IEEE Metaverse Newsletter • Issue 2 • 2025
A collection of published articles

Introduction

By Peter Corcoran, University of Galway

The past six months have confirmed what many of us sensed when we originally launched this newsletter: the Metaverse conversation is accelerating, expanding well beyond the XR community and into the core of networking, standards, civic innovation, and the creative arts. In this second issue of the Metaverse Newsletter we showcase that breadth—highlighting new IEEE standards work, flagship events, and a sweeping “Metaverse 2025 Snapshot” of the latest peer-reviewed research—to help you navigate where the field is heading next.

Curiously Pioneering a Human-Centric Citiverse: Tampere, Finland

By Tampereen Kaupunki, City of Tampere

Tampere has a strong history as a smart city, shaped by its dynamic technology-driven startup culture, collaboration between the public and private sectors, and strategically targeted development programs – one of the latest being Data-Driven City for Citizens.

Musical Metaverse

By Luca Turchet, University of Trento

The Metaverse relates to a vision of a virtual, digital world which is parallel to the real, physical world, where each user owns and interacts through his/her own avatar. Music is one of the possible activities that can be conducted in such a space. The “Musical Metaverse”, the metaverse part which is dedicated to musical activities, is currently in its infancy, although is a concept that is constantly evolving and is progressing at a steady pace. Such emerging space offers several new opportunities for musical stakeholders at artistic and economic level. However, much academic, industrial and artistic research still needs to be conducted to accomplish the vision of a Metaverse tailored for musical stakeholders. Several technical challenges at hardware and software level exist in the domains of metaverse platforms, telecommunications, multimodal tracking, multisensory rendering, artificial intelligence and blockchain. Moreover, artistic, ethical, sustainability, and regulatory issues need to be addressed so for the Musical Metaverse to be created and utilized in efficient, creative, and responsible ways.

Digital Content Technology Standards Committee, IEEE Computer Society

By Kyoungro Yoon, Chair, Digital Content Technology Standards Committee, IEEE Computer Society; and Edward Au, VP, Standards Activities, IEEE Computer Society

Standards are crucial for the commercialization of new technologies as standards encourage innovation in the industry and shorten the time to market of products and technologies. IEEE standards have had a profound impact on the computer science and engineering community as well as on mainstream applications. Some of the most popular standards in terms of global markets and the number of participants are the IEEE 802.3 standards for Ethernet and IEEE 802.11 standards for Wi-Fi. Both standards series are managed by the IEEE local area network (LAN)/metropolitan area network (MAN) Standards Committee of the IEEE Computer Society (CS).

Invitation from ISEMV Chair

By Jeewika Ranaweera, Co-Chair, IEEE Metaverse Initiative

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the IEEE International Symposium on Emerging Metaverse (ISEMV) 2025, which will take place from 19-20 October 2025, in Honolulu, Hawaii, co-located with ICCV 2025.