[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How is the "metaverse" concept different fro...
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Ask HN: How is the "metaverse" concept different from the Second
Life boom?
Does anybody remember the Second Life boom when companies were
trying to snap up linden-land and set up shop online? That failed,
and I can't help but feel like the 'metaverse' concept being
marketed to us is that, but with VR helmets and advertising
strapped on.
Author : 0des
Score : 210 points
Date : 2021-11-07 04:07 UTC (18 hours ago)
| rswail wrote:
| I remember in the earlier web days, boo.com tried to get fashion
| on the web, before people had high bandwidth and the attempt
| failed (and for lots of other mismanagement as well).
|
| But now, people shop online all the time. The technology caught
| up to the point where people don't go to physical shops.
|
| VR/AR builds on that to allow for a more realistic display. So
| that's a natural extension that will come into play.
|
| The same changes in buying behavior affects things like direct
| car sales and house sales. Spinning a 3D car on a 2D screen is
| not the same as being able to walk around it and (figuratively)
| "kick the tyres" yourself.
|
| We're at the late stages of the "early adopters", and the rate of
| change in technology is exponential so is increasing at an
| increasing rate.
| elliekelly wrote:
| There's definitely a "ripeness" factor to monetizing new
| technology. There were tons of grocery and delivery start ups
| during the dot com era, too. They never got traction because
| they were too early.
| [deleted]
| comeonseriously wrote:
| All this is, is Zuck trying to flood the news with something
| other than the bad news about Facebook right now.
| shoto_io wrote:
| I think metaverse concepts/companies can only bet successful if
| they fulfill there key criteria that all products need to have:
|
| 1. It's gotta be useful (Jobs to done/value/utility whatever you
| want to call it)
|
| 2. It's gotta make me feel good/excited, it has to be fun
| ("emotional value" if you want)
|
| 3. It's gotta be socially acceptable ("what do others think of me
| if I use this thing?")
|
| My take is: It is unclear how and when the current concepts of
| the metaverse will deliver on these dimensions. I bet there is a
| version that will deliver on all 3. But, we haven't seen it yet.
| Once we see it, we'll all laugh and say, "why didn't I invent
| this?".
|
| PS: The closest thing I have seen is gather.town. It's not quite
| a metaverse (yet) though.
| ahevia wrote:
| Your 3rd point is really important and often overlooked.
| Explains why Facebook/Meta is going through such lengths to
| begin to fix its image.
| [deleted]
| retrocryptid wrote:
| second life. lively. there.com/forterra. OpenCroquet/Cobalt. that
| thing diamond multimedia did in 2011-2012. entropia. eve online.
|
| in the same way afghanistan was the graveyard of empires, virtual
| worlds are where corporate product development teams go to die.
| (and a couple open source teams as well)
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| There are three "branches" of the metaverse concept today:
|
| 1. VR rebranded (Facebook's approach)
|
| 2. a specific family of games that allow you to buy and own
| land/territory, mediated by the blockchain (see Bit.Country[1] as
| one of many examples)
|
| 3. a term used widely in crypto/web3 world to refer specifically
| to the fact that we can finally build networks that people can
| own (buy/sell but also control directly via programmable
| governance) and built on without being rent-collected by
| extractive web2 companies (mitigated platform risk); using web3
| platforms which externalize most of the value they create
|
| Hacker News tends to understand the 1st but not the 2nd or 3rd.
| The 3rd is most interesting and less well-understood: the
| metaverse is about much more than a new viewing device (VR
| headsets). It's about new kinds of economics around ownership and
| control.
|
| [1]: https://bit.country/
| herbst wrote:
| This so much! I earned money in second Life. Back then I
| exchanged it all to bitcoin and lost it gambling, but the fact
| that SL was rewarding my real efforts in real world money was
| amazing. Investments I did in current projects (ex. Sandbox)
| also doing well.
|
| Facebook is going to have nothing of that. Money will flow into
| one direction only and it essentially never be more than an VR
| entertainment hub.
|
| I honestly feel insulted in some way that zuck claims the word
| metaverse for something that will fail horribly anyway.
| dvh wrote:
| So basically all Facebook need to do is allow people to earn
| money from day one.
| yesenadam wrote:
| And if I want to understand the 3rd, what are some good things
| to read? Thanks.
| methusala8 wrote:
| Can you share any sources to understand the 3rd point mentioned
| above?
| thom wrote:
| People just don't want these embodied experiences outside of
| extremely narrow and controlled circumstances (e.g. games). 3D is
| just fundamentally not an efficient way of conveying information.
| Almost all useful information in the world (especially at work)
| is [hyper]text. Sometimes it's speech, which is just slow,
| inefficient text. I am absolutely baffled by this movement.
| Surely nobody actually wants any of this 3D stuff?
|
| There is a genuinely interesting conversation to be had about the
| metaverse. I think lots of conversations around identity are
| interesting: what is durable, what is opt-in/opt-out, how do we
| mediate a la carte personal identity with community standards
| etc. That's a hugely important conversation the outcomes of which
| we are feeling right now. This is _much more_ important than what
| fucking 3D fox avatar you walk around with.
|
| I think there are even interesting conversations to be had around
| AR, and smart glasses etc. But that have to be predicated on the
| fact that the technology just _isn't there_. Even if you had
| amazing smart glasses that weren't massive shitty headsets (that
| even if some people can tolerate, are worthless for work or on
| the bus), you'd still have the problem that the UIs are useless.
| Until we have way, way better AI assistants, you just can't have
| AR/VR UIs. Because you _need_ high bandwidth text interfaces. In
| the absence of keyboards that means voice, except the idea of
| using crappy voice recognition at work, or walking around, is
| deeply painful. So we'll need really good subvocalisation tech,
| and that doesn't exist. We'll need really good AI agents (and I
| genuinely believe the biggest concern of the metaverse is going
| to be how machines interface with it, not humans), but they don't
| exist. But that's fine, cos the headsets are crap so none of this
| is a pressing concern and I am _utterly baffled_ why this
| conversation is important in 2021. It's all years off.
|
| So I do think this will all one day be relevant, but not now. But
| even when it is, I think the _absolute least interesting_ bit of
| it is embodied 3D spaces. Basically nobody has ever wanted that,
| they don't want it now, they will never want it. It's just a
| crappy way to do business. It's a fun way to play games, but you
| know what, 3D on a 2D screen is still fine.
|
| The longer this conversation continues, the more money gets sunk
| into it, the crazier I feel. Nobody wants to go to work in
| Minecraft. Nobody wants to go to the pub in Roblox. They're just
| games that kids enjoy. You cannot build a trillion dollar
| investment hypothesis off the back of games kids enjoy.
|
| I dunno, this all sounds a bit grumpy, I'm sorry, but part of
| that is that I genuinely do think there is interesting stuff to
| discuss here. Maybe 3D worlds are dead on arrival. But making
| internet spaces ubiquitous and ambient? Interesting. How can I as
| a human, with privacy needs but a lust for reputation, inhabit
| these spaces? Interesting. We're just concentrating on the
| stupidest possible parts of the mataverse right now and there's
| going to be a spectacular metaverse Winter if we don't dial down
| the hype.
| b20000 wrote:
| there is no difference same bullshit different package
| _Understated_ wrote:
| I've often wondered if Mark Zuckerberg has anyone in his inner
| corporate circle that is willing to say "no" to him.
|
| Meta seems like there was a wall of post-it notes in Zuck's
| office with a bunch of ideas to stop FB from becoming MySpace and
| the dart he threw landed on this one.
|
| My gut tells me that Meta is dead in the water but with the
| billions that FB have in their war chest I wouldn't bet against
| it completely, however, the fact it requires a headset, a massive
| source of friction, will restrict the audience.
|
| I dunno... seems like Zuck is living in a fantasy world here.
| mabbo wrote:
| Huh, that's a neat idea. What if Zuck is this generation's
| George Lucas?
|
| For context, after the success of Star Wars and Indiana Jones,
| it's said that Lucas surrounded himself with yes-men who agreed
| with whatever he said. Anyone who wasn't one of those didn't
| last long in his inner circle.
|
| The end result was "Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace".
| There's an hour-long review video by "Mr Plinkett"[0] that
| dives into the all the major issues of the film, along with
| some honestly-not-great humour (imho) but at the end it really
| explains what the problem was: Lucas had absolute control, and
| everyone did what he said. And if the original Star Wars had
| been that way it would have been a disaster.
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgWcNsdmoyE&t=3677s (The
| whole video is good, but linking directly to the important bit
| I mentioned).
| prova_modena wrote:
| There is also an official documentary about the making of
| episode 1 that is viewable on YouTube.[0] Even though this
| was produced as promotional material for the film's DVD
| release, Lucas' total control and hubristic self regard are
| barely concealed subtexts. There is a great scene where
| Spielberg is visiting Lucas on set and they are just
| repeating to each other "It'll be great!" or some such
| platitude with forced enthusiasm. Even Lucas seemed to know
| he was out of his depth.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/da8s9m4zEpo
| mikevm wrote:
| Only goofy asocial types think that you can actually replace
| actual human interactions with virtual reality. Would you rather
| actually meet your friends, or have your virtual avatars meet up
| in some fake VR world?
| wan23 wrote:
| I'm sure someone said something similar when they first heard
| of the telephone.
| satyrnein wrote:
| Used to be goofy asocial types on Usenet/IRC/etc, now the whole
| world communicates via Facebook/Twitter/etc. So it's hard to
| say!
| Animats wrote:
| That's an important point. Matthew Ball, the venture
| capitalist, made the insightful comment a few months back that
| COVID-19 changed that. It is now possible to use a virtual
| world without being considered a loser.
| mikevm wrote:
| By the way, I'm a goofy introvert myself, so I hope people
| don't see that as an insult or anything :).
|
| COVID-19 might've made remote work mainstream, but I don't
| think it will fundamentally change the way we interact with
| other people in our social life. I think given the choice,
| most people would rather go out to pubs, restaurants,
| parties, etc... to experience other people face to face
| rather than be stuck in a virtual world. The virtual world
| was a last resort. Even during lockdowns people had
| underground parties (I've even been in a few!).
|
| I personally grew up spending much of my high school years in
| IRC chatrooms, having virtual friendships with anonymous
| people. But I'm an introvert, and most other kids did not
| share my experience so I'm a bit skeptical on the mass appeal
| of these virtual worlds.
| keyle wrote:
| If you strap enough rockets to a pig, it will fly.
|
| If you throw enough cash at a problem, it will be "solved".
|
| I remember google wave. Remember that? The noise it made when it
| came out. What a mess. And then we got slack and discord and we
| must admit it somewhat solves the same ideas.
|
| So I don't know. We might very well be in VR goggles in 10 years
| surrounded by 25 virtual screens, 5 notification systems and
| parallel windows updates while bidding on a new VR background, on
| a NFT trading platform using some shitty cryptocurrency we've
| never heard of 2 weeks prior.
|
| Or we could just be on a terminal in vim doing the same shit as
| today.
|
| I only hope we have choices. Because this new internet they're
| trying to push is further away from RFCs and open protocols than
| we've ever been. And that's very sad. Our parents gave us a free
| internet where everything is possible, and we're doing our very
| best to destroy that idea to a world of wall gardens and
| consumerism where the very few will even know how it works.
| mattdesl wrote:
| Probably worth noting: many of the recent "metaverse/web3" (not
| Metaverse) developments, for example ERC721, are also RFCs and
| open protocols. Yet unlike typical web RFCs we've seen in the
| last decade, they are generally not only decided upon and
| ultimately driven by a small handful of browser monopolies.
| high_5 wrote:
| Google Wave was my first association when I've heard about FB
| goin full meta(verse). The whole thing is just so "meta" it
| just shows how they're trying to solve all the problems of
| humanity by being blindsided by the opportunity of remote
| work/life because of COVID. Metaverse is just too abstract as
| Google Wave was.
| manquer wrote:
| Google wave was largely about real time collaboration.
|
| Most of those ideas live on Google docs , SharePoint and notion
| and other tools. Am not sure how discord or slack solves the
| same ideas.
|
| it was a hard problem to solve especially back then CRDTs were
| not baked in to any out of box large scale db, however it
| wasn't premature .
|
| To me it always looked like an experimental product from which
| mature product took the good parts, no different from Gmail
| incorporating ideas from Inbox
| herbst wrote:
| Remember when Google worked on a second Life killer? I think it
| was called lifely or so.
| native_samples wrote:
| Lively. One of the many Google products they killed that
| nobody mourns or remembers.
|
| Wave, Lively and Second Life have some useful lessons in them
| that it may be worth recalling. Second Life is/was of course
| the most ambitious attempt to build a metaverse, by far. It
| never broke out of its niche in the way Minecraft did partly
| due to insurmountable frame rate and resource usage problems
| that Linden Lab assumed at the start they'd inevitably
| overcome, but which they never really did. It's also the
| reason SL couldn't have been used in VR. Lively was to some
| extent an attempt to solve this problem with Second Life.
| However it simply created a different, worse set of problems.
| Lively also suffered from being seen as the pet product of
| one of the (at the time) extremely rare female product
| managers at Google, so she was basically given a team and
| budget to do what she wanted because hey! Isn't that great!
| Go women! But the project didn't actually have any executive
| support and the cutesy design was seen as wildly out of step
| with Google's brand at the time. So when it failed to set the
| world on fire immediately it was quickly shelved and the PM
| moved on.
|
| SL's biggest problem is that it's very difficult to render
| user-generated content performantly, in ways that look good.
| Minecraft solves this problem by sacrificing the 'looks good'
| aspect, partly because it had no pretence of being a
| metaverse, but SL explicitly wanted to do the Snow Crash
| thing and thus allowed you to place more or less arbitrary
| scripted 3D meshes inside the world. Unfortunately the
| structure of the world, and how users wanted to use it, were
| the opposite of how you do performant 3D graphics:
|
| 1. SL is set outdoors. Thus draw distances are huge and many,
| many objects can be captured by the camera simultaneously.
| This places huge load on the CPU and GPU. At the time, the
| standard was for 3D games to be set indoors, largely to limit
| draw distance.
|
| 2. Many constructions in SL are buildings that contain
| translucent windows. This is much more intensive to render
| (requires overdraw).
|
| 3. Many constructions in SL are very odd shapes which make it
| difficult to rapidly determine if they intersect things. Part
| of why "land" in SL was so expensive was the need to run
| physics simulations and collision detection against objects
| that were not designed to make it cheap.
|
| 4. Because every object was fully dynamic and the user could
| change the world at any time, all optimizations based on
| batch processing of static data e.g. lightmap baking, were
| unavailable to SL, trashing their performance still further.
|
| 5. Because land was all adjacent in one uniform world, at the
| edges renderer performance was effectively a tragedy of the
| commons. Even in the rare cases that an SL content creator
| learned about the limits of the SL 3D engine and worked
| within them, their hard work could be undone by someone in
| land next to them constructing a giant tower filled with
| translucent windows.
|
| Lively attempted to solve these problems by limiting art to a
| team of professional 3D artists. However this gave the world
| an entirely predictable, sterile corporate feel that appealed
| to nobody. Same problem as why Lego Worlds failed to compete
| with Minecraft. Additionally the Lively team had to spend a
| lot of engineering effort dealing with Google's
| infrastructure decisions, which at the time were optimized
| for apps that could use eventual consistency. See my comment
| from a few days ago on this topic [1].
