Monday, 17 February 2025

February 2025 - Metaverse News and Links

 

Stories that have caught our eye about what is going on in the Metaverse right now.

  • Microsoft moving away from Hololens and XR hardware - with Palmer Luckey's Anduril taking it forward for military use in the US Army's IVAS project, which we cover in The Military Metaverse
  • Open-Verse has been set up as an EU funded project to promote "open, and ethically responsible European Virtual Worlds" and metaverse companies
  • Schools use virtual reality to tackle gang culture - BBC News report of a project in a Birmingham school around knife crime - sounds very similar to a project we did in Lanarkshire in 2010 on knife crime and youth culture - creating NPC avatars that intimidated the player avatars was a challenge, but we did it.




As ever, good sources for these and other stories are:


Friday, 17 January 2025

January 2025 - Metaverse News and Links

 

This seemed to work OK last year so will continue to do it. One post per month, updating each month as we find links and news relevant to the series.


- Microsoft Introduces Trellis — An AI Model That Turns An Image Into 3D Objects - via Medium



Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Military Metaverse proof returned

 Andy and I have finished responding to the copy editors comments and sent the manuscript back, along with a couple of image tweaks. Next step will be when T&F send us a set of the "voucher proofs" - the book laid out ready for print as PDF and we get one final chance to spot any typos! That will be mid Feb, and then we should be on track for a May release.


Monday, 6 January 2025

Military Metaverse copyediting

 

(placeholder book cover image)


Andy Fawkes and I are now hard at work going through the copyeditor's comments for the Military Metaverse book, which will probably be out in May 2025. The contents look like this:

  • Chapter 1 – An Early History of the Military Metaverse
  • Chapter 2 – A Recent History of the Military Metaverse
  • Chapter 3 – What is the Military Metaverse?
  • Chapter 4 – The Metaverse for Capability Acquisition and Support
  • Chapter 5 – The Metaverse for Individual Training & Education
  • Chapter 6 – The Metaverse for Team and Collective Training
  • Chapter 7 – The Metaverse for Analysis and Planning
  • Chapter 8 – The Metaverse for Operations
  • Chapter 9 – Social Virtual Worlds
  • Chapter 10 – An Enterprise Military Metaverse
  • Chapter 11 – War in the Metaverse


The Military Metaverse explores the impact that the Metaverse is having today on how the world's militaries procure, maintain, train, plan and fight, and how the Metaverse presents new challenges and opportunities for future conflict.

The military were early adopters of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies and wider simulation systems. Before 2010 they were one of the few sectors that could afford the technology, and millions of military R&D dollars went into developing and understanding these technologies. However, as the democratisation of metaverse technologies has happened over the past decade there is a danger that militaries have been overtaken and caught short, encumbered with expensive legacy systems, sold and maintained by expensive prime contractors, whilst the gaming and consumer market has cheaper and more innovative and agile systems. The book provides a history of the use of metaverse technologies in the military, particularly in the areas of design, maintenance, training, planning and operations. It then examines the current state of the art in these areas and the opportunities that are available from the current generation of consumer-driven approaches. The drivers for, challenges to, and paths towards an enterprise approach to the Military Metaverse are then presented. The book explores the military use of social virtual worlds, of early work done by defence and security organisations in worlds such as Second Life, and how such environments could become important for intelligence as well as influence operations in the future. Finally, the book will consider what war in the Metaverse might look like, both in terms on in-world activities and the impact of cyber-war on the Metaverse itself.

It should be of interest to all militaries across the world, the industries that support them and those in academic and the wider public with an interest in the military and defence. 


 

Monday, 9 December 2024

December 2024 - Metaverse News and Links

 

  • Decentraland's 2025 Vision
  • Taiwan virtual world GOXR has closed, with the parent company focussing on its brand-new community platform XRSPACE. GOXR had a very nice 3D floor model of Taiwan and an AI driven avatar guide.

Tuesday, 29 October 2024

The Metaverse Series - Physical Launch Event




We had a great launch event for The Metaverse Series and our first two books at Blackfriars Hall in Oxford on the evening of 24th October 2024. The photo above shows Maggi, David, our editor Randi (who had managed to fly across from the USA to join us), and our kind and generous hosts at Blackfriars, the Regent and the Director of the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice at Blackfriars.

Dr Maria Power, Senior Research Fellow in Human Dignity at Blackfriars Hall, hosted the event (and took the photos). David provided a short(ish) introduction to the Metaverse and the Critical Introduction book - but instead of using slides projected our space in Frame up onto the screen and walked his avatar through the information garden about the book in order to highlight key elements of the text. Maggi then spoke about the Learning and Education book, discussing liminality, C.S. Lewis and his notion of a hall as a waiting room between many doors (David actually built The Wood Between the Worlds in Second Life as a way of moving between spaces there), and "learning assemblages" in the metaverse and how they challenged more traditional linear scaffolding (a hot topic in the discussion afterwards).

We then had 3 guest speakers: Prof. Nigel Crook of Oxford Brookes University,  Prof. Sarah Hayes of the University of Bath Spa and Dave White of the University of the Arts. Nigel talked about the impact of the Metaverse on an individuals moral development, and as a place where humans and robotic intelligences might be able to co-operate and even bond. Sarah discussed the relationship between the Metaverse and the post-digital world and thought, the biodigital and the role of the Metaverse in inclusion and entrepreneurship. David talked about the false dichotomy between "real" and physical/digital, the importance of place and presence to our lives, the impact of COVID and the Zoomification of our lives, and how the Metaverse potentially is an expression of our grieving for place.


(I'm just setting the timer for my talk, honest!)


There was then an open discussion driven by questions from the floor, exploring issues such as identity in virtual worlds, accessibility and the creation of "disabled" avatars, and the role of embodiment.

All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening and a great launch for the series. Our thanks to all involved, and especially to Blackfriars Hall for hosting us and providing technical and logistical support, and to Randi and Taylor & Francis for being so supportive of us and the series.

Remember that our Metaverse Series microverse and the information garden for the Critical Introduction book is still available directly in your browser at https://framevr.io/themetaverseseries-home.