Last week, members of the fast-growing LinkedIn community Metaverse Explorers, founded by Daniël van der Waals, visited the Alpha version of a digital space with great potential for the Metaverse, The Mall. In this enormous digital environment, which according to the developers of MetaVRse will eventually reach a height of one hundred floors, organizations can present themselves in showrooms that also provide access to their commercial environment.
This digital preview was hosted by Julie Smithson, co-founder of MetaVRse. In the current time frame, this name can be a bit confusing, but the company was founded way back in 2016. “Long before that name became the trend word of the past year,” says Smithson. Her own experience even goes back to 2010, so she has quite a bit of experience developing digital immersive experiences.”
At the Metaverse Explorers event, she took the opportunity to also introduce XR Women, a successful and fast-growing community for women to learn in the XR space, or in their own words, “XR Women was founded in 2020 as a way to connect, inform and empower women who are making a name for themselves in Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality.”
Engine
The Mall is built on the basis of an engine developed by MetaVRse. Smithson: “It’s a low-code, real-time 3D communication and multiplayer game engine that supports not only games, but any kind of functionality that requires immersive action. It can be just 3D on a smartphone, but also a complete VR experience.”
This means that the technology underlying The Mall is a browser-independent, web-based solution that can send any advanced system or gamification component directly to the web. The low-code solution allows users to create experiences and put them directly on the web. The engine supports everything from managing 3D games and avatar features, to multiplayer communications and NFTs.
Showcase
She explains: “When we started creating these immersive experiences, we saw that the spaces we had to create would essentially be a showroom. Then we decided to create a virtual Mall that you can walk through using both a mobile device and a VR headset. Eventually that Mall will be a hundred stories high. It’s open to anyone interested in being a part of our community, and it’s a really cool way to showcase brands.”