|
| The relevance to Wave is mostly that Wave was sort of the 2D
| content version of Second Life. It went all-in on very hard
| computer science problems, and did so _in a web browser_ , on
| the assumption that they'd just figure out how to make it
| performant later. But they never did. Moreover the
| flexibility of the tool meant it was often confusing to
| figure out and quickly developed a perception that it was
| half baked, buggy and required a mastery of the tool to use.
| For something explicitly about collaboration rather than
| content creation, that was fatal. Finally it also suffered
| the same problem as Lively in that the project was basically
| a gift to the co-founders of Maps for their success and the
| Australia office as a whole. The team played corporate
| politics very badly, adopting a culture of internal secrecy
| within Google that was not only alien and controversial but
| which also meant they pissed off other teams (whom they were
| competing with), and failed to build support amongst the
| senior executive level. When they failed to take off quickly
| enough they lost executive support and the project was
| quickly killed.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29086825
| pharmakom wrote:
| Whatever happened to chat bots?
| 01100011 wrote:
| Do you mean the Facebook metaverse or the general concept?
|
| I can't comment on Facebook. The current discussion surrounding
| the 'metaverse' often describes something that is more open,
| almost like the internet. Whether or not this happens in practice
| remains to be seen. I think the idea is that you may be able to
| teleport between worlds(servers run by companies or other
| entities) and carry some amount of your state with you.
|
| I remain cynical. As someone who grew up reading William Gibson
| and dreaming of 'cyberspace' you'd think I'd be excited but I see
| this as being just as boring as Second Life and There but with
| better graphics. The metaverse talk lately reminds me of when CE
| mfgs decided they needed to push 3DTV on everyone because they
| were running out of fancy new things to drive TV sales. This is
| likely just a way to create a new channel for monetizing.
| 0des wrote:
| The Facebook metaverse
| Animats wrote:
| Facebook has already had three tries at the metaverse - the
| Oculus version, Facebook Spaces, and Facebook Horizon.
| They're all so bad that Facebook won't give out user counts.
| rhizome wrote:
| Whatever anybody thinks "metaverse" means now, what it _really_
| means, Facebook is going to change it permanently or go out of
| business. They have to be able to define away every negative
| aspect of their new metaphorical identity or they 'll be used
| to undermine every future development of FB.
|
| Meta was created out of a life or death situation (perceived or
| otherwise), so they have to gain control over their future so
| that it isn't possible for that to happen again. None of
| Gibson's words can prevent or counteract this.
| 88913527 wrote:
| We're all talking about the Metaverse instead of whatever
| else is going on with Facebook. So it changed the public
| narrative. However, the latest earnings report was fine, so
| rumors of Meta's demise are quite exaggerated. Their other
| web properties will remain profitable for a long time.
|
| I see many others here calling out FB's pending decline, but
| I don't see anyone offering a clear thesis for how it
| happens. It could simply be wishful thinking. Locking down
| iOS doesn't mean Meta can't do targeted advertising with all
| previously collected data. Less effective, sure, but not
| meaningfully so.
| manquer wrote:
| Not financial death. Oracle is having the best years and
| making a ton of profit, but it is boring company with
| mediocre work and toxic reputations. Oracle cloud is still
| being sold and no cares. FB doesn't want to become the next
| Oracle
|
| It is about its relevance as a cool tech company. They will
| not be able to hire or retain the best engineers with
| current reputation problem they have.
| herbst wrote:
| IMO Facebook's actual death is mostly visible in RL.
|
| The only people in my circle left on Facebook were the
| party seeking folks. Now with Corona the organisation of
| parties changed enough to render facebook irrelevant. Now
| left are mid 30 single moms who likely spend more time on
| Instagram anyway.
|
| Then there is WhatsApp. I can tell it had bad news again
| when I get a sudden rush of 'x is now using telegram'. I
| can't remember the last time someone asked me for a
| WhatsApp number.
|
| Instagram is similar, once a daily driver for some it now
| looks and appears like a ad platform where most content
| wandered elsewhere (tiktok for that matter)
|
| Sure this is anectotal, but in my environment Facebook
| actually is visible dying.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| I'm a former Facebook employee, and also worked on VR at Google
| ~2015.
|
| I don't think it's different. I think if you went back in time
| and asked 18 year old Zuck what the future of online interaction
| would be, he'd basically tell you about second life.
|
| The only difference is that now the technology is better and
| enough people who are not Zuck are talking about it, so Zuck can
| steer the ship without everyone jumping off.
| concinds wrote:
| I just see it as a business opportunity. Half an hour better
| spend in nature than with goggles, but surely you can make good
| money from it early on.
| Ono-Sendai wrote:
| Hardware, internet connections, and software is better now.
| rudian wrote:
| Reality is that this is just Zuck yapping his mouth. Nobody cares
| nor will care about this, video calls will continue as they've
| always done, Second Life will stay niche, there's no AR until my
| phone makes me hallucinate.
|
| We got a couple more decades at least for AR to happen.
| MrRiddle wrote:
| I am completely guessing here, but I assume average device used
| to visit Facebook is an $150 Android phone. Metaverse would
| require multiple times more expensive equipment. Until the whole
| world gets a lot more prosperous, average user simply won't be
| able to use the product. The product that relies on number of
| users.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| I came to write exactly this. The app ecosystem grew due to the
| insane numbers of users having a >50$ smartphone everywhere in
| the world; and this is what made fb and the rest of companies
| what they are at the moment. The price barrier to enter the
| vr/ar world would be considerably higher and almost unreachable
| in the 3rd or developing world, which is fb's main audience.
| satyrnein wrote:
| _3rd or developing world, which is fb's main audience._
|
| Maybe by volume, but where do they make their money?
| higeorge13 wrote:
| There are so many apps targeting people in developing
| countries; fintech, crypto, ads, commerce, etc all
| accessible by a 50$ smartphone from some remote city in
| Nigeria or Guatemala. I can't really see a vr/ar
| marketplace targeting these people, but perhaps i am short
| sighted.
| bitwize wrote:
| SL was actually closer to Stephenson's metaverse than whatever
| adtech nonsense Zuck is pushing is likely to be.
| tdeck wrote:
| It's popped up again because they made a movie out of Ready
| Player One, so now lots of people are talking about the VR
| immersive world concept after watching that movie.
| musicale wrote:
| Pretty much.
|
| The possibly good news is it shows that Facebook doesn't really
| know how to avert its own decline.
| rhizome wrote:
| Google Search and Android are worse than they were before
| Alphabet.
| nbzso wrote:
| From accessibility POV - AR/VR is not an easy and comfortable
| enough to be mass adopted.
|
| If you have to "wear" your Desktop on your head and put on a
| "sensors" body costume, guess how much people will do it
| voluntarily. Yep. Small group of people.
|
| You have to provide something "out of this world" to even think
| for mass adoption. This in my view is just another data-grabbing
| platform and push to walled garden SaaS. It is logical big tech
| to push it hard. Microsoft, Apple, you name it.
|
| And this is in my view the controversy with Facebook. FB is mass
| social network. Successfully integrated in the daily routine of
| the "normies" trough several apps.
|
| Suddenly they push Meta, which as I mentioned is clearly small
| use-case. Branching this as a tool for "immersive" experience is
| vague attempt for justification and clearly PR move for
| distracting public from the toxic reality of the company which
| used dopamine hacks and psychology driven dark UX to become "the
| next advertising" platform.
|
| Until AR/VR is hologram driven, nothing will come out of this
| Metaverse. Just some corporations capitalizing on "enthusiast"
| market and suckling more data than usual.
| npunt wrote:
| Web 1 had a lot of ideas that failed because they were too early,
| not because they were inherently bad ideas. Not sure if Metaverse
| will work exactly like SL did, or if its even the right idea, but
| it certainly will have a larger audience and lower cost of entry
| for both users and developers.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| This is the correct answer. Lots of old ideas were in fact
| horrible ideas, until suddenly they weren't. Cannons were
| awful, right up till Napoleon proved otherwise.
|
| I think people are so skeptical due to a combination of
| disliking Facebook and the usual "overestimating the impact of
| years, underestimating the impact of decades."
|
| Wouldn't it be remarkable if 2021 happened to get the web
| exactly right? Think of it: in 3021, people will be using
| Twitter just like they do now, with Chrome and plugins and all
| the rest.
|
| Projecting forward helps dispel your own preconceptions. And
| then you conclude "Why not build it now?" -- There's often not
| much standing in the way, except a whole lot of work (along
| with a fair bit of luck).
|
| It seems like most of us just don't want Facebook to own the
| next Twitter. Admittedly, that's a scary proposition.
|
| I suppose my advice would be to become comfortable with that
| sooner than later. Zuck has never gotten big bets wrong. It's
| possible this will be the first, but I wouldn't want to take
| the other side of that bet if my money was on the line.
| 88913527 wrote:
| It's hard for me to imagine one of the incumbents leading the
| next generation of innovation, despite the copious amounts of
| capital to execute it. They view the world through their own
| Overton window, such that the next leap forward will originate
| from some perspective independent of their own. Brick-and-
| mortar stores weren't going to be the ones pushing online
| sales. A lot of the last few years have been copy/paste product
| ideas from other smaller social media companies: that's the
| reality. FB realized not everything has to be a timeline. At
| best, Meta could be something truly novel, but at its worst,
| it's just marketing to paper over the lack of innovative
| Product leadership within FB.
| psyc wrote:
| Meta can buy fresh blood. Oculus was acquired. Parts of
| Oculus were acquired and acquihired. If a smaller company
| innovates in this space, acquisition by Meta is an obvious
| business plan. Zuckerberg is a geek almost young enough to be
| my kid. If I can imagine a thriving metaverse, and I can, I
| don't see why he can't.
| brundolf wrote:
| My question with the metaverse concept is always, "Why? What's
| the point?"
|
| I can think of two parties that have their own answers:
|
| 1) A certain group of people who like computers and grew up
| reading sci-fi think it would be cool; some even tell themselves
| it's very important, but for vague reasons that they can't really
| articulate
|
| 2) Centers of capital are interested in it as yet another
| platform for consumption, attention-capturing, and rent-seeking
|
| I think Zuckerberg is both. But I'm not convinced that society at
| large has any real motivation to buy into something like this,
| unless the sheer novelty ends up being powerful enough to rope
| people in.
|
| Note that a world without a "metaverse" still has a place for
| VR/AR. Having a complete, interconnected virtual world is not a
| prerequisite for all the utilities and entertainment that that
| hardware technology can be used for. And to me it just feels like
| an incredibly unnecessary layer on top, which serves no real
| purpose to anyone outside of those first two groups.
| crubier wrote:
| I agree. At this point Zucks metaverse sounds just like another
| XBox Home Screen, in VR. A place were you want to spend as
| little time as possible, on your way to use the real apps.
| monkzero wrote:
| Books told stories for ages, but movies enhanced the experience
| and created a new breed of people who pre movies over books.
| Similarly we use phones for all our purposes, xr will enhance
| it
| brundolf wrote:
| The difference is that your phone is a _utility_ , not a
| piece of art. So XR would have to be more _practical_ than
| the current interface, which, maybe advanced AR will be. But
| even then, that 's just an AR GUI, not a "metaverse".
|
| And then on the non-utilitarian side, XR
| entertainment/storytelling is already a thing. You don't need
| a metaverse for that.
| eismcc wrote:
| Maybe like Ready Player One, people will use Meta if the
| outside / real word sucks enough. Here you can be anything you
| want to be...
| pessimizer wrote:
| Only if what you want to be is two floating eyes and two
| floating hands in a videogame.
| ridruejo wrote:
| It's an evolution of how you can communicate: pictures/written
| form -> 2D movies -> 3D movies -> AR/VR.
| Xplune13 wrote:
| You wrote the exact same thing I wanted to write. I still
| haven't got a satisfactory answer to that question though.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I have a similar take on how VR lets you show ads much beyond a
| rectangular screen, so plausibly commands higher ad revenue if
| monetised. FB needs to grow the pie bigger: the user growth is
| flatlining.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Facebook's ad product is shit. They exist because they're a
| monopoly. Their ad product is shit because they don't
| understand their clients (advertisers) _at all_ and would
| rather sink R-n-D into keeping the monopoly thing going
| instead of figuring out market fit for their product. (In
| that regard Facebook is exactly like Google.)
|
| t. Worked more than 16 years in ad tech.
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what don't they understand about
| advertisers?
| polote wrote:
| The only thing that counts when you create a B2C product is how
| much time each user will spend time on your product per day.
|
| There is no goal to achieve for the user. Zuck is a very smart
| guy and knows that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok,
| Twitter, Youtube ... are activities for people. And those
| activities will keep being popular only a handful of years. If
| you don't want the Meta Inc, company's revenue to collapse you
| have to innovate and be part of the next hot thing.
|
| Nobody knows what is going to be the next hot thing, Zuck just
| want it to be the metaverse. So the metaverse doesn't need to
| have a point, it just needs to be successful
| brundolf wrote:
| > There is no goal to achieve for the user
|
| I mean... there won't be users at all if there's _nothing_ in
| it for the user.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| The value to Mark Zuckerberg is obvious, the question is
| what's the value to users? Why is it fun? Why is it
| interesting?
| bunkydoo wrote:
| Mark fuckerberg is just cracked out. This is his rich guy thing.
| Bezos and musk have rockets, but this guy thinks he's gonna bring
| Tron or the Matrix to reality. Luckily most people don't want
| this
| fulafel wrote:
| Metaverse was coined and the concept introduced in Snow Crash in
| the beginning of the 90s.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| The metaverse is noise.
|
| The interesting long term stuff that will come out of this is
| computing more integrated into your whole life with AR. This is
| going to need a more networked, spatially aware, OS like
| abstraction than we've had to date. The scary part of that is FB
| making the play to own it and presumably all the data that can be
| harvested by being implicitly jacked into your entire life.
|
| Apple are presumably working on the same thing for the same
| reasons but want you jacked into their ecosystem instead.
|
| I believe the net result of what we'll get is several competing
| walled gardens with interop at the app level as we see with
| phones these days.
|
| The Web3 side of this is a mix of vultures taking easy money,
| well meaning people without backing and VC backed companies
| preaching decentralisation but offering themselves up either as
| middlemen or the beginning of another platform with the attendant
| lock-in. It primarily seems to be a way to get out of the rent
| seeking world of platforms into a rent seeking world for
| everything.
| Def_Os wrote:
| Although slightly depressing, this seems to me the most likely
| outcome too.
| ToddWBurgess wrote:
| As a mobile dev (and former Second Life player), I am skeptical
| about the metaverse due to limitations of current mobile
| hardware. Using the metaverse is going to require the screen to
| always be on and will consume the CPU which leads to a huge
| battery suck. We already saw this play out with Pokemon Go
| leading to lots of players to carry around external battery
| packs.
|
| Unless mobile technology has some major revolution with battery
| life or Facebook/Meta can find a way to use the metaverse without
| a screen or sucking battery life, I think mobile tech will
| severely hinder users from using the metaverse.
|
| Now to bring things back to the original quesion, when Second
| Life was a thing, mobile tech was mostly flip phones and
| Blackberries so mobile wasn't an option. Users could only use the
| desktop and were fine with it because it is all we knew at the
| time. Being a desktop only application was never an issue for the
| users. The current demand to support multiple platforms when many
| of those platforms are not capable of supporting the metaverse is
| what makes the current metaverse different than Second Life.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| maybe FB figured out a way to do a virtual world on the cheap and
| this is there way to force google and apple to jump in play catch
| up. a bit of misdirection... while aapl and xyz are distracted by
| shiny objects, FB is working on their _REAL_ product.
