[HN Gopher] The metaverse is already here - it's Minecraft
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The metaverse is already here - it's Minecraft
Author : Tomte
Score : 267 points
Date : 2021-11-02 16:09 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (clivethompson.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (clivethompson.medium.com)
| jmcgough wrote:
| I've been blown away by the explosion of "urlfest" concerts
| teenagers have been running on Minecraft during shutdown. A ton
| of really good music because everyone was stuck inside and needed
| something to do (digicore / hyperpop blew up last year).
| curtain wrote:
| For me a metaverse would be a collection of objects overlayed on
| our physical world.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| No, it is not. Neither is Roblox or Fortnite, or VRchat. A single
| game or world is NOT the metaverse, what is so hard to understand
| about that for journalists and companies?
|
| The metaverse is the immersive internet, as a successor to our
| current one that is more 2D oriented around photos/videos/text
| today. It's a paradigm shift in how we interact, but most
| importantly there will be many of these virtual worlds/spaces
| interconnected together to form an actual network that nobody
| outright owns. To get to this future, we need protocols/standards
| to allow virtual worlds to talk to one another and agree that
| users can hop back in forth between them seamlessly, across all
| platforms.
|
| More specifically, the way we use the web today to navigate from
| webpage to another is how we we traverse the metaverse. The core
| problem that needs to get solved right now is interoperability,
| to enable the "web of 3D".
|
| Look to WebGPU, WebAssembly, and WebXR as cornerstone
| technologies here. Our startup is building the "3D/VR web" in
| this way, and our current focus is getting proper HTML5 exporting
| from the native game engines, currently Unreal Engine. We're also
| building out a suite of tooling to empower developers and
| creators along with our hosting/discovery platform that includes
| advanced texture compression + asynchronous asset fetching to
| enable 3D/VR websites that load as quickly as a regular 2D page.
| If you're a developer and are interested in our work, you can
| join our Discord here:
|
| https://discord.gg/zUSZ3T8
| gremloni wrote:
| Plus if it doesn't look good and have porn it's no good.
| one_off_comment wrote:
| If the web was created today, it would not be a set of open
| protocols, markup languages, etc. It would be a product. That's
| the world we live in, so that's why journalists and companies
| chase that vision.
|
| There's obviously no way to be sure, but the only reason the
| web was created how it was is because it was a bunch of
| academics, nerds, and hobbyists who saw a need and filled it.
| There was no perceived money in it from the private sector's
| point of view. Now that there's no question that there's money
| to be made, it's like blood in the water. And the capitalist
| sharks can smell it.
|
| An open standard that's given away for free isn't attractive to
| the people who have the means to create it.
| psyc wrote:
| And it was a trade off. I think most of us are well
| acquainted with the advertised advantages of open standards
| and web application architecture as we know it. But it came
| at the expense of both user experience and developer
| experience on par with traditional desktop applications. E.g.
| arbitrary languages (esp. compiled languages), fast graphics,
| great UI toolkits. We get some approximation of such things
| at a glacial pace, or it's always just over the horizon.
| Everybody is leery of adopting a comprehensive framework only
| backed by a single corporation (is this what held Java back?)
| but standards bodies take 20 years to deliver a bright idea
| like compiling your favorite language to byte code that can
| execute in the browser.
| nightpool wrote:
| Minecraft is actually a _great_ example here--the client and
| server ecosystem is extremely, extremely diverse, with lots of
| different choices for users. Almost everyone who uses Minecraft
| on desktop is running _some_ mod, if only Optifine, and the
| server landscape is even more diverse, with dozens of competing
| reimplementations, all communicating over a shared protocol. I
| think Minecraft is a great example in the current landscape of
| a _naturally evolved_ diverse, unowned network of interactive
| virtual spaces. If Mojang disappeared tomorrow, the only thing
| the community would need to solve is authentication (and for
| our use-case, something like mTLS would work super well)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's the metaverse we wish for, yet it's not the metaverse FB
| wants to build. It is the metaverse only in name, but it's just
| another proprietary sillowed plateform built to milk users.
|
| A metaverse should have an HTTP-like protocol, with the goal to
| interconnect, to give power to the client, while allowing an
| ecosystem to build, because it would be defined as an open
| standard.
|
| We need a 2021 Tim Berners Lee, not a Mark Zuckerberg.
| bsanr2 wrote:
| >what is so hard to understand about that for journalists and
| companies?
|
| They've gotten used to redefining existing words to better fit
| a desired narrative, a habit picked up from your given tech
| company marketing department. It's funny that you mention XR,
| which was itself coined in part to get around Microsoft's co-
| opting of "mixed reality" (which itself evolved to encompass
| all forms of n-reality after initially being coined to replace
| "augmented reality", I believe by Magic Leap). It's a mess.
| phailhaus wrote:
| It's pretty wild that Meta has gone all-in on this "metaverse"
| concept when VR as a platform has completely stagnated to date.
| VR still hasn't found its killer app, why is Meta so convinced
| that it's going to look like Second Life?
| sprkwd wrote:
| Do they know something we don't?
| one_off_comment wrote:
| I think they know how much money they've sunk into their
| Oculus property and they want to see more return on that
| investment.
| fullshark wrote:
| Maybe they know that VR and Second Life may have stagnated
| but are going nowhere and as tech improves, the "Metaverse"
| is inevitable? The fact that Second Life is still a thing in
| 2021 is actually impressive.
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| The 2D internet works though because it's an efficient means of
| communication and data transfer. When I search the weather,
| check directions, send a message, book a flight, buy a shirt,
| or view the daily news, I can get that done fast on the
| existing internet. I don't want to load a 3D world to read an
| article. I don't need to walk around as a 3D avatar to ask a
| friend what time they're arriving. It's inefficient. It's not
| the future of the internet. It's a gimmick or form of
| entertainment.
|
| That being said, I did think it was the future of the internet
| 15-20 years ago when I was taking CAD files of products and
| turning them into interactive 3D Flash websites. Then I
| realized my mistake. People don't want fancy graphics or
| animations when browsing the internet. They want data. They
| want it fast, and they want it organized and presented to them
| in the most efficient way.
|
| For that reason, I don't believe the future of the internet is
| the metaverse. The future will be something along the lines of
| neuralink, where information is instantly sent and received
| from the brain. Instead of spending 20 minutes reading a
| Wikipedia article, the information will be instantly sent to
| your brain. Instead of pulling out your phone and checking
| directions to a restaurant, you'll know where to go just by
| thinking that very question. The internet will basically be an
| extension of your brain. What the internet knows, you'll know.
| That's the future.
| _nalply wrote:
| I underestimated Minecraft. I knew it is important, so I
| tried it out two years ago but dismissed it when I got killed
| by a zombie. I thought, fuck it, I don't need anxiety when it
| gets night in the game.
|
| But then a friend of my son played Minecraft.
|
| I installed Minecraft on a Chromebook then I watched the
| children figuring out Minecraft. I figured out lot of things,
| too.
|
| When I discovered that they created a railway and put
| monsters onto the trolleys, first I had a hearty laugh then I
| got intrigued again. I discovered that Minecraft Education
| Edition has a coding environment similar to Scratch from MIT.
| I showed them how to create a giant ice cube and dig narrow
| aisles inside it. Next they created a giant cube of TNT and
| set it off.
|
| Anyway, I think what will happen: you can't centrally create
| a world. You need people. So when I read the article I found
| myself just nodding.
|
| People will find ways how to define and use the metaverse,
| not that company.
| Zababa wrote:
| I've been saying for quite some time that the next big thing (for
| me) would be some kind of hybrid between a virtual coworking
| space, VRChat and Minecraft. I feel like being in a 3D space is a
| completly different experience from being on a Discord server for
| example. I'd love to go build a house with friends, then code a
| bit with them inside, and then invite a few people in.
