[HN Gopher] Who is still inside the metaverse?
___________________________________________________________________
Who is still inside the metaverse?
Author : jkestner
Score : 109 points
Date : 2023-03-20 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nymag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nymag.com)
| agentultra wrote:
| Flashbacks to Second Life, New World Notes, Active Worlds,
| LambdaMOO... the writing in this piece is brilliant. But it's the
| same old story again and again. Different time, different
| technology, same old loneliness.
| atomicfiredoll wrote:
| Thank you for knowing what Active Worlds is.
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| This quote tickled me the most - His curious IRL appearance -- of
| a human designed by a computer or of a Styrofoam cup that a
| wizard decided to turn into a person but then changed his mind
| about halfway through -- adapts unexpectedly well to the Meta-
| cartoonization algorithm
|
| All in all a great bit of writing and commentary on something
| shit. The metaverse.
| TatersGonnaT8 wrote:
| As with all of these articles that follow this same script, the
| author conflates "the metaverse" and all of the monetary
| investment being made in Reality Labs with just Horizon Worlds.
| Makes it hard to take anything said in this article seriously.
|
| As others have already commented, most of that money has gone
| towards longer-term bets on hardware and other investments. A
| small percentage of that $36 billion mentioned by the author was
| directed towards Horizon Worlds.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Agreed. I felt like I needed a "Meta's Metaverse Bingo Card"
| throughout the whole article too. When it started off whining
| about legs I almost stopped reading bc come on we've had
| various styles and kinds of avatars in games the entire time
| they've existed and not having legs in VR games is very common
| and really NOT that jarring. Then the author continued on to
| talk about it being empty and do the Facebook...er Meta thing
| and while I really dislike Facebook/Meta all those things just
| meant the tone for this article was going to feel like some
| cringey magazine author trying to seem relatable and going in
| with a bias.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending any of the metaverse
| branding crap but your point about this just being the same
| stupid scripted article about Horizon Worlds is accurate and
| I'm not sure how this reached the front page.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| If Horizon worlds is not the entire meta verse, can you name
| any other metaverses?
|
| Can a regular person?
|
| And don't say things like RecRoom, because those exist
| independent of the billions Facebook spent on meta
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Minecraft?
|
| Why must the metaverse be the result of billions Facebook
| invested? Maybe Facebook spent billions on attempting to
| clone Minecraft, and failed?
| T-A wrote:
| > can you name any other metaverses? [...] don't say things
| like RecRoom, because those exist independent of the billions
| Facebook spent on meta
|
| You seem to believe that only things financed by Facebook
| qualify as "metaverse", a concept which existed long before
| Facebook:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| You are conflating the industry term 'metaverse' with
| Facebooks billions of investments and huge PR push on their
| 'Metaverse' which has so far been solely Horizon Worlds.
|
| Similarly, despite the obscure industry term predating
| Facebooks push, it is not a common term, and even techies
| do not think of Minecraft and other digital worlds as being
| 'Facebooks Metaverse'.
|
| A company cannot just start using a term and then
| retroactivly justify their expense based on other external
| examples.
| T-A wrote:
| > You are conflating the industry term 'metaverse' with
| Facebooks billions of investments and huge PR push on
| their 'Metaverse'
|
| No, you are.
|
| > it is not a common term, and even techies do not think
| of Minecraft and other digital worlds as being 'Facebooks
| Metaverse'
|
| Here's a well-publicized example of techies persistently
| doing just that:
|
| October 2021: https://medium.com/@ow/the-metaverse-is-
| already-here-its-cal...
|
| August 2022:
| https://tech.hindustantimes.com/gaming/news/fortnite-
| gamemak...
|
| September 2022: https://mashable.com/article/fortnite-is-
| the-real-metaverse
|
| September 2022:
| https://nordic.ign.com/fortnite/60374/opinion/how-
| fortnite-i...
|
| December 2022: https://mixed-news.com/en/fortnite-studio-
| epic-games-develop...
|
| December 2022: https://coingape.com/education/explained-
| fortnite-game-and-w...
| Kyragem wrote:
| VR sickness is still the largest barrier to large scale adoption.
| I've been following research by Meta/Reality labs closely but
| despite them investing billions in VR they seem to have not
| bothered investigating VR sickness at all.
