A Concise Review on the Concept of Metaverse: Types, History, Features, and Technological Perspectives

Definitions Of Metaverse

To further facilitate the digital transformation of every part of our physical life, the word “metaverse” was developed. The idea of an immersive Internet as a sizable, interconnected, permanent, and shared environment lies at the core of the metaverse. The digital “big bang” of our cyberspace is not far off, despite the metaverse being futuristic and being powered by cutting-edge technology like Extended Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and 5G (Braud et al., 2021). Zhao et al., (2022) agreeing with Braud et al., (2021) that the term “metaverse” refers to a 3D virtual cyberspace that combines the real and virtual worlds. This is made possible by the fusion of Web technologies, Extended Reality (XR), and the Internet. They persisted in considering the metaverse to be a visual realm where the physical and virtual worlds coexist peacefully. In addition, the Metaverse is the convergence of 1) virtually (digital) enhanced physical reality and 2) physically persistent virtual (digital) space. It is a synthesis of both, while permitting users to experience it as either.

Park & Kim, (2022) classified the definitions of the metaverse into four types: (1) environment, (2) interface, (3) interaction, and (4) social value (Cheung et al., 2022). As depicted in Figure 1 the taxonomy or categorization of the metaverse has as its basic components as environment, interface, interaction, and security.

Figure 1.

Basic components of the metaverse (Park & Kim, (2022)