MetaVerse

MetaVerse : Are We Evolving to Next phase ?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Connect 2021 on October 28, 2021, introduced Meta, which eventually brought the Facebook apps and their technologies under a new umbrella or a new company brand “Meta”. They are creating MetaVerse which might be another next step to Human Evolution. So, Are you Ready to evolve to the MetaVerse of Life?

Welcome to the Metaverse Era of the Life

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“You might be wondering if this can be a kind of The Matrix or Avatar where you are using a virtual avatar of yourself to meet with other people in the universe or around the world.”

Meta is like a hybrid of today’s online experience which can be expanded sometimes into three dimensions or projected into the physical world. It allows the people to share immersive experiences with other people even when people can’t be together and do things together you couldn’t do in the physical world.

The metaverse doesn’t really exist — at least not yet. The idea was popularized by the 1992 novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, a persistent virtual reality world navigated by the book’s protagonist. Also, other science-fiction books, movies, and TV Shows like The Matrix, Ready Player One, and Stranger Things. You can also explore the concept of “mirror worlds” where everything in the real world has a digital counterpart.

Metaverse : Key Impact Areas

Education

Augmented and Mixed Reality Tool powered Education Experiences

Entertainment

Socially Connected Entertainment Zones through Virtual Reality.

Fitness

Mixed Reality powered Fitness Trainings.

Gaming

Retro games with a socially connected Mixed Reality Experience.

Home

Smart Homes with spark of virtual assistance and 3d projection Technology

Work

Smarter Virtual Work Places: Work from Home still be there with colleagues at Office.

Social

Mixed Reality powered Social Life: Meet and spend good time with friends without all that travel hassles.

Oculus : Gateway to Metaverse

To experience any Virtual reality and Mixed Reality Experience in this current form of available Technology you require a VR Headset or at least a Smart Glass.

Since 2014, Facebook has acquired many AR/VR/XR startups one of the key investments among those was the Acquisition of ‘Oculus’

Oculus Quest 2 : MetaVerse

Oculus headsets such as quest, quest 2, Oculus go enable you to experience the best of the AR/VR/XR world have to offer.

Cost:

Oculus Quest 2 (128 GB): 31500 INR. at Amazon India

Oculus Quest 2 (256 GB): 39999 INR. at Amazon India

Ongoing Works at Facebook Reality Labs

Core Research

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AR experiences

Polar

a new, free iOS app that makes it easy to imagine, create, and share AR effects and filters without needing to code or work in the Spark AR Studio. Creators will be able to extend their personal brands, art and creative vision in new ways – like a virtual sticker with their own tagline, or a piece of swag they can share during an AMA. Opening applications to the closed beta program for iOS later this year.

$150M Immersive Learning education program

Aimed to help create economic opportunities for AR/VR creators and developers, ranging from new training and career development resources to new content and technology partnerships.

○  Spark AR Certification: AR creators will be provided with a formal pathway and program to demonstrate their knowledge and proficiency of Spark AR, and Research.

to earn a Facebook Certified Spark AR Creator credential. The first exam will take place in November and registration will open soon.

VR and XR Experiences

Check out the amazing different VR/XR Platforms Meta (Facebook) is building. Don’t miss these cool Geeky Videos they have showcased.

●  New fitness offerings on Oculus: Supernatural boxing, new FitXR fitness studios, and Player 22 by Rezzil, which is currently used by pro athletes, are adding guided and hand-tracked bodyweight exercises.

 Active Pack for Quest 2: A fitness accessories pack that makes Quest 2 more comfortable, with controller grips for when things get intense, and a facial interface that you can wipe the sweat off, making your sessions more comfortable. That’s coming next year.

●  Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: The Rockstar Games classic, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is currently in development for Oculus Quest 2. This new version will offer players an entirely new way to experience this iconic open-world in virtual reality.

●  Vertigo Games Partnership: Oculus is partnering with Vertigo games to bring a total of five games to the Oculus platform.

●  Beat Saber update: Beat Saber surpassed $100 million in gross lifetime revenue on the Quest platform. We also shared a teaser for a new update, coming soon.

●  POPULATION: ONE ongoing updates: POPULATION: ONE will be offering a double XP weekend October 30-31 tied to its Halloween event that went live last week. Next month, they’ll launch an Autumn event, followed by a Winter Wonderland update in December. Since its launch last October, POPULATION: ONE has seen more than 5 million friend connections made in-game, as reported by BigBox VR, the title’s developer.

