While we wait for the metaverse to emerge, developers have 3D platforms from Microsoft, Nvidia, Roblox, Mozilla and others to test now.
There has been a flurry of metaverse related announcements from major tech giants, including Microsoft, Nvidia and Meta (formerly Facebook). The metaverse is the latest buzzword in the tech sector. But, in the metaverse, what does it mean to be a developer? How can the community of developers contribute to the metaverse? Will it, like the web, be an open platform? Or, like the mobile app industry, will one or two giants dominate it?
Developing a metaverse application entails creating a game or “experience” for a variety of platforms, including virtual reality systems such as the Oculus Quest and HTC Vive, or emerging virtual worlds like Roblox and Fortnite, or gaming consoles like Playstation and Xbox, other mobile apps and even the web itself. Epic’s Unreal Engine, Unity, Amazon Sumerian, Autodesk’s Maya, and the open-source Blender are just a few of the developer tools available.
As a result, metaverse development is currently on a blank canvas. There aren’t any dominant platforms, unlike the mobile app market. Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta would be contributing to constructing a more open and interoperable system. Meta, no doubt, will be perfect to be one of the leading metaverse platforms in the future.
After Snapchat’s Bitmojis and Apple’s Memojis, Meta introduced its own set of create your avatar stickers. And now, it has started rolling out these stickers to not just Facebook and Messenger but also Instagram. The avatars offer a cartoonish version of you that is applied to many cool scenarios, making stickers that you can share with your friends and loved ones on Facebook and Instagram. They’re better than plain emojis as they have your uniquely-created digital-lookalike reacting to stuff.
While we wait for the metaverse platform ecosystem to emerge over the next few years, Zuckerberg thinks he would look at three current initiatives that have been labelled as “metaverse” — Microsoft’s metaverse stack, Nvidia’s Omniverse and the Metaverse product group announced by Andrew Bosworth, Facebook VP of AR/VR. He also promises to focus on how developers can participate in those platforms and potentially help determine the future of 3D applications.
Microsoft’s Metaverse Stack
“A new layer of the infrastructure stack that’s getting produced as the digital and physical worlds converge: the enterprise metaverse,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during his keynote address at the Build conference last June. He mentioned a “metaverse stack,” which allows programmers to create a rich digital model of anything physical or logical.
What’s remarkable about Microsoft’s metaverse concept is how closely it resembles the real world. Microsoft’s metaverse has no fantasy avatars, leave that to Roblox or Fortnite. In Microsoft’s universe, metaverse apps will be supported by digital twins, characterised as rich digital models of everything physical or logical, from simple assets or products to sophisticated settings.
The digital twin concept stems from the IoT, which hints at Microsoft’s objectives. It seeks to provide a platform for digitally mapping and monitoring everything in a real-world corporate setting, such as warehouses, factories, and retail stores. It’ll be similar to a three-dimensional version of Microsoft Office.
Microsoft covers pretty much everything from a developer standpoint – you can use Microsoft’s Power Platform to apply complicated machine learning techniques to digital twins or build a simple application on top of digital twin data (its low-code toolset).
Nvidia and the HTML of 3D
Recently, Nvidia announced an expansion of its Omniverse platform. Omniverse, which debuted in 2019, is an open collaboration platform for real-time graphics studio workflows. Essentially, it enables engineers to cooperate on developing a physical object by collaborating on a digital model of that thing. As a result, it follows Microsoft’s digital twin strategy.
The Omniverse is built on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description (USD) open-source technology. Richard Kerris of Nvidia’s Omniverse referred to USD as the HTML of 3D. He went on to say that many other businesses, including Apple, are in favour of it. “USD will continue to advance from its infant condition today to a full definition for the virtual world,” he said, comparing it to the path from HTML 1.0 to HTML 5.
Kerris described Omniverse as linking the open metaverse, implying that Nvidia envisions Omniverse as the 3D version of a web browser.
Users may teleport into the world with VR by portaling in and out of Omniverse using workstations or laptops. Alternatively, they may combine AR and broadcast RTX (a high-end professional visual computing platform) to any device, allowing anybody to experience the scenario on Omniverse.
The Omniverse Developer Resource Centre may teach developers to create Omniverse extensions and microservices. A development kit and instructions on how to get started creating 3D sceneries using USD are provided.
The imminent arrival of Meta
Unlike Microsoft and Nvidia, Meta’s metaverse is currently a vaporware product. Its metaverse product group was just recently launched.
Andrew Bosworth announced the group on Facebook, pointing out that two existing Facebook products, Portal (a video calling device) and Oculus, can teleport you into a room with another person, regardless of physical distance, or to new virtual worlds and experiences. And this is the sort of presence that metaverses would require, but Meta still needs to construct the connecting tissue across these locations.
It’s too soon to determine if Meta will give such connective tissue (a phrase akin to “social graph,” which Facebook popularised around 2007). However, so many of us now use Facebook as our primary social network — at least for real-world family and friend interactions — it’s understandable that Facebook would want to expand that social graph into the virtual realm.
Remember the open metaverses
Developers may now try out both Microsoft and Nvidia’s metaverse stacks, as well as metaverse visions like Roblox’s (which has an active developer hub). If you want a non-commercial metaverse, many open-source systems are available. Because Mozilla Hubs is a browser-based application, you’ll be working with web technologies such as Three.js and WASM. The Open Metaverse OS is a new open platform that capitalises on the cryptocurrency craze (NFTs, decentralised governance, and the like).
Regardless of whose image of the metaverse you choose, it’s pretty sure that we’ll see a 3D version of the web in the following years. This will give many chances for developers, similar to the emergence of the 2D web in the 1990s and early 2000s. So be ready to teleport in and have a look at these new platforms for yourself.
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