Virtual Reality, Digital Twins, the Metaverse

Dear Colleagues,

With the rapid development of modern society, the demand for practicability and intelligence is increasing day by day, and more application technologies are focusing on the development of digital intelligence in the future. The intelligent development of smart manufacturing, smart industry, smart medical, and other fields is the only way to build a smart city in the future. In the future, it will even go further beyond the level of cities and countries to realize intelligent research on the entire universe and explore the origin and development of the universe from a more intelligent perspective.

Virtual reality (VR) contains a variety of information technologies, among which simulation technology has developed in a more extensive direction in recent years. The demand for virtual reality technology in various industries and fields is increasing, and chasing a more extreme sense of immersion is the mainstream of current development. Interactivity is also an important focus of research and development. In complex practical application scenarios, a stable experience is an important consideration in determining the pros and cons of practical applications. Real-time and effective interaction ideas and methods are important evaluation indicators for virtual reality technology.

Digital twin (DT) provides a broader application space for virtual reality and at the same time puts forward higher requirements for the technological progress of virtual reality. In the future, various objects in the virtual world will have more abundant intelligence, which is a necessary condition for them to be able to evolve independently and to map each other with objects in the real world. For applications that already exist and will be developed in the future, the integration of real-world data into the virtual world is critical to the development of digital twin technology. New sensors play a vital role in this, and this will also be the key to whether the digital twin can better develop in coordination with multiple fields.

The exhibition of a variety of virtual achievements indicates that the development of the metaverse is no longer limited to the conceptual level, and the digital twin provides a fundamentally effective way for it. The development of VR, DT, and the Metaverse promote each other, forming a closed-loop mutual push development method. This Topic involves a wide range of multidisciplinary themes and realizes more systematic intelligent and digital development in multiple fields, such as industry, manufacturing, education, aerospace, medical and health, and urban development.

Dr. Zhihan Lv
Prof. Dr. Kai Xu
Prof. Dr. Zhigeng Pan
Topic Editors