NVIDIA has announced the open beta of NVIDIA Omniverse, an open, cloud-native platform that makes it easy to accelerate design workflows and collaborate in real time.

Omniverse allows creators, engineers and researchers to collaborate in virtual worlds that are all connected — the beginnings of the term Neal Stephenson coined, “Metaverse.”

According to the company, the platform enhances efficiency, productivity and flexibility, as teams from across the room or across the globe can enter Omniverse and simultaneously work together on projects with real-time photorealistic rendering.

As part of the open beta, NVIDIA released several Omniverse applications that can be used within the Omniverse software, including Omniverse View for architecture, engineering and construction professionals; Omniverse Create for designers, creators and specialists in media and entertainment and manufacturing/product design; and Omniverse Kaolin for 3D deep learning researchers.

Early next year, the company plans to release Omniverse Audio2Face, an AI-powered facial animation app; Omniverse Machinima for GeForce RTX gamers; and Isaac Sim 2021.1 for robotics development.