The university hall: two hundred students and one honest question
The university hall in Amman was full, which surprised me, because it was a weekday afternoon and the subject was announced as “virtual reality”, which in 2022 could have meant anything from a lecture on optics to a sales pitch. I brought a headset, a few short films and four photographs' worth of slides.
I gave the tour I usually give — what VR is, what AR is, where the two meet in mixed reality, why the region should build rather than import — and then I opened the floor, which is the only part of any talk I actually enjoy.
The first question was not about technology. A student in the third row asked: “Is anyone actually using this here, or is it just conferences?” It is the most honest question anyone can ask a speaker about an emerging technology, and it is the one I have been asked most often since, in every accent. I answered with the projects we had running at the time, and I noticed the room relax. They did not need to be convinced that VR was clever. They needed to know somebody had paid for it.
I have kept that lesson. Every talk since starts with a delivered project and ends with the technology, not the other way round. The headset stays in the bag until somebody asks for it, and somebody always does — but only after they have seen that the thing exists outside the conference hall.
The metaverse assembly: a thousand conversations and the same five questions
A few months later I was in Dubai at a global metaverse assembly — regional and international specialists gathered for two days to shape, as the programme put it, the future of the metaverse. It was outstanding to meet so many people and to have so many genuinely good conversations in corridors and over coffee, and I say that as someone who is usually tired of corridors by the second day.
What struck me was that the questions were the same as in the university hall. The vocabulary was more expensive — “interoperability”, “digital assets”, “persistent worlds” — but underneath, a bank's innovation lead and a third-year student were asking identical things. Who is using it? What does it cost? Does it work on a normal phone? Is my data safe? And, always, what happens to the physical thing — the campus, the exhibition, the shop — when the virtual one exists?
The difference was not the questions but who was expected to answer them. In Amman, I was. In Dubai, the room expected the platforms to answer, and the platforms mostly answered with roadmaps. I came back convinced that the region did not need more roadmaps. It needed a few things that were actually built, open to the public, and boring enough to work on a Tuesday. Two of those arrived within the year.
The five questions I hear in every city, and the short answers
| Question | What is really being asked | Our short answer |
|---|---|---|
| Is anyone actually using this here? | Show me proof, not a demo | Yes: a digital-twin campus at a Jordanian university, hologram halls at a national memorial, signage across 32 hypermarket branches, a fully virtual Arab summit |
| Does it need a headset? | Will my audience be excluded? | No. Everything we build runs in a browser and on a phone first; the headset is an option, not a requirement |
| What does it cost? | Is this for giga-projects only? | It scales from a single branded booth to a campus. Start with one hall or one course and grow |
| What about our data? | Who owns the world we build? | You do. Encryption, authentication and access control are standard, and the content stays yours |
| What happens to the physical venue? | Am I replacing something? | You are doubling it. The virtual campus or exhibition extends the physical one to people who could not come |
A Jordanian university signs for a complete digital-twin campus
The first thing that was actually built was a campus. A Jordanian university signed to create a complete digital twin of its campus inside an Arabic-language metaverse platform: students and teachers present as avatars in a 3D virtual campus, with lecture halls, laboratories and gathering spaces that mirror the physical ones, and smart learning supported by VR, AR and AI. At signing, the university described itself as among the first in the world to be present in the metaverse, and I think that was fair.
I mention it here because it answered the third-row student's question better than any slide could. Here was a university — their kind of institution, in their city — putting real students into a 3D campus with real lectures. Not a conference booth. A Tuesday.
It also answered the fifth question. The physical campus did not get less important. The twin let students who were ill, abroad or simply across town attend a lab session as an avatar; it let the university show its campus to applicants and their parents in other countries; and it gave facilities staff a model of every building. We have since written up what a digital-twin campus involves and published the case study. The short version: the virtual campus is a second campus, not a replacement.
The first fully virtual Arab summit: halls, theatres and branded booths
The second thing that was built was an event. Our team helped build and run the first fully virtual Arab summit, held entirely inside a virtual expo centre — exhibition halls, theatres for keynotes and panels, meeting rooms for the side conversations that are the real reason anyone attends a summit. Exhibitors designed their own branded virtual booths, uploaded their documents and films to the booth screens, and staffed them with live chat. Attendees joined as avatars from wherever they happened to be.
It was positioned as the first and largest virtual exhibition centre of its kind, and whatever you think of superlatives, the scale was real: a venue with a reception, an auditorium, meeting rooms and a booth floor, navigated in a web browser with no download.
The lesson we took from it now shapes Nplay Nexus, our virtual exhibition and convention platform, which is in development. A virtual event works when it is designed as a venue — with a floor plan, sightlines, a place to bump into people — and fails when it is designed as a website with a 3D skin. Exhibitors want to know who visited their booth and for how long; speakers want to know who was in the room. Analytics is not a feature of a virtual venue, it is the reason to hold one. You can read the summit case study for the details.
Nobody asked about headsets
Looking back across the year — the hall, the assembly, the campus and the summit — the thing that stays with me is what nobody asked. In neither city did anyone ask me about field of view, refresh rates or which headset was best. The audiences were, on the whole, not interested in the hardware at all.
They asked about people. Will my students come? Will exhibitors pay for a booth they cannot stand in? Will a visitor from another country feel welcome in an Arabic-language world? Will my mother be able to use it? These are design questions and trust questions, and they are the ones we now spend most of our time on, which is why our platforms are browser-first and phone-first, why avatars are customisable to look like the person, and why every 3D venue we build has a social space in it.
The technology has moved on since — the hardware is lighter, the engines faster, the AI avatars now hold a conversation — and we have written elsewhere about the differences between VR, AR and MR and about where VR is heading. But if I walked into that university hall tomorrow, I would still start with the student's question. Is anyone actually using this here? Yes. Let me show you who.
Questions audiences ask us
Does a virtual campus or exhibition require VR headsets?
No. Our platforms run in a standard web browser and on mobile first; a headset adds immersion for those who have one but is never required to attend, teach, exhibit or buy.
Can Nplay speak at our conference or run a demo for our team?
Yes. We regularly present on VR, AR, digital twins and virtual events in Jordan and the Gulf, and we bring working demos — a hologram box, a virtual venue, a digital twin — rather than slides alone. Use the contact page.
What is the difference between a metaverse campus and an online learning platform?
An online platform delivers content. A digital-twin campus recreates the place: students and teachers meet as avatars in the same 3D halls and labs, with VR, AR and AI support, and the model doubles as a facilities and admissions tool.
Is Nplay Nexus available today?
Nexus, our virtual exhibition and convention platform, is in development and builds on the virtual summit our team helped deliver. Contact us to discuss pilots and timelines.