The Metaverse Spacetime: The Creator’s Perspective
Download PDF version on Research Gate.
Abstract — The metaverse is a digital universe where creators can build worlds, create characters, make rules and establish cultures, and from these worlds sprout stories and experiences. The development stages of technical objects in the metaverse are perhaps most often seen as a process of creation by enthusiasts such as designers, programmers, architects and so on. This paper offers a perspective on technocultural imagination and proposes a knowledge map that suggests bold visions, desirable commitments, and creative methods for creators to solve problems, build elements, contents, and applications within the metaverse. On this note, we have detailed two (2) prescriptive points that would serve as a framework to help meta creators build frames of meaning and expression. These include spacetime creator-platform collaboration and spacetime thinking.
1.0 Introduction
The metaverse was first mentioned in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. In this novel, the metaverse is conceptualized as a virtual world where humans, as programmable avatars, interact with each other and software agents, in a three-dimensional virtual space that uses the metaphor of the real world [1]. The vision of Stephenson’s novel has now become part of technocultural imagination and as a view of such, the metaverse opens up windows to new worlds as it offers a fresh perspective on familiar technologies. This emphasizes that alongside the technological challenges the metaverse presents, the true nature of the metaverse will be determined by the imagination of creators in the technology industry.
The metaverse as an industry imagination has reached a point where it’s been presented and promoted as the future of computing. Currently, the metaverse is a project adopted by several companies such as Meta (née Facebook), Microsoft, Roblox, Nvidia, Epic, and a host of many other companies. These companies create different versions of the metaverse according to how they have imagined it. Thus, we believe that the different versions of the metaverse are based on the perspective and core expertise of these platform developers. For example, Meta, whose sole mission is to connect people, imagines the metaverse as the next chapter of ‘social connection’; a set of virtual spaces where you can meet and explore with other people that are not in the same physical space as you [2].
Technocultural Imagination [3] suggests what we have currently as the metaverse is somewhere between creative imagination and technological feasibility. Technocultural Imagination allows for the egression of the sublime, allowing what we see in our vision to manifest in our present reality. We use this form of imagination to explore the depths of our thoughts and probe for newer ideas and solutions. It is a form of imagination that denotes higher dimensions of reasoning that could possibly bring an abstract idea unfamiliar to us into a contextual application.
Technocultural Imagination suggests a poetic construct of human imagination predicated by the conjuring of utopian worlds and experiences with the loom of practicality. It is a form of elaboration and exaggeration; a way of embellishing thoughts and ideas with more expressions of dimensions. In other words, finding appropriate metaphors, analogies, and narratives to suggest multi-dimensional magnitude and efficacy of new ideas through the metaverse as a fantasy playground. The beauty of the flight of this poetic construct is that it has no limit to what one can imagine in the metaverse.
The metaverse is designed to be a place where the limits of reality exist only in the creator’s imagination and at the edge of technology. This would mean that the extent of the metaverse depends on the interplay between creators and platform developers. Platform developers such as Nvidia have created tools to empower the vision and imagination of meta creators. Nvidia sees its metaverse project Omniverse as an interconnecting online toolkit for 3D collaboration that offers software hooks to a ton of other applications such as Blender, Maya, Autodesk, Adobe, and many others.
The platform combines cutting-edge technologies including artificial intelligence, simulation tools, augmented reality and scalable computing ecosystems to help developers create 3D assets and scenes from their laptops or workstations [4].
2.0 Creator-Platform Collaboration
Creators in the metaverse include designers, artists, architects, entrepreneurs, programmers, game developers and so on. These creators require a technology platform to build content, applications, or systems in the metaverse. Creator-platform collaboration provides a viewpoint for designing content and creating applications with the tools, frameworks and API that platform developers have developed for the metaverse. This collaboration defines the symbiotic relationship between creators and platform developers. The purpose of platforms is simply to give meta creators the creative power to solve real problems, create content, applications, build systems, and 3d worlds with complex physical and psychological simulations.
Platform developers are responsible for creating workflows for creators to bring their imagination to the metaverse reality. These workflows are built for industries such as architecture, design, manufacturing, gaming, real estate, social networking and so on. Workflows are designed to assist creators in streamlining the process of creative development. A platform can be segmented into 4 technology layers: content layer, application layer, data layer, and simulation layer. These layers represent the group of all models of technology that make up developer platforms and are very essential for any metaverse creation/creative process.
The content layer is a content creation kit that consists of GUI utilities and general functions that allow creators to build content for the metaverse. Platform developers provide these kits to allow seamless workflow for creators to express their imagination without constraints or technical knowledge of 3d. This will allow them to focus on storytelling or building story worlds for example.
The application layer is a set of API frameworks that makes provision for creators to forge intricate simulations, custom workflow tools to extend the content kit far beyond its roots and foundations [4].
The Omniverse consists of four (4) layers of technology and a fifth which connects to external 3d creator software. NVIDIA Omniverse™ is NVIDIA’s open graphic platform for real-time interchange, collaboration and shared virtual worlds. Omniverse aims for universal interoperability across different applications and vendors[5].
It is important to recognize the power of 3d modelling in the metaverse, not just for creating 3d characters or worlds, but for analysis and simulation of any kind of system. This implies that creating anything in the metaverse would mean learning to think in 3d and work constructively in this dimension. Case in point, the Simulation layer allows creators to train and test their creations more efficiently by orchestrating their functions in a 3d virtual environment.
NVIDIA Isaac Sim, powered by Omniverse, is a scalable robotics simulation application and synthetic data generation tool that powers photorealistic, physically-accurate virtual environments to develop, test, and manage AI-based robots[6].