|
| meh. it's a fun conspiracy theory.
| wy35 wrote:
| The comments here are much, much more pessimistic than I
| expected. Yes, AR/VR is still a novelty, and it has been for a
| while. However, anything innovative started off as being
| dismissed as toys [0]. VR tech has improved immensely from its
| inception, but there is a gap -- people need a reason to use it
| beyond its initial wow factor. The "metaverse" is the proposed
| solution for the gap.
|
| [0]: http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
| alex_young wrote:
| Remember when they were going to fix the entire financial system
| with a new crypto currency centralized amongst a few nodes? That
| was only a couple of years ago. Seems unlikely that this grand
| idea is any more likely to actually happen.
| herbst wrote:
| Or when they wanted to bring 'free walled garden intranets'
| over the whole world and the related countries like India
| pushed them away.
| jl6 wrote:
| Are there any interesting Long Bets being made about the future
| success or failure of the metaverse?
|
| I could imagine making some money on the following: "by 2030, the
| number of VR users of the metaverse will be less than 1% of the
| number of users of other social media apps".
|
| (Unless they pull some definitional stunt like saying "you used
| AR once on the Facebook app therefore we are counting you as a
| metaverse user").
| gfodor wrote:
| It's simple really, and most commenters don't "get" what is going
| on with all this.
|
| Remote communication tools like video conferencing fail to
| deliver what academics call "social presence", which is the
| feeling of being together in unmediated communication. VR and AR
| have the necessary capabilities to do so, and deliver social
| presence on par with face to face. With a fully immersive
| experience, you can feel like you are standing next to a person
| talking to them, regardless of their physical location. Body
| language, eye contact, etc all come through.
|
| That is the core capability that will disrupt all industry, it is
| more a matter of when not if. The current hardware clearly is not
| hitting the mark for sudden mass adoption. The hardware will
| eventually, even if we have to wait until it becomes something
| like sunglasses or even contact lenses.
|
| From first principles, having computers override what photons you
| see will have huge effects, but don't focus so much on the shiny
| video game world aspects: it's all about removing the need for
| physical co-location to communicate, work, and spend time
| together with full social presence. This is why Zuck bought
| Oculus, and why he has pivoted his company around the entire
| thing. It's not because of "Ready Player One", but because he
| feels that hardware/software will modulate most person to person
| communication soon, and he wants it to be his stack.
| Havoc wrote:
| Pretty clear explanation. Thanks for posting
| tomp wrote:
| Just because "remote social presence / coworking" is the
| future, doesn't mean that Facebook is on track to capitalize on
| it.
|
| For example, I'd much prefer a "mirror-sized realtime video"
| (i.e. a "window into the other office") kind of experience,
| where I don't _actually_ need to wear a helmet.
|
| And there aren't even that many technological obstacles to
| that; just good TVs, with good software, and fast enough
| internet connection. Add a bit of eye/head tracking (to
| approximate 3D from different viewpoints) and it'll be very
| real-like.
| shafyy wrote:
| I agree that social presence is the most underrated aspect of
| VR, especially from people who have never tried it. Of course,
| it's not there yet, but if you experience it today you can see
| glimpses of how it will be in the future.
|
| However, that has nothing to do with the "metaverse". Metaverse
| is just a fancy word Facebook is trying to establish to somehow
| rebrand their walled-off social media platforms.
| gfodor wrote:
| I agree Facebook is kinda taking their eye off the prize by
| focusing on the metaverse concepts. But they're not dumb,
| they understand what I wrote above, so there might be a
| reason this is being done towards that end.
| shafyy wrote:
| No, they are not dumb at all. That's why they are
| rebranding "social media" as "metaverse" and trying to own
| the whole stack (hardware + software) this time around.
| They are not taking their eye off the prize. The VR tech
| they build is objectively amazing, and if they continue
| like this they will own the biggest VR social network, at
| least initially.
|
| Edit: All I'm saying is that the metaverse is not some new
| concept. It's bascially social media enabled by the
| internet, but for some reason we start calling it metaverse
| when access through the medium of VR.
| tehbeard wrote:
| > ... social presence is the most underrated aspect of VR ...
| Of course, it's not there yet, ...
|
| All this "body language" talk neglects that vr tracks at most
| your head and hands. Not how people are stood, or even facial
| expressions. "Body language" indeed. Too day nothing of the
| whirly Hurley motion sickness from it.
|
| Maybe one day, but I put it in the same bucket as fusion.
| gfodor wrote:
| No, we were doing full body tracking with perception neuron
| inertial sensors tracking 7 years ago in AltspaceVR. My
| guess is the zero cost option is going to be using a home
| mirror, as recently demoed. It can also be done with
| outside in cameras, was done with Kinect literally almost a
| decade ago or with lighthouse pucks from valve 4-5 years
| ago. Facial and eye tracking will almost certainly be in
| the next meta headset.
|
| Motion sickness goes down with each generation and is also
| largely a function of software design anyway. You're very
| behind the curve.
| dathinab wrote:
| > fail to deliver what academics call "social presence", which
| is the feeling of being together in unmediated communication
|
| Do they fail? I don't thinks so, when I e.g. play D&D like
| games over voice only chat + a shared map it totally convoys
| the "felling of being together" (just one of many examples).
|
| On the other side when in-person sitting in a conference room
| where a person takes 30min to convey some (for me) mostly
| irrelevant facts which could have been summarized in a single
| slide there isn't really any "feeling together" and weather I'm
| sitting there or at home or use a headset on a train station
| makes literally no difference.
|
| What makes people "feel together" is interaction and being
| focused together on a specific think. This doesn't need VR or
| AR at all.
|
| Also what people totally forget is that moving company meetings
| and similar into VR has a number of problems:
|
| - everyone needs to have a VR headset with them and a
| reasonable good internet connection
|
| - everyone needs to be able to use a VR headset, but even with
| the best headset there are tons of people out there which get
| motion sickness from it (or from many things which convey 3D
| weather it's in VR or in a PC game) this people are much less
| rare then many thing.
|
| - the platform needs to convey the feeling, as I mentioned
| above "just putting it in VR" doesn't mean it works. Also more
| important the "virtual venue" you meet has no reason to be
| anything like the real world, like at all. So there is no
| reason to replicate all the limitations from the real world.
| But Facebook seems to be exactly trying to do this.
|
| Facebook positioned themself well by owning one of the most
| affordable VR headsets.
|
| But the meta-verse thing isn't looking too good IMHO.
|
| What companies want isn't a virtual world, but a virtual
| meeting room.
|
| What people want is being whatever they want to be in VR, and
| potentially have different identities for different social
| cycles (mainly work, friends, family). So not quite what
| Facebook is building, to some degree even the opposite thing.
| gfodor wrote:
| You quoted half of my definition. Google it.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Until we can see each other's faces in VR, this won't work for
| social presence. Shrinking everything down to contact lenses
| (even sunglasses get in the way of social contact) is likely to
| be beyond us for quite some while if ever. I'd rather not put
| something in my eye anyway.
|
| Further, VR does not work well for switching - you can't be in
| VR and scribble notes at the same time. AR might be an
| improvement, but not by much.
|
| Video conferencing does not suffer from any of these problems,
| and works pretty well for collaboration. 'Zoom fatigue' is
| definitely a thing though - it's unclear whether VR fatigue
| would be better or worse.
|
| VR/AR will see limited adoption for certain specialised use
| cases only.
| crawsome wrote:
| We all just need our own Council of Thirteen (From the
| Venture Bros)
|
| https://i.cdn.turner.com/adultswim/big/image-
| upload/thumbnai...
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| All of these points could start with the word, "Currently, ".
| Don't you think having one of the world largest companies
| throwing massive amounts of time and money into these issues
| could solve a few of these?
| mulderc wrote:
| Given that several of the largest and wealthiest companies
| (google and Microsoft) in the world can't make decent chat
| apps and meta seems unable to make a product that doesn't
| incite ethnic tensions around the world. I'm skeptical of
| such organizations to solve many of these issues.
| gfodor wrote:
| The progression from DK1 to Quest 2 proves that effective
| technological miracles are in the reach of Facebook's VR
| group. It's pretty insane what has been done so far.
| mulderc wrote:
| We have very different definitions of insane apparently.
| I enjoy my quest 2 but it still very much feels like a
| smartphone strapped to my face. Basic aspects of the
| software like the guardian have issues all the time. Each
| software update seems to fix some bugs and introduce new
| ones.
|
| I am deeply skeptical meta is going to make the kinds of
| fundamental breakthroughs that will make VR mainstream
| and useful to people. Right now they are basically brute
| forcing the issue with tons of money and even then I am a
| bit underwhelmed and I use my quest almost daily.
| dathinab wrote:
| You need to separate technical progression of VR headsets
| from the whole meta-verse idea.
|
| It's out of question that Facebook (and other companies)
| did a good job in progressing VR headsets technology
| (through I wouldn't call it a miracle).
|
| But the meta-verse idea as presented by Facebook doesn't
| look too promising IMHO. It looks out of touch with
| reality and it's from Facebook. A company well known to
| try to force their world view onto all other people
| around the world, ignoring any ethical questions arising.
| Sure by renaming themself they will manage to somewhat
| run away from their responsibilities, but as they don't
| really change their ways it's just a mater of time until
| we will have the next batch of scandals, now attached to
| the "meta"-name instead of Facebook.
| roveo wrote:
| There are algos that reconstruct photorealistic 3D facial
| expressions from headset cameras in realtime.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XcQtoja_Y
| charlesju wrote:
| https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1442201621266534402
|
| Please read this, and then read up on why everyone is talking
| about web 3.0.
|
| This isn't a phase of the metaverse that is going to be
| different because of screen and control technology, it's an
| ownership and control shift.
| gfodor wrote:
| These trends are converging but the most valuable
| contribution of HMDs imo is remote social presence. It's
| not their only contribution, and the economic revolution of
| web3 would have happened without HMDs imo.
| mettamage wrote:
| You don't need to shrink down, you might be able to scan
| faces in vr glasses and put them in the vr world
| runnerup wrote:
| The HP Omnicept, based on the Reverb G2, adds a camera that
| points at the lower half of the face and a Tobii eye
| tracker looking at the eyes.
|
| You could do a LOT of avatar face reconstruction with that.
| [deleted]
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Meta is of course working on exactly this.
| gfodor wrote:
| What you're posting here is "common knowledge", but it is
| actually in conflict with social presence research. VR beats
| video conferencing even without any facial tracking, and the
| abject failure of video conferencing in the pandemic to
| replace most of the feeling of face to face communication
| should be enough to convince people there is merit to the
| studies that have been done showing it scores poorly.
|
| In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment
| into the virtual environment. So there is no deficit there. I
| think you haven't tried these things before so you are just
| speculating.
| teucris wrote:
| Interesting. Links to research?
| sweetdreamerit wrote:
| The literature I know defines social presence as
| something that has only partially to do with technology
| (and Virtual Reality) [0]. The advantage of VR is that it
| can enhance the sense of immersivity in some
| circumstances [1]. [0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ab
| s/10.1080/01587919.2017.13... [1]
| https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/50061
| gfodor wrote:
| Here is a talk I gave a few years ago - I haven't kept up
| tho so there may be better sources now.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5w8xbeCc2Q
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| I'd be curious to know how VR beats video conferencing - by
| what metrics etc.
|
| Video conferencing has certainly been wildly _successful_
| in actually getting (collaborative) work done - though in
| fact it is screen sharing that is the secret ingredient
| here. Would screen sharing in VR be any different? I guess
| 3D models or images could be shared usefully.
|
| It is notable the difference between tele conferencing and
| video conferencing - and that difference is faces (and
| screensharing). Until VR can show faces, it is basically a
| tele conference with a puppet show.
|
| My point about switching is that in VR you are completely
| immersed, so are limited to what the VR provides, whereas
| with a vid conference I can e.g. go make some coffee while
| still participating. I'm limited mainly by social
| convention, not the technology itself. The nature of modern
| work is we are at the centre of various tools and
| technologies (half of which are a bit broken) that we
| choreograph together to get useful stuff done. No VR system
| could hope to replicate it all.
|
| Actually I'm currently working on a VR project (amongst
| other things), so these concerns are real and pertinent to
| me.
|
| (As ever with engineering there is a tendency to focus on
| the what and the how, instead of the who and the why.
| Furthermore, people will use technology as they see fit,
| which might be quite different from how it's inventors
| intended or envisioned. To develop on this point, even the
| most 'non-technical' human is an accomplished tool user,
| and they won't be reading the manual anymore than they
| absolutely have to.)
| dathinab wrote:
| The ting is the "felling together" part is less dependent
| on the medium (real workd, audio, video, VR) but on the way
| the meeting is held.
|
| Video conferencing didn't fail because video conferencing
| is fundamentally bad but because:
|
| - meetings are often done in a fundamental bad way, where
| people don't have any "felling together" even is they sit
| physically in the same room.
|
| - people having bad microphones, the video part in a video
| conference is the least important the audio part is what
| makes it work or fail (because meetings are all about
| speaking, except if you are mute/deaf, in which case VR
| might help).
|
| - technical difficulties all over the place, there is no
| reason for this to get better with VR
|
| - peoples homes being fundamental unsuited for conferences
| (i.e. a lot of background noise), again nothing which will
| change with VR
|
| - also VR headsets and mimic don't work well together,
| proper gestic is possible but often requires full body
| tracking which put more requirements to the environment you
| use it in.
|
| - VR headsets are much more straining to use then audio-
| only conferences, and somewhat more straining then video
| conferences. Which can be a major no-go for anyone doing
| many conferences, like the management deciding weather or
| not to buy into it.
|
| - Companies want virtual meeting rooms not a meta-verse,
| something which already exists, and looks better then the
| honestly crappy looking thinks Facebook presented.
| Tagbert wrote:
| If people use microphones with noise cancellation, it can
| remove most of the background noise. When I was still in
| the office I used a Jabra headset with a noise
| suppressing microphone, I could speak on a call with
| people talking nearby and their conversation was not
| noticeable on the call. I would hope that a VR/AR headset
| for this purpose would have a similar microphone setup.
| gfodor wrote:
| I wrote "feeling together in unmediated communication" on
| purpose. The unmediated part is the most important part
| of the definition.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| And the actual benefit of the feeling of face to face
| communication is?
| gfodor wrote:
| We spend a sizable % of US energy moving physical bodies
| around, so apparently people do in fact like face to face
| communication.
| johnny53169 wrote:
| > In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment
| into the virtual environment. So there is no deficit there.
|
| Writing/typing would be really bad in VR though, and that's
| a major need for meetings, I don't see a good solution for
| that.
| gfodor wrote:
| The solution is you use a keyboard and mouse. No need to
| reinvent the wheel. It can be brought in via passthrough
| camera tracking.
| dbbk wrote:
| This seems like an awful lot of hoops to jump through to
| get to something which is still not at all compelling.
| umvi wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it. I think most people will find
| the cost of strapping on headsets to be greater than benefits
| of the social presence it provides
| gfodor wrote:
| For a given headset there is an activation cost and presumed
| benefit that gets someone to use it. The activation costs
| will continue to trend downward as passthrough AR gets
| deployed and size/weight goes down, among other things, and
| the presumed benefits will go up as cultural norms start to
| interface with this technology and more and more applications
| come online.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| If that's the plan, Google is well ahead of Facebook for
| recreating presence with their starline demo. That gives you
| body language eye contact etc without the big headset and
| paddles - and you're still able to interact with your real
| world environment.
