they’re also getting cheaper. Ten years from now the immersive, high-definition virtual reality headsets will be much more widespread. The issue is with a 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. So, is themetaverse here to stay or is it a fad? Yes, it’s here to stay... but it’s not here yet!
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. Howdo you see events in themetaverse developing? At the moment, 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 these incredible abstract worlds, 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 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 together, 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. 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 immersive worlds. You can organise events inside the game and event concerts – some of the world’s most attended concerts have happened inside video games. What are the cost implications of events in theMetaverse? There is a democratisation of
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