We have been emphasizing and advocating for a long time, that the fate of a technology can't be at the behest of a few big tech companies.
Though this is a statement of fact, the public perception around any new technology (or) new product revolves around the success, failure and investment of big conglomerates. Given the fact, that they have a wide reach and big media push and any new initiative or even some above average tech breakthroughs become the hot topic of the news cycle.
This happened similarly with Metaverse, when Meta rebranded itself from Facebook and announced an all on approach towards building the future of Metaverse, the entire tech community got into wild debates around it on the possibilities, impossibilities and it's complexities.
As Meta made huge billions of dollars in investment and still trying to find its ground and approach, it started raising questions on the future and potential of Metaverse. Adding fuel to the discussion was the launch of Chat GPT by Open AI and it took the Global Tech Community by storm. All the discussions started revolving around Chat GPT and AI. This paved way for the skeptics to question the future and merit of Metaverse.
There were several news articles claiming that Meta has shut down it's Metaverse operations and is focusing on AI completely and it created discussions around declaring an unwelcoming fate for Metaverse. This claim and the perception which was ingested into the tech ecosystem called out the various trends that prevail over time and started pronouncing Metaverse as one such act of technology.
On the contrary, the VR and AR Industry on the whole is growing and the VR Industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.8% from 2023 - 2030 as per Grand View Research.
Last week Meta had their earnings call and in that, Mark Zuckerberg has been reported to have stated that Meta is very much focused on their Metaverse activities and is pursuing both A.I. and Metaverse in parallel.
Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying "Building the metaverse is a long term project, but the rationale for it remains the same and we remain committed to it."
We recently saw lot of advancements in A.I which gave us some ancient and imaginary photos of superior quality and were generated in an instance. There are several advancements that are happening in the space of Generative AI including text to 3D, image to 3D etc. All of these will usher in the penetration and advancements in 3D Content Creation which is the primary crux for Metaverse & VR / AR.
Often, we come across statements that spread a wrong notion and get a course correction later on. Most of the times what works best in one market may not work in another market, but over time it will evolve and add value. Generative AI will be the best thing that has happened to the advancement and adoption of VR / AR & Metaverse and it will make 3D content creation process simpler and faster. We need real time 3D content generation in place, if we are going to spend about 20 - 25 % of our day in a virtual world.
As the technology keeps progressing in other areas of support for VR / AR like computing, processing power, optical technology etc., it's will grow even further and farther. Metaverse will become the best form of computing that we have come across, once it is fully functional across different use cases and wider access.
Metaverse is a Marathon and not a sprint and the marathon is very much on.