| gfodor wrote:
| I agree I've been working in and out of VR for the last 8
| years or so and it was the first thing I saw that made me
| question the assumption that VR was the only possible
| solution to this problem.
| ghaff wrote:
| As someone who spends way too much time on video--including
| meetings I should be in in case something directly relevant
| to me comes up but mostly can pay partial attention to
| while I do stuff on another computer--I would mostly hate
| the idea of wearing a headset. Heck, at in person meetings
| for better or worse, a lot of people do the same thing.
|
| High-fidelity, lifesize, no stuttering, etc. plus
| collaborative docs and I'm pretty sure you may have a
| better experience than VR.
| gfodor wrote:
| Yeah the headsets are a distraction, the way to think
| about this is there are three distinct tech tracks:
|
| - full photonic override (HMDs -> passthrough visors
| (lynx-r is a half step) -> passthrough swim goggles ->
| contact lenses)
|
| - partial photonic override (HoloLens -> AR glasses ->
| contact lenses)
|
| - magic windows (google's thing)
|
| They all have trade offs but the first track in
| particular it is an error to look at current form factors
| as a fixed condition. They will be changing rapidly
| insofar as traction and/or investment continues.
| ghaff wrote:
| Certainly. Though I'd be inclined to argue that full
| VR/immersion is mostly of interest in an exploration
| context (e.g. 3D construction walk through, virtual
| tourism) or simulation (including gaming)--especially for
| situations where you can participate from a fixed
| location.
| gfodor wrote:
| I think if another tech hits face to face social presence
| scores then yes things get a lot more interesting. I
| don't know if google has run a study.
| buu700 wrote:
| Rather than contact lenses, how plausible would it be to
| project an image into someone's eyes from a distance?
|
| As in you'd have an external VR unit that's as bulky as
| needed to handle face tracking, photonic override, etc.
| without any direct physical contact or uncomfortable
| accessories. Does that kind of tech sound further or
| closer than contact lenses, or would it be so different
| as to be hard to say?
| ghaff wrote:
| There was some pro type contact lens technology in a talk
| at Hot Chips but nowhere near prime time yet. Saw a
| thread. Forget if it was here or Twitter.
| gfodor wrote:
| Yeah I would put that into the same bucket as contact
| lenses: really hard to imagine tech in terms of
| execution, but probably possible from first principles.
| The invariant is basically if code is determining what
| photons you see, and if it has full governance or partial
| governance (ie, the real world has the ability to leak in
| or not.)
| dbbk wrote:
| Yes! I can't wait for this to go mainstream. Seems like the
| perfect solution. I love their description of it as a "magic
| window".
| psychlops wrote:
| I have a feeling that part of social presence will require
| absolute privacy among participants. Once we see permanently
| recorded leaks of these social conversations, there will be a
| halt of adoption.
| gfodor wrote:
| Yep this is part of the goals of one of the projects I worked
| on, Mozilla Hubs: ensuring that there is always a self hosted
| privacy preserving open source option for this basic use case
| of VR avatar based communication.
| przeor wrote:
| Based on your comment, the biggest difference then ( second
| life ) and now is tokenisation and non fingible stuff
| monetization at scale, you can check it here
| https://experty.io/web-3-0-vs-metaverse-similarities-and-dif...
| to read more
| msoad wrote:
| The hardware is so behind this kind of application that
| Facebook's pitch sounds like selling billboard ads on future
| Mars highways!
| meheleventyone wrote:
| It's surprisingly not that far behind. We're already close to
| having commercial headsets with full-body tracking, eye
| tracking and facial tracking.
|
| Even without those technologies current VR is quite different
| in terms of social presence to interacting on a flat screen.
| A lot of body language comes through even just tracking the
| head and hands.
|
| I think we're quite a bit away from having mass adoption of
| VR though. But that's more form factor and comfort.
| gfodor wrote:
| No, there is a study that was done on PC rift hardware that
| showed it was already competitive with f2f on most measures
| of social presence except for facial expressions (which makes
| sense, given the lack of facial tracking.)
|
| The bottleneck for adoption is probably mostly about UX,
| comfort, norms, marketing, etc. Not raw capabilities.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Laughable - that's like saying "this cake has 80% of the
| required ingredients, we're almost there with the exception
| of flour and sugar".
|
| The uncanny valley on the raw capabilities of these current
| products is a grand canyon. Holodeck it ain't.
| rackjack wrote:
| I wonder how much we need facial expressions for VR
| communication. You can convey a lot in Source games just
| by crouching and violently shaking your mouse... plus
| nobody's trying to blow you up in a work environment
| (hopefully).
| gfodor wrote:
| You can also fake it. My app jel.app has avatars that
| have a lot of facial animation and it's either random or
| just driven off voice, and conveys a lot imo.
|
| There is a limit and a point where this can make things
| worse, but if it approximates what a person expects well
| enough and never conflicts with that expectation it's a
| good tool.
| gfodor wrote:
| Not really, I'd imagine if you ran the same trial today
| with face and eye tracking HMDs you would match f2f
| social presence scores. Wouldn't surprise me if the study
| has already been done. You're confusing graphics quality
| and realism with just the subset of what is needed to hit
| face to face social presence. That bar is much lower:
| high resolution, low latency, good tracking. The actual
| GPU power beyond that doesn't put a ceiling since
| conveying non verbal communication doesn't require
| expensive rasterization.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It feels like you're just moving goalposts by defining
| some arbitrary metric of "f2f social presence scores". It
| doesn't really matter how much any individual test does
| against these "scores" if your average person walks away
| feeling "That felt nothing like a face to face meeting
| I'm used to having with actual, live humans."
| gfodor wrote:
| You're just arguing at this point. The scores I'm talking
| about are not arbitrary, there are a few standardized
| measures used in social presence research to attempt to
| make apples to apples comparisons between communications
| tools attempting to compete with f2f. The point is that
| the scores people give are literally asking users to
| convey their feeling that the experience met the baseline
| of face to face, or not, along various dimensions. You
| sound like you have an axe to grind, and aren't actually
| looking to understand anything new here.
| charlesju wrote:
| I agree this is one facet, but other is we now have a trustless
| ownership protocol (ie. cryto + NFTs) that will lay the
| foundation for people "caring" about the stuff and status you
| have in the metaverse.
| roywiggins wrote:
| What stops me from minting an NFT that says I own anything I
| want? If platforms are only honoring NFTs minted by other
| platforms then they might as well just share that information
| in a database.
| charlesju wrote:
| Same way you can't just print out a copy of the mona lisa?
|
| People care about status and authenticity.
|
| Imagine a virtual world where
|
| 1. You have the validate you are an avatar you own
|
| 2. You can be anything you want
|
| The virtual world 1 is way more interesting because it's
| authentic and the people of status will want to use it and
| people of less status will build towards being higher
| status.
| abeppu wrote:
| Who arbitrates which NFTs-based claims are respected
| versus not? How does one decide authenticity? And once
| you have an answer to such a question (relying on some
| preexisting system of ownership in the real world), then
| why should we care about tokens?
|
| E.g. if someone _does_ try to create an NFT for the Mona
| Lisa, our ability to refute / accept its authenticity is
| premised on the knowledge that in the real world, the
| French Republic itself owns the work. How would we trust
| that the keys associated with minting the NFT were
| controlled by the French Republic? Presumably we'd need
| some public statement of attestation from an official
| French government body, and perhaps with the concurrence
| of others, to have confidence that this wasn't a rogue
| intern at the Ministry of Culture, or a hacker that got
| control to some official accounts or pages.
|
| But applying this logic to "avatars" seems to be either
| broken or creepy. Who has the authority to say that you
| are or aren't you?
| gfodor wrote:
| The people who decide which NFTs matter are the
| communities and cultures you participate in, and entities
| who have sovereignty over you. Which is no different than
| anything else.
| abeppu wrote:
| Right but the point the grandparent I was adding to, and
| also what I understand delecti is saying is roughly: Meta
| or a similar platform is an "entity who has sovereignty".
| For users to have a coherent experience in the platform,
| it may essentially be required that the platform
| exercises some decision-making power on what NFTs to
| respect and which not to. Do I get to bring in and use
| item X just because I say I own it, or not? Once the
| platform is exercising a choice on how/when to recognize
| ownership or not, the ownership system is no longer
| "trustless" and why should we bother with the complexity?
| gfodor wrote:
| I would agree a centralized authority like Facebook
| basically "owning" what gets blessed is a world where the
| promise of these technologies has not been met. The hope
| is that we can have a more egalitarian outcome where
| there are a variety of actors who align based on shared
| interests to agree on what contracts to recognize and
| confer benefits based on. Of course, one challenge with
| realizing this can be seen elsewhere in this thread,
| where people are dismissive of the entire concept (and
| ironically have boxed it in as a Facebook thing now,
| effectively ceding the entire territory before the first
| battle.) It's important that technologists get sped up on
| what is at stake and the likelihood that correcting a
| misstep will be hard or impossible for future generations
| if a singular entity "wins" this emerging space in the
| next several years. There really won't be another
| platform turnover to try to correct the error and disrupt
| the existing players as there has been for the last
| several computing platform changes.
| abeppu wrote:
| We're perhaps escaping the reasonable scope for a thread
| like this, but can you point to something that describes
| a potential version of "the metaverse" where no such
| authority exists in any form?
|
| To my layperson's view (this is def not my wheelhouse),
| either such an authority exists (even if it's a
| foundation backed by several "actors who align based on
| shared interests"), in which case we're going to be
| required to trust it so we may as well drop the overhead
| of the blockchain, or no such authority exists, and
| there's a potentially high degree of fragmentation among
| platforms recognizing different subsets of ownership (or
| identity, or canonicity of speech or whatever), in which
| case ... is it a metaverse or just a bunch of distinct
| rooms?
|
| > There really won't be another platform turnover to try
| to correct the error and disrupt the existing players as
| there has been for the last several computing platform
| changes.
|
| What makes you say that with such apparent confidence?
| TillE wrote:
| Right, it's just shoving some arbitrary data in a
| decentralized database. People will still need to get
| together and agree on which bits of data to care about,
| and at that point the blockchain is adding very little
| value besides a cumbersome way to transfer ownership.
| gfodor wrote:
| The value is that the blockchains (or analogous tech)
| maximize durability and odds of societal consensus across
| time and space. For example, I would put higher odds on
| the Ethereum blockchain still existing and being citable
| in a century or two than most centralized authorities
| today. (These may be low odds in absolute terms, but in
| relative terms I think the Ethereum chain wins.)
| roywiggins wrote:
| Okay, Ethereum is still around, but all it says is that
| in 2023 you bought a string of digits that referred to a
| special hat in Fortnite. But it's 2040 now and the
| special hat has linkrotted away because Fortnite got
| taken over by Zuckerberg.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I can only speak for myself, but I do not feel any
| particular predilection towards "social consensus" when
| I'm told that a think has cryptocurrencies mixed into it.
| If anything, it's a negative signal that tells me that
| someone has undisclosed financial interests in whatever
| they're trying to tell me about.
| gfodor wrote:
| Sure, the argument made by crypto people is that is a
| transitional condition and in a few decades society at
| large will in general consider information on blockchains
| (or their descendants) as authoritative in many
| situations.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Sure, I can understand the vision. I guess the more
| salient "why?" question is the one that still feels
| lacking to me. Current easy money aside, it's not clear
| why society as a whole would be willing to cast aside the
| last 250 years of physical ownership and financial
| infrastructure in exchange for digital ownership(?) and
| immutable ledgers with irrecoverable error conditions.
| gfodor wrote:
| Possibly last man standing phenomenon after a few decades
| of turmoil unwinding present day nation states.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Sounds like the same fallacy as preppers getting ripped
| off buying Krugerrands at a premium to keep value safe
| after a complete collapse of all civilization. When it is
| like putting platforms on the boughs of a tree to stay
| safe when the trunk is cut and felled. It fundamentally
| misunderstands the order of dependencies.
| roywiggins wrote:
| > The virtual world 1 is way more interesting
|
| What use are NFTs in such a world? If it's permissioned
| _anyway_ , and there's only a few approved vendors, you
| can do this with a database. Suppose you already
| developed a Roblox/Fortnite/Minecraft metaverse, why do
| you want NFTs on top of that?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Yes let's crystalize greed and avarice into our brave new
| virtual meta world thing
|
| How about a virtual world of _no_ ownership? Why must we give
| the wealthy yet another venue to lord their status over us?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Like the answer to all of the juvenile notions of "the
| rich" - because they are the ones making, running, and
| maintaining the goddamned servers in question!
|
| NFTs are dumb but so is the concept of no ownership in a
| way that conflates definitions so.
|
| If it is popular to have say a World Tree in a pool as your
| spawn point and said map is a popular one you would still
| have instance ownership even if the map itself is free
| software. Having your own instance would be found
| preferrable to most compared to a common flooded one with
| millions clipping through each other and trolls rampant.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > If it is popular to have say a World Tree in a pool as
| your spawn point and said map is a popular one you would
| still have instance ownership even if the map itself is
| free software. Having your own instance would be found
| preferrable to most compared to a common flooded one with
| millions clipping through each other and trolls rampant.
|
| I don't really understand how lack of ownership strips
| the ability to shard instances.
|
| > because they are the ones making, running, and
| maintaining the goddamned servers in question!
|
| They are, because they are most capable. But do not
| underestimate that others do so as well, often in a much
| more just and equitable fashion. (See: The Pirate
| Bay/private trackers vs Spotify or Youtube)
|
| And watch what you call juvenile, that perspective
| explains the world so much more clearly than any
| explanation that the guilty might offer
| gfodor wrote:
| The ultimate scarcity is human attention and creativity -
| so in the limit that will always be a thing that is a form
| of wealth. The ownership of digital assets (NFTs or not) is
| fundamentally an output of a system where someone chooses
| to expend creative energy into making the asset, and traded
| that opportunity cost off based on the expected outcome. A
| scenario where that work would not be something they could
| capture value from by enforcement mechanisms of scarcity
| would lead to some of these efforts not happening. (Not all
| of course, many people do amazing CC licensed work. But it
| doesn't pay the bills.)
| tomc1985 wrote:
| But digital is a realm of infinite copying, and where
| true ownership of bits means that you can never show them
| off (like Shkreli and that A Tribe Called Quest album).
| NFT 'ownership' is an additional layer on top of the data
| that can easily be stripped away, as the exclusivity only
| exists in the minds of those gullible enough to actually
| value it.
|
| I am very tired of watching humans constantly try to
| impose real-world economic scarcity into a digital land
| of infinite plenty. Rather than fight the nature of a
| digital economy, why not embrace it?
| gfodor wrote:
| People who want to create works that can be infinitely
| copied, will. People who want to create works that have
| various kinds of cultural norms imposing scarcity, will.
| There is no "fight", it's just saying that you'd prefer
| less options for people to choose how to expend their
| creative energy. Nobody is stopping a person from turning
| the knob all the way to "infinite free copies," but the
| idea here is to make a knob that is granular,
| multidimensional, and under their control, as opposed to
| under the control of a few centralized actors.
|
| Besides, NFTs actually embrace your philosophy: allow
| copies, and shift scarcity elsewhere to things like
| social status. It is not DRM, obviously. You should be a
| fan.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| While they permit infinite copies, the ownership bit
| strips away potential egalitarianism. Scarcity needs to
| be stripped and not an option. There shouldn't be a knob
| that allows one to select 'infinite copies', that should
| be the default. And ownership should either be collective
| or none at all.
