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Forbes
Forbes
Technology
Tim Bajarin, Contributor

The Missing Link In A Metaverse-For-All Vision

Will it be possible to participate in a Metaverse without using glasses or goggles? getty

By now just about everyone on the planet has heard about the Metaverse. Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg introduced his version of the Metaverse in late 2021 while renaming his company, Meta. NVidia has their version of a “metaverse” called the "Omniverse", although their version is more focused on the enterprise. 

Zuckerberg, nVidia, and others have their own visions for the Metaverse. The reality is that the term and concept mean producing a virtual world where users will have access to a 3D environment. There they can play immersive games, connect virtually and eventually shop and do business in some type of virtual world. 

Today the concept of virtual worlds and how they will manifest themselves is in its early stages. However, all theories of the Metaverse include creating and interacting in virtual environments in some form or another. 

At the moment, all of the approaches to interacting with the Metaverse include the need for using some type of goggles or a headset like Meta's Oculus models. Alternatively a type of worn glasses would be optimized for AR content. Zuckerberg's vision heavily relies on a headset like his Oculus 2, while Apple is expected someday to enter this market with some form of glasses that are optimized more for AR. 

The need to use a headset to gain access to the Metaverse will be OK for some. However, the biggest hole in delivering the Metaverse to the masses revolves around the question of whether everyone can and will adopt using headsets to get the benefits of these exciting virtual worlds in the future. 

For the last 40 years, the way people access digital information has been through their PCs. The PC democratized information and made it accessible to billions of people around the world. Granted it delivers that digital information in 2D but that is all it can do using its current technology and form factor.  

However, given that the PC is the broadest way for people to interact with digital data, could it eventually be used to deliver the 3D Metaverse, too?  

Four years ago I was introduced to a company in Silicon Valley called ZSpace. They have created a laptop that can take an object and lift it off the page so you can see it in 3D and from any angle. The model I saw back then needed cheap 3D glasses to view any objects in 3D. But I recently saw a demo of a new model and it now uses a stereoscopic screen so you don't even need the 3D glasses for it to work. It uses a special pen to manipulate the 3D objects and navigate the corresponding content. 

In one demo I saw I was able to lift a picture of a heart so that it jumped off the screen and allowed me to view it 12 inches from my face. I could spin it for a 360 view and using their special software, could even explode the heart to look at each component that makes up a normal heart. One of ZSpace's first customers was from the medical field where they wanted to use it to teach virtual surgical techniques. 

In another demo, they showed me a picture of the earth modeled as a globe. Using their software I could lift the globe off the page, place it directly in front of me and spin it to see all of the continents and countries laid out in 3D. They also showed me a prototype of a retail shoe store where I could take a shoe off the rack, lift it in front of me, and a 3D version of that shoe could be spun around and viewed at any angle so I could see how it was made and check it out it in 3D. 

This type of software got the attention of teachers and the ZSpace laptop is now being used in thousands of schools across the U.S. to help bring science, geography, and many more subjects to life to enhance the learning experience. 

While their current models are optimized for medical and educational purposes, their technology represents a potential way for a PC or laptop to also become a medium for delivering access to the Metaverse or virtual worlds. 

This would take a lot of work on their part to optimize their technology for this purpose but given the core patented technology they have, it is very feasible that this system could be modified to become a third means for delivering access to virtual worlds in the future. 

This is an important perspective the traditional PC makers need to look at. They have spent 40 years helping democratize information but only in a 2D format. If the Metaverse and virtual worlds are the next big thing, as many technologists believe, how do these PC makers grow their market? To be fair, all of them have their own VR headsets and glasses in the works, but as I stated above, I just don't believe that the masses will adopt these goggles or glasses any time soon, if ever.

On the other hand, the masses have adopted PCs, tablets, and smartphones and use them to connect to our current digital world. The missing link or big question in any current Metaverse vision needs to be how to deliver these brave new virtual worlds to the masses. Not all people will adopt a headset and glasses to gain the benefits of a virtual world, so there needs to be another medium for delivering this experience. 

Given the fundamental technology ZSpace has demonstrated I believe that the PC and laptop can be modified to also deliver an immersive 3D experience and has the potential of becoming, perhaps the main way people interact with virtual worlds in the future.

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