In his famed “Year in Review,” an annual collection of musings and speculations about what will happen in the coming year, the millionaire Microsoft founder made a huge metaverse forecast.
Within the next two or three years, “I believe that most virtual meetings will transition from 2D camera image grids which I call the Hollywood Squares paradigm, though I realise that probably dates me to the metaverse, a 3D place with digital avatars, within the next two or three years,” Gates wrote.
Instead of physically meeting in an office location, Gates predicts that we will soon be interacting with avatars in a similar fashion, ideally employing motion capture and spatial audio technology to make the metaverse feel real.
Last month, Microsoft launched Mesh, a tool for virtual teams to communicate in a 3D world using personalized avatars.
The “metaverse” is a subset of the internet that consists of a number of platforms for creating virtual worlds, in which significant corporations have already begun to invest.
According to CNBC, Meta (previously known as Facebook) has made Horizon Worlds, its metaverse platform, public.