|
| Permitting ownership enables an unnecessary layer of
| stratification that humanity is best without, in a rare
| environment that actually allows for the lack of it.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| You don't get to decide that. Your prejudices and
| carefully bonsaie gardened imperatives about how you
| think the world should work be do not change that fact
| any more than the tantrums in congresses and parliaments
| demanding encryption that doesn't work for "bad guys". It
| is fundamentally about information and its shapes.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| > You don't get to decide that.
|
| Such is the nature of idealism. It is a shame we allow a
| world of plenty to artificially lock up value so a few
| people can feel better than others
|
| Alternatively, why is a piece of data not allowed to just
| be? You can see this everywhere, even outside the digital
| world and in the realm of the mind. An idea is never
| allowed to stand on its own merits, we always have to
| attach our bullshit culture to it
| delecti wrote:
| The virtual stuff you "own" in virtual environments are going
| to be siloed in individual companies' ecosystems. Just like
| GTA Online is never going to give me any sort of benefit from
| the fancy sword I have in World of Warcraft, neither is
| Facebook/Meta going give me any benefit from the couch I have
| in whatever system Microsoft or Valve puts out. NFTs are
| never going to materialize into that sort of cross-ecosystem
| unified ownership because no large company benefits from
| honoring assets obtained in another company's ecosystem.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Never say never. A "stuff" import seems like the kind of
| feature that would have to be copied by other platforms as
| soon as one does it, but there's a chicken and egg aspect.
|
| I disagree with the whole "value of ownership" thing.
| Making knock off nfts is trivial, so this relies on people
| caring enough about provenance to police this and shame
| people that have knock offs in their virtual environment.
|
| Digital goods can be copied for free. It's the killer
| feature of digital. No more scarcity!! Any system that
| fails to embrace this will be outcompeted long term. See
| the music industry.
| tehbeard wrote:
| > shame people that have knock offs in their virtual
| environment
|
| Because the bullying at school for having non-brand
| clothing or things wasn't enough. You'll need Supreme(TM)
| nfts, or become a digital pariah?
| charlesju wrote:
| This is already happening. You're thinking about this in
| reverse.
|
| The web 1.0 and 2.0 way of thinking if we build the
| product, then we own the community.
|
| The web 3.0 way of thinking is there are existing
| communities out there (BAYC, Punks, etc.) that we can
| enable to use our product and come into our space.
|
| And this is already happening.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| BAYC is light years beyond everything else in the NFT
| space. The way they've built a community and played up
| their cool factor to make you want to be a part of it all
| is impressive.
|
| Their parties this last week in NYC for NFT week pretty
| much locked them as the model to strive for. I don't know
| if others can do it, but they've set the standard.
| TillE wrote:
| > played up their cool factor
|
| C'mon. This is very "rich nerds desperately trying to be
| cool", it's not an actual thing that normal people will
| ever care about. We already have status symbols that you
| can show off in the real world.
| woodruffw wrote:
| At every cryptocurrency party I've been to, the people
| (i.e., the normal ones, not the true believers) stop
| coming when the free drinks and food stop flowing. I
| wouldn't confuse that with a "cool factor."
| indymike wrote:
| > Remote communication tools like video conferencing fail to
| deliver what academics call "social presence
|
| When we have Star Trek's transporters, we can achieve "social
| presence". Until then, you can have "this is cool". There is a
| real problem with VR: it requires way more focus and attention
| that being live, in person. Where VR does shine is shared
| experiences you can't have in real life. Those shared
| experiences are really cool, but are not such that people want
| to have them whenever they want to interact with grandma or Bob
| in accounting.
|
| > it's all about removing the need for physical co-location to
| communicate, work, and spend time together with full social
| presence.
|
| We already have technology that may be "good enough". The issue
| with VR is that it requires so much cognitive effort to work...
| so you really are dealing with something that is cool. Cool to
| the level that it seems magical, but not cool enough to beat
| the ease we can communicate via other channels. Playing a
| flight sim with VR? actually great. Trying to have a
| conversation with my kids via VR? Not so great.
| gfodor wrote:
| No, you don't need transporters to archive social presence,
| this is a specific measure that is quantifiable to a large
| degree via standardized surveys and measurements. Doesn't
| require transporters, just the ability to deliver the feeling
| of unmediated communication. VR gets closer than any other
| tool I know of on this specific measure, though the recent
| google work on their magic light field window may also be
| able to compete with face to face.
|
| Note this has nothing to do with photo realism, seeing the
| physical form of people, or cool immersive environments. It's
| the feeling of unmediated communication.
|
| I suspect you haven't actually tried hanging out with your
| kids in VR on a reasonable setup when they are physically far
| away from you. I'd suggest trying it to get a more concrete
| view on what is probably going to happen with regards to
| physical co-locality and it's value prop.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| I see this conflation happening all the time from metaverse
| enthusiasts, but the metaverse != VR.
|
| Would a high quality VR version of Zoom/Teams be awesome? Of
| course it would, it would be freaking amazing! But the
| "metaverse" ain't that, it's supposed to be a _virtual
| universe_ (hence the name), where everything happens, including
| games, watching movies, etc. A gigantic MMORPG, containing
| every possible kind of online interaction and games. And _this_
| part is complete bullshit.
|
| Which user story seems the most likely:
|
| - the user open the app, select their contact or group, puts
| the VR headset on, join the chat room.
|
| - the user puts the VR headset on, login in in "virtual flat",
| go out, jump in his virtual (flying, as a DLC) car, and go to a
| virtual bar where your friends are waiting.
|
| Only the second one is worth the "metaverse" name (the first
| one being just a "virtual chat over the internet"(r)), and even
| if it could be really fun in the beginning, and could even have
| a decent success as an MMO, it won't be the mainsteam way of
| communication.
| gfodor wrote:
| Frankly there are like 50 working definitions for "metaverse"
| at this point so it's not really worth the energy of trying
| to unpack it as a way to ground an argument.
| [deleted]
| swman wrote:
| No idea but buy FB to find out
| throwawayswede wrote:
| I'm curious if there been any mention of AR/VR in sci-fi or
| popular culture in general in a positive light? Almost all I can
| think of is dystopian and does not invoke the positive imagery
| that Fb seems to be playing at.
|
| Who's their target market?
| laserbeam wrote:
| Isn't this just a forced rebranding during s time of pr
| nightmares that has nothing to do with actually building a
| successful "metaverse"?
| ravenstine wrote:
| I would not take marketing around things like VR and AR very
| seriously because _nobody knows_ whether any of them will catch
| on, and their track record isn 't very good. Oculus, for the most
| part, is a niche. A lot of people have an Oculus but it's
| primarily for games, and it hasn't reached the level where
| _everyone 's gotta have one_.
|
| Only time can tell whether Metaverse has something that Second
| Life did not. My guess is that it will be considered a joke in 5
| short years, but I don't actually know. Overall, I think Silicon
| Valley is overestimating people's willingness to wear headsets
| and paddles for extended periods of time. Just because 12 year
| old boys will do it doesn't mean that everyone else wants to.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Yeah, I think the main use case for VR will be just be porn
| with connected devices. I do think there is some ability to do
| a VR-ish remote tele-presence use case. Think Google Street
| View data capture for walking the Great Wall of China. So real
| life data used to power a VR world you can explore as you wish.
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| Oculus devices have this strange effect. The first time I got
| one, it was a total "wow." Then I put it on the shelf after a
| week and never touched it again.
|
| Talking around, I don't think I'm the only one.
| nh43de wrote:
| Same here. When I first experienced HD VR, I knew it had the
| power to be extremely addictive. However, the plug and play
| experience isn't there. Yet. Still waiting for the killer
| app.
| jostmey wrote:
| Palm pilots didn't become pervasive. So you could have applied
| that argument to iPhones. It is a matter of if the technology
| is ready. When it is, it will take off
| ravenstine wrote:
| That's definitely a factor, but these technologies need to
| solve real problems for people. Modern phones have a clear
| advantage over not having one because they are so general
| purpose. They've effectively out-tricorder'd the tricorders
| from Star Trek in their usefulness. VR not only pales in
| comparison to the _holodeck_ , but it isn't clear whether
| they have any real utility beyond being a toy. Is VR more
| efficient at relaying information than a standard phone or
| laptop? That's yet to be seen. Is VR better for socializing
| than real life or even Discord? Maybe for some people, sure,
| especially for the immobile or those who can't leave home,
| but the answer isn't clear for a wide general audience. Does
| VR help people do their jobs? There are already VR surgical
| operations, but is Zuckerborg the one who's gonna make it
| even better?
|
| My best guess is that until we can beam visions directly into
| our eyes and brains, VR will end up in a similar domain as 3D
| printers (remember all those articles touting how we would
| have "santa claus machines" in every home by now?). For the
| average person, 3D printers don't solve anything despite how
| many people would consider a 3D printer to be a "cool" thing.
| Most people won't deny the cool-factor of VR, but that
| doesn't mean they will use it for any reason. After all,
| personal computing didn't really take off until it started to
| solve more problems for the average person other than word
| processing and playing Oregon Trail. (yes I'm
| oversimplifying, don't jump down my throat, I was using
| computers before we had the web)
|
| Again, I don't really know, and nobody really does. Maybe
| people _will_ want to join the Metaverse. Hopefully
| Zuckerborg doesn 't _set back_ the adoption of VR by virtue
| of association with Facebook.
| WhiteNoiz3 wrote:
| I agree. VR is allows for great game experiences, but today's
| devices are still cumbersome and we won't see a VR device get
| mass adoption until we have something that is: - Not much
| bigger or heavier than a pair of glasses - Lets me work all
| day on virtual screens to replace my monitor. It would be
| great if it also connected to my phone to give me more screen
| real estate there, showed my notifications etc. - has pass
| through video so I'm not totally unaware of my environment
| and other people.
|
| Outside of VR, AR glasses need to be all of the above, plus
| offer something that works better in glasses than on a phone
| - like indoor wayfinding, using the cameras to allow people
| to search by image for things they are looking at, virtual
| assistants that are proactive and context/location aware, or
| just being able to do things quickly and privately without
| pointing a phone at something. Or it could just be that the
| immersive/spatial experience is just better than looking at a
| small phone window.
|
| Facebook / Meta is working on all these things, so I think
| the Metaverse talk kinda distracts from some of the more
| concrete and useful applications and paints an unrealistic
| picture for how much time people will want to spend in VR
| worlds.
|
| There are so many challenges and so much interoperability
| required to make this happen and be useful - I think it will
| be some time before it becomes a reality. But, the original
| iPhone was pretty limited initially, and I can remember lots
| of people saying "Why would I use a smartphone when I can
| just browse the web and send emails on my computer more
| easily?". I think it's likely that VR/AR will follow a
| similar trajectory with it becoming much more powerful and
| easier to use as time goes on.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| > or just being able to do things quickly and privately
| without pointing a phone at something.
|
| From what I've read, you'll more or less have the opposite
| effect. People assumed Google Glass wearers always had the
| camera on, or were taking pictures, even if they were
| unambiguously not. Wearing any gadget with this capability
| will not be significantly different from pointing a phone
| at something, I believe.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Sure, but it was always clear what the palm pilot was for,
| even if the early versions were scrappy they had use cases
| that made sense.
| topkai22 wrote:
| I've for years argued that the iPhone didn't succeed because
| of the technology (or at least technology in solutions had
| been sufficient for a while). It succeeded because it was an
| iPod a phone- a logical progression of something people were
| familar with and loved.*
|
| VR suffers from a number of technological problems still (eye
| strain, etc) but a major issue is how much a departure it
| feels like from other things we do.
|
| * Apple also utilized the proved wild popularity of iPods to
| wield tremendous power over its carriers and partners to keep
| them from interfering with the experience. Other smart phones
| of the were sold with carrier firmware mods that kept you
| doing things like transfering photos unless you paid the
| carrier a dollar per photo.
| nkingsy wrote:
| I feel like most people got it as soon as they saw the iPhone
| in action.
|
| A similar "you'll know it when you see it" applies here I
| think.
|
| For iPhone it was "everyone has a phone, and now that phone
| can give them turn by turn directions anywhere. Everyone will
| want this."
|
| For vr, there's no incumbent device to disrupt. Glasses are
| the obvious choice, but they're not in the same category.
|
| I don't think there's room for more than one digital device
| that people carry everywhere, which means vr will need to
| disrupt the phone again.
|
| Carrying that to logical conclusions, apple seems like the
| best bet to pull this off.
|
| Facebook making this move seems very strange. Building tools
| for a gold rush that isn't possible yet or even in sight. I'd
| imagine it's more about recruiting than anything.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I'll start thinking more seriously about it when I know anyone
| who's not hardcore into gaming, or a deep technologist, who
| owns one.
|
| I can count on one hand the number of people I know with
| something like an Oculus.
|
| Two of those people don't use it because they couldn't feel
| comfortable using it, but they like seeing other people try it
| out the first time, as a novelty.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >Overall, I think Silicon Valley is overestimating people's
| willingness to wear headsets and paddles for extended periods
| of time.
|
| I think the issue is that a significant portion of the
| population will have issues consuming the content and not
| ending up with eye strain or getting sick. It was one of the
| factors which killed off the resurgence of 3D in the 2010s and
| VR headsets suffer from many of the same problems.
|
| Bumping up the frame rate didn't fix it, nor did all the other
| tricks cinematographers and cinemas employed to make stereo
| screenings less jarring.
| mojuba wrote:
| The two main problems with VR not feeling quite right is the
| virtual world not reacting to focus and aperture changes in
| our eyes. The brain gets confused, and that creates this
| sense of confusion and that something is wrong.
|
| These can be solved some day though by following the eye's
| aperture and focus and adjusting the "world" with minimal
| latency.
| ravenstine wrote:
| To be fair, after motion pictures was initially invented,
| audiences are legitimately frightened by things that were
| happening on-screen. Yet here we are today with over 100
| years of cinematic history and nearly everyone watching some
| form of entertainment at home.
|
| I have a feeling that future generations will simply know how
| to mentally process VR in a way that fully grown adults can't
| easily adapt to.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| > To be fair, after motion pictures was initially invented,
| audiences are legitimately frightened by things that were
| happening on-screen.
|
| For what it's worth, there's no record of that ever
| happening. There's been no account of this sort of thing,
| even in newspapers of the era, which at the time tended to
| exaggerate spectacles with catchy headlines, nor are there
| any police reports describing panic. As far as we know,
| people enjoyed the film and sat and watched it just fine.
|
| https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-
| abou...
| bink wrote:
| Unless we come up with a way to override the inner ear I
| can't see future generations being able to mentally process
| away the sickness that comes with VR motion.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| VR goggles make me wanna barf. I get crazy vertigo. So at
| least some %age of people will actively avoid anything
| requiring them.
| demeyer1 wrote:
| I don't think you are off entirely here. The 3D creator community
| is growing very quickly with new tools, lowering the barrier of
| entry to 3D design, emerging consistently. That provides the
| content. Hardware, to your point, is getting better, cheaper and
| more accessible to more content consumers. The last component, as
| I have been thinking about it, is then the network that brings
| users together. As other posters have already mentioned - the
| user experience is an improvement vs the original Second Life..
| which may be enough, over time, to become a new inflection point.