| philjohn wrote:
| When I started having meetings in Workrooms I was shocked by
| how much less fatiguing it was than a standard VC, even with
| the Quest hanging off my face.
|
| I also regularly sim race (1-2 hour races on iRacing) in VR and
| that's a much better experience as it's 3D than just starting
| at a screen - VR feels like it's reached that critical mass
| moment where it's not going to fade away as a fad.
| MrFlibbles wrote:
| I thought is was already here... Fallout 76...
| pknerd wrote:
| I have not played Minecraft, my son does but I think that
| Metaversa is more closer to the Matrix movie instead of
| Minecraft.
| sushsjsuauahab wrote:
| There will never be a metaverse! The amount of electricity and
| device manufacturing required for it to exist at scale will
| likely exhaust our capabilities as a planet and lead to yet more
| conflict and strife.
| wussboy wrote:
| And that strife will be in the real world. The thing about
| "real" is that it always wins over "virtual".
| sushsjsuauahab wrote:
| 100%. The virtual world is actually a very fragile thing.
| petre wrote:
| Just turn off the electricity and it's gone. Imagine what a
| solar flare could do.
| clpm4j wrote:
| (Aware of the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to read HN)
|
| I really wonder how many adults > 25yrs and < 60yrs have the time
| to immerse themselves in any type of digital world / metaverse
| experience. If I was a teenager or in college, then yeah I can
| see it... but there are so many things to do in the 16hrs we have
| each day, and I already kick myself for not finishing that book,
| or getting an extra workout in, and just sitting in the backyard
| and resting my eyes. And I don't even have children...
| id wrote:
| Working remotely? That's 8 hours of digital world / metaverse
| experience right there. Most people have at least another 2
| hours of screen time on top of that. I know I have days that
| are just screen time essentially.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Unless.. its super easy to convert what obsesses ones day into
| 3d and park it in the world. But then its just humanitys meme &
| memory junkyard.. kind of like a book with sad faces.
| jonas21 wrote:
| The Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts the American Time Use
| Survey [1], which tracks how people spend their time. This
| includes a breakdown by age (see table 9).
|
| In every single age group, the average person spends over 4
| hours per day on leisure and sports activities, the majority of
| which is watching TV (and very little of which is exercise or
| reading).
|
| This is true even for people with children, with the exception
| of those with a child under 6 years of age. They spend an
| average of 3.86 hours/day on leisure and sports activities,
| 1.91 hours/day of which is watching TV.
|
| It seems as though there is plenty of time for the metaverse.
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/atus.pdf
| cbhl wrote:
| The ones that I have met did so because their children were
| into it. An hour or two a day adds up pretty quickly if you're
| building
| mmmeff wrote:
| I think the end vision for the metaverse is to swallow up a lot
| of those time sinks in a typical lifespan. Working, shopping,
| socializing, etc. could theoretically be supplanted by a
| metaverse (for better or worse).
| Grimm1 wrote:
| How many people spend a lot of time on social media? Billions,
| this is just providing a more immersive interaction for that.
| VR is only a tiny portion of that and I'm expecting AR and
| haptics and a whole bunch of other tech that enable more
| diverse sensory experiences to play a part here.
|
| I don't really want "Meta" to own all of that largely because
| what made the internet successful was having no gatekeeper and
| a very low barrier to entry. Not that that's true anymore, but
| having no initial gatekeeper let people do crazy things for 30
| years while the current gatekeepers were establishing
| themselves.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| 29 years old no kids here, have lots of coworkers in the same
| cohort. During the pandemic in particular a lot of friends
| started to pick up VRChat, and a majority of people in my age
| group still regularly play games. I think that's not that
| untypical honestly, I can see quite a few adults sinking at
| least a few hours per week into it if it gets interesting
| enough.
| beebmam wrote:
| The time I spend in Minecraft is either meditation time or
| social time.
|
| It's an even better experience when there's a modpack on the
| server with a near-infinite number of things to do, too.
| one_off_comment wrote:
| You're preaching to the choir. This is why I'd always rather
| read an article or a book than watch a video if I'm trying to
| learn something. I'll watch TV or a movie if I'm only aiming to
| be entertained. But for something I want to try to retain or if
| I'm trying to get business done, text wins for me.
| kelnos wrote:
| More like 6 hours, if you consider work time, commute time (for
| folks who'll still have to do that), meal prep, etc.
|
| But I don't think that's really the point. People use those 6
| hours in a bunch of different ways. Some of those hours might
| be replaced by a metaverse experience entirely (as in, "I used
| to do play video games on my console, but I can get the same
| experience, but better, playing games in the metaverse"), and
| other activities might get nudged out because they aren't as
| (subjectively) enjoyable as the metaverse to some people. And
| other people will just not do the metaverse thing, because
| other activities are more fun to them. FB is betting on the
| user group being very large, and I don't know that I'd disagree
| with them.
|
| And the same thing will always happen: people will continue to
| kick themselves for not finishing that book, or getting that
| extra workout in. That will continue to be the case with or
| without the metaverse.
|
| Also consider that something like a metaverse could become the
| standard way for remote knowledge workers to get in a "room"
| together to collaborate. That alone seems like a large user
| base.
| bluedino wrote:
| The amount of 25-35 year old adults that play video games is
| pretty huge.
| BTCOG wrote:
| The amount of 6-60 year old video gamers is huge. 25's a
| strange number to start, and 35 is far too young to cut off.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| 50-something-or-other here. I'm still plugging away at Ultima
| 4 w/o cheating.
| pugworthy wrote:
| Don't discount 35-65 (or beyond) either.
| xrobledo84 wrote:
| Most people don't read books or exercise.
| pdog wrote:
| With software improvements, our perception of time will
| eventually be slowed down in the metaverse to such an extent
| that one hour in the material world will equate to several days
| of perceived elapsed time in meta-reality.
| Matrixik wrote:
| It's hard for me to believe one hour to several days but one
| hour (material world) to two hours would, probably, be
| already achievable. Now I watch most videos on youtube at 2x
| speed.
| derac wrote:
| Do you have any context which would indicate this is
| possible?
| colordrops wrote:
| Might be sarcasm?
| rakejake wrote:
| Only if we are cloned and are pure software beings. In that
| case, it is possible to run at a faster "clock speed". Of
| course, this is all in the realm of sci-fi.
| masona wrote:
| You answered your own question - it's a play for the next
| generation.
|
| My kids bounce between a multitude of shared digital spaces
| (games, chat, social, videos etc) and they would be right at
| home at some kind of metaverse that would bridge them all (if
| that's even possible).
| headcanon wrote:
| Metaverse may not end up being something that you end up glued
| to for a long period of time exclusively, the interactions will
| also bleed into other parts of your life. The main example
| would be that you could buy items for a Metaverse game in an
| online store on, and you would browse around there on your
| phone while you're waiting in line for coffee or the bus or
| whatever, just like we would do online shopping.
|
| Metaverse would also wrap itself around a lot of the things
| people do already, like watch movies or concerts, coupled with
| games of any size and type. So as opposed to a stereotypical
| 6-hour WoW raid lifestyle, you could, for example, watch a
| virtual concert with friends, then afterwards jump onto a
| couple rounds of some Fortnite game variant, similar to how we
| do it today but just within the 'verse. But you could also
| immerse yourself for longer if you want to.
|
| Honestly Metaverse seems more to me like a digital version of a
| big shopping mall with a bowling alley, arcade, and movie
| theater. You can hang out all day there or just drop in to get
| something from a store, or just get dinner and a movie.
| Kiro wrote:
| I also kick myself for not finishing things. Namely programming
| projects, my game backlog and lots of other things that are
| strictly digital. While you seem to want to get away from the
| computer I want to spend more time in front of it.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Now you can read the book in the metaverse!
|
| Kidding. Kinda.