| ivix wrote:
| [flagged]
| tonymet wrote:
| The "$39B for Horizon" is misleading. Most of that went to shared
| R&D and infra shared with other products .
| notbeuller wrote:
| I've enjoyed a few VRChat things of watching movies with a random
| group of mst3k like mindset - but I'm not social enough to have
| created any contacts, so it's hit or miss if you'll find one of
| those rooms with a compatible mindset.
|
| The Meta Horizons stuff though - was creepy. There seemed to be
| people that must've been paid to be there to excite the
| newcomers, and once I sort of got away from that I ran into the
| "these are obviously children" problem. I can't help but think
| that there's a huge COPA fine at the end of that rainbow.
| poisonborz wrote:
| The worst will be that when somebody, sometimes actually creates
| an actual immersive small-to-be-worn VR/AR glass - one that will
| be very much unlike the current generation of headsets -
| journalists along with these companies will trumpet "this was the
| idea we had, the product was there but before its time".
|
| No sir. The idea of virtual reality and "holograms" is at least
| here since the early 20th century. It's just that these people
| burnt billions of dollars on some tacky tech demos and empty
| marketing promises, and the industry believed them for years.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| > ...and the industry believed them for years.
|
| Did they?
|
| From the outset, people pretty unanimously called bullshit on
| the metaverse and ridiculed Zuckerberg. Facebook's own
| advertising of the metaverse wasn't even ever designed to
| attact users, it was very obviously designed to make people
| think there were revenue sources buried in the multiverse. They
| never had a product or even a particularly coherent idea for
| one.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| > The worst will be that when somebody, sometimes actually
| creates an actual immersive small-to-be-worn VR/AR glass - one
| that will be very much unlike the current generation of
| headsets - journalists along with these companies will trumpet
| "this was the idea we had, the product was there but before its
| time".
|
| I had an AR startup in the "pre-Pokemon Go" times (2015).
| Explaining what we were doing and what AR was capable of became
| _significantly_ harder after Niantic launched their second game
| (remember Ingress?).
|
| The main reason was that the definition of AR changed from
| "augmenting reality" to "3d floaters". It was much easier to
| work with people who had no prior experience with AR as we
| didn't have to help them unlearn whatever marketing bullshit
| they read at the time. Now I think that sound is the most
| immersive AR platform.
|
| Incidentally, we had a project called Metaverse as well. Let's
| say it was smaller in scope and much more "boring" though
| (boring is good, I like boring).
| [deleted]
| Delento wrote:
| Facebook clearly tried it with a huge amount of money.
|
| I think the illusion was the problem. Suck wanted it to work
| without realizing his gadget.
|
| I'm much more curious if Tim will really release apples version
| and if it will burn him.
|
| And I only mean for broad consumer vr/ar not for industry etc.
|
| Forcing a worker to wear a headset is much easier and there are
| fast financial benefits. Alone when you can train someone
| virtual before letting them on the real thing.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm convinced this is why Apple and Microsoft (among others)
| keep putting money into AR development. It clearly sucks to use
| right now, so it doesn't make a lot of sense that they're
| putting significant money into it... but when someone (possibly
| one of those two companies!) finally puts out AR glasses that
| aren't awful, they'll be ready.
|
| I remain unsure whether Zuck is running that same playbook, or
| if he legitimately thought bulky-ass VR goggles were the way of
| the future and expects to have a smash-hit _before_ marketable
| AR glasses exist.
| baby wrote:
| Man all these comments are not going to age well
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Why not? Do you think AR-on-a-slab-of-glass is going to
| become something people actually use, or that VR headsets
| are going to get way more popular before sleek AR glasses
| are available? Neither of those things seem likely to me,
| but maybe I'm wrong. I do think if someone gets AR glasses
| hardware right, it's gonna be the next "smartphone
| revolution".
| daveguy wrote:
| I never used a Google Glass, but it seemed like they got
| at least part way there -- essentially a light weight
| hud. I guess that doesn't have to deal with any eye
| tracking or motion latency. Also don't know if the
| limited Glass applications / interface just sucked.
|
| Overall it seemed like they weren't too far from
| {something_useful}.
| fatnoah wrote:
| I had an inside view of things, but all of the work being
| done is actually a long term roadmap towards building AR
| devices that don't suck. There many complicated issues to
| deal with, including batter life, processing power, input and
| control, heat management, placement of self and objects in a
| virtual world, safety, and on and on. That's all on top of
| figuring out what content is interesting and compelling.