●  Blade & Sorcery launch date: Blade & Sorcery: Nomad is launching exclusively for the Quest 2 on November 4, 2021.

A broad range of machine perception and AI capabilities will enable developers to build mixed reality experiences on the

Quest platform. A realistic sense of presence will be key to feeling connected in the Metaverse, and Presence Platform’s capabilities deliver on this promise with things like environmental understanding, content placement and persistence, voice interaction, and standardized hand interactions. Presence Platform consists of three offerings: Insight SDK for developing mixed reality experiences, Interaction SDK to make it easier to add hand interactions to apps, and Voice SDK to make voice input a part of the experiences they build.

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Soon when you join an Oculus Party you’ll be able to invite your friends into a new social version of your Home where they’ll be embodied as their avatars. You’ll be able to spend time together with friends, co-watch videos together, and launch games and apps together

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Horizon Worlds is just the jumping off point. Connect with people all over the world and test your skills, imagination, and more.

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Soon you’ll be able to communicate with your friends across all your apps and devices — including Portal — with Messenger calling in VR coming later this year. From anywhere in VR, you’ll be able to invite your Facebook friends to join a Messenger call and eventually spend time together or travel to VR destinations.

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A place to focus and work using the new suite of 2D panel apps, or just check a few things off your to-do list.

●  Workrooms customization: For Horizon Workrooms, we’re working on launching the capability to customize your Workroom with your company logo, posters, or designs.

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Services like Slack, Dropbox, Facebook and Instagram, and many more will soon work in VR as 2D panel apps in Horizon Home — so you can multitask, cross things off your to-do list between gaming sessions, and stay connected while in VR. This starts bringing some of your favorite 2D internet services into the metaverse.

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This will bring work capabilities into consumer Quest devices, including the ability to log into Quest 2 with a Work Account instead of your personal Facebook account. It will also bring businesses the tools they need, like account management, IDP & SSO integration, Mobile Device Management and more. Beginning to test this year; fully available in 2023.

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Fitness

●  New fitness offerings on Oculus: Supernatural boxing, new FitXR fitness studios, and Player 22 by Rezzil, which is currently used by pro athletes, are adding guided and hand-tracked bodyweight exercises.

 Active Pack for Quest 2: A fitness accessories pack that makes Quest 2 more comfortable, with controller grips for when things get intense, and a facial interface that you can wipe the sweat off, making your sessions more comfortable. That’s coming next year.

Gaming

●  Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: The Rockstar Games classic, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is currently in development for Oculus Quest 2. This new version will offer players an entirely new way to experience this iconic open-world in virtual reality.

●  Vertigo Games Partnership: Oculus is partnering with Vertigo games to bring a total of five games to the Oculus platform.

●  Beat Saber update: Beat Saber surpassed $100 million in gross lifetime revenue on the Quest platform. We also shared a teaser for a new update, coming soon.

●  POPULATION: ONE ongoing updates: POPULATION: ONE will be offering a double XP weekend October 30-31 tied to its Halloween event that went live last week. Next month, they’ll launch an Autumn event, followed by a Winter Wonderland update in December. Since its launch last October, POPULATION: ONE has seen more than 5 million friend connections made in-game, as reported by BigBox VR, the title’s developer.

●  Blade & Sorcery launch date: Blade & Sorcery: Nomad is launching exclusively for the Quest 2 on November 4, 2021.

Presence Platform

A broad range of machine perception and AI capabilities will enable developers to build mixed reality experiences on the

Quest platform. A realistic sense of presence will be key to feeling connected in the Metaverse, and Presence Platform’s capabilities deliver on this promise with things like environmental understanding, content placement and persistence, voice interaction, and standardized hand interactions. Presence Platform consists of three offerings: Insight SDK for developing mixed reality experiences, Interaction SDK to make it easier to add hand interactions to apps, and Voice SDK to make voice input a part of the experiences they build.

Interaction SDK
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Horizon Home

Soon when you join an Oculus Party you’ll be able to invite your friends into a new social version of your Home where they’ll be embodied as their avatars. You’ll be able to spend time together with friends, co-watch videos together, and launch games and apps together

video
play-sharp-fill
Horizon Worlds

Horizon Worlds is just the jumping off point. Connect with people all over the world and test your skills, imagination, and more.

video
play-sharp-fill
Messenger

Soon you’ll be able to communicate with your friends across all your apps and devices — including Portal — with Messenger calling in VR coming later this year. From anywhere in VR, you’ll be able to invite your Facebook friends to join a Messenger call and eventually spend time together or travel to VR destinations.

video
play-sharp-fill
Horizon Workroom

A place to focus and work using the new suite of 2D panel apps, or just check a few things off your to-do list.

