• Companies are exploring different corners of virtual worlds.
• We are still short of technology required to build the metaverse.

Flying dragons, supercar chases, deceiving Godzilla-like creatures guarding a destination and more. All of it seems surreal. It is indeed. But the metaverse doesn’t consider what is real or a work of fantasy. It just brings them to life. However, there’s more to virtual worlds. Some are calling it the industrial metaverse.

Metaverse Could Play a Crucial Role For Future Industries

A few are skeptical about the future of the metaverse, one even declared it dead. However, companies are running factories in this ‘dead space.’ MIT Sloan sees the industrial metaverse as a real-world problems solver. From improved design and engineering to upskilling employees, in the future it could play a crucial role in various industries.

Physical presence won’t be a necessity. A remote worker won’t exactly be remote. She could attend an executive meeting in Manhattan while settling on a couch in a cabin located near the hills of Bali, Indonesia. Covid-19 gave us a glimpse of how organizations can run without expensive office buildings.

Companies are exploring different corners of virtual worlds. For instance, sports goods giant Adidas Originals bought a digital land plot in The Sandbox, a metaverse game, in December 2021. They collaborated with leading non-fungible token (NFT) collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Gmoney, who revealed his identity last year.

Real time data flows could become the norm, expediting time-consuming activities. For example, imagine if a motor engineer can actually see different parts of an automobile come alive in the metaverse. He does not necessarily need to go beneath the undercarriage to look for technical inconsistencies. This will become a reality with the metaverse.

Doctors won’t have to travel to see a complex case to cure. Surgical Theatre, an extended reality (XR) service provider in healthcare, is already assisting surgeons at Mayo Clinic, a leading medical center. As blockchain will be an integral element of the metaverse, electronic health record (EHR) security will likely enhance.

A Long Way Home

But we are still lacking the technology required to build the metaverse at a scale that is significant. A digital twin is supposed to be photorealistic, unlike Meta Platforms’ Horizon Worlds today. Nowadays, attention to details gives a game its unique selling proposition. See how games have evolved since 2000. 

Graphic processing units (GPUs), 6G, supercomputers and more advanced tech is needed to bring an authentic virtual world to reality. Nonetheless, it’s costly and could take years to advance. Maybe 1, maybe 20, or more, no soul can tell. What we know is the potential it carries with it.

It won’t come with a cost however. Cybersecurity risks persist, even terrorism could stretch its roots to leverage this technology. Metaverse is deemed as a decentralized space, still it requires some policing to keep things from getting out of hand.