|
| Devices being made by these companies all embody elements of
| solutions to these challenges, but they all recognize it's a
| long road, and there's a lot of learning still to be done.
| darkerside wrote:
| I've never understood why we aren't putting those hard
| problems into a backpack that you wear and is connected to
| a very lightweight head device.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Apple decided against requiring a separate compute
| device. Because it sucks that's why.
| bippingchip wrote:
| Apart from the fact that people might not want it, even
| technically you might still have latency issues, our eyes
| are extremely sensitive... also keep in mind: the sensors
| and displays you need on head might still weigh a lot and
| consume a lot of power on your head, even if all
| processing power is relegated to an external unit.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Nobody would buy it. Worst that might fly is a cord going
| to a phone, and I'm not sure about that.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Those headsets are bad enough. Having to wear a backpack as
| well sounds like a nonstarter.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| If you are unsure of what Zuck's playbook is, just read it:
|
| * https://www.techemails.com/p/mark-zuckerberg-vr-ar-strategy
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| This is a great document. But it's his 10 year plan from 8
| years ago.
|
| I'd love to get insight on how his 10 year plan would look
| today.
| rickdeckard wrote:
| I think we shouldn't underestimate the leaps that have been
| made in R&D just to improve VR in the past years.
|
| Companies invested billions in tackling all those fundamental
| technology limitations (reduce motion-to-photon latency, higher
| refresh-rates, global refresh, lower pixel-persistence,...).
|
| The dilemma is, that in VR everything "sucks" until you achieve
| presence (the feeling of really being somewhere else) or at
| least full immersion.
|
| So how do you fund all this development? By releasing iterative
| products which sadly harm the wide adoption more than they
| help, because "it still sucks".
|
| At best, VR drove mass-production of necessary technology in
| other industries (i.e. adoption of >60Hz displays, high-
| resolution sensors, eye-tracking, OLED, immersive audio,...),
| which ultimately helps the next entrant to create a more-
| affordable AR/VR-device.
|
| At the very least, it created IP that this "somebody sometime"
| will then have to license. I doubt it will be possible to
| create a new VR-device without the patents of Sony, Microsoft
| or Samsung.
|
| How much this helps to really innovate is another question,
| arguably it means Apple is the only new entrant large enough to
| cross-license and still disrupt...
| ipaddr wrote:
| It means in 20 years when the patients expire someone will
| take another look at it. The only worry is minor modification
| patients that keep extending the original
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I doubt it will be possible to create a new VR-device
| without the patents of Sony, Microsoft or Samsung.
|
| It's easy to avoid the patents by waiting for them to expire.
| This is the traditional way of doing things, and is why there
| are so many instances of technologies not becoming
| commonplace until 20 years or so after they are patented.
| bitwize wrote:
| No computing/tech product actually exists until Apple releases
| one -- because Apple is the first (and often only) company to
| get it _right_.
|
| So it will be with VR.
| ivix wrote:
| What I find absolutely mystifying about Meta's VR experiment is
| that they did not leverage the colossal advantage they have in
| that for facebook users, they know your friend network and
| interests.
|
| Why is the Meta product so catastrophically naff? What went
| wrong?
| sli wrote:
| Nothing went wrong. Meta owns 90% of the VR space.
| haspok wrote:
| This essay brought back memories from the last millenia, from the
| IRC / ICQ / webchat days. Except things were much simpler then,
| and the whole point of chatting with someone was to meet them IRL
| (OK, I was young back then, maybe older people had different
| motives). And the least important thing about it was how
| "realistic" of an experience it was, because of the textual
| interface things were very restricted anyway, but in hindsight it
| was all the better for it.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| Still waiting for a polished multi-monitor replacement option for
| macOS that would allow me to travel with a headset and a laptop
| and not have to worry about finding a large external monitor to
| plug into for my dev work. Please someone make this a thing.
| rabf wrote:
| Big screen beyond may be a solution:
|
| https://www.bigscreenvr.com/
| [deleted]
| aprilnya wrote:
| there's an app called immersed that does this
|
| also, meta has their own virtual monitor thing but it's only on
| quest pro iirc (and not on quest 2)
| irrational wrote:
| Has anyone actually met anyone who has visited the metaverse?
