In the last episode of the Step into the Metaverse Podcast, I had a chat with John Gaeta, a creator, inventor and an Academy Award-winning designer best known for his work on the Matrix Trilogy, where he pioneered form-bending innovations such as "Bullet Time", “Virtual Cinema” and "Volumetric Capture" to envision human, hero and god-like moments. He was also involved in The Matrix Awakens from 2021 as Executive Creative Development, Executive Producer, Writer, and in the ultimate Engine 5 demonstration featuring the universe of The Matrix, which is a great watch for anyone who wants to know how close the metaverse really is. Recent areas of exploration include “Photo Anime”, “Nuvies” (Natural User Movies), “Holo Cinema”, “Immersive Cinema”, Mixed Reality, and The "Magicverse". In 2015, John co-founded Lucasfilm’s Immersive Entertainment division: ILMxLAB. “ILMxLAB seeks to “Develop, Produce and Release premium, story-based Immersive Entertainment Experiences for Star Wars and other imaginative universes”.He served as its Executive Creative Director, overseeing content strategy and multi-platform portfolio development. John and I discussed how important AR and VR are, especially regarding hyper-realistic content. We discussed the role of user-generated content in the metaverse and the infrastructure challenges of creating a hyper-realistic metaverse. Please tune in for more of our value-packed conversation. If you are interested in learning more about the metaverse, you can order my book Step into the Metaverse here.