●  Workrooms customization: For Horizon Workrooms, we’re working on launching the capability to customize your Workroom with your company logo, posters, or designs.

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2D Apps in Home

Services like Slack, Dropbox, Facebook and Instagram, and many more will soon work in VR as 2D panel apps in Horizon Home — so you can multitask, cross things off your to-do list between gaming sessions, and stay connected while in VR. This starts bringing some of your favorite 2D internet services into the metaverse.

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Quest for Business

This will bring work capabilities into consumer Quest devices, including the ability to log into Quest 2 with a Work Account instead of your personal Facebook account. It will also bring businesses the tools they need, like account management, IDP & SSO integration, Mobile Device Management and more. Beginning to test this year; fully available in 2023.

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Hardware Works

Project Cambaria

Project Cambria is currently in its prototyping phase, but Oculus parent company Facebook has stated that it focuses on face- and eye-tracking. Just like any other popular virtual reality headset on the market, Project Cambria will wrap around its user’s face to provide the virtual experience. Unlike previous Oculus headsets, Project Cambria introduces pancake lenses which will likely improve the design of the headset.

Project Nazare

wrist-based electromyography (EMG) input technology that Meta believes will be key to controlling future devices — could one day allow you to send a message in AR with your hand resting comfortably at your side.

They are also building AI that understands your context and can give you a simple set of choices based on that context. They demoed a series of assistant-related smart home experiences enabled by Project Aria.

These experiences are proofs of concept for the types of interactions AR glasses will one day bring to us. Our first fully-fledged AR glasses — Project Nazare — are still a few years out, Are you excited by the progress ?

Ray-Ban Stories

Ray-Ban Stories pairs with the new Facebook View app, so you can share your point of view, stories, and memories seamlessly with friends and social media followers. The Facebook View app on iOS and Android makes it easy to import, edit, and share content captured on the smart glasses to apps on your phone: Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and more. You can also save content to your phone’s camera roll and edit and share from there. And new, exclusive post-capture enhancements built into Facebook View let you create unique content to put a special spin on your posts.

Our Verdict about MetaVerse

We at FreeFlow Technologies believe whether you want it or not. You and Most of us, have already started evolving into the MetaVerse Phase of Life. Our Facelabs Team is also super excited about this. as they are also working on a similar domain of technology. So, we have to slowly embrace it. Good or Bad that only the future can answer.

Article By:

Mukesh Ranjan KumarLead Backend Developer- FreeFlow
RapydFund

A ‘Rapyd’ rise in Crowdfunding startups

In the modern age of digitalization, paper-based money continues to lose relevance as smart wallets and payment apps take a firm hold of the driver’s seat. Not only is this significant in terms of environmental sustainability, but it also warrants a call to developments in digital security. To this effect, we have RapydFund a breakthrough in crowdfunding startups. It is not a business, but an idea waiting to happen. This idea was coined by a team of three, participating in a hackathon organized by Rapyd Financial Networks Ltd.

RapydFund is a crowdfunding platform wherein there are two main parties- the investors and the project managers. The investor can be anyone with an idea that impresses, and similarly, there are no constraints as to who can invest in a particular project.

The problem it solves

A recent survey showed that approximately 10% of all money donated/invested in fundraisers, charities, and crowdfunding is embezzled, and an amount even higher than that misappropriated and subject to inefficient use. RapydFund a crowdfunding startup aims to tackle this problem by providing airtight security and transparency to all parties involved.

How it works

RapydFund allows its users to host and invest in various crowdfunding projects. It leverages blockchain technology to ensure not only the improbability of misuse and mismanagement but also seamless transacting and complete accountability.Both parties are provided with Rapyd smart wallets that they may use for all transactions on the platform. RapydFund’s unique offering is that not only can investors track the progress of their desired projects, but they can also monitor how and where their contribution is being utilized.

