Falstaff Magazin International Nr. 3/2022

travel / THE FUTURE IS

travel / THE FUTURE IS NOW Avatars in a floating office: Business meetings are also expected to take place in the metaverse. < you simply leave and come back for the finale. Why not a visit to the doctor in the metaverse, at least for a quick preliminary diagnosis? And it would also serve a valuable educational function if used to take students on excursions to historical sites from the classroom. To encourage us to immerse ourselves in new, digital worlds, work is currently being carried out to reduce the cost of high-quality virtual reality goggles. People are already using VR goggles to help them overcome their fear of heights. Many museums now offer virtual tours: you can wander around the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, for example, without having to travel there, or skip the long queues when you visit the treasures in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence or immerse yourself virtually in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The British Museum in London has also made a virtual tour available. The website youvisit.com/tour offers 3D helicopter flights over New York City, visits to the Louvre in Paris and tours of Berlin. These are an ideal way to prepare for an actual trip because they provide a sense of distance and depth – you can see where the entrance to a museum is, for example, or the nearest café. Virtual reality tours are also a useful tool for travel providers, enabling their customers to virtually inspect hotel rooms before booking. MORE LIKE REAL LIFE There is a downside, however. At the moment, all content is recorded; nothing is live. But being in the moment is exactly what makes a holiday so enjoyable. You’re able to participate in life’s activities rather than just engaging with three-dimensional images. But the difference is this: in the metaverse, you chat with others, go shopping, sit in a café as an avatar, instead of just passively consuming a prefabricated VR world in 3D. The metaverse is supposed to feel like real life – with all of its excitement and unpredictability. This already works to some degree with live concerts. The German metaverse platform Yabal, for example, organises virtual gigs, an area in which providers such as Sandbox and Roblox are also active. MTV has even introduced an annual award for the best metaverse concert. South Korea’s capital Seoul is in the process of building a digital twin. It plans to move all local government departments to the metaverse. In the future, the city’s residents will be able to visit a tax office or a complaints office as an avatar. Supporters consider this to be a useful project, while opponents portray it as dystopian. Some wags say that many people already feel that visiting a local government office is like being in a parallel universe where a foreign language is spoken. Whether artificial intelligence can provide help faster than a real person is questionable. The beauty of the future, however, is that it hasn’t happened yet and could easily turn out to be quite different. After all, the media has been talking for some time about fridges that automatically re-order food as soon as they run out. But it’s not something that anyone really needs. < Photos: Unsplash, Adobe Stock, Rendezverse, Roblox, beigestellt 36 falstaff winter 2022/23

JOURNEY INTO THE METAVERSE The most exciting features: HYPE TRAINERS To make your avatar look cool in the metaverse, you can purchase NFT trainers and other digital fashion items. The metaverse is no different to real life. It’s all about seeing and being seen – and that means wearing status symbols like the aforementioned trainers. Labels like Adidas and Nike have already released an NFT collection of trainers that you can put on your avatars or on a virtual shelf. Leading the way is the RTFKT collective, whose Nike Dunk Genesis Cryptokicks (photo above) have already become much sought-after collectibles on the largest NFT platform Opensea. But there are also jackets, caps and a winter jacket – for when it gets really cold in the metaverse. rtfkt.com RICH AND BEAUTIFUL Gaming is on trend in the metaverse. The Otker Collection Hotel Group offers metaverse gaming featuring its luxury destinations. The Oetker Collection hotel brand has designed a fun metaverse adventure in cooperation with the fashion styling game Drest. You travel as a stylist to an upmarket hotel like Le Bristol in Paris and have to create a look for your avatar that matches the elegant ambience of the hotel. A virtual gaming community then decides whether the look is a hit or a miss. Fashion, gaming and hotel destinations are natural partners in this venture. Drest already has experience in the field: the company has partnered with about 250 luxury brands to connect the virtual with the real world of fashion. oetkercollection.com THE GARDEN OF FASHION Keen to be seen as trail blazers in the virtual world, many high-fashion labels are checking out the metaverse. In the middle of the pandemic, Italian luxury label Gucci invited us to take a walk in the virtual Gucci Garden. For two weeks, you could immerse your avatar in Gucci campaigns on Roblox and experience at first hand thephilosophy of their creative director Alessandro Michele. Decentraland recently hosted the first virtual Fashion Week at which Dolce & Gabbana and Tommy Hilfiger sent virtual models down the catwalk. Even the hype label Balenciaga, which appeals mainly to the younger generation, has responded to the trend by offering digital fashion to upgrade your avatar. blog.roblox.com winter 2022/23 falstaff 37