The metaverse is the network, says Nvidia’s Kerris

Everyone is talking about the metaversethat is expected to fundamentally change everything we do.

As Richard G. Kerris described it: Think of the metavers as: the network.

“It’s the next-generation network of the web, it’s 3D, and that makes for immersive experiences in virtual worlds,” said Kerris, VP of Omniverse platform and IGM development at M&E at Nvidia, in a fireplace chat with Dean. Takahashi, lead writer for GamesBeat, at this week MetaBeat event.

Ultimately it will affect everything; we will be able to “go from virtual world to virtual world, just like we do from website to website,” he said.

The fundamental difference is that today we experience the internet as ‘witnesses’, he said: we visit a website to look at it and what it has to offer. In the metaverse? We are evolving towards experience and commitment.

“To the point that it’s become seamless, it’s a part of our lives, from what we do at home to what we do at work and everything in between,” says Kerris.

Enter the Omniverse

To help realize that future, Nvidia recently launched Omniverse, a suite of metaverse building tools. This real-time graphics platform uses Universal Scene Description (USD), a software developed by Pixar that makes it possible to build 3D scenes together.

Kerris described this “collaboration and simulation platform” as two distinct parts.

The first is the ability to bring existing applications to Omniverse. There, they can be imbued with additional capabilities, such as artificial intelligence (AI) or 3D rendering. The second is the opposite flow, or the development of digital twins. Organizations can create digital worlds and build physical content based on them.

To further promote this, Nvidia recently announced Omniverse Cloud. This moves the entire platform to the cloud so that it can be “accessible anywhere and by anyone on any device,” he said.

Those who don’t have access to Nvidia’s visual computing platform RTX, or those who don’t support it, can access Omniverse, which he ultimately described as the operating system of the metaverse. There have already been more than 200,000 Omniverses Downloadsand hundreds of organizations — including Amazon, Charter Communications, and Lowe’s — are using or evaluating it.

The power of digital twins

Like the metaverse, “digital twin is something that is going to be a part of our whole lives,” says Kerris.

They unlock great efficiency and optimization: BMW, for example, has built digital twins for factories to evaluate processes. Lowe’s, meanwhile, is building a digital twin of stores to improve layout and monitor inventory. And Amazon is digitally bundling its warehouses to better train its robots.

People produce content and building products more efficiently and seamlessly; they don’t need to import, export and download files, Kerris said. They can manage their content and assets “through the core”.

“You no longer have to move these heavy, heavy pieces of content,” Kerris said.

From a fear of missing out (FOMO) perspective, “Look at what companies have been missing out on on the web,” he said.

Applications both life-saving and practical:

Digital twins could also have major health implications, Kerris said. Operating rooms are already building digital twins where doctors perform highly complex surgeries before they are performed.

However, eventually we will see twins of the human body and in cancer treatment, he said. One of the biggest challenges in cancer care is determining the best treatment; doctors and patients go through many iterations before identifying the right one.

But if a doctor has digital twins of a particular tumor in the future, they’ll be able to identify the right treatment much faster, he said.

Meanwhile, in practical applications, “you end up having a digital twin of your house,” Kerris said.

For example, if you want to carry out repairs or upgrades or just train a vacuum robot to get to know the layout of your house. He pointed out that there are already apps where people can try on clothes before buying or see what a piece of furniture could look like in their home.

In the end “it just makes sense,” Kerris said.

The Earth Digital Twin

On a much larger scale, Nvidia recently launched the ambitious Earth 2, the world’s digital twin.

Not surprisingly, it’s a multi-year project, Kerris said, because “it’s much more complex than a factory, much more complex than a warehouse.”

The original purpose of Earth 2 is to evaluate the climate: specifically what is causing and influencing climate change. Nvidia wants to use digital twins to learn from history and enable prediction of different ways the Earth could be affected, “almost like a time machine”.

A supercomputer is being built to power the immense power Earth 2 needs, Kerris said, and “the end result is something that will benefit all of us.”

We’re not quite at the metaverse yet; like the internet, there has to be an alignment around a standard, Kerris said. Universal “plumbing”, so to speak. That’s starting to happen with USD, which Kerris said was described by many as the HTML of the metaverse. The “beauty” of USD is that it is so open, Kerris said.

For the metaverse to be successful, it must be open to everyone. “We learned our lesson from companies that tried to shield parts of the internet in the beginning,” Kerris says. “That won’t work on the web, it’s not going to work in the metaverse.”

And no company can build the metaverse; it will grow organically, just like the web.

“When would you say the web was here?” said Kerris. “We use it and we don’t think about it. One day we wake up and realize that our internet is all 3D and we’re just dealing with things.”