The metaverse is the shiny new buzzword doing the rounds, and while we suspect that we will shortly be fending off PR and marketing types with a bargepole, the trend does have transformative potential over the next few decades. However, the video world has been burnt before, and so metaverse vendors are going to have a lot of persuading to do. We can understand the skepticism. Many billions of dollars were sunk into AR and VR ventures that went nowhere. Magic Leap might be the best posterchild for disaster in that sector, and AR hardware has only really found use in specialized industrial applications, typically in manufacturing lines and field engineering work. It seems inevitable that many more billions will…