|
| Obligatory Futurama:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6eRqMiAxQ0
| [deleted]
| mastazi wrote:
| I'm 43, I don't play regularly because of work/kids/etc. but
| every now and then I log into one of my favourite servers and
| spend some time there.
|
| Two years ago I have built a base on 2b2t[1], located millions
| of blocks away from spawn, it took many hours of travelling
| through nether highways to get there. Before starting the
| journey, I had to escape spawn (a very dangerous area since
| 2b2t is an anarchy server) and I had to find valuable items
| from scavenging abandoned bases. After I finished my base, I
| made friends on the server, I have also helped building one of
| the highways, using a hacked Minecraft client that includes
| tools to build tunnels automatically[2].
|
| There is also another server that I have visited regularly,
| MinecraftOnline[3], I built a house there and I made some
| friends, this one has rules and moderators unlike 2b2t which is
| an anarchy server. On both servers there is a rich community, a
| subculture specific to the server, and even specific activities
| that stem from each server's subculture[4][5]
|
| Based on my experience, I have to agree with the article,
| Minecraft is an amazing and diverse metaverse.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2b2t
|
| [2] Highway Tools demonstration
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwkDk_Xn2Y4
|
| [3] https://minecraftonline.com/
|
| [4] https://minecraftonline.com/wiki/Pigchinko_(Game)
|
| [5] Guide to Crystal PvP on 2b2t
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOImrm9ldTY
| mikewave wrote:
| Agreed. There's way too many things to do in reality. I have
| about 30-60 minutes a day of Me Time, and the last thing I want
| to do is piss it away in front of a computer when I've already
| spent 70% of my time doing exactly that.
|
| Go outside, people. Talk to your friends in reality if
| possible. Experience the place you live in; participate in
| something physical to improve it materially. There's no end of
| socialization and minigames in reality, the graphics are
| better, and it's free.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse
| and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually
| really insightful answer.
|
| 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day.
| alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The
| actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the
| average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video
| Games are about ignoring reality for entertainment in a fake
| world already. thats a few hours people can dedicate.
|
| 2) The metaverse can be more than traditional video game type
| entertainment. WFH has turned the office as a destination into
| a keyboard/monitor as a destination. You can use VR to have a
| much more immersive/focused work destination than either office
| or WFH desk. Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse.
|
| (I have tried the Oculus workrooms and if the virtual screen
| resolution was higher then i'd personally work in it.)
| robbiep wrote:
| I think those are reasonable points - one thing from my life
| as someone who has basically turned my back on gaming due to
| the 'real life game' I'm involved in is that tv is a good
| escape/unwind when I can't be arsed exercising/socialising
| but one of the reasons it is compelling is because the start-
| up times/stopping cost is basically zero - compared to either
| a pc or console game where not only do I have startup times
| to contend with but also the possibility of getting sucked
| towards the event horizon I can't get out of and neglecting
| my level-ups in life
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I have a Quest 2 and had a Vive before that. The Quest 2 is
| way more convenient. But I'm still too tired/lazy to put it
| on most of the time and would rather veg out on the couch.
|
| I can't be the only one who feels this way?
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Conceptually, a VR workroom sounds like it could be extremely
| nifty. As someone easily distracted, I'd love to be able to
| sit in space with only a text editor open and do my thing.
|
| In practice, excluding resolution, wearing a headset for
| hours on end seems even more straining both for the neck and
| eyes than the alternative real life workstation.
| bamboozled wrote:
| "Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse."
|
| I hope he plans to be spending 8 hours a day in "metaverse"
| but I'm sure as fuck not going to be.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Sure, that's also what sport coaches, musician teachers,
| people teaching cooking on youtube and librarians say.
|
| Also you should get 8 hours of sleep, buy food at the farmers
| market, spend time with your familly, meditate, get this GTD
| rolling, and learn a new skill for your carreer.
|
| But honestly, the truth is, as soon as VR is cheap and comfy,
| I think people will rush to it anyway for one reason: porn.
| So the metaverse can grow, if like in second life, it allows
| for porn to develop. But since FB tend to want a family
| friendly experience, I think we got a betamax vs VHS
| situation here.
| kibwen wrote:
| I'm frustrated that everywhere I look I keep seeing
| "metaverse" and "VR" used interchangeably. All of the things
| described above are VR, and none of them are the metaverse.
|
| Watching TV or playing a game in an immersive, distraction-
| free VR environment sounds great, and will happen, and it's
| not the metaverse, it's just VR.
|
| Working in a virtual home office has the potential to be
| extremely productive, ergonomic, and space-saving, and it's
| not the metaverse, it's just VR.
|
| A metaverse involves some kind of shared space and shared
| experience across a networked medium. Not only is it more
| than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even
| require VR.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| Frankly the problem is, none of these are really well
| defined. I think Zuck wants the general consensus to lean
| towards:
|
| VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for
| that user interface.
|
| Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user
| interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then
| we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and
| with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got the
| screen and mouse user interface, and with it FPS, RTS, like
| Warcraft and Doom. Touch screens were again a new user
| interface and with it came games like Fruit Ninja. VR now
| exists as a user interface (although still needs to be
| improved) and many people love playing Skyrim with it, or
| Beat Saber.
|
| All of these were mostly local experiences with different
| (better?) user interfaces.
|
| Meanwhile, each user interface had its own networks that
| were built on them. e.g. Email is a "first class network"
| built on the text based user interface. e.g. WWW is a
| "first class network" built on the mouse based user
| interface.
|
| The metaverse isn't a new user interface. The metaverse is
| a "first class network" built on top of the VR based user
| interface.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I think part of the plan is to build VR spaces and then
| connect them together. Take the "things" in that space and
| expose them to non-vr software clients.
|
| eg. maybe your vr home has digital art, but that art can
| also exist and be viewed in other mediums. Or you can all
| sit at home and watch VRTV with friends, but one friend
| just watches on their phone on the bus.
|
| Or a virtaul office desk, that can have coworkers visiting.
| The office server can be hosted on your corp servers (or,
| the social networking, maybe you self host your personal
| office), but when you leave to go virtually home, you're
| now in your home, hosted by fb nee meta.
| kibwen wrote:
| Absolutely, the idea of a shared virtual office (as
| opposed to just a solitary home office) would be a
| realization of a VR metaverse. Of course, aside from
| meetings (where the whole point is to interact with other
| people), I think it remains to be seen whether the idea
| of a shared virtual office is actually something that
| anyone really wants, or whether it's simply a case of a
| lack of imagination from people who are so accustomed to
| the idea of shared office space that they try to shoehorn
| it into the virtual world without really considering if
| it makes sense to. Personally, if I'm going to be working
| in a virtual space, I'm going to be working somewhere in
| Earth's orbit, or under a tree on a hill on a rainy
| evening surrounded by fireflies, and not in a 3D-rendered
| cubicle.
| stormbrew wrote:
| > Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a
| metaverse doesn't even require VR.
|
| I'm sorry, I think if you want to broaden this term like
| this you're going to have to stipulate some new boundaries.
| Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and
| metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names
| for it back to the "internet superhighway".
|
| And when Di died or 9/11 happened I had a "shared
| experience across a networked medium" about them, for
| concrete examples.
|
| Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very
| unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember? So
| I'm not sure where this idea even comes from.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Else, we 've got the metaverse: it's just the
| internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line
| of silly names for it back to the "internet
| superhighway"._
|
| Yes, this is absolutely correct.
|
| A "metaverse" exists in contrast to meatspace. In
| meatspace I walk down the street, I look through a shop
| window, I see you browsing inside, I spray some graffiti
| on the wall, you see the graffiti when you come out of
| the shop. We have a shared space with the qualities of
| presence (I passively saw you while you were browsing)
| and persistence (the graffiti will be there for anyone to
| see).
