Over the last year significant hype has been created over the idea of the Metaverse. Despite being first mentioned 30 years ago, the Metaverse still seems ill defined, with more smoke and mirrors than substance. This talk revisits the concept of the Metaverse and discusses how the topic could be defined more broadly, providing a clearer idea of the opportunities in the space. Using a Metaverse taxonomy it is possible to identify interesting areas for research, particularly at the boundaries of different domains. One particularly fruitful area for research is Empathic Computing which draws on the various elements of the Metaverse to create new ways for people to connect together. This will be discussed in detail and directions for future work explored.

Mark Billinghurst is Director of the Empathic Computing Laboratory, and Professor at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, and also at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. He earned a PhD in 2002 from the University of Washington and conducts research on how virtual and real worlds can be merged, publishing over 650 papers on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, remote collaboration, Empathic Computing, and related topics. In 2013 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and in 2019 was given the ISMAR Career Impact Award in recognition for lifetime contribution to AR research and commercialization.