The founder of Epic Games and the co-creator of the Unreal Engine for game development sees how get to immersive social virtual reality — soon.

We don’t often post items here for the purpose of sending you somewhere else, but VentureBeat has a great interview (as in “I wish I had done it.”) Dean Takahaski of Venture Beat sat down recently with Tim Sweeney, graphics industry pioneer and recipient of the Jon Peddie Research Technology Advancement award. During their chat Sweeney explained how the Metaverse is closer than we think.

The name and the concept behind Metaverse was coined by science fiction writer Neil Stephenson, and refers to full-time immersive virtual reality with social interaction and sense of presence. Stephenson is currently an employee of Magic Leap, the secretive company with wads of venture money showing off impressive demos of new augmented reality technology it says will ship soon.

Sweeney has his own ideas about getting to the Metaverse; ideas based in his years as both a visionary programmer and as an executive in the CG industry. Take a few minutes to read “Epic graphics guru Tim Sweeney foretells how we can create the open Metaverse.” It’s a good read, not a TL;DR.