Toward a Spatial Metaverse: Building Immersive Virtual Experiences with Georeferenced Digital Twin and Game Engine

Recent advancements in geospatial and digital technologies have enabled the efficient capture of three-dimensional representations of the physical environment, giving rise to a virtual counterpart mirroring reality. This virtual replica serves as the foundation for constructing a city digital twin, a cyber-physical system that seamlessly integrates real-time data via the Internet of Things (IoT). In parallel, progress in gamification and virtual reality (VR) has paved the way for novel avenues for immersive engagement, outperforming conventional digital visualization tools. Drawing inspiration from the evolving concept of the “metaverse,” this chapter sets out to pioneer a comprehensive conceptual and methodological framework of “spatial metaverse”, for building immersive realistic virtual experiences, firmly rooted in geospatial science. This endeavor integrates a suite of emerging technologies, including reality capture, digital twins, IoT, gamification, and VR. The framework is demonstrated through the development of a digital university campus in Melbourne, Australia, characterized by its rich historical and contemporary architectural buildings, as well as a complex urban layout. The campus’s physical elements, including buildings, landscapes, and street furniture, were reconstructed into a photorealistic 3D model, leveraging context capture from point clouds and oblique photogrammetry. This model formed the basis for constructing a digital twin, enriched with near-real-time microclimate sensor data streams. Subsequently, a spatial metaverse application was developed within a game engine, offering users a first-person perspective for wayfinding and navigation on campus through VR interactions and personalized avatar characters. This project represents a critical step in bridging GIS and gamification, leading to the development of a fundamental spatial metaverse prototype. The synchronous sharing of this prototype holds immense potential, offering users a wholly immersive experience grounded in real-world geospatial data. In doing so, this initiative addresses critical gaps in geovisualization, ultimately enabling us to bring abstraction back to reality.<p></p>