Once a project manager’s investment goals have been met, he/she can choose how to appropriate the funds acquired. However, as an added layer of security, he/she can only transact with a pre-disclosed and approved list of vendors (with Rapyd smart wallets of their own) to accomplish the specific requirements of that particular project. Leveraging Ethereum Smart Contracts, tracking and logging transactions become dead simple for all parties involved, with a transaction list that is crystal clear, complete with unique identification codes.

Finally, to make it even easier, RapydFund provides a dedicated transaction page, accessible by the investors and project managers, where a list of all transactions is maintained and displayed, thereby adding a layer of trust and security to the platform.

This idea has not yet gained the traction it probably will in the next decade or so. There is potential for limitless growth and capitalisation for crowdfunding startups– if only one were to act.

 

 

Facebook Outage : Lessons Entrepreneurs should Learn

Facebook Outage : Lessons Entrepreneurs should Learn

It might be a little late to talk about the massive Facebook outage that happened on October 4th, 2021. But, We entrepreneurs should concentrate on what to learn from the incident. That’s why it might be ideal to be slow, steady, and learn from detailed  Genuine sources. In case, you are not a techie avoid the link and read about 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs should Learn from Worst Facebook Outage Ever.

No matter if your business relies on technology heavily or Very lightly. The Facebook Outage still has 5 key lessons to share no matter if you are a technical person or not. 

Lesson 1: In a high-end networked infrastructure, outage can happen at any point in time with just a small change in any line of code.

So the Facebook outage occurred from a routine network maintenance job.  It was not a feature update work or upgrade job. Shocked?! But, it is the reality you should stay ready for.

You are not as huge as Facebook. So, always keep a backup network infrastructure ready.

Lesson 2: Avoid relying on automation tools completely/blindly.

A massive networking company like Facebook is always aware of this eventuality but a small Glitch in their Code audit tool allowed them to Issue a buggy command in their Network backbone to assess the global network availability and it caused complete disconnection of their servers.

So, Automation tools and pipelines are all good. But, you should stay cautious about it all the time and keep things in check.

Lesson 3: On-premise Server maintenance is a huge struggle. Avoid self-hosting, go for the cloud.

Facebook has to maintain a total of 15 Huge Data centers and numerous localized facilities. When you open Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp/Workplace and load up your feed or messages, the app’s request for data travels from your device to the nearest facility, which then communicates directly over our backbone network to a larger data center. 

Facebook doesn’t host its platform through any 3rd party cloud or hosting services. When it was created cloud infrastructure was not commercialized yet. So, They had to host their own servers, set up their own network. Eventually, the popularity of the platform led Facebook to have its own cloud network infrastructure.

Lesson 4: If you run a multi-platform business, keep their network infrastructure separated from each other.

Every online business would like its audience to have complete reliance on its platform.

So, when your platform is down for any reason you can try to solve it from its core. But, when you are running a multi-platform/app business an outage in a common back-boned infrastructure would lead to the complete collapse of all the platforms/apps. You should definitely try to avoid that situation.

Lesson 5: Keep your internal ecosystem control separated.

Facebook engineers with the knowledge to recover the situation were not able to enter the premises at all. The physical and digital entrances of the infrastructure premises were secured using Facebook’s own Workplace tools. So, when the entire backbone got down. It also collapsed, shutting out the access for its own employees. That’s why it took more time to recover.

That’s a clear indication of what future digital collapses would look like and as an entrepreneur, you would probably not like the idea of your own system shutting access for your own employees.

Although Facebook lost a lot of business during this outage, what they have lost most is the public’s trust in their agility. Entrepreneurs should definitely learn from it and avoid repeating the same situation in the case of their online platform.

At FreeFlow, You are Free from worrying about all these complex geeky issue,

We at FreeFlow, have a separate team of Freeflow Technologies with hand-picked engineers and innovators. We don’t only code your platform but also host it with a high agile cloud environment. Our Cloud Solution Architects and DevOps make your platform hosting capabilities elastic and quickly recoverable/ Failsafe.

Freeflow Technologies Team’s hosting strategy helps you to avoid huge cloud bills. Our Serverless first approach will make you pay only that amount which you are really using not for idle times. Moreover, We are direct Partnered with AWS. Our incubated startups are eligible for 5000 USD worth of Free Cloud credits and an additional 1500 USD worth of support credits from AWS as a part of the AWS activate Portfolio Programme.
So, do what you love to do, leave your hosting and downtime worries with us.

Article by:

Rudranil DasCIO (Chief Information Officer)