All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda

TL;DR

This survey defines the metaverse as a perpetual, shared, and interoperable virtual realm emerging from the convergence of XR, AI, IoT, blockchain, and networking. It proposes a two-axis framework—eight enabling technologies and fourteen ecosystem-focused topics—to guide research from digital twins through digital natives to a coexistent physical-virtual reality. The paper offers a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art technologies, ecosystem considerations, and a concrete research agenda addressing security, privacy, trust, governance, and economic models. By articulating grand challenges and cross-cutting requirements (latency, privacy, interoperability, and governance), it provides a roadmap for achieving a scalable, user-centric metaverse with practical implications for industry, policy, and research.

Abstract

Since the popularisation of the Internet in the 1990s, the cyberspace has kept evolving. We have created various computer-mediated virtual environments including social networks, video conferencing, virtual 3D worlds (e.g., VR Chat), augmented reality applications (e.g., Pokemon Go), and Non-Fungible Token Games (e.g., Upland). Such virtual environments, albeit non-perpetual and unconnected, have bought us various degrees of digital transformation. The term `metaverse' has been coined to further facilitate the digital transformation in every aspect of our physical lives. At the core of the metaverse stands the vision of an immersive Internet as a gigantic, unified, persistent, and shared realm. While the metaverse may seem futuristic, catalysed by emerging technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence, the digital `big bang' of our cyberspace is not far away. This survey paper presents the first effort to offer a comprehensive framework that examines the latest metaverse development under the dimensions of state-of-the-art technologies and metaverse ecosystems, and illustrates the possibility of the digital `big bang'. First, technologies are the enablers that drive the transition from the current Internet to the metaverse. We thus examine eight enabling technologies rigorously - Extended Reality, User Interactivity (Human-Computer Interaction), Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Computer Vision, IoT and Robotics, Edge and Cloud computing, and Future Mobile Networks. In terms of applications, the metaverse ecosystem allows human users to live and play within a self-sustaining, persistent, and shared realm. Therefore, we discuss six user-centric factors -- Avatar, Content Creation, Virtual Economy, Social Acceptability, Security and Privacy, and Trust and Accountability. Finally, we propose a concrete research agenda for the development of the metaverse.

Figures (35)

• Figure 1: We propose a 'digital twins-native continuum', on the basis of duality. This metaverse vision reflects three stages of development. We consider the digital twins as a starting point, where our physical environments are digitised and thus own the capability to periodically reflect changes to their virtual counterparts. According to the physical world, digital twins create digital copies of the physical environments as 'many' virtual worlds, and human users with their avatars work on new creations in such virtual worlds, as digital natives. It is important to note that such virtual worlds will initially suffer from limited connectivity with each other and the physical world, i.e., information silo. They will then gradually connect within a massive landscape. Finally, the digitised physical and virtual worlds will eventually merge, representing the final stage of the co-existence of physical-virtual reality similar to the surreality). Such a connected physical-virtual world give rise to the unprecedented demands of perpetual and 3D virtual cyberspace as the metaverse.
• Figure 2: The cyberspace landscape of real-life applications, where superseding relationships exists in the information richness theory (left-to-right) as well as transience-permanence dimension (bottom-to-top).
• Figure 3: Connecting the physical world with its digital twins, and further shifting towards the metaverse: (A) the key technologies (e.g., blockchain, computer vision, distributed network, pervasive computing, scene understanding, ubiquitous interfaces), and; (B) considerations in ecosystems, in terms of avatar, content creation, data interoperability, social acceptability, security/privacy, as well as trust/accountability.
• Figure 4: A timeline of the Metaverse Development from 1974 to 2020 (information source partially from T. Freyand Duan2021MetaverseFS-ACMMM-2021), demonstrating the evolving understanding of the metaverse once new technological infrastructures are introduced into the metaverse. With the evolving status of the metaverse, the metaverse has gained more enriched communication media -- text, graphics, 3D virtual worlds. Recently, AR applications demonstrate highly immersive digital overlays in the world, such as Pokémon GO and Super Mario AR, while VR applications (e.g., VR Chat) allow users to be fully immersed in virtual worlds for social gatherings. The landscape of the metaverse is dynamic. For instance, cryptoassets (e.g., CryptoKitties) have appeared as in-game trading, while Alien Worlds encourages the users to earn non-fungible tokens (NFT) that can be converted into currencies in the real world.
• Figure 5: The fourteen focused areas, under two key aspects of technology and ecosystem for the metaverse. The key technologies fuel the 'Digital Big Bang' from the Internet and XR to the metaverse, which support the metaverse ecosystem.