| Admittedly, I don't live in SV (or CA), but I do know a lot of
| developers, tech people, nerds, etc. and none of them have
| visited the metaverse. I keep assuming it doesn't actually exist
| yet. It's like a story of this far off land that people have
| heard of, but nobody has actually visited.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I live in California and most of my friends are fairly nerdy.
| Some work in tech, some do not. Most have not even tried VR
| period.
|
| The Metaverse I am convinced is pretty dumb unless we can make
| it significantly more immersive - as in adding sense of touch
| or other senses.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I have. They gave me a link to decentral land or something. I
| clicked briefly, looked like Sims, went away. They claimed to
| spend time in it.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Any time someone describes 'metaverse' they just end up
| describing Minecraft, which I've played for quite a while and I
| really enjoy it. I don't think Minecraft is the future of all
| human interaction, but that hasn't detracted from Minecraft
| being successful.
|
| Unless 'metaverse' is supposed to only mean 'VR platform sold
| by Facebook'.
| steveylang wrote:
| >Unless 'metaverse' is supposed to only mean 'VR platform
| sold by Facebook'.
|
| That is exactly what Zuckerberg is shooting for, and why he
| is failing on an epic scale. He doesn't really care about VR
| and virtual universes so much as he cares about ownership of
| the 'one true metaverse'.
| oneil wrote:
| Actually, yes.
|
| Outside of my regular group of friends, I've met people who
| were regulars within AltSpaceVR which has now closed. They've
| now shifted to Horizon and avoid VRChat which is full of kids
| or people pretending to be a mouse in a race car.
|
| Horizon has given me the ability to make friends from other
| parts of the country and the world. People that are actual
| friends, not just people I talk to online.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I do think Horizon would fare better with the same tech
| (features/capabilities) but a different look to it. I've hung
| out in it a bit and certain spaces kind of evoke the old
| feeling back when I was in college and hanging out at an
| apartment or around a campfire and just quietly listening or
| chatting with other people bullshitting with each other. And
| I also got to go to a 'club' where people were dancing around
| a DJ another time.
|
| I'm a bit too old to feel comfortable doing that in person
| anymore. So it was nice to have that feeling again, as
| fleeting as it was.
|
| Too bad it has to be in an environment that looks like it
| came out of the PS1 era with the blandest art direction
| possible.
| dmarchand90 wrote:
| Vrchat has a stable and vibrant underground clubbing/ rave
| scene that's a lot of cyberpunk fun. If that counts as
| metaverse
| bradneuberg wrote:
| I'm a tech nerd and developer who enjoys social VR, whether
| Horizons, VR Chat, or Rec Room. One issue is that the public
| rooms are usually full of annoying griefers, all the nice
| interesting people have retreated out of the public areas and
| into private rooms and parties. This means if you just drop in
| to one of these systems casually you don't get to see all the
| interesting private events happening, like lots of private DJ
| and music concerts in VR Chat for example.
| djtango wrote:
| Unpopular take but maybe FB were onto something when trying
| to enforce you using your FB account and real identity...
| baby wrote:
| I have, it was quite insane. I played Catan, a board game, with
| people online. Most immersive social experience I've ever went
| through.
|
| I also went into a cinema, thought I was alone but when I
| turned my head to the room realized that people were staring at
| me lol. I screamed of surprise, they heard it and laughed, it
| was too real so I disconnected.
|
| I did VR chat a bit but in general the feeling of presence was
| too strong when I wanted to chill so didn't experience as many
| things as I could.
|
| I've had friends visit my space and play chess with me there as
| well. But at the time our headsets would only last for like
| 30min and they would overheat easily. I got the Quest later and
| every problem had been fixed. Perfect headset. Can't imagine
| what the quest 2 feels like.
|
| Wrote about some of it here:
| https://p1x3l.com/story/239/social-virtual-reality-and-the-o...
| Ylmaz wrote:
| My employer bought a few VR headsets (from meta). I see them
| lying around in the office but no one ever used them.
| tfandango wrote:
| One day in the middle of the day I visited the "Soapstone
| comedy club" world in Horizon Worlds. People were actually
| taking turns going on stage and telling jokes. Then in the
| course of general conversation, one person said she wrote and
| sang songs and someone asked her to get on the stage and sing.
