Early projects included Active Worlds and The Palace. The 2003 virtual world platform Second Life is often described as the first metaverse, as it incorporated many aspects of social media into a persistent three-dimensional world with the user represented as an avatar, but historical claims of metaverse development started soon after the term was coined. ImplementationsĪvatars socialising in the virtual world Second LifeĬomponents of metaverse technology have already been developed within online video games. Information privacy, user addiction, and user safety are concerns within the metaverse, stemming from challenges facing the social media and video game industries as a whole. Web3 and metaverse have been used as buzzwords to exaggerate the development progress of various related technologies and projects for public relations purposes. Recent interest in metaverse development is influenced by Web3, a concept for a decentralized iteration of the internet. Metaverse development is often linked to advancing virtual reality technology due to the increasing demands for immersion. The term 'metaverse' originated in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash as a portmanteau of ' meta' and ' universe'. In colloquial usage, a 'metaverse' is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social and economic connection. In science fiction, the ' metaverse' is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets.

Some software platforms require a virtual reality headset to explore the metaverse.

Snow crash novel