Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes office meetings will increasingly be done via personal avatars in the metaverse by 2024. The collaborative tools at our disposal significantly enhance the quality of real-time communication. “Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars,” he said in his yearly blog.

The metaverse, currently in the works, is a virtual world wherein people will be virtually represented through avatars in their online interactions. 3D avatars will congregate at virtual locations in the metaverse by leveraging the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), and Augmented Reality (AR).

In the blog, Gates said the way we work and interact has undoubtedly been “revolutionised” by the COVID-19 pandemic. The 66-year-old, who transitioned away from the Microsoft board to focus on philanthropic commitments, said the technology will continue to evolve until we settle into a more permanent way of working. We had surrendered the spontaneity in communication when we started working from home, and the same has been continuously compensated for by evolving technology.

“The acceleration of innovation is just starting,” said Gates.

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Microsoft revealed its aspirations to launch a metaverse platform during the annual ‘Ignite’ conference to realise this vision. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that 90 new services will be launched in three areas, one of them being the metaverse.

Virtual gatherings will be made as natural as possible using VR goggles and motion-capture gloves that will accurately replicate human gestures online and capture body language. “Microsoft plans to roll out an interim version next year, which uses your webcam to animate an avatar that’s used in the current 2D set-up,” Gates said.

Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces, a Microsoft ERP tool, will be powered by AI-based models to enhance the retail experience for consumers. Users will be enabled to interact with the brand products from any location in the world through the same.

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Bill Gates also mentioned in the same blog that significant strides were being made in the field of spatial audio. We do not realise the importance of spatial audio until we focus on the direction from which a person’s voice is coming. It feels like an actual meeting when the person’s voice comes from the same direction (s)he is visible to the others in the same meeting.

The technologies powering the metaverse are still undergoing intensive research and experimentation. The key will be to replicate the human experience we have in the real world today. “There’s still some work to do, but we’re approaching a threshold where the technology begins to truly replicate the experience of being together in the office,” Gates wrote.

(Edited by : Priyanka Deshpande)

First Published:Dec 13, 2021 5:58 PM IST