Microsoft and Nvidia are working on their metaverse, they assure that it will be more practical

Last week Facebook changed its name to Meta, entering the metaverse fully. Now with all this it is not surprising that other greats in the technology industry are beginning to talk about their own visions in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).

At this week’s Microsoft Ignite conference where NVIDIA was present, both companies displayed a more practical and business-oriented approach to the metaverse than the consumer-centric version presented by Mark Zuckerberg.

While the Meta version of the metaverse focuses on things like being able to wear the virtual reality headset, both Microsoft and Nvidia focused on team collaboration and business-to-business communication.

There are many other differences between the different metaverse perspectives. These differences speak to the intent of different organizations, the means by which they intend to get to market, and more.

Microsoft, for example, will integrate its AR Mesh technology into Teams, providing a different “view” in the Teams environment for all Teams users.

Cartoon-like avatars give participants a way to continue offering non-verbal communication cues like facial expressions, gestures, and more without needing to be in front of the camera all the time. Of course, it remains to be seen if that will actually alleviate the “always on” stress associated with endless video calling …

Mesh’s integration with Teams is also designed to make participants feel more like they are in the same physical environment. Given the expected resilience of hybrid work models, even after employees begin to return to work in greater numbers, it’s easy to imagine how some of these capabilities can provide a practical benefit.

In the case of Nvidia, the company has been talking about its Omniverse platform for several years, where it will provide a highly graphical 3D environment designed for engineers and modelers in a collaborative environment.

Omniverse Enterprise is designed to be collaboratively built by many people, from designing the latest cars to seeing how artificial intelligence-powered versions of those cars would perform in simulated environments. In fact, Omniverse provides the foundation for Nvidia’s Drive Sim efforts in autonomous driving, as well as its Isaac Sim robotic simulation platform.

Omniverse Create is the tool that leverages the company’s RTX graphics technology to create advanced scene compositions and virtual worlds with photorealistic detail and then share them via the Pixar USD format.

One of the other interesting aspects of Nvidia’s approach is its that of its partnerships. As Microsoft is doing with Teams, Nvidia continues to emphasize Omniverse as an extensible platform that other software companies and developers can leverage, including companies like Adobe, Autodesk, and more. Additionally, Nvidia is focused on working with a variety of hardware partners to help deliver the systems that can drive the Omniverse vision.

Although Zuckerberg acknowledged many times that most of the innovations needed to achieve extraordinarily impressive graphics in his metaverse are several years away, they also hinted that it would be a choice for everyone. In a sense, it will be like Ready Player One that virtually anyone who currently uses something like the Facebook app is expected to use regularly.

To be clear, calls or video calls in meetings will continue to be essential. Although at the time they are probably the least attractive of these new technologies.

That’s why at the end of the day, while it’s definitely great to think about the exciting possibilities that technologies and concepts like metaverses could allow us, the practical benefits are likely to be successful.