Real World Places in the Metaverse

Unity's Timoni West is Creating a Different Kind of Digital Twin

We just spoke about digital twins in terms of replicas of humans. What about replicating places from the real world as virtual worlds?

Fast Company has an interesting story a couple of weeks ago about Timoni West from Unity. She was recognized as one of the most creative people in business for 2022. That’s not just for synthetic media, gaming, or the metaverse. It’s for all of the business scope that Fast Company covers. A high honor.

A Big Market

West told Fast Company that Unity estimates the market for digital twins for “real-time simulations of real-world things, such as factories, industrial machines, or airports,” is $3.2 billion dollars.

Interestingly, this is precisely the conversation I had recently with Paul Cutsinger from Nvidia on the Voicebot Podcast. I thought we would talk more about Nvidia’s metaverse ambitions but Paul kept bringing me back to simulations of real-world settings. Nvidia, the GPU maker that is a cornerstone of the gaming industry, is being used to lay out manufacturing sites and simulate operations.

Is This a Simulation?

This isn’t really that surprising, given that Nvidia CEO, Jenson Huang, likes to repeat the term “simulation” frequently in his recent conference keynote addresses.

Most people think of the metaverse as either a game or social space or some combination of the two. These simulations are kind of like the Sims. The difference is that the Sims doesn’t have a real-world counterpart. The digital twins that West and Cutsinger are talking about do have both physical and virtual spaces. The model, which is the digital twin, can then be run with software versions of people and machines.

Simulation is a powerful tool for planning and forecasting. I can say that from experience. Planning and forecasting in a 3D virtual world has the potential to be even more powerful.

You may have heard about the replica of Times Square. Soon you may be having a virtual stroll through concept retail store or a BMW plant. It is interesting that two pillars of the gaming world are taking the virtual world space to a very different conclusion and use case.