| She did, and it was beautiful, almost a magic moment of
| discovery. Afterward she told us that she was a twin who
| recently met her brother and both were into music so they
| formed a band. The band is called Cave Twins and the song was
| "A Little Longer".
|
| It's the one redeeming moment in Horizon Worlds that I have
| had. I continue to check in once a month or so but have had no
| other meaningful interactions since.
| michaelteter wrote:
| What you describe also happens periodically in the real world
| :). It doesn't require any technology; it just requires
| getting out and going places (and a city/environment with a
| lot of different things happening).
| tfandango wrote:
| oh yes, of course it does. I just wanted to mention the one
| instance where I had a good experience in "The Metaverse".
| Something like this could be nice if the experiences could
| be repeatable and you happen to live in a place where you
| don't have such venues like you mention.
| michaelteter wrote:
| > you happen to live in a place where you don't have such
| venues like you mention
|
| This is a topic which I am currently experiencing and
| thinking a lot about.
|
| For those who truly cannot be in lively areas, technology
| can provide at least some level of connection to the rest
| of humanity. But I realize now that living location
| choice can make an enormous difference on quality of life
| just based on the availability of good social options.
| And as a techie who has lived most of my life behind a
| computer, I have recently discovered that real life is
| much, much more rewarding - if you're in an area where
| people are not just boxed up in their own homes every
| night from 6pm+.
| tfandango wrote:
| I agree. Interestingly enough, I find talking to real
| people much easier than talking to people in Horizon
| Worlds, where it just seems kind of strange to me, I
| usually keep my mute on and observe there whereas I am
| pretty talkative in reality.
| Delento wrote:
| I watched a few discovery videos about it and the only positive
| was a comedy club people liked to go to.
|
| Everything spontaneous was empty.
|
| So more like event based like cinema than a hang out space
| explaininjs wrote:
| There is no _the_ metaverse currently, but there are many
| metaverses. The definition itself is shaky and contradictory
| across sources. But to summarize, a metaverse is a "set of
| digital spaces that you can move seamlessly between", it will
| include "familiar 2D experiences, as well as ones projected
| into the physical world and fully immersive 3D ones too". It
| can be accessed via your phone or computer, or a VR reset for
| "full immersion". Fortnite is a metaverse, but some say Roblox
| and Minecraft aren't. I couldn't tell you how that distinction
| was drawn.
|
| My favorite metaverse is RuneScape, but I unfortunately haven't
| visited in a decade or more. Steam might also be considered a
| metaverse. Which would imply Xbox Online and all that are too.
|
| [1]: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/meaning-of-
| met...
|
| [2]: https://about.meta.com/what-is-the-metaverse/
|
| [3]:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2022/09/23/fortnites-...
| nicksrose7224 wrote:
| That just seems like a rebranding of "the internet" to me
| smolder wrote:
| I don't buy this definition where everyone is having their
| own metaverse. There's nothing meta about that. If anything
| is a metaverse it's the internet, and it just sucks as a
| metaverse because we've let big companies and their walled
| gardens dominate it and prevent freedom of movement.
| Practically, metaverse is now a useless word since Zuck and
| team started promoting/misusing it.
|
| Prior to the misuse, it had always meant a single unified
| network[0]. I maintain that if there is no one metaverse,
| there are none. Don't let the confused BS that comes from
| marketing people change the meaning of words.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
| kibwen wrote:
| There may have been only one metaverse in Snow Crash, but
| there's absolutely nothing that requires there to be only
| one metaverse. Hell, practically the whole _point_ of
| virtual reality is to remove the limits and scarcity of the
| physical world, and thus limiting yourself to a single
| metaverse is antithetical to the very concept.
|
| At its most basic, a metaverse is just a persistent virtual
| space shared among multiple users. We have lots of those,
| and have had them for years, and unsurprisingly they're
| pretty much all video games.
| smolder wrote:
| > limiting yourself to a single metaverse is antithetical
| to the very concept.
|
| I want to also dispute this point. The idea of the
| metaverse from Snow Crash was one that was federated and
| interoperable, like the internet was historically, and
| still remains, at a low level. The _standardized nature_
| of the metaverse 's spacial analogy was key to the
| concept. It was the internet, but represented and
| navigable as physical space. I'd say it's "independent
| metaverses" that are antithetical to the concept of a
| metaverse.
| smolder wrote:
| > but there's absolutely nothing that requires there to
| be only one metaverse.