|
| I do think there is more hype than substance right now around the
| metaverse, but I don't have to squint too hard to see a world
| where this becomes real relatively soon.
| kaffeeringe wrote:
| The biggest difference is, that it ties together existing, living
| communities like fortnite, facebook and so on. It ist supposed to
| connect allthe communities you use instead of just creating a new
| one. So as long as people use any service that is part of the
| metaverse, the metaverse diesn't really need a hype of its' own.
| The metaverse is supposed to become the operating system of the
| internet owned by Mark Zuckerberg.
| aaron695 wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
| ed wrote:
| Don't read much into the product side of meta. Metaverse is just
| a hedge, so that if Apple shows us how to do VR/AR "right,"
| Facebook will have $10B worth of pieces on the board to be
| competitive, allowing them to avoid another iOS platform risk.
| Owning a platform provides leverage elsewhere too. Apple will be
| Apple, but maybe Facebook can be Android, next time around. (As a
| side benefit, it also helps "rally the troops," which is needed
| given current morale.)
| kooshball wrote:
| ya obviously it's reasonable that Facebook changed the name of
| their company for a "hedge"
| symlinkk wrote:
| Actually it's totally reasonable. They got bad press and
| rebranded to seem hip and futuristic. It's that simple
| ed wrote:
| Eh, I don't know. Nothing of value was renamed -- Facebook,
| Instagram, and WhatsApp are unchanged. And "Meta" is a good
| name for an umbrella organization, even if they drop their VR
| ambition entirely.
| yokoprime wrote:
| The metaverse needs a killer app - something that makes it
| appealing for a large user-base besides gamers, academics and
| tech bros. At the moment the metaverse is simply a concept with
| some very interesting tech demos, but without any broadly
| appealing use cases.
| cloudking wrote:
| It's a vision for when VR/AR transitions from being heavy clunky
| hardware with niche use cases and early adopters, to lightweight
| powerful hardware with wide use cases and majority adoption.
| Similar to how mobile phones started out with a small group of
| adopters, then technologically evolved enabling more use cases,
| got small enough to fit in our pockets and now everyone has one.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle
|
| The idea that we will work and play in the metaverse is blocked
| by the hardware right now. If the hardware is amazing (say, a
| regular looking pair of glasses) and can actually enable an
| immersive computing experience, that is more productive and
| better at connecting people, why wouldn't you use it? Regardless
| of who builds the platforms and experiences.
| cybernautique wrote:
| I wouldn't use a non-FOSS platform or experience for non-
| corporate reasons. My employer wants me to use a particular
| hardware? Fine, but I'm not using my money for it, I won't like
| it, and I'll break it every chance I get.
|
| The idea that _I_ will work and play in the metaverse is
| forever and eternally blocked by which particular group of
| assholes is trying to wrangle me. If it 's a group that allows
| me the same access they have, which enable me to wrangle the
| tech and myself? I'll pay triple the premium, just to stick it
| to Zuck and other proprietary scum.
| [deleted]
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| > I wouldn't use a non-FOSS platform or experience
|
| You are in the extreme minority, if smartphone trends are to
| be treated as any kind of indication. So your actions likely
| would not matter to Meta/Apple/Google.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| you replied to this message using open source code and an
| open protocol.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| I used a locked down phone to do it. I can't even get
| root on this phone, and this is the more open platform,
| compared to the only other alternative.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| _Nothing_ is also an alternative.
|
| It's impressive how comprehensively consumerism has
| persuaded people that you have to buy _something_.
| rndmind wrote:
| I'm with him in that. And I am glad I am able to clarify
| this for you, Android OS is built upon a FOSS project (
| AOSP ) and that is by and large the most popular OS in the
| world. There's ton of community projects that prove that
| millions use and contribute to FOSS mobile software.
|
| Oh and there's no way in hell this corny Horizon Workrooms
| will ever, ever take off.
|
| To me, Meta is a more nefarious hint at the collection and
| backroom sale of users' metadata.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Whether meta fails or succeeds is not related to the
| openness of the solution. People do not care. They will
| literally pay thousands of dollars for a device they do
| not own if you show them shiny things.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Unfortunately, I was born into a world without FOSS phones
| yet where phones are mandatory. I've therefore unhappily
| furnished Google with more money than I'd ever have liked
| to, did my best to scrub the hardware of their taint, and
| treat it like an adversary.
|
| Thankfully, for now, VR is not mandatory. If it becomes
| mandatory in the long dusk of my latter years then I will
| be content as a grumpy old man humbuggering about the kids
| with their newfangled record players.
|
| And, yes, I am in the extreme minority. It has a
| negatively, and severely, impacted my social life (on top
| of being socially ungraceful, I have relatively far less
| space to ply my social wares). I'm so thoroughly
| radicalized that this is merely another price I'm happy to
| pay.
|
| My actions don't matter to them, and I aspire to a day
| where their actions have a similar impact to me.
| cloudking wrote:
| I respect your opinion and completely understand where you
| are coming from, but I think you should also consider the
| amount of technical effort, organization and money required
| to build something like an open platform/protocol for the
| metaverse + all the advanced hardware required. It would be
| awesome if a group of strangers from the internet were able
| to band together and build this, but let's face it, they will
| have no where near the resources and talent a place like
| Meta, Google, Apple or Microsoft has. They have the top
| engineers on the planet, hardware pipelines and the resources
| to actually make these ideas become reality.. or virtual
| reality? :)
| cybernautique wrote:
| I absolutely respect the technical challenge of the
| Metaverse, but also: I'm not really interested in it.
|
| I live a fairly tech-minimal lifestyle already. I have my
| computer, which is largely a tty machine, and my phone. All
| of my media is either downloaded music files, pirated
| lectures, or physical books.
|
| I think of VR/AR, the Metaverse, etc. ... and it fills me
| with a sort of vertigo. I'm desperately in love with my
| physical existence, as such. I very much abhor any attempt
| to make computers _more_ present in my life.
|
| I'm happy to wait 30+ years for a Metaverse that doesn't
| repulse me. If I were to die without ever having worn a VR
| headset, I'd be likewise happy.
|
| I'm much more interested in finding ways to meaningfully,
| socially, connect via my terminal. I've been happy with IRC
| for the past 5 years and see no reason why I won't be happy
| in the future.
|
| EDIT: thanks to mosh and termux, my phone is also largely a
| tty machine.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| In the most recent episode of the Exponent [1] Ben Thompson and
| James Allworth make the interesting argument that it's intended
| to recreate the enterprise-to-consumer transition that PCs made
| but for VR technology. That is to say that very low price-
| sensitivity enterprise money will end up funding dramatic
| technological improvements in VR that can then be more
| effectively deployed to capture consumers.
|
| [1] https://exponent.fm/episode-196-forecasting-the-metaverse/
| L_226 wrote:
| Personally I think the "metaverse" will not be a thing until
| climate change makes going outside impossible or at least
| extremely uncomfortable for a large percentage of the global
| population.
|
| Covid did increase teleconferencing software usage (Meet, Zoom
| etc) - but I think that work-related (i.e. forcible) usages can
| only go so far. Online education solutions were lacking this time
| around, but I think next time there might be better options that
| end up "sticking".
|
| Imagine a holistic lockdown going on for years at a stretch, and
| your only possible respite is to explore some virtual worlds, or
| meet others in an MMO style setting.
|
| Something I would personally enjoy is wikipedia converted to a VR
| "Library of Alexandria" - which you can browse at will, or take
| guided tours, or attend lectures by subject matter experts, or
| just chat in general with others who are browsing the same topics
| as you. Just need to write an engine that converts the wiki graph
| into some rooms....
|
| EDIT: this is not bad: https://wikiverse.io/
| ph4 wrote:
| Man if we ever get to this point I'll just kill myself.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Second Life didn't have the resources of a (approx) trillion-
| dollar company to pour into a solution by a CEO convinced it's
| the future. That can fix a lot of problems and force a lot of
| adoption.
| psyc wrote:
| A company that already makes the best selling VR hardware by a
| healthy margin.
| junon wrote:
| Second Life required you were at least 18 at one point. It was
| meant more for social gatherings and meeting spots and I think
| (though I'm not 100%) that they shifted toward "virtual" office
| spaces with a focus on community building and digital trade using
| real-life currency.
|
| The metaverse, as I understand it, is just Facebook Games but in
| VR, for kids and bored adults.
|
| I think the outcome will be the same, though. I can't imagine how
| anyone at Facebook thought this idea would work.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I'm shocked people are taking "Meta" at face value.
|
| To me it's a way to signal to outsiders that Facebook is still
| cool and hip. That's it.
|
| Now when recruiting they can play the Meta-not-Facebook angle.
|
| Now if they can pad earnings calls with the amazing success the
| metaverse is seeing (so what if it's losing us money, that's
| the future!)
|
| -
|
| It's like an inverse Alphabet. Where Alphabet silently serves
| as an umbrella for moonshots, Meta is a moonshot that's an
| umbrella for boring old Facebook
| cm2012 wrote:
| They are spending insanely on r and d on this compared to
| companies their size. 10b a year.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Their market cap has risen over 70B since the announcement,
| so I think they'll be ok
|
| (Yes I know market cap != war chest, but expenditure on
| Meta is nothing compared to the "soft power" it provides
| FB)
| manquer wrote:
| honestly I am not sure how actually are they spending that
| kind of money.
|
| I dont see a ton of fb recruiters hiring for VR skills, I
| dont see a lot of training/certifications /open source
| libraries /platform Sdks for other devs etc that feels like
| _$10B a year_ kind of budgets are behind VR /AR.
|
| That's a lot of money, Hard space companies like SpaceX or
| Blue Origin which have big hardware expenses spend only 1-2
| billon/year and have thousands or tens of thousands of
| staff working and their progress is visible .
|
| Does FB have 20,000 + engineers working on metaverse? even
| if so, doing what exactly ?
| retrocryptid wrote:
| you're looking in the wrong place. i have reality labs
| recruiters calling me frequently and my linked in feed is
| a never ending cascade of sponsored posts about how
| working ar FB^H^HMMVRS is so much fun.
| manquer wrote:
| > FB^H^HMMVRS No sure what this meant
|
| I am sure FB is recruiting, my point is not that reality
| labs is fake , I am sure it is real and they do recruit,
| it just that I don't see recruitment that would signal
| that large a number of investment.
|
| I wasn't saying from a personal engineer anecdotal
| experience, but as some one working in recruitment tech,
| I keep an eye on industry patterns.
|
| I could be wrong in my impression but I think they are
| just doing bit of creative accounting on existing
| expenses to show high spends on their flagship project.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > Meta-not-Facebook
|
| I am going to start using this term to satisfy people that
| argue its not called Facebook anymore.
| jackTheMan wrote:
| Meta-pk-Facebook = Meta-previously-known-Facebook
|
| would be better, because in case of the Meta-not-Facebook,
| 'not' might be strong enough to remember that way.
| brundolf wrote:
| "The artist formerly known as Facebook"
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| s/artist/criminals/
| [deleted]
| aerosmile wrote:
| Nailed it.
| retrocryptid wrote:
| fwiw, SL launched the "teen grid" in 2005. later they merged it
| in with the main grid and disallowed youngsters from entering
| "adult themed regions"
| mherrmann wrote:
| > The metaverse, as I understand it, is just Facebook Games but
| in VR, for kids and bored adults.
|
| I don't think that's true. Search for "Horizon Workrooms" to
| see an (IMHO) significant product they have in the
| collaboration tool space.
| legostormtroopr wrote:
| That's the most dystopian thing about this - the best, most
| aspiration use for VR they can show case is... meetings, but
| in VR.
| mherrmann wrote:
| What's wrong with that? That meetings are necessary in
| modern working life is a fact. So might as well have
| products and services that make them better on some axes.
| And it doesn't necessarily have to be just office meetings
| either. University lectures or tutorials this way also
| sound pretty cool to me. You could have a student from
| Taiwan, the US, Germany and Sweden sit in the same
| classroom and interact, without having to travel thousands
| of miles. I think that's very cool.
| gsich wrote:
| So, voicechat?
| manquer wrote:
| The point is not that meetings are not a good
| application, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of
| useful productivity stuff beyond that.[1]
|
| Also in person meetings are useful over a video call
| largely because there is lot of information from body
| language you can pick up being up close to someone. There
| is a lot of information on how someone breathes, moves or
| posture etc.
|
| AFAIK there is no good VR solution that is able to solve
| that today. Even if there was enough cameras on you to
| pick up that level of detail , the bandwidth on transist
| across continents today or in next 15 years is not going
| to be available even for it make sense for businesses let
| alone regular users. VR as a replacement for zoom sure is
| interesting gimmick , but as replacement or equivalent to
| sitting next to each other we are atleast 2 decades away
| .
|
| [1] real estate is only successful business application I
| have seen in the VR space
|
| I keep reading about this multi billion army contract , I
| am sure the money is real, but whether it is actually
| effective remains to be proven.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > Also in person meetings are useful over a video call
| largely because there is lot of information from body
| language you can pick up being up close to someone. There
| is a lot of information on how someone breathes, moves or
| posture etc.
|
| I keep hearing this but don't feel I've lost anything
| working fully remote for the last five years. Are there
| experiments proving that a call with high quality audio
| is so much worse in business than a physical meeting?
|
| Perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough to pick up on all
| the nonverbal cues. Though even if so I think calls are
| more equitable and accessible.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| The last in-person meeting I attended, I drew on a
| whiteboard, made exaggerated gestures with my hands to
| point to different parts of it, and established spatial
| metaphors by establishing one side of the room as the
| backend, and the other as the front-end.
|
| When people asked me questions, they walked up to the
| whiteboard and pointed directly, and then scribbled on it
| to clarify. I felt a lot more connected when I was able
| to make direct eye contact and get backchannelling.
| Perhaps it was my perception, but I felt like it was a
| lot better for communication as a whole.
|
| I'm sure you can replicate all of this stuff in Zoom or
| VR, but it sure is a lot more clunky and annoying.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| "get backchannelling"
|
| Curious what this refers to?
| qdot76367 wrote:
| Not sure what axis Horizons makes meetings better on
| though.
| ilaksh wrote:
| You used the lowercase metaverse. THAT metaverse is a broad
| concept definitely not specific to Facebook. It encompasses
| things like Second Life and Meta's attempts, but the more pure
| connotation is something like the world wide web but with
| virtual spaces and avatars. Not controlled by any particular
| company.
|
| The strange thing to me is that web browsers do support VR, and
| they used to even support navigating seamlessly between VR
| pages without exiting VR mode. But for some reason the seamless
| navigation was removed. And browsers are almost never even
| mentioned in these discussions of the Metaverse, even by people
| who seem concerned that some proprietary platform will take
| over.
|
| This type of utter failure to understand or recognize the
| significance of various technologies even by groups like HN,
| makes me seriously support the idea of AI taking over control
| of the planet.
| jordanpg wrote:
| I've very little exposure to this tech but my instinct tells me
| that it is no more than a curiosity for tech folks so long as you
| are required to wear a large, uncomfortable, expensive thing on
| your head.
|
| I don't know what the next evolution of this is, but if it
| involves "wearing" something, it needs to have characteristics
| like being featherweight, as trivial to take on and off as a pair
| of glasses, 0 friction to operate, and be extremely robust and
| durable. IIRC, Google Glass, for example, had none of these
| properties (and it wasn't VR/AR in any sense).
|
| Are we anywhere near this? How far off is hardware that's
| _really_ mass-market ready?
