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. 

 

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.

November 2024 - Metaverse News and Links

 

Some of the more interesting bits of news we spotted around the Internet about the Metaverse this month:

• VR Is Changing War & Sex, Why Are We Still Acting Like It Is Just A Game?
• https://www.auganix.org/xr-news-khronos-group-and-vrm-consortium-collaborate-to-expand-vrm-avatar-format-globally/ - extending the glTF standard into avatar design using VRM.
• Philip Rosedale appointed as CTO back at Linden Lab to help drive Second Life forward again:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Mu2Rpgpw4&t=1s&ab_channel=SecondLife
• https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/entry/15941-philip-rosedale-returns-as-cto-to-help-build-the-future-of-second-life

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.

October 2024 - Useful Links

 

Whilst I post interesting Metaverse news to my Twitter feed, I thought it might also be useful to post them here. But since they don't merit a whole post for each one I'll experiment with the idea of a monthly post that I add to during the month as news comes in. We'll see how it goes!

• EU's ideas for Web 4.0 and virtual worlds -  https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_3718
• Using AI to turn old video game/virtual world machina (and other) footage into more realistic video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrAomadM4c
• BMW's M Mixed Reality system - you drive a real BMW round a race track but wear an MR headset which augments the view around the track (as far as I can work out form the description!)
• Ready Player Me launches Player Zero - essentially NFT "collectible" outfits
• Nice summary from Immersive Wire about VR in China, particularly location-based VR.
• Ernst Kline (of Ready Player One fame) is backing a new Battle Royale world called Open (but bet it isn't!) from Readyverse Studios.
• Decentraland 2.0 White Paper, head of their 2.0 launch
• POC of using AR/MR to rewrite reality as you see it - https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/1g9iwcg/lifeskin_app_concept/?rdt=60673
• HeyGen demo video - virtual presenters - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3225dV0lyQ&ab_channel=HeyGen

Also always worth checking out Immersive Wire for a whole range of stories, only key ones of which I'll repost here.

 

Here's a new way to sample our new book - The Metaverse: A Critical Introduction - by NotebookLM generated podcast. It's about 19 mins long (but still very listenable at x1.5). Enjoy!

https://www.taunoyen.com/media/The%20Metaverse_%20A%20Critical%20Introduction.wav

(apologies for the pronunciation of MUDs and MOOs!)

It's interesting how its remixed the axioms and the end scenarios a bit, but certainly catching the gist, and how the female "presenter" brings in her previous history and experiences in virtual worlds.

Odd that Google haven't work out how to end a podcast yet though!

Server Meshing

 

Given recent announcements by Unreal and other vendors there is growing interest in server meshing in MMOs and virtual worlds  - being able to dynamically assign computer resources to different parts of a world as user (and other activity) in each space increases. The idea of having different servers supporting adjacent parts of a world so that you can walk from one server to another is nothing new, it's how Second Life works, but in SL each server has fixed to its supporting region. The key innovation here is that you have a pool of servers or compute resources and you assign them to regions needed - static regions with no one in them get nothing, busy regions with lots of activity and avatars get lots of compute.

More info at:

- https://nosygamer.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-server-meshing-wars-have-begun.html