|
| Aside from how it was specifically used, the way the word
| is formulated alone suggests there should only be one.
| Meta loosely means above, and encompassing, on a higher
| plane. Verse comes from universe obviously. The unified
| world, above everything.
|
| This is just another case of people confidently misusing
| words so prominently that the meaning changes, which "is
| allowed", obviously.
|
| > a metaverse is just a persistent virtual space shared
| among multiple users. We have lots of those, and have had
| them for years
|
| Yes, we've had them for years, and we didn't call them
| metaverses, and nothing was lost in that time. That's
| good evidence for my prior assertion that the word (with
| its new definition) is practically useless.
| kibwen wrote:
| I think we're just having a semantic argument now; just
| because meta roughly means "above" doesn't imply
| singularity (you could envision a metametaverse above
| multiple metaverses). And the existence of a singular
| observable universe doesn't preclude the many-worlds
| interpretation of quantum mechanics or the accompanying
| "multiverse".
| JohnFen wrote:
| > That's good evidence for my prior assertion that the
| word (with its new definition) is practically useless.
|
| I think the word is not only useless, it's actively off-
| putting to most people.
| waboremo wrote:
| Not sure the Roblox and Minecraft exclusions make sense.
| Maybe they used to in the past but they act as all other
| current forms of metaverses do, like VR Chat or Second Life
| or GTA Online.
|
| The consideration of Steam and Xbox Online as a metaverse is
| one I'm not too fond of. It kind of messes the entire idea up
| as you're not really using 3D avatars to communicate with
| others in a way that sort of replicates reality. If Steam and
| Xbox get considered as metaverses, we're now suddenly calling
| Twitter and HN also metaverses which is a bit absurd when we
| have perfectly reasonable names for them.
|
| Also while the current implementations of metaverses are
| quite limited and mostly game related, people are setting
| their sights on future goals. Mainly interoperability. Right
| now you can't go from Runescape to VR Chat in any seamless
| way, you lose your friends lists, items, accounts,
| expectations and standards, etc. There is some work being
| done here, for example Epic created EOS as a layer of
| interoperability between any games without the usual
| restrictions, however the project is still very much in early
| stages and acts as nothing more than a universal friends
| list/account for now.
| explaininjs wrote:
| I was thinking more of TF2 when I brought up steam (I
| suppose my age is showing...). The momentary interaction is
| using TF2's models and game logic, but all the "metaverse"
| stuff is using Steam's logic (chat, inventory stores,
| trading, etc.)
| waboremo wrote:
| That I definitely agree with. I also think you're right
| here in regards to viewing Steam's Steamworks as a sort
| of abstraction layer or prerequisite for their metaverses
| to work. Without Steamworks, TF2/CSGO/L4D/etc become
| isolated experiences.
| Macha wrote:
| Facebook's metaverse project? No.
|
| VRChat, I think everyone with a VR headset has at least tried
| it, plus plenty of people using the desktop client.
|
| Rec Room was also a popular early "metaverse" type setup in VR,
| though VRChat has mostly supplanted it.
|
| And of course, if VR is not a requirement for your metaverse,
| basically every mmorpg is also a metaverse.
| JohnFen wrote:
| For all meaningful definitions of "the metaverse" that I've
| seen, the internet fully qualifies.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Yeah came here to say the same. We've had the metaverse for
| ages in a much better and broader form factor than fiction
| portrayed. Most "metaverse" projects want to build something
| more limited which seems backward.
| Semaphor wrote:
| A few months ago during the height of the metaverse craze, I
| mentioned that it seems forced by some companies. I was told by
| HN that I live in a bubble ;) So there are probably tons of
| people who care a lot!
| p0pcult wrote:
| Both of my kids play Fortnite, as do I on occasion. During
| COVID, they had concerts (Marshmallow), movie nights, and BLM-
| adjancent lectures. Anyone who had an account could fire up
| their rig, jack in, and attend--even with friends.
|
| This is one of the many metaverses. Minecraft is a pretty
| readily available one too. Neither required VR gear, either.
| VLM wrote:
| Could an old timer help me out?
|
| I was involved in Second Life around the turn of the century.
| I've been ignoring the metaverse since giving up on SL a long
| time ago. Obviously the resolution, frame rate, and software
| integration in metaverse will be somewhat better than SL; aside
| from that, can anyone tell me the difference between modern
| metaverse and SL, also how does that difference translate into
| profitable sales?
