Building the metaverse using digital twins at all scales, states, and relations

Today’s technological development is equivalent to the iterative evolution of applications and ideas: from early graphics to visualization, to HCI, to virtual reality, to Digital Twins, and finally to the Metaverse. Since the birth of the first image display in 1950, computer graphics have undergone continuous development

in recent decades and continuously evolved. Computer graphics aim to create efficient visual communication, and this goal is achieved via visualization techniques. Visualization is the theory, method, and technology of using computer graphics and image processing technology to convert data into graphics or images and display them on a screen, and then perform interactive processing. Subsequently, with the development of computer hardware and realization of more interactive technologies, virtual reality was conceived.

Virtual reality is a further extension of visualization technology, focusing on bringing immersive experiences to users in a virtual world such that users become and feel part of a virtual world. Simultaneously, virtual reality technology emphasizes visual simulation and attempts to simulate various senses such as touch, taste, smell, and hearing. Digital Twins are a virtual entity that digitally recreate a physical entity. With the help of historical data, real-time data, and algorithm models, it is a technical means of simulating, verifying, predicting, and controlling the entire life cycle process of a physical entity. Compared with virtual reality, Digital Twins are more concerned with the synchronization of data and interaction between the virtual and real worlds. The Metaverse is a larger and more complex system than Digital Twins. Digital Twins originated from the industrialization of complex product development and is moving toward urbanization and globalization, whereas the Metaverse originated from the gaming and entertainment industry that builds human–human interaction and is moving from globalization to urbanization and industrialization. Although the Metaverse and Digital Twins focus on the connection and interaction between the real and virtual worlds, the essential difference between the two is that the Metaverse is directly oriented towards people, whereas Digital Twins are oriented towards things. The concept of the Metaverse represents the development direction of the next generation of the Internet, and via Digital Twins, the two major technology systems complement each other and will lead the fourth industrial revolution.