He jokes about it too: “I know that of all the new features of avatars, what everyone is waiting for are the legs.” During a presentation that lasted just over an hour, skilfully played between real and virtual, Mark Zuckerberg illustrated the strategy and stages of the journey towards the metaverse. A year has passed since Facebook changed its name, leaving the social network behind to focus all its efforts on creating a new platform, a virtual world where you can have fun, meet and work.
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A new digital body
Meta is not only working on the legs, but is designing a series of new features related to avatars to make them expressive and photorealistic, in order to represent themselves in different situations. It will be possible to bring avatars in the Reels of Instagram, but also in Messenger and WhatsApp for video chats, a bit like Apple’s Memoji: “It will be a cross between a live video chat and a call without video”, comments Zuckerberg . Meta will also launch a shop during the year where you can buy virtual clothes and accessories for your avatar, which you can wear in all compatible applications. Gucci, for example, will certainly be in the game, as it already sells virtual clothes and accessories.
The agreements
It is not the first and it is not the most important of the commercial agreements announced by the CEO of Menlo Park: and indeed, it is a bit of a surprise to see next to him Satya Nadella of Microsoft talking about how it will be possible to work in the metaverse using Teams and all the apps of the Office Suite, integrated into the virtual offices of Meta. “We think this kind of cross device and cross screen experience will be the foundation of the virtual office of the future,” says the CEO of Microsoft.
Another important partnership is the one with Accenture: CEO and president Julie Sweet reveals that in 2019 the company had started a collaboration with Microsoft to imagine a virtual space in which staff could gather. “Obviously this has become even more important in 2020,” Sweet explains. “Since then we have deployed 60,000 Quest 2 headsets and transformed our onboarding and training process by welcoming over 150,000 people to our virtual campus called the nth floor, which we believe is the largest corporate use case of the metaverse. This allows for a more dynamic immersion for new team members and our research shows that the experience is much more productive. People learn up to a third more information when they are inside an immersive experience ”.
The plans for the future are ambitious: to make Accenture’s internal experience available to all those realities that want to deal with the metaverse: “It will change the way people work, but it will profoundly modify every part of every company, inventing the way how you interact with your customers, the products and services you offer, the way they are produced and distributed, and the way you relate to your employees. And VR will play a huge role, ”notes Sweet.
The viewer
For this, of course, software is not enough. There is also a new VR viewer, Meta Quest Pro: it can be booked immediately, but it will only be available from 25 October at 1,799.99 euros. The price includes the viewer, the Meta Quest Touch Pro controllers, the charging base and various accessories. It is not a device for everyone: “It is the first device in our new high-end line, equipped with innovative features, such as high-resolution sensors that guarantee great mixed reality experiences, LCD display for clear images, a completely new design and more elegant, plus an eye tracking system and natural facial expressions that will allow your avatar to represent you even more naturally in VR, ”explains Zuckerberg. We had already talked about this and the next viewers on which the Meta Reality Lab is working. Today’s presentation is an opportunity for the CEO of Meta to remember the partnership with Essilor Luxottica, which reserves the Italian company a leading role in the creation of the next VR viewers, largely designed and manufactured in Milan.
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For companies
With the new headsets for the professional audience comes Quest for Business, the subscription bundle for Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro, which includes essential functions for companies such as device and app management. Coming next year, along with new features for Horizon Workrooms, the VR space for connecting and collaborating teams: more expressive avatars, workgroups with spatial audio, sticky notes for the whiteboard, the new controller stylus tip for better writing and a personal office that offers the ability to use large virtual screens and color pass-through mode for increased productivity. There is also room for integration with Zoom, which however will be available “in the long term”.
On all platforms
Thus Zuckerberg opens up to a less rigid and limited vision of the metaverse, with concessions to mixed reality, or to the possibility of interacting with the outside world: the new Quest Pro also allow you to see the surrounding environment and not just immerse yourself in virtual reality. . But, aware that “it will take a while before there are enough viewers” (we need 200 million), in the meantime he announces that Meta’s metaverse will also be accessible through other devices, and even via the web, just as happens today with Decentraland , another popular virtual reality platform.
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Opportunities
To create virtual worlds, Meta will make its online platforms and software available, but a giant like Adobe will optimize the current offer for 3D; with a package of programs designed especially for the metaverse. “This is an incredible technology that offers so many opportunities,” said Mark Zuckerberg. “We believe in this vision, the more people and creators there are now in virtual reality and the more brands in the metaverse, it is a sign that the future is not that far away. We have been there from the beginning. Apart from the games, it will be a social experience. “Zuckerberg also released some data: to date, 1.5 billion dollars have been spent on games and applications in the Meta Quest store, and about one in three titles has a turnover. million dollars A game like The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners has surpassed $ 50 million in revenue on Meta Quest alone, nearly double the revenue on all other platforms. There are many more games to come, in the coming months and years: from the surprise announcement of Marvel’s Iron Man VR on Meta Quest 2 to updates on Among Us VR e The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners – Chapter 2: Retributiona brand new Skydance Interactive project.
One in three
Those are big announcements today, but Zuckerberg still has a lot of work to do to convince the world that the metaverse is worth investing in. Starting with his employees, who apparently are not exactly enthusiastic about the vault, as reported by the New York Times. Not that things are better outside Menlo Park: the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, had said in an exclusive interview with Italian Tech that he was not sure “that many today can say what virtual reality means”. The confirmation comes from Turin, where in the first Metaverse Festival in Italy, an opinion poll was presented entitled Young people and innovation in the metaverse scenario, by Professor Roberto Baldassari, General Director Lab21.01 and Director of the Scientific Committee ANGI (Italian Association of Young Innovators). Only 32% of Italians know what the metaverse is: more men than women (59% – 41%), younger (41%) than over 55 (10%). Of the young Italians who claim to know the metaverse, only 7% have had an “immersive” experience, 74% have not yet done so.
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