|
| In the metaverse, I open some application on a computer,
| I look at some window or readout, I see that you're
| online (maybe I just see a light next to a username, or
| maybe I see your WoW character dancing shirtless outside
| of Goldshire), I leave something persistent (maybe a
| comment on a blog post, maybe a spray on the wall in an
| MMOFPS), which is available for you to see at some point.
| There are hundreds of metaverses (that's nearly the whole
| point; a metaverse is a virtual space that isn't bound by
| the rules and limits of physical space, so why not
| inhabit a few dozen?) of varying complexity (many
| websites, IRC, BBSes) and immersiveness (Minecraft,
| Second Life, PlayStation Home). VR isn't intrinsic to the
| idea of a metaverse, it's just one potential realization
| of the idea.
|
| _> Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was...
| very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can
| remember?_
|
| Stephenson depicted his metaverse as a virtual space for
| the sake of the reader's imagination, so that they could
| envision something real and familiar instead of just a
| bunch of people clacking away on keyboards. The "virtual
| street" metaphor used in Snow Crash was always just a
| convenient literary device, and not at all the point of
| the metaverse, which to reiterate is the idea of a
| virtual shared universe in which to exist that is unbound
| from the restrictions of the physical universe.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The depiction was as relevant to the WWW as the browser
| is: the presentation is up to the client, remember that
| Lynx and Firefox are both perfectly good web clients (in
| principle, we've killed that aspect of the web for the
| most part by insisting on pixel perfect copies instead of
| broad rendering hints). But depending on bandwidth and
| rendering capability of your device you could have the
| entirety of the gamma ranging from text-only all the way
| to full immersive 3D and everything in between.
| Closi wrote:
| I think metaverse is just a fancy name for communicating
| with people online supported by technology (both present
| technology, future technology and meatspace
| communications supported by technology).
|
| It's clear from Facebook's presentations for instance
| that they consider text messaging via WhatsApp to class
| as part of the metaverse.
|
| It's not anything new, but I think the metaverse strategy
| is basically Facebook saying "we want to own all
| communications, and push the boundaries of what owning
| communications even means". That's my take anyway, but I
| have found most people are focused on the VR aspect and
| have missed the more scary all-encompassing and broader
| definition.
| kibwen wrote:
| I would classify it as slightly more than communication;
| a metaverse also has to give you some way to "inhabit"
| it. We're communicating on HN, but HN doesn't really have
| a way to inhabit it, so I wouldn't call HN a metaverse.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Every registered user is an inhabitant, every passerby an
| observing alien that might convert into an inhabitant at
| some point.
| [deleted]
| mbesto wrote:
| The fact that the definition of the "metaverse" is
| stipulating so much disagreement and discussion is itself
| the problem.
|
| When smartphones were launched there was a simple
| description - "oh cool, it's a traditional phone but it has
| a computer running inside of it? makes sense"
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| > Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a
| metaverse doesn't even require VR.
|
| It does not matter because for the public and the media
| Zuckerberg is redefining the meaning of the word right in
| front of our eyes. Give it a few years and everybody will
| believe VR is an inherent feature of metaverse. Just like
| those of us who had been using the word "crypto" to mean
| "cryptography" for decades were trying to explain in vain
| what the word originally mean - but it made no sense as the
| new meaning was already popularized.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Arguably that's probably why Facebook's efforts are
| doomed to fail before they've even started. By branding
| and marketing and tying all of their "metaverse"
| activities to VR they've already lost in a lot of user
| mindset. The retrending blog post on the Requiem for the
| HMD [1][2] is more than enough reason to believe that VR
| (at it exists today, as it existed in 2019 when that blog
| post was written) is an albatross that Facebook has now
| tied around its neck as Meta.
|
| People are already dismissing this "metaverse" furor as
| just more VR hype with a stupider name and the company
| "Meta" is risking killing the entire term "metaverse" and
| any usefulness it might have had altogether.
|
| Ironically, by owning Facebook "Meta" should be in one of
| the best positions to build/sell a 2D "metaverse plane"
| as well as just about anyone else possibly could. Tear
| down some of the garden walls, allow a bit more of the
| old MySpace and Blog anarchy of clashing styles and user
| control, be a better web citizen. They aren't likely to
| do that because they are using "metaverse" as attempt to
| make more Oculus money and risking the Facebook lock in
| and walled garden for a vision with actual guts and takes
| risks doesn't seem to be in their interest.
|
| [1] https://www.highfidelity.com/backlog/requiem-for-the-
| hmd
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29069381
| nradov wrote:
| I see a lot of assumptions about office worker productivity
| with zero real world evidence.
|
| A lot of home office workers never learned to touch type.
| How the heck are they supposed to do office work if they
| can't see their fingers on the keyboard? Voice recognition
| is no solution, it still sucks for text entry and is
| completely useless for anything like slide presentations or
| spreadsheets.
|
| There is legitimate potential for workers doing 3D stuff
| like CAD, architecture, and data visualization but that's a
| tiny niche of the workforce.
| c54 wrote:
| You'll be able to see your fingers and arms and
| keyboard/mouse/trackpd/desk surface/chair all in vr. Even
| current gen oculus has a front facing camera.
| [deleted]
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| How is touch typing (or lack of it) related to working in
| a home office?
| pitched wrote:
| Most office work that I've seen requires text entry
| (email, spreadsheets, proposals, etc) and that's always
| today done through a keyboard. Doing that work in VR
| where you can't see the keyboard is surprisingly tough,
| even if you can touch type!
|
| I've switched out my keycaps for blanks recently to try
| to force myself to get better at working in VR but I'm
| still struggling a bit with all the symbols.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Like others said, occluding the keyboard into VR is
| suprisingly capable, especially when combined with touch
| typing.
|
| Also most CAD users would probably not want cludgy UI
| like VR has today, they want keyboard and mouse too.
|
| I suggest looking at the demo/videos of Horizon Workspace
| (by meta). It works really well, although the resolution
| is too low for me tooday.
|
| Then there is this guy that was on HN recently:
|
| https://blog.immersed.team/working-from-
| orbit-39bf95a6d385
| Kiro wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. Bigscreen in VR is amazing. Hanging
| out inside a virtual cinema auditorium watching stuff
| together with other random people is way better than I
| could ever have imagined.
| Corence wrote:
| Yeah, even things like gather.town people have said worked
| well for things like happy hours for teams working remotely.
| Having some virtual equivalent of physical space helps people
| socialize more naturally.
| derac wrote:
| I'm incredulous that having a screen strapped half an inch
| from your eyes for 8+ hours is desirable. I have an Oculus
| Rift, my face is sweaty/red in a couple of hours and there is
| an indent around my eyes. I'm sure newer tech can be much
| better, especially with airflow and an AR set that lets in
| natural light. We're not there yet, though.
| darkwater wrote:
| I just got to try an Oculus Quest 2 and I was really blown
| away by how advanced it is, I didn't expect that. But at
| least in my case and at my age after a 2-3 hours of full
| use (when you run out of battery) my eyes are really tired
| and I was scratching them for a few days after. So, it
| still need one extra generation at least, probably an
| "iPhone-like" moment but it's definitely addictive.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| In thirty years there will be a startup that you can get
| affordable eye replacements. Keep burning those eyes!
| 8note wrote:
| Can you actually wear the heavy goggles for that long?
| ksaj wrote:
| Between that and staring downward at the phone while
| walking down the street, this will all be a blessing for
| chiropractors.
| nradov wrote:
| I hardly ever "watch" TV. But I often have the TV on while
| I'm doing something else.
|
| With this metaverse stuff you have to wear the stupid
| goggles. You can't just have it on in the background and
| glance up if something interesting comes on. This is why 3D
| TVs failed in the market. The technology worked fine but most
| regular people didn't want to wear the goggles just to watch
| a movie.
