The Metaverse is the Web
Aug 8 2022
"This is how the real Metaverse will happen."
The web has evolved to be the most powerful computing platform in the world. It is not just the natural choice for enabling the Metaverse, it is guaranteed that it will become the de facto winner. Why?
The web is everywhere. It runs on every device that has a screen. PCs, Macs, tablets, phones and XR. Browsers are already everywhere.
There are over 17 million JavaScript developers in the world today. By far the most popular language today. Next is HTML/CSS, also a part of the web community. The next closest is Python with three quarters of the developers. Even Typescript, JS with types, beats out C# and C++.
It is friction free. The web works because you can access virtually any site from any device, anytime. When I have a shared XR space hosted in the web cloud, you can join me within seconds — no downloads, no barriers. Instant access to your friends, colleagues and content.
It is dynamic — alive. JavaScript is a dynamic language. This is a secret superpower of the browser. It means that you can actually modify a JavaScript program while your web page is running, changing its behavior to meet your needs.
Performance is amazing — and getting even better. The browser’s performance has been increasing at an amazing pace over the last decade. There have been billions of dollars invested in making the browser the beast it is today. JavaScript is extremely fast and still improving.
WebGL provides native 3D rendering using the same GPU as AAA games. WebGPU is waiting in the wings and provides as much as a 10x improvement in performance over WebGL in many cases.
Four different browsers running Rapier physics in WebAssembly perfectly synchronized.
WebAssembly provides near-native performance using traditional compiled languages like Rust. Rust itself is an amazing step forward in performance and code quality.
Built entirely on standards. The web is made up of a collection of very well defined and architected standards that enable developers to leverage billions of dollars of investment to create powerful and interoperable sites.
Totally open and free. The web is by far the largest open source project in the world. Nothing else comes close. The code for almost every page is immediately available by viewing source (one way or another).
More importantly, an uncountable number of frameworks have been created and provided for free that enable developers to easily and quickly construct powerful applications with a minimal amount of effort and time. No need to reinvent wheels over and over.
Portals are real and dynamic. Another huge win that will only make sense on the web are portals. Portals will transform the metaverse in the same way that links transformed the web. The web-based metaverse enables any world to be connected to any other world on the web, no matter who developed it or on which web server it is hosted.
Multiplane portals — secure and sandboxed. Each microverse is running in its own iFrame.
URLs totally sandboxed and secure from each other, but totally accessible. I call it cell-based portals — based on Disney’s cell-based animation
Interested in trying out the Croquet Microverse?
Download the Beta Read Docs