The Metaverse is shaping up as the ‘next battleground’ for different institutions and individuals rushing to embrace this in-demand platform. According to a new report from Grayscale, the rate of active metaverse users increased 10x between the start of 2020 and 2021.
The report highlights that metaverse platforms integrated with crypto tokens, decentralized finance services such as staking and lending, non-fungible tokens (NFT) etc. have “created a new online experience” that’s rapidly attracting new users.
Just recently, one of the Big4 firms, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Hong Kong, dipped their toes into the metaverse space. The company purchased a land plot in a metaverse game Sandbox.
Nvidia catching up
Blockchain, metaverse and NFT technology are set to make a splash at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) event. It is an annual event that features exhibitions of the latest tech advancements and keynote speeches. Companies such as LG, Samsung, Amazon, Nvidia and Sony were present.
JUST ANNOUNCED: #NVIDIAOmniverse is now available free to millions of creators to accelerate their #3D workflows with NVIDIA's core rendering, physics, and #AI technologies.
Read more.
— NVIDIA Omniverse (@nvidiaomniverse) January 4, 2022
Nvidia, the tech giant released its own set of metaverse concept, Omniverse here. Its real-time 3D design collaboration and virtual world simulation platform. Surprisingly, it’s available free to individual creators and artists. ‘NVIDIA Omniverse is now available to millions of individual NVIDIA Studio creators using GeForce RTX and NVIDIA RTX GPUs,’ the blog added.
The tech giant also rolled out new features and integrations for the product, which the company has dubbed the “metaverse for engineers.” They can use leading design applications to create 3D assets and scenes from their laptop or workstation.
One of the users had this to say on the aforementioned development.
“With this technology, content creators get more than just a fast renderer, said Zhelong Xu, a digital artist and Omniverse Creator based in Shanghai. NVIDIA Omniverse and RTX give artists a powerful platform with infinite possibilities.”
Nvidia announced the expansion of Omniverse with new features, such as the one-click collaboration tool Nucleus Cloud, and new connectors, extensions and asset libraries built by Nvidia partners. New ecosystem partners include 3D marketplaces and digital asset libraries TurboSquid by Shutterstock, CGTrader, Sketchfab and Twinbru.
More features include the following:
Source: Nvidia
Long time coming
Looking back, it did however fall in line with its vision. Omniverse launched in beta early last year and a paid subscription version for enterprises followed in November. Nvidia says Omniverse has been downloaded by over 100,000 creators. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared a similar goal at Computex last summer.
Samsung, Sony, Nike, and many such famed organizations have incorporated metaverse as well. More are soon expected to follow.
Enterprises can utilize blockchain technology to create business models in the metaverse, thereby achieving efficiency and cross-compatibility with the real world. If 2021 can be considered to be the year of DeFi and NFTs, it is almost certain that 2022 will be the year of metaverse.
