Best Practice

Metaverse - a new world of experiences

Merging the physical world with virtual experiences with the Metaverse

The Metaverse is the next iteration of the internet, supporting ongoing online 3D virtual environments where the world’s publicly accessible virtual experiences, real-time 3D contents and other related media are connected and accessible through VR/AR, as well as through classic devices such as PC or mobile. An immersive Web3 internet, where users meet in virtual spaces, represent themselves as avatars and share virtual objects through new technologies.

Metaverse: the challenge

The user’s own digital identity being represented as an avatar should become something universal and exploitable in various Metaverse spaces. This is a big challenge with current initiatives, which are mainly centered around proprietary, locked-in Metaverse solutions. Building a system to connect these worlds, with interoperable assets and avatars, is a key step in enabling a shared Metaverse.

This will lead to the creation of a new level of reality which will be fully digital, with its own values and economy, and including an expression of ourselves, as in the real world. Many sub-challenges come with this mission: privacy, identity theft and security concerns which should not be dismissed. Web3 and decentralized technologies like blockchain could represent a solution.

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Several digital worlds co-exist in the Metaverse, where people can interact and socialise simultaneously, through digital identities known as avatars. These avatars can take on synthetic or hyper-realistic appearances, be guided by a physical person or, if supported by artificial intelligence, act independently and interact with other users in a more empathetic and engaging way than a simple conversational interface. 

Always available, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, they are able to establish several interactions with a large pool of users at the same time, online and on three-dimensional corners, covering unimaginable scales for a human being. 

Reply, combining its digital experience skills with those related to the production of conversational interfaces and AI technologies, is able to provide a highly customisable service using the best technologies available on the market, both at the avatar interface creation level and at the conversational level.

Token economy

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Within this new virtual ecosystem, digital asset ownership and transactions will be managed securely and transparently through technologies like blockchain, that enable NFTs (Non Fungible Tokens).

NFTs are cryptographic digital assets registered and transferred on blockchain, but not mutually interchangeable: they are "one-of-a-kind" assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold like any other part of a property. Each NFT represents a unique digital item that can be bought or earned by a Metaverse user and traded on the market. Digital ownership, enabled by NFTs, is a signal to show what we believe in and gives a shout out to the communities we’re part of.

Reply supports companies by educating them and broadening their perspectives of NFTs and cryptocurrencies, delivering NFT-based marketing strategies, thanks to their technical expertise and utility-oriented project design.

Immersive experiences

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One of the enablers of the Metaverse is the evolution from two-dimensional to three-dimensional virtual environments, giving users the ability to explore "volumetric" and immersive spaces and content.

Relying on technologies such as photography-based reproduction and three-dimensional modelling, Reply develops virtual environments for brands and companies which are either directly accessible for autonomous navigation, or accessible with assistance from remotely-connected experts; assistance ranging from the designing of user experiences, to support with the technical integration of virtual spaces.

Reply's virtual environments scope ranges from experience with virtual showrooms, which are true enablers of visualisation and exploration of 3D models for e-commerce platforms, to multi-user remote visits, which create the possibility of virtually exploring artworks or places from other eras.

Collaborative spaces

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From entertainment, to communication, to exclusive tours, to events and training: there is no limit to the new relational experiences that brands can create in the Metaverse. New forms of interaction between people and environments, in which the digital realm merges with the physical one, are already changing the world, not only when it comes to gaming and social networking, but also to entertainment, communication and all the areas in which people can relate to each other and collaborate. 

Having a virtual space where it is possible to “be there”, so to speak, offers the advantage of being able to reproduce complex scenarios and environments, going beyond the limits of the physical realm, within which you can interact remotely with other identities and share objects and experiences.

As Reply, we work closely with our customers, supporting them in choosing the platform that best suits the specific context, designing and developing tailor-made solutions modelled on their specific needs.

Real World Metaverse

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The development of 3D real-time contents, objects and items is one of the keys to the development of the Metaverse, digitizing companies’ design and production flows.

Reply can support companies in creating 3D contents from a uniform data model for different communication channels (virtual reality applications, image content for car configurators on the web, CGI image production for print, simple animations for websites, or contents for video streaming). In this way, previously separate production processes are merged into one production pipeline, which dramatically reduces the overall time and effort required.Into the enterprise environment, thanks to the use of AR/VR technology digital twin data can be visualized in a Metaverse context as a 3D model that contains information both from a physical object and from integrated sensors. In this way, it’s possible to help companies get a glimpse of how real-world IoT data is, in real-time, overlaid on top of the physical world through Spatial Computing experiences; all within an AR Real-World Metaverse. Mainly driven by AI computer vision and advanced sensors, a common spatial map can be shared between heterogeneous devices to build connected, collaborative, and cross-platform Real-World Metaverse apps where virtual objects anchored in the physical world can be shared across devices and over time with persistence.

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