| 01100011 wrote:
| TV is relaxing. I can turn my brain off and don't need to do
| anything. The metaverse is just a fancy videogame that big
| tech companies need to invent so they can monetize another
| platform and sell more HW.
|
| Sure, if you pay me to work in the metaverse I'll be happy to
| hang out there. Otherwise I'm not interested.
| wruza wrote:
| We'll do the same thing we are mostly doing with games now:
| watching somebody playing it sitting next to you, like
| you're friends, on some sort of in-game cloud.
| thrashh wrote:
| But the metaverse itself is not content. Instead it's another
| medium to consume content.
|
| Therefore the metaverse isn't a replacement for a video games
| or TV. You would simply watch TV or play a video game while
| in the metaverse.
|
| The metaverse in that regard isn't a new concept, because VR
| spaces have existed for a long time now. I've watched movies
| in Minecraft more recently, for example. I've seen every idea
| in the metaverse attempted in some game or application
| already.
|
| The reason these VR spaces have not taken off, however, is
| because the medium to access these VR spaces have been pretty
| disappointing.
|
| It's the reason why the Internet took a long time to take
| off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When
| smartphones took off, so did the Internet.
|
| Facebook has not fixed the medium problem as I see it. I have
| never gotten motion sickness, but I do not want to put on a
| VR headset for more than a few hours. I don't even want to
| put on a VR headset to be honest. I've owned one for two
| years and it just sits in a drawer. I can't imagine that many
| people want to put on a VR headset either if they could just
| watch TV while sitting on the couch, grabbing real drinks on
| their real table, and texting their friends.
| toto444 wrote:
| A big reason the internet took off is one that I guess will
| be banned by default in the metaverse : 18+ content.
| jyounker wrote:
| And this is probably why facebook won't win.
| echelon wrote:
| The metaverse that wins will allow 18+ content.
|
| Not Zuckerberg.
| a9h74j wrote:
| 18verse > metaverse
| wruza wrote:
| But there is no P in FAANG. And Steam/etc don't make
| their living on adult games. And youtube has no porn on
| it.
|
| I think the issue with winning it with adult content will
| remain unchanged, at least for a while. Porn is so
| classic, that it cannot tunnel through this potential
| barrier.
| lottin wrote:
| > It's the reason why the Internet took a long time to take
| off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When
| smartphones took off, so did the Internet.
|
| What?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Honestly pre-2008 spending time online was pretty niche.
| I spent maybe a couple hours a day max on MySpace and
| LiveJournal and maybe a couple of forums once or twice a
| week. This was between pirating music and burning CDs for
| friends in high school which gave me a pretty high score
| on the nerd-index.
|
| I was listening to a podcast on Flat Earthers and the
| host basically traced the explosion of True Believers to
| the advent of the smartphone circa 2008 onwards; suddenly
| hundreds of millions more people were spending hours a
| day online.
| allturtles wrote:
| > It's the reason why the Internet took a long time to take
| off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When
| smartphones took off, so did the Internet.
|
| This is not true, the Internet took off in the U.S. in the
| mid-90s: https://ourworldindata.org/internet
|
| The driving force was the WWW, not smartphones.
|
| Personally, I would say exactly the opposite, the only
| advantage a smartphone has over a desktop computer for
| Internet usage is portability, otherwise the experience is
| worse in every way.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Like Web3.0 we are gonna get every shade of meaning of Metaverse
| shoved down our throats for the foreseeable future.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| But what if Web 3.0 _is_ the Metaverse?
| Shadonototra wrote:
| Sorry but these "metaverse" articles are all cringe, boomers
| trying to regain influence they lost in the real world
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| There is a lesser-known part of Minecraft already used by
| educators:
|
| https://education.minecraft.net/en-us/discover/impact
|
| This is the kind of product I hope for with the Metaverse but
| will probably never see.
| kn8a wrote:
| Mojang have also cracked down on brands from 2016. "Mojang
| spokesperson Owen Hill pointed to situations where something
| like a car company would build or commission an independent
| developer to build a Minecraft server with specific purpose of
| advertising a new vehicle."
| https://venturebeat.com/2016/05/31/microsoft-bans-corporatio...
| janitor61 wrote:
| what is up with those weird recipes in the third section? That's
| not vanilla
| fhinson wrote:
| Growing up for me it was Runescape.
| zemo wrote:
| Minecraft is great but to my knowledge you can't make a portal in
| one Minecraft world to another world, you can't take an object
| from one Minecraft world to another world, and you can't transit
| from one simulation to another simulation (all Minecraft worlds
| run the _same_ simulation: the _Minecraft_ simulation). It 's not
| really a metaverse in that it's not one connected uncoordinated
| space, it's many separate, instanced spaces. But it does at least
| let you run your own space. _Valheim_ is more metaverse than
| minecraft is since you can gather resources in one Valheim server
| and take them to another, but there 's no real security on that
| and there's no public history so it's not really stable; there's
| no notion of what's " _real_ ". Although I do agree with the
| framing that something being a metaverse has little to do with
| head-mounted displays.
| Zababa wrote:
| I feel like taking an object from one simulation to another and
| having different simulations are oposites. Either you have the
| same simulations and thus objects share behavior, or the
| simulations are different and the objects are just 3D things.
| zemo wrote:
| > taking an object from one simulation to another and having
| different simulations are oposites
|
| not really, we just have to get into some semiotics here and
| consider the difference between the signifier and the
| signified
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier). In
| semiotics, a signifier is a physical artifact; the
| manifestation of something. A physical stop sign, for
| example. The signified is the _concept_ embodied by a
| signifier. All of the stop signs in the world correspond to
| (roughly) the same _concept_ of stopping, but they are
| separate instances of that concept. Separate signifiers
| (instances of "stop sign"), all with the same thing
| signified (the idea that you should stop).
|
| Now in games, we have the notion of the signifier and the
| signified, too. Let's take an example item from WoW. I'm
| using this as an example because it's a game I'm familiar
| with. An item like Staff of Westfall
| (https://classic.wowhead.com/item=2042/staff-of-westfall)
| expresses several things. The first thing that it expresses
| is that it's a weapon so it uses your weapon slot to equip
| it, and the stat bonus of +5 intellect that gives you
| additional mana and +11 spirit that gives you mana
| regeneration. Great, that's nice. Those things can be taken
| to be the _content_ of the item: its in-simulation properties
| and effects. But what does the existence of this item
| _signify_? The Staff of Westfall can only be obtained by each
| player exactly once, cannot be traded between players, and
| can only be obtained by going to The Deadmines, a particular
| dungeon, and defeating the final boss. Equipping the Staff of
| Westfall has the effect that it gives you mana and mana
| regen, but it also communicates something non-mechanical:
| that the player carrying the Staff of Westfall has gone to
| the Deadmines and fought and beaten Edwin VanCleef.
|
| Now, can the Staff of Westfall be transferred to another
| simulation? Yes and no. The signifier, the physical
| (virtual?) staff can be transferred to another game in some
| sense. The 3D model can be transferred, the physical
| appearance of the item can be transferred. But that was
| always on your computer all along; it's not particularly
| meaningful. The effects of the item may or may not be
| transferable; if a game is not the exact simulation that WoW
| is, what does +5 intellect and +11 spirit mean? The game
| operator may elect to translate that to some other concept in
| their game, or they may not. I think this notion of
| "transfer" is what you're eluding to: the transfer of the
| _signifier_. This concept is probably very useless. It 's
| also the concept that people are generally talking about when
| they talk about the transfer of items between games. I think
| it has no merit at all.
