Students of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology soon after announcing that their university is building digital replicas of its two campuses in the metaverse they will be able to take lessons and interact with their classmates.
The campuses will be part of MetaHKUST, a project led by two of the university’s professors, MetaHKUST project leader Wang Yang and Pan Hui, director of Metaverse and the Center for Computational Productivity.
Students Will Join the Metaverse by Wearing VR Headsets
Announcing its roadmap at a press conference on Thursday, the university announced that the project ultimately aims to unify all physical and virtual experiences at the university under one roof. By wearing VR headsets, students will be able to see data and information attached to real objects or attend classroom lectures on different campuses.
Initially, the physical infrastructure including VR classrooms, sensors, cameras and visualization tools will be established in the first phase. The university will then scan physical campuses to collect images and create virtual world replicas.
Students and faculty members can create their own avatars, NFTs, cryptocurrencies and create works of art. They will also be able to receive their diplomas and transcripts as NFTs.
The university will also turn to AR technology, which Hui currently describes as mostly single-user, which presents significant time and place constraints.
In a statement on the subject, the university said:
“What we are trying to achieve here is the scaling of technology to handle massive environments and massive multi-user experiences, which not only represents a fundamental challenge to our physical-digital vision, but is a fundamental factor that sets MetaHKUST apart from other campuses’ Metaverse initiatives.”
*Not investment advice.