Now imagine what all was possible and available to us through Second Life and PlayStation Home app. I will say it was really awesome and very much ahead of it’s time as for some reasons PlayStation Home app was discontinued in the year 2015.
We have got a fair understanding how Metaverse as a concept was not new for the gaming industry and its users. There are games where players spent a good numbers of hours daily and sometimes it leads to hundreds of hours to master a game play with a players digital avatar, fighting and interacting with other players (through their avatar) in a virtual world. Through these games and gaming platforms players collects virtual currency and points to unlock gaming levels, enhance their skills, outfits, and goodies to customize their avatars.
There were video games like GTA (Grand Theft Auto) that fall under the category of open world games, which provide the player a lot of flexibility while they play a free-roaming role-playing video game. In GTA, the player chooses the missions they wish to do, and these decisions affect how they interact with other characters. At any time during the game, players are allowed to explore the digital version of a real life city in form of basic simulation that includes city building, roads, different mode of transportations, city people who walks on the street, drive cars and follow traffic rules.
So we can say that to a decent extent there was already a Metaverse in the gaming world and the primary driver for Metaverse past was the gaming industry and gaming community.
If you look at the AR and VR industry, then from the past few decades we are having significant developments in these areas. The primary driver to these industry from creativity / imagination / inspiration aspects standpoint was mainly the gaming industry.
Early prototypes of video games were developed in labs in the 1960s, but it was Atari’s release of Pong in 1972 that helped to kickstart the industry.
Augmented Reality technology was invented in 1968, with Ivan Sutherland’s development of the first head-mounted display system. Boeing Computer Services Research employee Thomas Caudell coined the term Augmented Reality in 1990.
Virtual reality technology was invented in 1957 by Morton Heilig. His multimedia device called the Sensorama is considered one of the earliest VR systems. The term Virtual Reality (VR) was initially introduced by Jaron Lanier, founder of VPL Research in 1989.
It will be good to know about AR and VR at least from their respective definition context to build some basic understanding.
Augmented Reality
“Augmented Reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content.”
Pokémon GO mobile game has demonstrated how to to create a powerful location-based Augmented Reality (AR) game. In AR we put digital 3D images or 3D models onto the real world and these 3D image or 3D models can be further enhanced with digital details.
Virtual Reality
“Virtual Reality (VR) is a simulated experience that can be similar to or completely different from the real world.”
AltspaceVR Social Platform (initial release — 2015) allowed users to interact with items, cast content from the Internet into virtual screens, and occupy a shared virtual area with spatial voice interactions. Moreover, it enables additional hardware for body tracking and eye tracking. In VR we put a user into the virtual / digital created / simulated world and further provides interaction elements for the users to perform actions within the virtual / digital world.
The majority of virtual reality (VR) games are centred on player immersion and are often played with a headset or head-mounted display unit with stereoscopic displays and one or more controllers.
Virtual Reality devices has been introduced to providing more immersive experiences to the end users like Sony has launched PlayStation VR headset for their gamers to play with immersive experience some of their popular titles on PlayStation VR. The Oculus Rift was the first widely known Virtual Reality HMD that became available for consumer purchase in 2016.
Lets have a look at list of VR devices, AR development kits and Gaming Engines that has been contributing for quite some time in the Metaverse Past.
VR Devices
HTC Vive, Facebook / Meta Oculus Rift, *Samsung Gear VR, *Google DayDream, Microsoft HoloLens, PlayStation VR
AR Development Kits
*Wikitude, ARKit by Apple, ARCore by Google , Vuforia AR platform
Cross-platform Game Engine
Unity 3D, Unreal Engine, Godot
Google DayDream was discontinued and same with Samsung Gear VR.
Wikitude was launched in 2008 later acquired by Qualcomm
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