Metaverse

 The metaverse is a shared virtual three-dimensional (3D) world that is interactive, immersive, and collaborative. The metaverse can reflect the real world but is independent of it. Three-dimensional (3D) imaging and display technologies are essential technical supports for three-dimensional communication. And it is important to choose suitable three-dimensional imaging and display technologies when establishing a three-dimensional communication system.

Holograms allow the display of a high-quality, three-dimensional digital representation of a person without the need for viewers to wear a headset. Holograms are also known as 3D video or volumetric video; they can be captured either by using an array of cameras or by capturing a light field array of the subject. The images can then be recreated using projectors or on special holographic displays. To achieve wide adoption, building holograms in the digital space that accurately reflect individuals in the physical world is key.

In essence, a holographic display works by having a high-definition or 4K screen reflect digital content through glass with a special coating, called glass optics. When placed at a certain angle, the glass optic will create an illusion that makes your brain interpret the digital content as three-dimensional. This is what creates the sensation of seeing a free-floating hologram before your eyes. When a laser beam is split up to make a hologram, the light waves in the two parts of the beam are traveling in identical ways. When they recombine in the photographic plate, the object beam has traveled via a slightly different path and its light rays have been disturbed by reflecting off the outer surface of the object. Since the beams were originally joined together and perfectly in step, recombining the beams shows how the light rays in the object beam have been changed compared to the reference beam. In other words, by joining the two beams back together and comparing them, you can see how the object changes light rays falling onto it—and that's simply another way of saying "what the object looks like." This information is burned permanently into the photographic plate by the laser beams. So, a hologram is effectively a permanent record of what something looks like seen from any angle.

Now, this is the clever part. Every point in a hologram catches light waves that travel from every point in the object. That means wherever you look at a hologram you see exactly how light would have arrived at that point if you'd been looking at the real object. So, as you move your head around, the holographic image appears to change just as the image of a real object changes. And that's why holograms appear to be three-dimensional. Also, and this is neat, if you break a hologram into tiny pieces, you can still see the entire object in any of the pieces. Hologram-based Mixed Reality can be commercialized as a Business-to-Consumer (B2C) service. Attending meetings as a hologram version of yourself is set to become more common.

The use of a holographic image in a virtual environment as a stand-in for the real world is also seeing promise in mental health treatment. A VR-based environment that behavioral therapists can use with their patients to deal with phobias or other mental conditions has created a tool that lets patients practice managing their phobias in a safe, fully controlled virtual environment, so they can be trained to respond or not respond to specific stimuli.

Enterprises could also use metaverse technology to create digital twins or avatars of people. These twins will not only exist on computer screens as they do now but also, in the near future, be AI-powered holograms or holographic beings assigned different tasks.