|
| But there's something else that can be transferred: the thing
| that ownership of the Staff of Westfall _signifies_ : the
| _concept_ that the person holding that item has slayed Edwin
| VanCleef (in WoW). Transferring the Staff of Westfall may not
| mean transferring the physical model or its attributes, but
| it may mean something more along the lines of transferring
| the meaning of what the player has accomplished. Admittedly,
| I 'm not sure why this would be _useful_ or what the
| applications of such a system would be; what I 'm getting at
| instead is the idea that transferring an asset may mean many
| things, and that transferring an asset from one simulation to
| another is not necessarily the opposite.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Now, can the Staff of Westfall be transferred to another
| simulation? Yes and no. The signifier, the physical
| (virtual?) staff can be transferred to another game in some
| sense. The 3D model can be transferred, the physical
| appearance of the item can be transferred. But that was
| always on your computer all along; it's not particularly
| meaningful. The effects of the item may or may not be
| transferable; if a game is not the exact simulation that
| WoW is, what does +5 intellect and +11 spirit mean? The
| game operator may elect to translate that to some other
| concept in their game, or they may not. I think this notion
| of "transfer" is what you're eluding to.
|
| > But there's something else that can be transferred: the
| thing that ownership of the Staff of Westfall signifies:
| the concept that the person holding that item has slayed
| Edwin VanCleef (in WoW). Transferring the Staff of Westfall
| may not mean transferring the physical model or its
| attributes, but it may mean something more along the lines
| of transferring the meaning of what the player has
| accomplished. Admittedly, I'm not sure why this would be
| useful or what the applications of such a system would be;
| what I'm getting at instead is the idea that transferring
| an asset may mean many things, and that transferring an
| asset from one simulation to another is not necessarily the
| opposite.
|
| What the "ownership of the Staff of Westfall signifies" is
| a relatively easy problem to solve. In a way, it's a list
| of achievements. So the only thing you need to do is to
| link that list of achievements (or facts if you want to be
| more general) to a centralized or federated identity.
| That's easy to do. The 3D object is already harder: not all
| engines render 3D objects the same way. Maybe there's a "3D
| object standard" like SVG and you could use that. That's
| maybe not easy, but not the hardest.
|
| You're hinting at the hard part when saying "it's a weapon
| so it uses your weapon slot to equip it, and the stat bonus
| of +5 intellect that gives you additional mana and +11
| spirit that gives you mana regeneration". If we remove that
| part, the "usefulness" of the item, the only thing that's
| left is appearance and signaling. There's no substance.
| What's a pen without the ability to write? What's a
| computer without the ability to run programs? What's a car
| without the ability of moving? This is why I say that
| taking an object from one simulation to another is not
| compatible (at the same effort level) with having different
| simulations.
| entangledqubit wrote:
| Transferring objects from one world to another may not be
| desirable for a few reasons. This could lead to coupling of
| world economies where something that is meant to be -
| intentionally - scarce in one world now finds itself with an
| overabundance.
| zemo wrote:
| there's only one metaverse, and there's only one economy in
| the metaverse. I'm not advocating that you should be moving
| game objects between games, that's a distinct concept (and
| probably not a very useful one).
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29086415
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Maybe, that is just what it should be. Maybe this is the way
| these things will actually work. The internet itself works, in
| big part, because it sides with federation over persistence.
| vizzier wrote:
| You are correct in vanilla minecraft as far as I'm aware, but
| there are a number of plugins/mods that have been supporting
| this type of functionality for a while.
| kibwen wrote:
| The principle being demonstrated here is _persistence_ , and it
| exists on a spectrum. In a single Minecraft server your
| inventory is persistent, but across Minecraft servers only your
| account identity is persistent. In Valheim or Terarria both
| your account and your inventory is persistent across servers.
|
| Right now the talking heads are trying to sell us a metaverse
| on the idea that one account could have a persistent inventory
| between Minecraft _and_ Valheim _and_ Terraria, but anyone who
| 's ever played a game can tell you immediately that this makes
| no mechanical sense whatsoever (cross-game promotions are
| common, and welcome (e.g. an Aloy costume in Monster Hunter
| World for PS4 owners, or Nintendo Amiibo giving you random
| rewards in various games), but don't involve literally round-
| tripping your character between games of potentially wildly
| disparate genres), and anyone who's ever written a piece of
| software can tell you immediately that this would be an
| infeasible logistical nightmare to implement.
| zemo wrote:
| right I agree with all that, I'm not advocating for the idea
| of moving the _content_ that an item represents from one
| simulation to another, but the idea that transferring what
| that thing _symbolizes_ should be considered separate and isn
| 't as easily dismissable. See this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29086662
| [deleted]
| taylodl wrote:
| Animal Crossing is my wife's Multiverse.
| antifa wrote:
| Is there anything GNU or good that's essentially AC for
| android? By good I mean isn't a slot machine with an AC style
| minigame. I already know about the current official android AC
| spinoff.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I want a single contiguous Minecraft world that everyone can use.
|
| Each account could get a range of blocks allocated to them, after
| Credit Card validation, to prove you're a real person.
|
| You could pay to own some more blocks.
|
| The blocks you get are just a land grab.
|
| You can trade blocks you own for blocks someone else owns, and
| there could be a monetary transaction to go with it.
|
| You can build what you want to on your blocks.
|
| How does all of this pay for itself? We set up Pay To Download
| blocks. If you want to fly around my creation, you can, and it
| just costs a little bit to do it.
|
| For the blocks I control, my Server lets me make permanent
| changes to those blocks. I can let other people on my Server, and
| I can give them permission to help me make changes to those
| blocks. We can make a shared Access Control List, and pool our
| blocks together, and edit them together.
|
| If you visit my area, you're using some Server to do it, and you
| can be on the same Server as your group of friends. And y'all can
| make a Copy-On-Write set of modifications to my blocks. And those
| blocks will stay, as long as your Server caches them. But no one
| else sees your changes.
|
| Maybe add some minor annual fee to blocks, so that if someone
| abandons their blocks, that they fall back to the public domain.
|
| If you want to get fancy, you allow block owners to set up
| royalties for visiting, and clients can set some rate limiters
| for how much they'll pay, and etc.
|
| I get that Minecraft itself has licensing terms that prevent us
| from doing this, and especially if money changes hands. I get
| that people build things that infringe copyright, and the only
| reason it's tolerated is because money isn't changing hands. I
| get that if someone hosts this, they'll have to deal with DMCA
| copyright teardown notices, and etc. And I get that it's not like
| the true Metaverse where you randomly bump into people you don't
| know, and can make permanent changes to the world together.
|
| But I just think it's bizarre that someone will make a really
| cool Minecraft map, and I can't explore it, even if I have money
| and I'm willing to pay a bit.
|
| If this whole system came with the ability to click a URL to
| immediately appear in some blocks? I mean, I just think that
| would be so cool.
|
| Okay, I saved my idea, and hopefully someone will implement
| something like it.
| achenatx wrote:
| its actually roblox
| vyrotek wrote:
| Indeed. All my kids went through a huge Minecraft obsession
| along with their friends but have all now moved on to Roblox.
| They find the "games" more entertaining to build and play now.
| It's become the social hang-out just to chat with friends as
| well. The Roblox VR experience is pretty fun too.
|
| My only problem with Roblox is that it's not on the Switch and
| they all want better tablets and computers to play it now.
| bluedino wrote:
| I thought Roblox was what kids play before they 'graduate' to
| Minecraft?
| xmprt wrote:
| I think it's more a generational thing. If Gen X grew up on
| arcades and the Atari (guessing), and Millennials on games
| like Quake or NES games, then Gen Z grew up on Minecraft
| and Gen Alpha on Roblox.
|
| Until VR technology gets better I probably don't think kids
| will grow up on it because I can't imagine headsets being
| safe to use for extended periods of time if you're under 10
| years old.
| vyrotek wrote:
| > _I can 't imagine headsets being safe to use for
| extended periods of time if you're under 10 years old._
|
| Oops. Well the only reason my kids play as much Roblox as
| they do is only because I don't let them play the Quest2
| all day. They would if they could. (Especially the 8yo)
|
| RecRoom is a really well done VR Roblox and my kids would
| live there if they could. I think we'll see a generation
| of kids with high interest and expectations of VR.
