A prospective vision of the evolution of immersive technologies: Towards a definition of metaverse

This article focuses on identifying and describing the current status of immersive technologies, to project them, from this initial point, towards the near future, by considering the evolutionary trajectory of these technologies based on mechanisms of progress and innovation. The ambition of this study is then on the one hand to describe a next point of arrival for these technologies, but above all to confront it with the current vision of the concept of the metaverse, and even to extract a more completed and structured vision. The conclusions of the article underline the compatibility between the potential evolution of present immersive technologies and the current vision of the concept of metaverse. Moreover, a metaverse framework is presented to consolidate and structure this concept. Finally, the framework is broken down into the properties inherent to the nature of a metaverse and evaluated through two real cases relating to crisis management training and immersive teaching. • A unified definition of the metaverse concept is proposed based a literature review. • Potential evolutions of immersive technologies are studied, modeled and formalized. • The metaverse is demonstrated as a legitimate future for immersive technologies. • An analytical conceptual framework for analyzing metaverse properties is described. • The analytical conceptual framework is experimented through two real case studies.