| fareesh wrote:
| Serious people don't need to feel like they are in the same room
| as others to get work done
| abvdasker wrote:
| Second Life allowed for a lot of the NSFW content and
| interactions that people tend to enjoy both in entertainment and
| in real life (this is also true of VRChat to some extent).
| Metaverse will be a sanitized, sterile project for children.
| Fundamentally the people like Zuckerberg responsible for its
| execution do not understand what people want, which is why
| Metaverse has no chance of success.
| long_time_gone wrote:
| > Fundamentally the people like Zuckerberg responsible for its
| execution do not understand what people want
|
| I agree with the broader point, but Facebook owns three of the
| most popular apps in the world. They have at least some idea of
| what people want.
| tremon wrote:
| Do they really? Only one of those they created, the others
| they bought after they'd already become the most popular
| apps. You don't have to have any ideas to just measure what's
| already popular and buy it.
| wy35 wrote:
| Instagram acquisition price (2012): $1B Instagram projected
| ad revenue (2021, projected): $18B
|
| They do more than just buy apps. We shouldn't underestimate
| Meta -- they can do to Oculus what they did to Instagram.
| [deleted]
| long_time_gone wrote:
| They built Facebook and Messenger from zero users to
| billions. Instagram had 50 million users when Facebook
| bought them. WhatsApp had around 300 million. Now they each
| have over a billion.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I have owned land in Second Life continuously for probably ten
| years or more. Haven't been on recently but very familiar with
| what you are talking about. NSFW is a big part of it but by no
| means the only part.
|
| Meta has a very dominant position in VR headsets. All they have
| to do is add add a "teleport friend" button to message
| notifications inside of Oculus Quest 2 when you are in the
| default home environment, allow some movement in the space, and
| they will have by far the most popular version of the
| Metaverse. If they want to start doing brand deals, place some
| store portals near the door.
|
| You really think that won't start taking away a ton of business
| from VR Chat and the rest? They will win by default. They
| completely control the experience. From the moment you turn the
| headset on, you are already IN their Metaverse. It's just a
| shit Metaverse with no features. But regardless of what Zuck
| understands, there are too many highly paid geniuses around him
| absorbing some of his billions to not take advantage of the
| situation.
| herbst wrote:
| I honestly don't know a single person with a oculus. Many
| with the PlayStation or the HTC one.
|
| I also barely know people that use Facebook. And many that
| are not willing to create a FB account for whatever reason.
|
| It's just anectotal. But I don't see how this walled garden
| will find any widespread use around here. Just as I know no
| one who uses Apples walled garden chats, simply because apple
| never reached a critical mass and people don't like to be
| locked out of their friends.
| satyrnein wrote:
| I think you may _already_ be living in an alternate
| reality!
| ilaksh wrote:
| Lol. Look up some statistics. Quest has a 75% market share,
| Facebook has more than 2 billion users, and there are more
| than 1 billion iPhone users.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Yeah. Like sibling comment said. You are already in your
| own wild bubble. You're taking your anecdotes and having
| them explain why people are or are not doing things in
| general. When in reality things like Facebook, Oculus,
| iMessage/FaceTime are all popular.
| tremon wrote:
| I must be living in the same alternate reality as the GP,
| then. Facebook and Whatsapp are commonly used around
| here, but the others hardly exist at all.
| skinnymuch wrote:
| You named Facebook and WhatsApp as being popular. Of
| course everything popular won't be popular in your
| anecdotal experience. The difference is the OP dismissed
| a bunch of popular stuff without exception.
|
| It is interesting you know many people with Playstation
| and HTC VR but none with Oculus.
| qdot76367 wrote:
| Guard rails never work completely, even in kids worlds (i.e.
| the "babboing 4 furni" trend in habbo hotel).
|
| NSFW content will always find a way.
|
| Always.
| PeterisP wrote:
| What is "babboing 4 furni"? Search seems to find only this
| very comment for these terms.
| parkaboy wrote:
| For the most part, I think it's mostly (but not all!) the same,
| where the hype and excitement is from a new generation of VCs and
| founders who didn't experience the VRML/second-life era.
|
| Of course, not only is the technology to facilitate a metaverse
| is better, but I think society has also evolved a lot since then.
| Remote work/life is now much more of a mainstream/accepted thing
| than it used to be. Internet is now a mainstream full-blown
| appendage via our smartphones.
|
| I'm much more optimistic a metaverse (in a Platonic ideal sense)
| could catch on this time around, BUT I'm much less sure that what
| will be hawked to us is the "right thing" (whatever that means).
|
| I do think this article posted on HN last week is definitely onto
| something that Meta and other attempts may not be thinking about.
| https://debugger.medium.com/the-metaverse-is-already-here-it...
| Stevvo wrote:
| Zuckerberg's Metaverse: Lessons from Second Life
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59180273
| [deleted]
| jollybean wrote:
| When the tech is as easy as putting on a pair of glasses and not
| that much more, and it's solid, fast, reliable, cheap - then we
| will have that revolution.
|
| But it's probably 20 years and a few 'Magic Leaps' away from
| reality, 'pun intended'.
|
| It may happen gradually as techines buy the big googles, they
| then get smaller like Ski Googles, more people get on board, then
| they'll just be glasses and we'll look at VR headsets like horse
| and carriage.
|
| I suspect we will really start to face social problems as people
| in that era will not be exposed to humans that lived before the
| internet and were 'normal' and the hyper connectivity we did not
| evolve for will throw us all for uge loops.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| I kinda view TikTok, Instagram, etc as part of a metaverse
| already - it's all basically fake online personas in one way or
| another.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Underrated point - social media turns everyone into their own
| exaggerated avatar.
| przeor wrote:
| relevant Web3 vs Metaverse article:
| https://experty.io/web-3-0-vs-metaverse-similarities-and-dif...
| theptip wrote:
| The Metaverse is a Second Life that everybody wants to hang out
| in, not just some subset of gamers.
|
| (Steel-manning the concept of course).
| retrocryptid wrote:
| towards the end of SL's heyday, we were trying to make an open
| metaverse with OGPX, MMOX and VWRAP. alas, the company ran out of
| money before we could complete the work (and IBM kind of stiffed
| us on some IP issues.)
|
| it's interesting to note that cory and babbage and beez and a
| raft of other lindens wound up at FB between 2009 and 2011. i
| went to pitch the idea of continuing the "open metaverse" and try
| to get FB to fund the VWRAP work, but no dice. 2010-2011 was way
| too early for virtual worlds or augmented worlds to be on the FB
| radar.
|
| at linden, at the end, we wanted to build a shared world which
| could be fed with real or made up geo data and with a common
| protocol different organizations could use to cause a consistent,
| shared experience be delivered to end users.
|
| the key here is "different organizations." by the end we were
| trying to build an open protocol linden could be a key player in,
| but not own it as a walled garden.
|
| i think the prime difference here is FB wants to own the venue
| (walled garden) and sell different data layers to different
| communities.
|
| i would be very surprised if they weren't working on an AR
| experience where advertisers could buy a data overlay identifying
| most likely consumers for specific services. so you're minding
| your business at the mall and someone walks up and says "excuse
| me ma'am, i notice you bought floral print shirt last week. we're
| having a sale on slacks that would complement that shirt and your
| colour pallette."
|
| not to mention strossian "cop space" or a raft of less intrusive
| layers for different communities.
|
| so... "own the venue" and "sell distinct value-added layers to
| different parties"
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Second Life was limited in many ways, as far as gameplay goes.
| Ultimately it failed because it was boring, in my opinion. More
| modern examples of games that approach this concept are Minecraft
| or Roblox (public company valued at $45B). Roblox in particular
| is interesting as it created a platform for others to make game
| experiences and re-sell them, and it's been very successful.
| Minecraft, too, has had a lot of staying power and has an active
| community.
|
| The problem with Roblox, is that it's geared for kids primarily,
| it's centralized and it also has I believe a 30% fee. You have
| the same issues as you have with the mobile app stores: an
| excessive take rate and risk of being deplatformed at any time
| (like the early Facebook and Twitter apps). You don't really have
| ownership. But it does underscore the idea that if you create the
| right environment for shared gaming experiences and creativity it
| can be very interesting and entertaining.
|
| The crypto metaverse is attempting to use digital property rights
| represented as NFTs to facilitate permissionless value creation
| and exchange. Just as real world property rights give owners the
| stability and framework with which to build long-term
| investments, understanding they can take risks and potentially
| reap rewards for those risks, the hope is that digital property
| rights will do the same.
|
| The NFT space is very interesting and the gaming sector in crypto
| is evolving pretty rapidly. Some interesting attempts I see at
| creating these experiences are Sandbox
| (https://www.sandbox.game/en/), Decentraland
| (https://decentraland.org/), and Treeverse
| (https://www.treeverse.net/).
|
| I think it's still super early days for this stuff. It's likely
| that a lot of the current attempts will fail, but I believe this
| concept is going through its 90s dot com phase, and we'll get a
| few gems out of this movement that stand the test of time.
| Animats wrote:
| _Ultimately it failed because it was boring, in my opinion._
|
| This, in fact, the real problem. Second Life really is a
| virtual world, not a game. You log in, and you're somewhere in
| a virtual world the size of Greater London. Now what? The
| virtual world itself is completely indifferent to you. You can
| do nothing, if you choose, and nothing will happen. You will
| not be attacked by monsters. You will not be destroyed by a
| shrinking vortex. You can go to an area that's not busy and sit
| or stand for as long as you want to stay logged in. A car might
| drive by. The sun will rise and set. Not much else will happen.
|
| You can travel around and look at stuff. You can talk to
| people. There are games to play if you can find them. You can
| build stuff. You can sell stuff. But you have to find things to
| do. There are guides and search tools, but you have to use
| them. It's a "pull" system like the web, not a "push" system
| like Facebook.
|
| This totally throws a sizable fraction of new users, mostly
| those who want a pre-structured entertainment experience. It's
| great for the fraction of the population that likes to build
| something from nothing. That small fraction.
|
| The second part of "boring" is that Second Life is really
| sluggish. This is a fixable problem, stemming from legacy code
| from the era of OpenGL and single-CPU desktops.
|
| Nobody has really looked hard enough at metaverse client theory
| yet. You have many of the problems of an MMO client, in that
| you have to present a real-time 3D environment. And you have
| many of the problems of a web browser, in that the network
| throws un-optimized stuff at you and you have to deal with it.
| The big game engines, UE5 and Unity, don't address that latter
| problem.
|
| All this looks quite fixable, if you target a gamer-level GPU
| (even one from 5 years ago), a few CPUs, an SSD disk for
| caching, and over 100mb/s networking. This is what the average
| Steam user has. We ought to be able to get up to GTA V level
| visual quality and frame rate. Second Life has content that
| good.
|
| A third problem with Second Life is that the social features
| are terrible. The group message system has been losing messages
| for a year due to a scaling problem. (It was designed so that
| you could talk to people in your party, not broadcast to your
| store's customer base.) The voice system, outsourced to Vivox,
| is flaky. There's two decades of technical debt and not much
| will or money to fix it.
|
| Mainstream metaverse adoption may be a problem in the era of
| the $1000 phone and the $200 laptop. What we're seeing right
| now are new low-end virtual worlds that look like games from 15
| years ago. Many run inside a browser. This may be why few
| people actually spend time in Decentraland. The VR headgear
| people really don't have much more compute power than a phone.
| Beat Saber, fine. Breakroom, OK. Big virtual world, not so
| much.
|
| On line right now:
|
| - Roblox: 1,446,121 users.
|
| - Second Life: 35,008 users.
|
| - VRchat: 29,072 users.
|
| - Decentraland: 604 users.
|
| - Facebook Horizon: they're not saying.
| rswail wrote:
| I have a friend that just got an Oculus, she is early 40s, found
| out about it via online zoom yoga classes and now uses it for
| exercise, as well as gaming, especially gaming with friends and
| even actually meeting because it is more comfortable than just
| the 2D nature of zoom.
|
| So I can see it growing. I think AR has a better chance than full
| VR to be the game changing technology longer term, especially
| considering things like AR Facetime and equivalent.
| ve55 wrote:
| We have better technology (and thus immersion) now. It's a simple
| answer, but I think largely sufficient enough to explain why
| things may be quite different now.
|
| The immersiveness that can be attained via modern high-end VR
| systems is simply not comparable to what we had a decade ago; it
| enables many more use cases and paradigms that wouldn't have felt
| usable, interesting, fun, or sometimes even particularly social
| in the past. To me at least, VR/AR seem like a pretty large
| medium shift, and I really expect them to stick around and become
| a large part of society.
| rjakobsson wrote:
| XR is the unavoidable future, whether we want it or not. It is
| mind blowing to be able to dance with life-sized 3D models.
| Imagine when we cannot tell the difference between what's in the
| headset and what isn't. Not too far away.
| martin-adams wrote:
| I personally believe that the gap to a life-like virtual
| experience will be closed with the use of neural networks
| generating the experience. I also believe that's a long way
| off.
|
| Reminds me a bit of 'photorealistic cg'. The gap between close
| and indistinguishable has an exponential curve of effort
| required. I remember when Final Fantasy the Spirits Within was
| released in 2001[1], and it was said to be extremely
| photorealistic. It was good for it's time, but you wouldn't
| think it was anywhere close to believable by today's standard.
| That was 20 years ago and still I don't think I've seen a full
| CG movie that I thought was real.
|
| So my take is that, without the help of AI filling in the
| exponential curve in ways we've not yet seen, it's longer than
| we think.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaI7ZPA9I1c
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's a way for Zuckerberg to learn firsthand just how much luck
| was involved in his success.
| juancampa wrote:
| It's not like he invented the concept. They are trying to take
| over the term though
| [deleted]
| nowherebeen wrote:
| Its a powerplay. If he succeeds, he can solidify himself as a
| product genius, but in reality its just his money at play.
| Its easier to use money to take over something than to use
| money to invent something new.
| manquer wrote:
| How is that different from FB 1.0 or apple under jobs for
| that matter ?.
|
| Money is always needed, but money alone is not enough.
| Every funded startup has some money, many have raised a ton
| of money only to fail badly.
|
| Also it is not his money i.e. he is not selling/leveraging
| his FB stock to invest personally. FB is investing
| shareholder money of which he only owns 16.7% .
