Metaverse
Metaverse
What Is the Metaverse?
- A 3D virtual world where people gather as avatars
- A new stage for work, learning, and play
- Evolving into practical uses
What the metaverse actually changes is the sense of “being there together.” A video call lines faces up on a screen, but in a virtual space participants walk up to equipment, turn a valve themselves, and see a colleague’s gestures. That’s why it works so well for training on procedures and spatial skills that are hard to explain in words. You can repeat the same scenario as many times as you like without stopping a real line or handling hazardous materials, and logs record who moved in what order. The substance of this technology is a practice space that allows repetition and records.
Operating models fall into two broad types. HMD-based immersive setups feel the most real, but because of device management and motion sickness, sessions usually have to be capped at 20–30 minutes. Desktop-type setups accessed by PC or mobile are less immersive but suit gatherings of 100 or more people. If you lump the two under one name in your approval request, budget and expectations will be misaligned from the start. The boundary with a digital twin is also different. A twin mirrors real equipment data in real time, while a metaverse is where people enter as avatars and act together. Connect the two and you get a training situation room where several people step into an anomaly the twin reveals and make decisions together.
The criteria for adoption are surprisingly simple. Virtual works best for training that is dangerous (work at height, confined spaces, high voltage), costly (equipment downtime, consumables), or hard to bring people together for. By contrast, tasks where hand force control or fine tactile feel decides the outcome still can't be replaced by a screen. The return on investment shows up when two or more of danger, high cost, and distance apply. Moving something a video call could handle into avatars only makes things harder for participants.
The most common misconception is that building a space is the same as delivering training. A company spends tens of millions of won on a virtual headquarters, but if all that happens inside is attendance checks and lecture video playback, within two months the only person logging in is the operations manager. Scenarios come first; the space comes later. The other pitfall is leaving out running costs. If you budget only for the build and omit year-two costs such as licenses, servers, device battery replacement, and scenario updates, the whole program gets cut at next year’s budget review. If you can’t answer in one sentence why this training can’t be done offline, it’s not yet the right time to adopt it.
Ilyoung JungExpert in smart factories, equipment management, and Industry 4.0
John KimInstructor John Kim, author of “B2B Marketing Design” and CEO of Nanum ConsultingThe term first appeared in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, and it rose to prominence alongside advances in VR and avatar technology.
Consider a hypothetical case. Company A, an auto parts maker, has 1,200 employees and three domestic plants. Proper work-at-height and confined-space practice requires stopping a line for 4 hours, so fewer than half of its 180 annual new hires completed hands-on practice. After two pinch-point accidents in a row, the safety and health team was handed a six-month project to introduce VR safety training.
- After collecting 42 near-miss cases over three months, Deputy Manager Kim of the safety and health team insisted on building scenarios for just the three most frequent: confined-space asphyxiation, forklift pinch-point injuries, and falls from height.
- When site foremen pushed back with “Buy us new safety boots instead of building a game,” the team borrowed just 5 HMDs and ran a two-week pilot. Of the 12 foremen who went through the confined-space scenario, 9 changed their minds: “New hires really need this.”
- The head of manufacturing told the team not to list only the KRW 80 million (≈ US$59,900) build cost but to include the KRW 22 million (≈ US$16,500) in year-two operating costs as well. The manager attached a table comparing both with the loss from each 4-hour line stoppage, and the proposal was approved.
- Operations were fixed at 25 minutes per session, in groups of 4. When participants reported dizziness, the team placed chairs and water in the training room and added a 5-minute adjustment period before each experience, cutting the dropout rate from 18% to 4%.
- One year later, the new-hire practice completion rate rose from 46% to 98%, line downtime for practice fell from 64 hours to 12 hours a year, and near-miss reports actually rose 2.3x, a sign that people had become more willing to speak up about risks.