Forget video calls, computer scientist Lex Fridman interviewed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the metaverse using lifelike 3D Codec Avatars. Some might be familiar with the cartoon-like avatars that are seen in many games, but these mimicked a real human face, complete with all of their imperfections.
Inworld AI’s Inworld Studio platform lets you create artificial intelligence-powered virtual characters for the metaverse and games. A new update now lets you talk to NPCs, enabling gamers to interact with their favorite characters in a whole new way. This means that living characters and their digital counterparts can think for themselves without ever breaking character.
The Meta Quest Pro is coming sooner than later, and Lenovo’s ThinkReality VRX virtual reality headset just might beat Zuckerberg to the punch. Boasting a slim profile, the six-degrees-of-freedom (6DoF) ThinkReality VRX comes equipped with pancake optics and full color, high-resolution pass-through capabilities for mixed reality (MR) applications.
Populating huge virtual worlds could be an issue for some game developers, and that’s why NVIDIA GET3D was created. This AI model can populate virtual worlds with a diverse array of 3D buildings, vehicles, characters and more after being trained using only 2D images. The model then generates 3D shapes with high-fidelity textures and complex geometric details.
The NVIDIA Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) was revealed at SIGGRAPH 2022 today, and it’s essentially a suite of cloud-native AI models as well as services that make developing lifelike virtual assistants a breeze. This allows businesses of any size to instantly access the massive computing power needed to create and deploy assistants and digital humans that understand multiple languages.
Everyrealm, a mtaverse real estate developer, along with real estate advisory firm Alexander Team, have partnered to introduce ‘The Row,’ an invite-only virtual community with 30 architectural designs by world-famous artists. They include Daniel Arsham, Misha Kahn, Andrés Reisinger & Alba de la Fuente, Alexis Christodoulou, Six N. Five, and Hard.Architects.
Microsoft Project AirSim turns to the metaverse for autonomous drone AI training, or in other words, a virtual world that mimics the physics in a realistic three-dimensional environment. These autonomous drones are piloted by artificial intelligence in a controlled environment, making it far safer than training them with human pilots in a city.
Tony Hawk has partnered with The Sandbox, a decentralized gaming virtual world, to create ‘Tony Hawk LAND’. This is touted as the ‘world’s biggest virtual skatepark’ where users will be able to create Tony Hawk avatar NFTs based on his most iconic skateboards, equipment, and apparel, including the iconic skateboard used to land the 900 at the X Games in 1999.
We have seen the future of virtual showrooms, and it looks like Samsung Space Tycoon. This virtual playground of sorts is built inside the global metaverse platform Roblox where users can create and play games as well as share experiences using Samsung Electronics’ products together, complete with alien characters in space.
