Bengaluru: Meta, the parent company of Facebook, expects a lot of the software work and applications related to the metaverse to happen out of India. Ajit Mohan, VP & MD for India at Meta, said the country will have the largest app developer ecosystem in the world in two years, so many of the metaverse applications will be built here.
In an interaction with TOI, Mohan said Meta is not building the metaverse, but is rather focussing on building toolkits for other companies and developers to build the metaverse. “This is an important point to highlight. We are helping to build what will become the metaverse, which is a combination of these connected immersive spaces that will be built by millions of other developers and creators,” he said. Meta’s ambitious metaverse plans were on full display last year when founder Mark Zuckerberg made the surprise announcement to change the company name from Facebook to Meta. The move also catapulted the concept of the metaverse into global public consciousness.
One of the crucial tools for the metaverse is the headset, which Meta is hard at work on. Its Oculus Quest is already a market leader in headsets. Last week, Zuckerberg released a video showcasing newer prototypes of the VR and AR headsets that the company has been working on over the last few years and said that they are spending at least $10 billion this year on R&D on VR/AR tech.
Many today believe that the metaverse will be the next version of the internet. “Fundamentally, it means the transition from the 2D world to the 3D world, a transition from anything that we looked at on a mobile screen, to one where you will be in it,” Mohan said. What fascinates him the most, he said, is that interactions in the metaverse can cause one to form real memories of being in a shared physical space with other people.
There are plenty of challenges still to overcome to build a metaverse that gives the feel of a physical world. More than anything else, hesaid, Meta is trying to solve the vexing problem of creating a sense of physical presence between people when they’re not in the same room. At the moment Meta’s Horizon Workrooms project, which uses the VR headset called Quest 2, can replicate certain real-life behaviours. For example, if a person on your right is speaking, the sound will come from the right. It can also capture hand movements and gestures to a certain extent.
But all of that is just the beginning. Right now, Mohan said, a lot of work is being done by Meta to capture facial expressions accurately. “A lot of the feedback that we get from people in the physical world is based on how others are responding to us. And that’s the one thing that the avatars of today limit you from doing. But imagine if you can start rendering people’s facial expressions with the help of cameras and sensors. The more you can replicate the real sense of being in a shared physical space, the more natural it will become to adopt the metaverse,” he said.
One of the company’s primary goals, Mohan said, is for a billion people to experience their version of the metaverse in 10 years from now. “If a billion people have to adopt it, it has to be affordable. So even today, the devices that we’re putting out are either at cost or below cost,” he said. Multiple companies are building similar immersive spaces. Would these spaces be interoperable? It’s a question that Mohan said Meta takes very seriously. “I think there is a belief that there are too many closed systems in the mobile world. The assumptions that we have about the physical world should translate to the metaverse as well. If I buy accessories for my avatar, like sunglasses, it shouldn’t disappear when I land in Bengaluru.”