Metaverse: Tech areas with high growth potential for entrepreneurs and startups
As the metaverse unfolds in front of our eyes, newer and better technologies are emerging. Some of these technologies have been with us for years (but with different use cases) but some are completely novel.
With each new tech or improvement to the existing tech, comes an opportunity to scale its development and monetize its use case. This presents a huge potential for the entrepreneurs and startups who want to get a piece of metaverse development. Here are some of the tech areas that I feel will truly emerge during metaverse development:
- Haptics:
This tech creates an experience of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user. Metaverse is being promoted in the name of immersion. Unless people can feel the sensation of touch, immersion will never fully develop. This presents a massive opportunity to tech startups working in the haptics industry.
2. Hand and Eye tracking:
Gestures tracking such as hand and eyes tracking is another tech area that is developing fast. Hand tracking is a part of many new games while eye tracking can be a major cyber security and accessibility feature. With these techs developed, people will not need bulky controllers to interact in metaverse
3. Mixed Reality (along with AR/VR to develop “XR”):
We can already see implementation of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) within multiple apps/software that we use regularly. For example, Ikea Place allows users to visualize how the furniture looks in their homes using AR. Similarly, Ikea recently launched Virtual showrooms using VR. There are many other examples using these techs individually or together (called “Mixed Reality”)
As the metaverse grows, it will use the whole spectrum of immersion ranging from AR (a digital layer on top of physical world) to the VR (fully digital immersion). This use of AR, VR and MR in metaverse is being referred as Extended Reality (XR). These present a big opportunity for startups developing head gears, software and applications focusing on these realities.
4. Avatars:
Similar to the profiles and account for different social media platforms, avatars will provide an identify as well as a character to the users in the metaverse. The key to these avatars is they need to be persistent meaning one avatar should be able to move across multiple platforms. We will see full implementation of metaverse only when we can achieve interoperability at this level.
Platforms like Ready Player Me are already creating such cross-game 3D avatars. No wonder, brands like L’Oreal are partnering with these platform to attract users.
5. Computer Vision:
Object and facial recognition, gesture recognition will prove to be critical when people start interacting using their avatars in metaverse. This is where improved AI and ML models creating better computer vision will prove to be a huge area of implementation.
6. Sensors:
None of the haptic and gesture tracking feature will work without development of appropriate sensors. These sensors have to compact, effective and affordable for wide adoption of the metaverse. Companies like Texas instruments, Ultraleap, etc. are already pouring a ton of money in the R&D.
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