It isn’t any different. In fact the metaverse concept has been tried many times since the Internet became popular in 1994. A popular concept that never took off in the 90’s was a 3D virtual mall. Retailers would have paid more to have their virtual store front closer to the spawn point for users.
The first released software that could be considered a Metaverse is ActiveWorlds. It released in 1995 and is still running today. They had limited land, although it wasn’t sold, it was just a land grab where you placed objects to claim cells. They eventually started selling servers and tried to get businesses and universities to use it for virtual meetings.
We have yet to see the original Metaverse concept of an infinite 3D virtual multiuser world. Nvidia Omniverse is almost there, but it’s made for developers to link different programs that normally can’t talk to each other. Nobody has come up with a good reason for a 3D Metaverse besides online games and chatting.
The Internet can be argued to be a 2D Metaverse however. It fits the metaverse concept except it’s 2D instead of 3D.
– yaosio
