Can We Expect The Metaverse To Become 4D?

While it may sound absurd at first for some, the metaverse isn’t just a far-off hypothetical notion. Today, major companies are investing heavily into virtual reality wearables, and popular blockchain games like Axie Infinity serve as early concepts of peer-to-peer virtual worlds. With so much development behind it, and its promise to enable anyone to do anything, the metaverse is most certainly inevitable. But the path to that journey and the ultimate repercussions of this web3 wonder is still not known.

VR technologies began to emerge in themid-late 1900s, but VR didn’t catch on until budding VR company, Oculus, showcased its Oculus Rift almost a half-century later. The most advanced and comfortable headset to date, gaming enthusiasts world-round eagerly awaited its launch. However, all were shocked when Meta (then Facebook) purchased Oculus in 2014 and went completely silent about the project. After 5 years without updates, VR seemed dead until suddenly the Oculus Quest hit the market with a major bang.

Though the Oculus Quest was a success, VR enthusiasts were confused about Mark Zuckerberg’s intentions with VR. Then, in the October of 2021, Mark Zuckerberg rebranded Facebook to Meta, and focused the company on metaverse development.

Some saw Meta’s rebrand as a  bandwagon for a quick cash-grab. However, factoring in Meta’s acquisition of Oculus half a decade earlier, it seems more likely that Mark Zuckerberg had everything planned from the start. pax.world, a rising metaverse tech company, sees Meta’s rebrand as a well-planned strategy aimed at keeping the company relevant in a fast-changing world; a plan that has been headed towards that direction  for a while.

The Future Of The Metaverse

To see where the future of the metaverse could be headed, it’s useful to compare the metaverse’s progress so far to that of the world’s most-loved media format – cinema!

The first film was released in 1896, and was a 50-second black-and-white short titled “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat”. It featured a single train chugging along an extension of tracks towards the camera. When it was first shown in theaters, audiences were so terrified of being run over that they ran clear out of showrooms. And yet, audiences were gripped by the captivating experience. An instant phenomenon, “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” started something big – immersion, the feeling of being in the action, became the driving force behind future developments in cinematography.

Understanding the importance of immersion in media experiences, pax.world is guiding the direction of the metaverse with immersive technologies like virtual reality, 3D viewing for NFTs, and life-like avatars that can be generated via real-world facial scanning. pax.world sees these technologies as part of the next step in the metaverse’s evolution that will enhance the experience and set a new standard, just as color film did for cinema.

Black and white films became commonplace and were produced until the 1950s when advances in colored film made full-color movies easy and cheap to produce. While full-color movies are still popular today, cinema continued to progress with the popularization of CGI and 3D movies in the early 2010s. Since then, theaters have begun experimenting with 4D experiences, during which movies are enhanced with features like sensor-equipped motion seats, wind, strobe, weather, and scents.

Each step in cinema’s evolution strived to heighten immersion and create even more life-like experiences. VR headsets are the “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat” moment for VR, the catalysts that kick off the next leaps forward. What’s next for VR will likely be 4D technologies that get us closer to truly life-like virtualized experiences.

At least, that’s Meta’s bet. In November of last year, Meta showed off its haptic glove prototype that enabled people to feel VR objects, a hint at what the future holds. pax.world is also working on enhanced 4D technologies like scent and touch capabilities that would give the metaverse a more realistic feel. They are also pioneering life-like avatars with facial scanning along with advanced socialization, education, entertainment, and commerce systems. Put together, these aspects will create truly immersive and real experiences.