| dandotway wrote:
| Does Minecraft go down for several days like Roblox does?
|
| Does Minecraft ban/cancel people like PewDiePie as Roblox did?
|
| Aren't monthly active users (MAU) around 100M for each?
|
| I think Roblox is eventually doomed to slowly fizzle like
| Second Life, etc. Internet history is littered with the corpses
| of dead closed systems. Remember Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL?
| Remember Myspace?
|
| Microsoft might eventually, say, install mandatory AI inside
| Minecraft that forces all players to behaviorally conform to
| the social and political views of the most vocal group of
| Microsoft employees. Then some other immersive 3D world builder
| with more open rules of participation will send Minecraft to
| its grave.
| sweetbitter wrote:
| Mojang would have a problem trying to control Minecraft
| because it's written in Java, their developers commonly
| associate with the players who hack the game, and the only
| control over the gameservers that they have is their
| authentication servers- which you can disable the use of by
| editing one flag in your server config files, allowing anyone
| to play even if they didn't buy the game.
| dandotway wrote:
| This describes the current state of Minecraft, but
| Microsoft can tie new releases to new restrictions. The
| unknowing masses will adopt the new version without
| understanding the loss of freedom. Look at the success MS,
| Adobe, etc., have had getting people to pay rent each month
| for software like Office and Photoshop that they used to
| buy once and run forever.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Modded players already are decoupled from the current
| version.
|
| For a while everything interesting was stuck on 1.7 so
| while Microsoft may have shipped 1.8, and 1.9 nobody of
| consequence played those in the modded scene.
|
| Even today, the newer Minecraft versions are only used
| for very experimental packs. Something mainstream is on
| 1.12 while Microsoft have already begun shipping 1.19
|
| Because of this, you have for many years been able to
| _pick_ which version of Minecraft is started, new
| versions don 't overwrite old ones.
| dandotway wrote:
| This freedom to use old versions sounds good. But of
| Minecraft's 100M+ users, what percentage know this? What
| percentage just automatically update to the newest
| version and don't explore the mod scene?
|
| I just read that Mojang added no opt-out telemetry to
| version 21w38a.[1]
|
| How many Minecrafters are savvy enough to understand that
| this happened, and the long-term implications?
|
| I initially tried to follow guides and "mods" to disable
| Win 10 telemetry but eventually gave up because MS
| changes how telemetry is disabled with every single
| update.
|
| [1] https://github.com/kb-1000/no-telemetry
| Zababa wrote:
| Mojang can control _their_ Minecraft, one of the strengths
| of Minecraft is that everyone can have their own.
| dividuum wrote:
| But then you have absolutely no authentication whatsoever.
| So anyone can join your server using any player name and
| it's difficult to effectively ban. Good maybe for small
| private servers, but won't work for anything public. Also
| IIRC then you get no user-selected player skins.
| curtain wrote:
| FWIW Roblox was created in '04 and launched in '06, Myspace
| peaked '05-'09.
| jesuslop wrote:
| I thought it was Second Life
| nitwit005 wrote:
| They certainly used the term.
| ksaj wrote:
| Last year they were trying to hype XR (eXtended Reality). I guess
| that didn't fly and now they're trying to see if Metaverse will
| interest the target market.
|
| Kids will love it for sure. It is indeed Minecraft, but with
| different/better graphics.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| To be completely honest, I don't really know what people mean
| when they talk about a "metaverse".
|
| But if I had to define it one way or the other, I feel like I
| already have, and interact with, a sort of metaverse. I play
| various video games with various people, talking and interacting
| with friends for these games on Discord, interacting with the
| larger community of these games on Discord/Reddit, engaging with
| influencer communities on Twitch/Youtube, and follow game news on
| Reddit/Twitter/Youtube/Forums.
|
| In the same vein, I've learned a tremendous amount about computer
| science, software engineering, job hunting, smaller hobbies, and
| plenty of other various things through the same set of things
| that make up my gaming metaverse
| (Forums/Discord/Youtube/Reddit/HackerNews/etc). It doesn't
| overlap with the same people I interact with for gaming, but I
| wouldn't expect the people to overlap much. The platforms are
| still the same.
|
| And it doesn't really stop there, these are just the two big
| things I can think of.
|
| So I guess I'm asking, what is the "Metaverse" trying to do? Take
| what we currently already have, but make it more cohesive? The
| only other thing I can think of would be a full-dive VR world
| experience, but I'm fairly sure we aren't even close to that.
| snarf21 wrote:
| He wants an even more addictive version of the "Ready Player
| One" Oasis but minus the contest to give it away, he wants to
| ascend.
| colordrops wrote:
| Why is no one building open standards or protocols anymore? Way
| back when, there was VRML, which would be a layer on top of the
| web, and you could jump from site to site but in 3D space
| instead of underlined links. Yes, VRML failed, but we've had
| over 20 years and a massive amount of progress since then. Is
| there any reason the metaverse couldn't be distributed and sit
| on top of current web standards?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Adoption is the issue, not the lack of open standards.
| colordrops wrote:
| What are the standards around this? I was unaware of much,
| if any, recent development on such standards. Even so why
| is no one with adequate resources working on growing
| adoption of standards, whether it be academia, DARPA, or
| corporate entities?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Standards of online networking or the metaverse? Its the
| internet. You can run 3D crap in a browser.
| colordrops wrote:
| "you can run crap on nand gates"
| gremloni wrote:
| The gold standard would be the matrix but one that you're aware
| you're in and can leave at any time.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I think the idea is there is a hub where all of those things
| are connected and live to some extend. Like if your web browser
| was basically a mmo experience and when you went to do any of
| the things you mentioned some type of avatar that represents
| you would be present doing those things rather than just
| cookies and network traffic from your computer.
|
| My understanding is its just a way to do all the things you do
| currently but in a more "connected" way.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| They mispelled Rec-room.
|
| Play Rec-room in VR and tell me this isn't the future of gaming
| and online interactions.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys_OgK2YB4E
| sweetbitter wrote:
| Yeah. The totally lawless environments that can be present in
| Minecraft servers are awesome- the best example of which being
| 2b2t, a vanilla gameserver running the same map since 2010 that
| is essentially the 4chan of Minecraft (it even originated there).
| Despite allowing users to hack to their hearts' content and
| having no rules, the creativity and sheer amount of media
| produced by such an environment is stunning.
|
| Here is a comic series that was made based on the server, and a
| neat video animation someone created:
| http://minecraft2b2t.thecomicseries.com/
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEg5UPKPY70
| polycaster wrote:
| Since I watched the highlights reel mentioned in the article [1]
| I wonder if there exists sort of a doctrine in recent PR video
| production to always include a super annoying aspect of
| choreography to keep people from thinking too long about the
| actual message.
|
| Here Zuck and friends are trying neurotically to keep their
| fingertips at 1cm distance at any time. Waving their hands as if
| they were mockups.
|
| In recent Apple event recordings Tim, Craig and the gang cannot
| get their feet together like anatomically unchallenged humans
| would do when standing casually. Always more than shoulder's
| width apart. I've observed something similar once after a
| mountain biking contest, got to do something with the saddle.
|
| It's obviously not pleasing to the eye (or is it me?). But I
| cannot see a compelling reason and I refuse to take this as a
| coincidence. Why???
