Digital World Experience (DWE) is a multi-dimensional, multi-party, and multi-sensory experience that transforms human interactions across physical, human, and digital worlds. The combination of these technologies is expected to yield human and machine experiences. This paper takes a closer look at the societal and economic opportunities that can be made possible through DWEs as well as 6G research and technology directions required to help realize DWEs.

The paper identifies several DWE use cases, such as immersive multi-sensory XR, network enabled robotics and autonomous systems, along with several technical challenges impeding their realization, e.g., lack of smaller form factor and lighter weight XR headsets/glasses. Also identified are several key 6G research and technology advancement areas that will enable DWEs, such as networks with interacting haptic sensors (tactile and kinesthetic), sub-msec latencies for instantaneous haptic feedback, and support for coordinating distributed computing across network nodes and devices.

Several developments and efforts across the industries involved will be needed for a path to realization:

• Ecosystem, standardization, and FOSS development
• Operating systems and platform innovations
• Technology accumulations and hardware innovations
• Innovations in rich content applications

The paper outlines these efforts spanning across several industries and stakeholders, including communications and computing providers, device manufacturers, policy makers, applications developers, and end users.