Derek Watts – Carte Blanche Enters The Metaverse

On the 1st of March 2022, well known Carte Blanche presenter Derek Watts, accompanied by his filming crew, visited the Virtual Reality offices in Roodepoort, Johannesburg. The purpose of his visit was to film a segment about the role of virtual reality within the world of the Metaverse. Additionally, Derek also wanted to understand the full extent of how immersive virtual reality can truly be. This is why we gave Derek a virtual reality headset and let him go through one of the most immersive virtual experiences one can come across, Richie’s Plank Experience.

Derek’s full reaction to the experience can be seen below.[vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8SvydkgEis” align=”center”]After he had completed the experience, Derek had a conversation with the founder of Virtual Reality South Africa, Gerald Ferreira, about the future of virtual reality, and what it might become in a hundred years. According to Gerald, it will one day be nearly impossible to distinguish the real world from the virtual world.The episode of Carte Blanche in which the segment featured, aired on the 17th of April 2022. Alongside Virtual Reality South Africa, the segment showed Derek speaking with a variety of prominent figures within the South African virtual reality industry, including Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, vice-chancellor of The University of Johannesburg, and  the creator of Ubuntuland, Mic Mann.

They discussed several aspects regarding the Metaverse and virtual reality, such as the benefits of NFTs in the modern economy, South Africa’s place in the Metaverse, and the impact of virtual reality and the Metaverse on the human lifestyle in general.Derek also spoke with smaller artists who are trying to utilise their skills to make a name for themselves in the Metaverse, such as Aubrey Moloto, who wants to create the first record label in Decentraland, and Jolene Forlee, a former architect that creates virtual clothing for the Korean metaverse named Zepeto.

Despite its rapidly rising popularity, the Metaverse is still relatively obscure to a great majority of South Africans. Hopefully Derek has provided them with enough information to help them understand that the Metaverse, alongside virtual reality, is the future.