The data layer demonstrates that the metaverse is data-powered and AI-driven. This means that within the metaverse, we can build and train data models of systems, the psychological attributes of avatars and so on. Data models can capture the behaviour and properties of elements or systems. In building a business model in the metaverse, for example, meta creators should be able to capture and quantize data sets in 3-dimensions. In other words, being able to translate the data attributes of requirements, structures, rules or processes onto a 3d virtual scene in order for them to be usefully manipulated.
3d data represent dimensions of information that provides a more complex and realistic representation of an element. 3d data set are points that are spatially defined by X, Y, Z coordinates and often represent the properties of an object.
A data model organizes elements of data and standardizes how they relate to properties of real-world or digital entities. The representation of the 3d data can be done in different ways depending on what type of creative activity is in operation: application, content, simulation or data operations.
When captured, 3d data representations can be represented in may different ways such as 3d point clouds, meshes, parametric models, depth-maps, RGB-D, multi-view images, voxels. The implicit representation of 3d data is very handy in the process pipeline.
3.0 The Creator’s Imagination
The metaverse is a technocultural reality that will grow and change according to our imagination. On this basis, the question of “what is metaverse” presupposes a particular way of thinking that points one in the direction of singularities. A singularity in this context is a potential state for everything yet to be created. It is where every understanding of a proposed digital universe converges at its technological limits and where everything must diverge. A creator in the metaverse is someone who extracts singularities from the continuous flow of technocultural imagination that traverses the world and materializes them in the form of contents and applications. To materialize this form of imagination, meta-creators, therefore, require several cognitive abilities such as thinking in three or four dimensions, mastering imagination, and having a unique perspective regarding what the metaverse should be.
As the name implies, the metaverse exists in a meta-dimension where there is an infinite number of elements that are in constant relation with each other through time and 3d blocks of information. This idea, in effect, will force meta-creators to think about this singularity relatively in geometric spacetime terms.
3.1 Spacetime Thinking
Spacetime thinking is a remote concept that explores the creator’s imagination interwoven with the real world. Spacetime thinking requires a comprehension of 3d euclidean space such that it would give rise to a topological understanding of how to create contents or applications in the metaverse. This would mean expressing every conceivable concept and idea in terms of geometry, space and time.
We, along with everything that surrounds us, have height, width, and depth. Just like the real world, elements existing in the metaverse have similar attributes and such attributes entail that the metaverse can operate consistently within a spectrum of physical and psychological rules. This is what makes these virtual worlds believable, comprehensible, and worth exploring.
Spacetime thinking is a model of cognition that contains the creator’s imagination in 3d structures and defines it across a level of abstraction. It depicts the relative attributes of all elements in an n-dimensional space rendered as geometric objects. In the real world, we experience everything dynamically as things are constantly moving through space and time. In the spacetime continuum, time is considered the fourth dimension. The fourth dimension is a complex concept that effectuates the dynamics in creative thinking. It instantiates our sense of perception and this sets in motion the right kind of imagination.
Spacetime thinking describes the space and time construct in the creator’s imagination. In the creator’s imagination, the core abstractions are anchored by word-image relations strung together like a symphony. This word-image relation with respect to time creates motion metaphors that are proportional to the geometry of spacetime. This relation is a necessary condition for generating thoughts and ideas in the metaverse.
Words and images are the original languages of the human imagination. The words that we associate with thoughts are formed by human languages. In essence, what makes thoughts understandable to us is the linguistic elements that are attached to a corresponding ‘picture’ of a phenomenon and they define the context of cognition in a way that is comprehensible and intelligible. The images are what we see in our minds and are formed by an internal visual system. From the expression of ideas in a cognitive space to the continuous creation of words, characters, and systems from a seed of thought, an inner speech guides the exploration of forms in the creator’s imagination.
A single word falls into the category of a one-dimensional object. This means that it can only flow in one direction (x or y or z). Each dimension of words give different ‘weights’ and are ordered by their expressive definiteness. A visual image on the other hand is three-dimensional and can be understood from any direction. As rational evidence of its most basic form, thoughts are usually construed as mental representational images of some phenomena.
So, for every unit of thought, there are three dimensions of imagery and one dimension of term instantiated by words. This allows for balance and the transition from one frame of thought to another. Like linear actuators, a symphony of words produces forces that push a creator’s vision in different axial directions, animating his thoughts and ideas. This adds extra depth, varying degrees of magnitude to the thoughts he conjures up.
The essence of Spacetime thinking is how we measure the extent of the creator’s imagination. Whatever he thinks, whether expressive or disruptive, descriptive or evocative; we can measure the scale, magnitude, depth, and direction of his thoughts.
Conclusion
The term ‘Spacetime Thinking’ is used to analyze how creators draw on their imagination to create perspectives that guide their creative/development process. With this framework of thought, creators are able to discover and describe thoughts in the same dimension as the metaverse and this will help them orient themselves when solving problems in the metaverse.
References
[1] Metaverse. (2022, January 16). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
[2] What is Metaverse? Creative Live. https://creativelive.com/blog/what-is-the-metaverse/
[3] Balsamo, A. (2011). Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work. Duke University Press Books.
[4] Scripting in Omniverse Kit. Developer Manuals — Omniverse Nucleus Documentation. https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/prod_kit/prod_kit/developer_api.html
[5] The Omniverse Structure. Omniverse Platform Doc. https://docs.omniverse.nvidia.com/plat_omniverse/plat_omniverse/structure.html
[6] NVIDIA Isaac Sim. https://developer.nvidia.com/isaac-sim
