I have taken the Metaverse courses provided by Meta on Coursera What is the Metaverse? It is a free course if you don\’t want that certificate.
Here\’s my learning experience. I have known a lot about the metaverse, the concept and related technologies before I enrolled, and I am pretty confident that I have understood all the terms in the right way. So, I find the first few chapters not that helpful, they are like famous people double confirming what I already know. I do learn something in the last few chapters, but I was expecting more. Still, I think it is worth it, I enrolled for free, what could I say.
In my opinion, this course is perfect for beginners who don\’t know what metaverse is and want to have a basic overall impression of it. It is designed to be super interesting and I think it explains all the terms in a very understandable way. So, If you are new to the concept, this course is the best first step you could take. It would also be suitable for people who have learned some basics but still need confirmation on their understanding or haven\’t yet perceived everything related in a systematic way. But for the one who already knows a lot about metaverse and is willing to dig deeper, I would say that it might not fully meet your expectation.
I will quote the ending lines of the course so that you can get a clearer picture of what the course is about. \”Congratulations on finishing this course. You\’ve learned how the metaverse works, from avatars to game engines to devices, and have identified ways the metaverse might impact everything from learning to commerce, from entertainment to health. You\’ve also explored the necessity of creating a metaverse that is diverse, equitable, inclusive, and accessible, and some of the ways to bring that vision to life. We encourage you to revisit the field trip readings and check out the metaverse for yourself. There\’s so much more to explore.\”
Here\’s something I find impressive:
| XR: a catch-all term for the ways we combine physical and digital worlds: virtual reality (which fully immerses us in the digital), augmented reality (which takes place in the physical world, but with a digital layer on top), and mixed reality (which is a blending of physical and digital) |
| AR: add a digital layer to the physical world |
| MR: you can see your surroundings with digital content overlaid into the physical world |
| VR: close off the physical world around you, enables you to feel truly present |
Social media has democratized talent, and provided creators with a way to earn income based on that talent.
Currently, we measure the impact of a company\’s ad by its conversion rate(how many people have reacted), but in the metaverse, we will also measure it by calculating engagement(how well the company could keep the customer they have attracted).
Shopping in the metaverse will be less about destination and more about discovery.
\”A truly diverse, equitable, and inclusive metaverse requires that the people building it, from the foundational technologies to the spaces and experiences that we engage in, are diverse.\”
Major technological breakthroughs to get to the next-generation metaverse: Displays, audio, input, haptics, hand tracking, eye tracking, mixed reality sensors, graphics, computer vision, avatars, perceptual science, AI, and more.
Tony Parisi, the author of a widely regarded piece called The Seven Rules of the Metaverse, calls the metaverse \”the future of human-computer interaction\”.