'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' - Arthur C Clarke.

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If someone came up to us when many of us were children, around the 1980s, and showed us an Oculus Rift headset, we would jump straight to conclusions like 'Aliens' or 'dream or 'hallucination' or, as the quote itself states, Magic.

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In the movie 'Gamer' released in 2009, Gerard Butler plays the role of a prisoner controlled by a Virtual Reality system in the future. People like us control multiple people like Gerard remotely from their homes by wearing a headset and making them participate in games.  

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A positive example of a Virtual world future can be the movie 'Minority Report' starring Tom Cruise. Three central Humanoid robots with Human operators combine Virtual Reality tech with algorithms and pattern sensing to detect and stop crimes before they happen.  

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Even as you go through this very article, the progress into the field of making our world virtual to a large extent accelerates exponentially. The recent surge has been due to long-standing research. VR products are more accessible to the end-users now. Growing acceptance of VR as a norm for the future has also helped its spread.

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One might suspect that this is a new field with little credibility or multiple roles on offer in this space. They would be very wrong. The market has already started showing sporadic instances of specified job titles like AR/VR Maintenance and support, XR gameplay, and Tools Engineer. Your more traditional roles (AR/VR Product Managers, VR Accounting managers, and others) have also started changing for this virtual space.  

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Recently, 2 of the Giants of the digital world, Meta and Apple, announced their foray into this.  

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Facebook with a more totalitarian approach by rebranding itself as Metaverse. A future space where we are all connected, not just through the internet, through virtual worlds as well. The access is granted by headsets or something even more innovative in the future.  

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Apple has a slightly different approach planned in their mind. They haven't clearly stated their intention of planning to join/not join the Metaverse. However, they are developing AR and VR capabilities in terms of products and systems.

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As an entity existing in the same business space as others, we feel that two things are bound to happen. One, Metaverse and the virtual reality world will for sure go ahead and become a dominant factor. And two, the entire field of product design and engineering will have to adapt themselves to creating offerings/products in this digital world or risk becoming a footnote in history or should we say a virtual footnote perhaps.