Facebook aims to become a metaverse company, just like Epic Games does and many other big tech companies, who want to join the trend.
However, before living in a huge virtual universe becomes possible, we need a considerable step up in networking and, generally, the technology around us, an expert says.
The Metaverse is a very prevalent concept that is slowly becoming real.
There are numerous definitions to the Metaverse, yet the most common one describes it as a massive virtual world where millions of people (or their avatars) get to react in real-time.
The Metaverse will be an entity of its own, with its custom economy incorporating both the physical and virtual worlds and available for everybody at all times.
Some believe that in a matter of two decades, we could even go to work in the Metaverse.
Instead of going to a live football match alongside thousands of others footballers, you could just enjoy it in the Metaverse.
You can even visit a virtual store via a pair of AR glasses and be able to see millions of items.
However, the concept is not as futuristic or far-fetched as you can already use virtual reality headsets.
Epic’s Fortnite is advancing towards metaverse-like features, like the Ariana Grande concert that took place in-game this year, similar to a range of quirky events that took place online, joined by tens of millions of people across the globe.
However, the infrastructure needs a fixer-upper before a metaverse comes true.
Stepping Up The Scale
Jerry Heinz, the co-founder of Ball Metaverse Research Partners, a company performing a huge amount of research into the Metaverse, believes that, even with the present huge data centers and high-speed connectivity, the technology just isn’t ready to cope with the requirements of the Metaverse, as he mentioned during a SamKnows Podcast.
“You need highly concurrent, highly persistent experiences that are on a scale and magnitude that we haven’t really yet seen before. At a network level, it’s funny, but it’s the same problems that we’ve faced throughout all of networking history. It really boils down to our old friends latency, bandwidth and reliability,” he explained.
Picture this – There is an entirely virtual environment that tracks every single movement of yours, including your face, replicating them with high fidelity in the digital realm to make your avatar look convincing.
All of the movement translates to extra data, which will certainly be a matter that will lead to extra lag unless networks get huge improvements in the near future.
New protocols and standards are mandatory for the Metaverse to be a thing, Heinz believes.
He explained that if you aim to interact with real life, zero lag is a must.
“When you’re operating over a computer network, you have laws of physics that you have to adhere to. And it’s not a Twitch game we’re talking about, it’s an ultra-low latency experience because there’s that feeling of realism you’re looking for. With even just the slightest perception of latency, it just doesn’t feel real – something feels off,” he added.
Latency is not too much of a problem for fixed-line fiber networks, but when it comes to mobile technology, even 5G networks manifest latency to some extent.
SamKnows determined that 5G networks latency can reach hundreds of milliseconds in worst-case conditions, which would make the existence of the Metaverse impossible.
“The network itself and the protocols that need to get developed we’ll have to keep that [low latency] in mind,” Heinz stated.
He explained that latency just hadn’t been the main focus during the evolution of the internet to date.
Workarounds
There are some ways to avoid latency-related problems.
Games like Fortnite use complex algorithms to predict where the player will move to, thus somewhat decreasing latency.
However, it’s believed that a full-scale metaverse won’t be a thing anytime soon.
Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the subject, claiming that Facebook would become a metaverse company within the next five years. Still, according to Heinz, that deadline is highly unlikely.
“I would love to see Facebook and Mark drive Facebook in that direction, especially just within five years. It’s going to take that bold vision of leaders, especially in the infrastructure and content-production side, to really drive this forward, but if they believe in it, then amazing things can happen,” Heinz said.