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > FB 1.0 or apple under jobs
|
| Two very different companies and scenarios. Jobs as
| famous for cutting down >10 products product offerings
| down to 1-2 to refocus the company. His skillset was very
| much product strategy. He used money mostly for marketing
| and design. Two things Apple is very much well known for.
|
| Facebook is known for copy, acquire, kill. They offer
| tons of money to try to acquire competitors. If they say
| no, then they hire tons to engineers to clone your
| product, then they kill your product.
|
| Money is required by both, but arguably how both
| companies spend money is vastly different. Facebook very
| much uses money as a powerplay than Apple under Jobs.
|
| > Money is always needed, but money alone is not enough.
| Every funded startup has some money, many have raised a
| ton of money only to fail badly.
|
| This is such a generalized statement. It's not even worth
| commenting. Water is wet and the sky is blue.
|
| > FB is investing shareholder money of which he only owns
| 16.7%
|
| No. Its company assets. Although he owns 16.7% equity, he
| has >50% of the voting power. Meaning he has absolute
| authority to dictate how that money is spent. The other
| 80% can only sell their equity and this doesn't mean they
| get to take away 80% of the company assets.
| manquer wrote:
| Control doesn't make it his money. His money is only
| small fraction of the money being spent.
|
| You made two statements that he is spending _his_ money
| and spending money makes it not an achievement if it
| successful.
|
| Neither of it is true , bootstrapping your way to success
| may make it even more impressive achievement, but success
| with or without money is difficult achievement that
| shouldn't be belittled.
| nowherebeen wrote:
| > he is spending his money
|
| Say I have >50% control:
|
| Can I make it a dynastic company and ensuring my kids
| gain control of the company? Yes.
|
| Who can stop me? No one.
|
| Can I dilute everyone else's shares and issues dividends
| when I want? Yes.
|
| Can I issue dividends only to a certain class of shares
| ensuring those shares which I own a super majority get
| paid? Yes.
|
| Can I fire the board when I want? Yes.
|
| I mean sure. Its not _his_ money, but its his _company_.
| Through and through.
|
| > His money is only small fraction of the money being
| spent.
|
| Company assets is not equity. I am not sure you fully
| understand how equity works.
|
| > spending money makes it not an achievement if it
| successful.
|
| No. Depends on how you spend it. Again, read my last
| comment.
| DigitallyFidget wrote:
| I think this "metaverse" concept is going to turn into yet
| another VRChat clone and flop. Sansar is a great example, made by
| Linden Lab. The problem I see is that it fails to have a demand
| for it to exist. There will not be an emergent userbase that will
| flock to it. There's already alternatives. VRChat, NeosVR,
| Sansar, and others I'm not even aware of. Anyone with VR already
| knows of VRChat, or isn't the type to care or be interested. So
| my question is this: How is it going to be an effective VRChat
| killer? How is it going to make people switch from a massively
| established community and virtual world that's known and enjoyed
| by so many people? How is it going to compete as a (probably) VR-
| Only against a platform (VRChat) that allows both pancake (flat
| monitor) and VR modes?
|
| I feel like the concept is pure hype with a trivial amount of
| userbase interest (at best). They're late to the party. I don't
| see it as anything except a failure in waiting. Secondlife is
| still holding up to this day, since its creation in 2003. Try and
| figure out why SecondLife is still around and you may see why I
| see no future for this "metaverse". The only way to bring users
| is to have users and content, and the only way to bring content
| is to have users, and they don't have the users. I don't know a
| single person who is looking forward to it. Of all the social
| chat groups I am in, it's come up in only one, and the
| overwhelming response was just pure negativity about it sounding
| dumb, being a waste of money, and a failure in the making.
| Shank wrote:
| Conceptually speaking, the difference with AR/VR is that you can
| have a truly immersive experience, which really does give you
| more possibilities than just Second Life, which was always just a
| 3D game world on a 2D screen. The pitch from Meta and with AR/VR
| is that with the ability to use 3D space, you can actually turn
| Second Life-style virtual worlds into something useful with
| actual tangible benefits. For example, VR/AR sense-of-presence
| totally outclasses video calls, if the intent is to feel like
| you're really in a room with someone. VRChat is already one of
| the most popular VR apps for a reason.
|
| Long term, I think that you have to look at it like this: most
| desktop computing is very very 2D centric and touch centric. If
| you want to, e.g., buy a product on Amazon, you're dealing with
| photos and imagery of a product, and reviews. But if you had a
| "Metaverse equivalent" you could view a 3D model, see it in
| action, and physically size compare it to other objects in your
| house much easier than manually checking dimensions.
|
| Obviously the applications and benefits aren't as clear cut right
| now. I'm not sure that the windowed operating systems we have
| today would have been the obvious way that computers would be
| used if it weren't for constant iteration on keyboard centric UI
| and experimentation over many years. That same innovation trend
| hasn't happened with AR/VR, and "the metaverse" that people talk
| about now will likely be totally different 20 years after it
| becomes a thing, post-iteration and innovation.
| dudul wrote:
| I understand that you point is that it would be such a new
| paradigm that it's hard to imagine applications. That being
| said, it is funny that the only 2 use cases you mentioned are
| 1) a way to see people in person less frequently and 2) a way
| to buy more stuff.
| hakfoo wrote:
| To me, the problem is finding situations where immersiveness
| actually adds value.
|
| I think for a lot of social interactions, it doesn't, or it
| offers rapidly diminishing value.
|
| This conversation would not be meaningfully better as a
| virtual/augmented reality 3D live chat.
|
| The Google Hangouts (or whatever it's called this week)
| meetings with my team at work would not be better either.
|
| I'm not even sure it would beat playing a pen-and-paper RPG
| with friends over Discord and Roll20.
|
| Now, there's two ways this could end up panning out:
|
| 1) The "metaverse" ends up sticking to the scenarios where
| immersive experiences add value. I'd expect this would be
| mostly gaming, media consumption, and some specific built-for-
| the-platform educational products.
|
| 2) We figure out new paradigms that make it worthwhile to
| replace current collaboration or communications tools.
|
| What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to have
| to basically invent new paradigms for "window management". The
| thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint presentation in VR.
| We'd have people jostling for the best view, and whatever
| "immersive" metaphor for presenting is likely to be clunkier
| than a classic Zoom call where the slides are just walked
| through on one big window.
|
| I'm not sure the 3D shopping model will come to meaningful
| fruition. We have plenty of retailers who can't even get text
| descriptions right, especially when it comes to huge
| catalogues. Are they really going to spend bazillions of
| dollars building accurate models, making sure the sizes track
| properly, etc?
| kibwen wrote:
| Note that Amazon already supports product listings with
| interactive 360 degree product visualizations. It's only a
| small step from there to full 3D modeled product renderings.
| That said, I can't say I would find it especially compelling
| to peruse a 3D model in VR as opposed to perusing it on a
| normal screen. Either way it just involves rotating our
| perspective around the rendering and observing it via the 2D
| planes of our eyes. I can imagine some small utility if I
| could accurately measure the dimensions of the product at
| arbitrary angles in VR, as a sort of freeform replacement for
| schematic diagrams, but that requires trust that the product
| listers will actually get the scale correct, and it would not
| be an overwhelmingly common use case.
| goopthink wrote:
| From experience in DTC retail, this is more of an AR (not
| VR) benefit. I _think_ (because I can't remember the exact
| examples) that Amazon, IKEA, and a few others already do a
| "See it in your room!" feature. With smartphones with LiDAR
| /equivalent scanning this becomes really easy. Other
| retailers like H&M already use digital human models and
| clothes so it's a short leap there as well.
| swman wrote:
| You don't need to spend billions. Generating 3d models from
| stitching images together is possible and with some
| automation and focused products it will become much easier
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| I think that immersiveness would be great for programming.
|
| Stacking windows with a z axis may give you a sense of how
| nested an abstraction is. You could follow a function in a
| class to it's base definition a lot easier, etc.
| drusepth wrote:
| >What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to
| have to basically invent new paradigms for "window
| management". The thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint
| presentation in VR. We'd have people jostling for the best
| view, and whatever "immersive" metaphor for presenting is
| likely to be clunkier than a classic Zoom call where the
| slides are just walked through on one big window.
|
| As someone who has given a couple presentations in VR (and
| spent ~400 hours coding/working in VR), there's a lot to be
| done here. Some very basic examples of value-adds are:
|
| - You (or your audience) can manipulate the presentation
| "viewport" to any size and/or replicate it wherever each
| viewer prefers in their own space (e.g. you can sit down on
| your couch and watch the presentation on a big screen, or
| have it as a "second monitor" next to something else, or
| treat it Hololens-pinned style and have the screen follow you
| around in your vision while you're working on something with
| your hands). IME, it's much nicer than effectively giving
| yourself a limited vertical screen monitor when you split
| screen a meeting/presentation on Zoom.
|
| - Streaming a replicated presentation video (like a
| powerpoint) to each individual person instead of streaming a
| singular one over a Zoom call lets viewers refer back to /
| rewind to previous slides without disturbing others' views.
|
| - Having a large view of a presentation yourself means you
| can also take notes directly on that presentation in real
| time, circle/underline text, draw arrows between concepts,
| whatever you need to help yourself remember what the speaker
| said later. I helped beta an app (that unfortunately shut
| down) for taking notes in the margins of videos in VR which
| would probably be a perfect use-case for things like
| presentations/classes. You could play back or scrub through
| the video later to see your notes in time.
|
| - Obvious, but any presentation about a 3D _thing_ will
| benefit from being displayed in a 3D space. I'd much rather
| see a new Tesla in front of me than look at a 2D image of it,
| or see the scale of a new roller coaster, statue, building
| plan, etc. In "physical presense" situations like this,
| there's also a value-add over the real thing because you
| don't have to "jostle for the best view" -- you can just
| phase through (or not even see) other viewers and always have
| a front-row seat (and teleport around if you want more
| angles). For smaller objects, being able to manipulate the
| scale of the object (especially without also affecting the
| scale other people are seeing it at) is a nice QoL, too.
|
| - For meetings and things with audience participation, it's
| way more intuitive in a 3D space to split up into groups (and
| e.g. only be able to see/hear people near you) by just...
| walking over to a group and joining in. I can't imagine doing
| something like small group icebreakers in a company's Zoom
| presentation.
|
| There's probably a lot of new paradigms and workflows to
| emerge when the VR space is a little more mature, as well.
| I've been out of it for a few months now (moved and haven't
| re-set-up base stations) and I tried to limit my value-adds
| to just presentations, but I'm excited to see where it goes
| in the productivity realm.
| noduerme wrote:
| I'm pretty skeptical it'll ever take off. Having tried to hang
| around in the Oculus Go spaces early on, it was pretty clear no
| one really had a great reason for being there. You'd sit around
| a badly rendered bonfire and hear people talking, sometimes
| interestingly, but it had about the same level of interest as
| getting on a CB and talking to strangers.
|
| There are two kinds of people you can meet in VR: Friends and
| strangers. Friends, you can meet privately. You don't need a
| public space 'verse for that. And as for jostling around or
| randomly talking to strangers, well, you can walk outside or go
| to a bar.
|
| It seems pretty nuts that Facebook would actually put its chips
| on this proposition. I can only view it as a totally desperate
| attempt to distract from the train wreck of their core business
| model.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| >Friends, you can meet privately
|
| if you live close to one another. If you don't, I guess this
| could be interesting? I don't really see myself using it but
| I am so old fashioned that I prefer my laptop over my phone
| so I get that the world doesn't always agree with me.
| kibwen wrote:
| My friends are far-flung and we meet privately in our
| Discord. We have an audio channel, and anyone who's free
| hops into it at their leisure. VR wouldn't add much there;
| to take advantage of it would require us to look at each
| other, which precludes doing an actual activity like
| playing a game together.
| noduerme wrote:
| Well, or you can meet privately on Zoom, or in VR if you
| prefer to see fake bodies instead of actual faces. I mean.
| My friends from around the country have a Zoom poker night
| every week or two which we started during the pandemic. I'd
| rather just see their ugly mugs and their kids in the
| background than sit in a fake room with a bunch of cartoon
| avatars.
| fossuser wrote:
| The photo realistic avatars they showed off change this.
| They were impressive - still in research stage, but it's
| not just a cartoon.
| samuli wrote:
| Not really sure if photorealistic avatar can really
| express all the emotions and facial expressions in a
| detail that people perceive subconsciously.
|
| This might lead to people becoming more tone-deaf and
| having less empathy when reading others.
| headsoup wrote:
| Not to mention Facebook gathering a dataset that is a
| virtual replica of your physical self. Imagine how much
| that would me sold on for...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| But there is clubhouse (presuming it's still popular?) which
| has turned strangers into friends but maybe that's because of
| it being pure audio and minimal interface. It's possible
| someone will create a similar popular "gameplay" in vr?
| JimDabell wrote:
| > But there is clubhouse (presuming it's still popular?)
|
| Nope: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27489374
| arisAlexis wrote:
| This sounds like Krugman's fax machine prediction
| egypturnash wrote:
| This time it's being pitched by a company who's expanded about as
| far as they can across the existing internet, with the goal of
| replacing it with a new 3d world where everything happens, and
| where they get a cut of every transaction.
| uhtred wrote:
| Do you miss listening to your colleagues obnoxious opinions all
| day? Metaverse will fix that with the metaoffice virtual work
| space!
| Gravyness wrote:
| Because Mark has a lot of marketting money.
| FounderBurr wrote:
| And yet SL still exists and generates tons of essentially free
| revenue. How much worse of an idea is it than the 99.999% of
| flaccid techno spun garbage seen here that never turns a dime of
| profit?
| jrootabega wrote:
| It's not different. The first couple attempts to pioneer
| something will always fail just due to being new and unfamiliar.
| When it's computers you also have the nerd/weirdo stigma, which
| was still around in the early 2000s. Not to mention the sexually
| charged content of second life. If the average person back then
| was connecting to second life for polite, socially acceptable
| content, it would have taken off. Later, giant megacorps, who
| always recognized the potential in the tech, figure out when
| their masses will be ready for it. It's almost more about getting
| the people ready for the tech rather than getting the tech ready
| for the people.
| outside1234 wrote:
| It will include scanning people's faces and a thousand other
| privacy vortexes
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Would you prefer that Facebook throws its money somewhere else? I
| 'd rather it be VR goggles than more spying tech.
|
| Second Life has figured things out. A 3D world in a 2D screen is
| much easier to build and interact with than a 3D world in VR
| goggles with your hands tied. High fidelity and Sansar both tried
| it , and both failed, and were scrapped despite "enormous
| potential". The Oculus Quest is great, but my main use of it is
| to view Street View imagery exactly because it doesnt require
| much control or interaction with other users. I had tried Second
| life in VR briefly, it was indeed nice to walk butn difficult
| interactions made you feel like an incapacitated person. Future
| VR can make some interactions compelling, but they won't reach
| the expressiveness of clicks and keyboards.
|
| VR is here to stay for a few million users, it's not going to
| become mainstream even when the FOV and resolution increase. It's
| an uncomfortable blindfold that creates stress and anxiety (as
| any blindfold should). This is nothing like smartphones, which
| are unobtrusive and adopt the age old tried-and-tested form of a
| book. AR is a cool looking gimmick as well. I will wait for
| neural implants until we can talk about VR worlds again.
| newacc9 wrote:
| Remember Myst? People went crazy for that game, they wanted to
| explore a pretty island. I imagine the metaverse as a metropolis
| with winding Dickensian streets that you could get lost in --
| each with all sorts of interesting shops and experiences: jazz
| bar, nft art gallery, movie theater, live music venue, even
| coding lounges. The walk should be rewarding with beautiful
| architecture, graffiti, leaves blowing in the wind, political
| posters, adverts (basically street life). I think it could work,
| but not in cartoon form - it would be as beautiful as Paris and
| in hi-rez.
| nsonha wrote:
| the fact that mobile computing/IoT/social network/super
| apps/e-commerce are already mainstream.
|
| Slap almost ready VR/AR tech on top of that but we'll see how
| that plays out
| ChildOfChaos wrote:
| I think that is only one part of the metaverse, which will likely
| floop or at least struggle, the real metaverse is still further
| away and that is when things will be more interesting.
|
| Like AR, basically getting rid of phones and a lot of computers
| and integrating digital into our real world, rather than just
| having avatars moving around in a space.
|
| I'm talking about, putting on a set of AR glasses to watch TV,
| instead of having an actual TV, this way you can watch movies,
| your GPS not being google maps on your phone but in your glasses
| that point you in which direction to go.
|
| The Metaverse is basically what Google Glass was trying to be,
| but will include a lot of other tech as well.
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