First Steps in the Metaverse

I've gotten extremely excited recently about the possibilities of the Metaverse, NFT's and what it could mean for my Faketrix Universe project.

Through my research I believe that very soon, just as Facebook started off as a niche student populated social media site, the 3D virtual spaces and augmented reality worlds of the metaverse will be as widely used by adults, kids and grandparents alike. The fully immersive 3D virtual worlds will be incredible, but I believe that augmented reality (AR) is what's going to make the connection between virtual and reality, with AR goggles, or glasses and eventually contact lenses, virtual NFT goods such as T shirts, shoes or any other virtual accessory can be worn in augmented reality, and be seen through other peoples AR lenses as animated garments.

I've been looking at a few of the companies ALREADY doing this!

It's crazy that there are companies out there right now selling VIRTUAL animated jumpers for crazy amounts of money, and people are taking them and putting them on their avatars in online virtual spaces such as IMVU. This is also being done with NFT art, being bought on one site, maybe through a virtual NFT exhibition, then being taken out of that virtual space and being placed in their avatars virtual home in IMVU. This is the metaverse! It exists right now. The only difference is that it is not fully immersive, like how the future of the metaverse will be..

For example, once AR glasses come in, Me and a friend could be sat in a real life room, and then a third friend could join us in a conference call (zoom, teams, whatever) but instead of being on a screen, the third friend would appear as a hologram, only viewed through our AR lenses. The Covid lockdown has thought us how important digital connectivity is, and how it can help the environment etc.. With companies saving money by keeping staff at home, even closing offices due to the benefits of working from home.. And with this more and more

people have been meeting online, but its come with its issues, only ever seeing a floating head on a screen, it's been great, but it can definitely feel better, this augmented reality, where it could feel more like a real person in the room with you, could really help this feeling of distance.

I joined the online chat room site IMVU as a school kid, interested in this new immersive world, I was playing club penguin at the same time, and there seemed to be more to do on that, and so I stuck with that for a bit longer. Tonight I joined IMVU again, just to see what was possible in this virtual space..

It's interesting to see how much it hasn't seemed to have changed since I was on it last, from what I can remember anyway.

I found myself wandering around different chat rooms looking for things to 'do', asking questions about IMVU itself, and trying to work out if it was anything more than a 3D chat room.

This is the first place I came to, a cafe by the looks of it. just me and this random person, who said absolutely nothing... not much a of a chat room..

Creator mode sounded interesting... But it's locked, costs money to do that.. on later research I found out that this opens up a door to a whole new commerce platform. More on this later.

I then stumbled across this mansion house where I continued my quest to discover what this virtual world is all about.. I found myself laying on this bed questioning my existence (virtual existence that is) I asked a stranger what IMVU is all about and if there's anything else to do in here other than talk? They're reply was "It's about kissing sex and adult stuff", which I was shocked at really, like, yeah I can get down with the whole virtual dating

thing, a bit more of an in person feeling than just sending faceless messages right? being able to interact with each other.. but sex? what? It's not about sex is it?

Anyway, maybe it is... I don't know.

I'm married with two kids, if this is the way, this ain't for me.

With not much of an answer, and the technicalities of virtual sex to ponder, I continued my mission..

I found myself in a virtual cinema, I particularly enjoyed this, the idea of it more so, reflecting my ideas of a Faketrix cinema... The film wasn't playing, just an image from that film with topless men... maybe IMVU is about sex?

This was a pretty tranquil place, I walked around a bit amongst the flowers, then found everyone else, just stood around, and I started to pay attention to their conversations. There's the conversation on screen where they're talking about KBs, I dunno what they were on about... But the conversation then turned to fashion, what they were wearing, how much it all costs etc... Ironically, in this tranquil space a group of people stood around judging each others outfits, their virtual outfits. It was hilarious just watching this scene unfold. It opened my eyes to this hidden commerce world underneath the surface.

Anyway, this is the navigation screen, where you go from one virtual world to the other. I believe these places are built by players themselves, then made public, it seems to me that you can generally have about 10 people in each room at a time.