Where metaverse meets ‘motorverse'

The metaverse — where the digital and physical worlds meet — is poised to take in-vehicle entertainment to places typically associated with science fiction movies.

Imagine being in a ride-hailing vehicle in New York, leaving a Beyonce concert at Madison Square Garden and tapping a screen to have a lifelike digital twin of the Grammy Award-winning artist appear inside the vehicle to offer an interactive, personal recap of her show.

That's the potential of in-vehicle entertainment in the metaverse, explains Dave Rhodes, senior vice president of digital twins at Unity Software Inc., a company at the forefront of developing a global platform for creating and operating interactive, real-time 3D content.

"I could be a digital human as your car assistant and you would think I'm a real person," he said. "It's that innovative. The metaverse will come to the car in the form of many destinations. It will be interactive, immersive, hyper-photorealistic and running in real time across all kinds of different screens."

The mere idea of the metaverse is having a major impact on in-vehicle entertainment, already in the midst of immersive transformation.

At SXSW this month, Audi said its virtual reality entertainment system, which fuses digital and real-world experiences, will be available in select models starting in June.

In another development, tech startup WayRay showed its Holograktor concept, which it touted as the first vehicle developed for the metaverse.

Hyundai Motor Co. unveiled an entire future product vision centered on the metaverse, called Metamobility, in January. The concept envisions a future where automobiles serve as smart devices to access virtual spaces, which can be tailored to offer entertainment, meeting rooms or even a 3D video game platform.

For its project, Audi is partnering with entertainment tech startup Holoride, a spinoff of the automaker.

Holoride's tech operates through a wireless connection to the vehicle, via a passenger's personal device, and combines navigational and car data to create immersive location-based experiences with the use of VR headsets.

To date, many of Holoride's in-vehicle VR experiences have been centered on games, created in partnership with leading content developers in the space such as Schell Games, a studio in Pittsburgh. However, Holoride is working to expand its suite of entertainment offerings by making it easier for developers to create content for their platforms.

Holoride also has conducted in-vehicle VR pilot programs with Ford, Mercedes-Benz, EvoBus, Hyundai and Porsche.

"I bet if you go to any OEM and you go into their innovation labs, the stuff that you will see [is] relative to real-time 3D entertainment and gaming and advertising and brand and content as a service," Rhodes said. "That's where they're going."

The news of Holoride's in-vehicle VR experience with Audi, which operates on Unity's digital real-time 3D platform, comes on the heels of Holoride introducing lightweight and more adaptable headsets, developed in partnership with VR platform HTC Vive.

Nils Wollny, CEO and co-founder of Holoride, said the metaverse, coupled with the growing number of technology applications and creative collaborations in the space, opens the door to an entirely new world