Today the Metaverse is more a buzzword and a promise than an actual product anyone can use, but many companies believe that it will be an important part of our digital future. For sure, there won't be any Metaverse if companies have no easy tools to create their own virtual spaces and consumers can't "live" these spaces with devices less complex and expensive than VR headsets.

This is what Italian startup AR Market wants to achieve with its new SaaS platform: AR Market Virtual. AR Market was founded in 2018 by five partners who have combined their background and know-how, with the aim of enhancing the world of education, entertainment, marketing and beyond, exploiting the potential of immersive technologies (AR/VR/XR) and gamification.

The Metaverse is a logical extension ad evolution of this vision. AR Market admits that the Metaverse "as defined by experts and scholars in the field, still does not exist". Nonetheless, a new virtual content market it's booming: globally, it should move something like 55 billion dollars in the next three years.

AR Market is working hard to be ready: "By 2026 there will be about 2.4 billion users of AR and VR content. With our team of creatives, 3D artists, graphic designers, illustrators and developers, we are ready to help companies meet the needs of these users. We believe this is the future", says Andrea Baldini, CEO and co-founder.

A future that must be carefully built: AR Market we will also invest during 2023 to set up a volumetric filming studio in Rome. "A farm where we can transform reality into VR or AR content quickly and easily, creating avatars, scanning real products to digitize them, designing streaming events, and much more", says Baldini.

But this is not enough, if we want - in the long term - a really massive Metaverse (or, more likely, a collection of Metaverses). Today, companies who want to create their own virtual experiences face a daunting process. Everything seems complex and expensive, because it is. And these companies don't want to create the next "Ready Player One" virtual world but, simply, to offer new digital experiences to their customers, partners and employees. Without breaking the bank.Andrea Baldini, CEO and co-founder fo AR Market

A SaaS standardized (but customizable) platform can help, AR Market believes. AR Market Virtual is such a platform: with it, companies and professionals can easily create immersive virtual spaces (Spazio Virtuale 360° is the official brand). Interactive and navigable environments that can be enhanced with multimedia content such as images, videos, logos, banners, and other digital objects.

"SaaS allows you to choose a predefined virtual space and customize it with your own content quickly and easily, at a very low cost. In addition, we can build full custom virtual environments through 3D modeling or reproduce real environments by scanning", Beldini explains.

AR Market virtual spaces can be accessed with VR headsets, for the most immersive experience, but also with PCs, smartphones, tablets. Supporting different client devices, AR Market's SaaS platform is able to host the widest audience possibile in virtual promotional activities, training sessions, cultural and artistic events.