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gElfIo6uw4g
| joshu wrote:
| i always thought it was WoW. lots to do, but all gatekept and
| previously defined/allowed
| zemo wrote:
| not really, WoW is a game, and no game can be a metaverse,
| because one of the most core and intrinsic qualities of what
| makes something a game is that it is a separate space from
| reality. Games studies people refer to this as "the magic
| circle"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_circle_(virtual_worlds)):
| the boundary separating reality from "game space".
|
| For example, let's say you're playing a game of Checkers.
| That's separate from real life. You can't buy a captured
| Checkers pieces on eBay and then in your next game of Checkers,
| start with more pieces than your opponent. Being able to do
| those things would cause the game to break down, because the
| game would no longer be a contest of your wits in Checkers, it
| would be a contest of your existing wealth. You can't purchase
| points in a basketball game, you can't purchase mulligans in
| golf, etc. A lot of people in the blockchain/NFT space seem to
| be of the position that games don't currently let you purchase
| things with real money or sell them to other players for real
| money because they lack the technical capabilities, but that is
| not and has never been the problem. There's also the "trading
| an item in one game for an item in another game" but that's
| equally useless, it's the same thing but with a barter system,
| and the barter system would eventually just give way to money
| anyway. The problem is that introducing those mechanics causes
| the magic circle to break down.
|
| By contrast a metaverse is a metaverse because the things
| happening in it are _not_ in a separate, isolated space. Both
| games and metaverses are virtual in nature, but what makes
| something a metaverse is the _lack_ of a magic circle, while
| what makes something a game is the _presence_ of a magic
| circle. The metaverse is a virtual facet of reality; games '
| whole thing is that they are _not_ reality.
|
| A metaverse can contain a game, but not vice versa. Plus WoW is
| entirely owned and operated by one entity; a metaverse is
| pretty definitionally a situation in which any party can create
| their own space without needing the permission of another
| party, kinda like anyone can create a website without needing
| the permission of any party. Well, of course, you need an IP
| address and if you want people to be able to reach it, a DNS
| record and if you want SSL some certificates, so that's not a
| perfect analogy, but the web isn't really decentralized anyway
| (for these specific reasons).
| benatkin wrote:
| That's a funny spelling of "Roblox".
| zemo wrote:
| all Roblox games run on servers owned by the Roblox corporation
| so not really. Minecraft is totally federated, anyone can
| create their own Minecraft server if they want to. Roblox
| doesn't release the server software and doesn't let you run
| your own server, so you can never really own your own space;
| they own all of the spaces.
| mfer wrote:
| Who said something needs to be federated for it to be the
| metaverse? That's nowhere in the definition.
|
| I'd argue that scifi examples (like Ready Player One) show
| that it can be proprietary.
|
| I'm not saying it's good to be controlled by one org. Just
| that the number of orgs controlling the infra has nothing to
| do with being the metaverse or not.
| zemo wrote:
| Raph Koster, for one.
| https://www.raphkoster.com/2021/09/02/online-world-or-
| metave...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Why do people cite fictional examples as if they matter at
| all? Honestly wondering. It's certainly good for imagining
| the possibilities, but this thread is talking about
| something that could actually happen.
|
| Facebook itself would be a better example to your point as
| it's the largest social network.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| This is a good point, though the edges are graying there too.
|
| I've been seeing a lot of ads lately for an iOS game (an
| awful looking game, but that's beside the point) whose major
| claim to fame in their ads is that you can earn Roblox's
| Robux by playing. They probably aren't using any sort of
| federated Roblox "metaverse ecommerce platform" today, they
| are probably just laundering Robux gift certificates. (I'm
| not entirely sure, it's not a game I have reason to download
| as awful and creepy as it appears.)
|
| So there are at least some game spaces they don't own.
| (Whether or not you agree those are worthwhile game spaces.)
| oskenso wrote:
| "it's actually neosvr", "it's actually [insert thing here]"
|
| Maybe it's always been here, perhaps it's just another
| abstraction or simulation of a perceived reality. One could say
| that MUD systems are metaverses(metaversi?)
|
| What I would like to see are more decentralized simulation
| systems with extensive accessibility features
| aww_dang wrote:
| Multiplayer virtual worlds have been with us since the
| beginning. I think there was a multiplayer high fantasy package
| for the PDP series of minicomputers?
|
| There's a concerted push to foist this buzzword on us either
| way.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| One of my favorite MUDs HellMOO has a lot of references to Snow
| Crash (the progenitor of the 'metaverse').
| [deleted]
| luxuryballs wrote:
| this is what I always thought when playing Minecraft, it's not
| just digital legos, even pure vanilla is a living breathing world
| with day/night cycles, farming, etc, I use a plug-in called
| Multiverse to connect all of our old worlds together with the
| current world, so we can go back and use resources we dug up 10
| years ago, and it supports a really nice live mapping plugin
| called dynmap, also built a "meta world" that acts as a go-
| between to quickly jump to specific builds across various worlds
| using an "iconic" chunk of the actual build converted to "meta
| world" materials:
| http://mc.legacycraft.vip:8123/?worldname=meta&mapname=surfa...
| maximaximal wrote:
| Very nice setup! As a sort of informal successor to dynmap,
| there's now (or rather since 1.13) also BlueMap [1]. It renders
| the map in 3D in the browser and you can look sideways at your
| builds. Truly impressive.
| https://www.spigotmc.org/resources/bluemap.83557
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| Some people spent decades in Ultima Online and WOW. Ask them how
| that went.
| prox wrote:
| The Metaverse sounds like a protocol for VR/AR worlds, but I
| don't think I read there is any consortium working on such an
| _open_ protocol. Unless such a protocol already exists?
| eganist wrote:
| This reminds me of Adobe Atmosphere
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Atmosphere), which I
| greatly miss. It was a highlight of my early 2000s.
| one_off_comment wrote:
| I remember that! I loved using an avatar that looked like a
| bush and then hiding in plain sight.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| It was called VRML[0] and was superseded by X3D[1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X3D
| prox wrote:
| The article mentions a (discontinued) 3d browser, which would
| be a necessity probably for any type of metaversial web.
| teraflop wrote:
| Lack of openness is a feature, not a bug.
| prox wrote:
| You mean for the companies working on metaverses?
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Roblox and Minecraft are great examples of what Metaverses could
| be. I think that is largely the appeal for many players.
| api wrote:
| I was wondering recently if it might be possible with today's GPU
| hardware to create a Minecraft-like world with similar dynamics
| but with fully simulated physics across the entire world. In
| Minecraft terms this would be a global simulation "tick" that
| allowed things like gravity to work, more sophisticated creature
| behaviors to play out globally, etc.
| oskenso wrote:
| The neosvr team is doing just that with the open source bepu
| physics engine :D
| fwip wrote:
| Looks like they abandoned that approach in 2019 with
| bepuphysics2 -
| https://www.bepuentertainment.com/blog/2019/1/16/-but-
| gpus-a...
| i_like_apis wrote:
| We will see several evolutions of the metaverse and there
| probably will continue to be more than one.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Isn't the Metaverse(tm) really just 2nd Life given a second life?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| 2nd Life is still out there. I say s someone who was invited to
| (and attended) a 2nd Life based event during lockdown. I also
| was invited to a bunch of similar virtual events on the 100
| competitors that seemed to spring up.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's Croquet. Which was Alan Kay building the metaverse -- as a
| mere stepping stone to his real goal which always was to build
| the _Young Lady 's Illustrated Primer_ from _The Diamond Age_.
| Allower wrote:
| No. Minecraft is ugly AF, literally unplayable unless you have
| the mind of a toddler. Do better
| recursive wrote:
| > Mojang thus far hasn't built microtransactions
|
| He must have a different Minecraft. Minecraft on xbox has a shop
| for skins and plugins and all kind of stuff right on the very
| first menu you see. It even has some kind of daily deal. It has
| its own funny money currency system. (Google "minecoins")
| qaq wrote:
| The Metaverse that will make the most $ is Porn
| WorldMaker wrote:
| That is often considered the primary reason VHS beat out the
| arguably superior tech of Betamax: one was willing to license
| to porn and the other preferred not to.
|
| Definitely a lesson for any would be "metaverse" to keep in
| mind.
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