So far, we have three basic "metaverse" approaches.
1. Augmented reality, that is, overlays on the real world. A cross between Pokemon Go and Google Glass. The Facebook version of this would probably look like that "Hyperreality" video I mention too often. This is all too likely to happen, if only to free up the hands of people who walk through the world staring at their phones. John Carmack expects it as soon as the headgear gets down to eyeglass size.
2. Virtual reality, that is, some simulated place you can visit. This may or may not involve headgear. This is really Second Life with better frame rates, or VRchat with a bigger world. It's striking that the newer metaverse wannabees have far lower visual quality than either of those. Roblox is the technical leader in this area, with a strong R&D team and a good technical roadmap. Unfortunately, their market is centered at age 13, so they censor very heavily. Holding hands is prohibited.
3. Virtual scarcity, that is, NFTs and land in virtual worlds. This is way overhyped. I expect the SEC to come down hard on a lot of that stuff soon, like they did with the ICO crowd in 2018. Selling NFTs for sports team collectables is probably OK. Selling virtual land before you build your virtual world is clearly a security, per the Howey test. The collectable NFT stuff peaked months ago. That works like Beanie Babies on eBay - $5000 asked, no bids, actual sales around $50. It turns out that OpenSea was front-running and Beeple's big sale was not arms-length. Same old scams, shiny new packaging.
I'm into the technical end of #2. This is a rather lonely place right now, even in the game development community. There are interesting problems to be solved in building large-scale virtual worlds with high-detail user content. That's not impossible, although many people think it is.
(Plug: See [1] for a demo.) The number of people actually doing anything of technical interest, as opposed to blithering about the "metaverse", is surprisingly small. I haven't even found a serious forum where such issues are discussed. I've read about a hundred of My First Metaverse Article at this point, though.
I don't believe in headgears, even though facebook will try hard to monetize their investment in oculus. Phones were successful because they adopt the unintrusive form factor of a book: you don't need to make time and space away from reality for it. VR/AR requires the time and space to be alone and it wears out over time as the bandwidth of communication is low, probably even lower than in video chat.
But turning every game to a social 3d world you can use on a laptop and (minimally use) in a phone is something that might work. I mean simple social gaming like farmville is already bridging those form factors.
I could see AR working if we get glasses that compare to your average or bit cumbersome safety glasses. That is you wear them, maybe not entirely love having them, but they do something useful for you. Overlay video, recipe, map. Provide information about surroundings. That is you are either working or maybe walking around and need to navigate, but don't want to keep your phone out all the time.
VR I just don't see getting there. It blocks your vision causing multiple problems, and technology is nowhere near where you would want to wear one for extended period of time.
Still more intrusive than phones. People don't wear glasses if they dont have to. the glasses would have to provide a lot of value to force people to wear them often. And while we see a lot of cool AR demos for specialized things like learning to cook, i m struggling to think what would be the use of glasses to me, right here sitting on my desk right now. Attention is limited and i could either watch the glasses or my screen. We are not robots (unlike zuck)
1. Augmented reality, that is, overlays on the real world. A cross between Pokemon Go and Google Glass. The Facebook version of this would probably look like that "Hyperreality" video I mention too often. This is all too likely to happen, if only to free up the hands of people who walk through the world staring at their phones. John Carmack expects it as soon as the headgear gets down to eyeglass size.
2. Virtual reality, that is, some simulated place you can visit. This may or may not involve headgear. This is really Second Life with better frame rates, or VRchat with a bigger world. It's striking that the newer metaverse wannabees have far lower visual quality than either of those. Roblox is the technical leader in this area, with a strong R&D team and a good technical roadmap. Unfortunately, their market is centered at age 13, so they censor very heavily. Holding hands is prohibited.
3. Virtual scarcity, that is, NFTs and land in virtual worlds. This is way overhyped. I expect the SEC to come down hard on a lot of that stuff soon, like they did with the ICO crowd in 2018. Selling NFTs for sports team collectables is probably OK. Selling virtual land before you build your virtual world is clearly a security, per the Howey test. The collectable NFT stuff peaked months ago. That works like Beanie Babies on eBay - $5000 asked, no bids, actual sales around $50. It turns out that OpenSea was front-running and Beeple's big sale was not arms-length. Same old scams, shiny new packaging.
I'm into the technical end of #2. This is a rather lonely place right now, even in the game development community. There are interesting problems to be solved in building large-scale virtual worlds with high-detail user content. That's not impossible, although many people think it is. (Plug: See [1] for a demo.) The number of people actually doing anything of technical interest, as opposed to blithering about the "metaverse", is surprisingly small. I haven't even found a serious forum where such issues are discussed. I've read about a hundred of My First Metaverse Article at this point, though.
[1] https://vimeo.com/640175119