|
| The new hype wave for SL sounds like someone hyping up the
| "new" idea of a CLI, and me feeling, uh, I think I've seen this
| before...
| pastdiscovery wrote:
| VRChat is less LARP-heavy than SL. VRChat is more proprietary
| than SL. VRChat is more custom than SL in some ways and less
| in others. The SL people tried to make a VRChat clone. They
| sold it off, and now an EDM label uses it for virtual raves.
|
| VRChat is significantly more voice-heavy than SL, which is
| better or worse depending on your use-case.
|
| The best thing about VRChat is that you get to wear a toaster
| on your face and get physical interaction with people. If you
| want to take a dancing course in VRChat, you can. Buy a few
| gadgets to track your limbs, and it'll be shown accurately.
|
| VRChat is essentially the next step in the user-programmable
| social video game, and the community seems more ambitious.
| The platform is so open that they've ran emulated Linux on
| user _avatars._
| Animats wrote:
| > Obviously the resolution, frame rate, and software
| integration in metaverse will be somewhat better than SL;
| aside from that, can anyone tell me the difference between
| modern metaverse and SL, also how does that difference
| translate into profitable sales?
|
| Most of the modern metaverses are worse than Second Life.
| Their big advantages were VR, browser and mobile clients.
| Second Life is getting most of those features now.
|
| Their dev team finally got out of "can't do" mode. (That's
| client side. Server side, they still have trouble fixing
| long-standing bugs.) They hired some good game devs, and
| graphics started to get better.
|
| * Frame rates have increased substantially. There's more
| multi-threading in the clients now, and the servers have been
| upgraded to better AWS instances. Still OpenGL, but work is
| going on to use Vulkan.
|
| * Graphics realism has increased, again. Physically based
| rendering with high dynamic range lighting is in test. Not
| subsurface scattering, though, so skin still looks plastic
| under some lighting. Graphics realism is becoming comparable
| to GTA-V, but not Red Dead Redemption.
|
| * There's a mobile viewer in test. Uses Unity as the graphics
| engine.[1]
|
| * Full body tracking is in test, and being demoed. It's
| striking to see how someone rigged for full tracking
| dominates a meeting.
|
| Second Life may end up being the metaverse, after everybody
| else fails. It's one of the very few systems with a large,
| continuous world, one about the size of greater Los Angeles.
| Facebook failed to deliver much, the NFT guys delivered even
| less, and the people who announced and didn't ship probably
| never will.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tjRlVwlAXA
| asow92 wrote:
| Thinking about those still trapped the metaverse is giving off
| Bioshock vibes
| bvrmn wrote:
| I own Valve Index. State of the industry is not very bright. The
| best VR game so far is HL2 VR mod. Alyx the second. Looks like
| investors are pretty shy to put money in VR game studios to make
| big and story rich content.
| elisk wrote:
| Nobody seems to mention the fact that most of VR games out there
| require using the hard-to-familiarize hard-to-memorize joysticks
| to interact with the game.
|
| I own a Valve Index and I mostly don't play it because of it's
| just really a hassle to have to physically stand up (or even
| seated) and to wave your arms around, only to forget how to
| reload your damn gun after a couple of weeks/months of not
| playing.
|
| I wish that people built simple keyboard-and-mouse VR games that
| I could enjoy the VRness of the experience using my fingers and
| palms like I'm used to in the past 30 years.
|
| I want CSGO VR, not a good-looking-cheap-knock-off that I need to
| figure out how to reload each gun and where to draw the grenade
| from. I want Cities Skylines VR where I can see my city from
| above wherever I look. I want Red Alert VR.
|
| The most enjoyable games I currently have that is worth whipping
| VR out for are those I can play with a regular XBox controller
| which I'm quite familiar with already.
| bitwize wrote:
| Rez is the killer VR app. It's close to what you describe: look
| at what you want to shoot, mash the button (DualShock
| controller works fine).
|
| I plunked down $500 for PSVR _just_ to play Rez Infinite; other
| VR games I got to play on it were gravy.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Oh shit! I wanted that game so bad on Dreamcast when I was a
| kid. I didn't know there was one out for psvr
| cableshaft wrote:
| It's also on Quest 2, but without the eye tracking for
| aiming that PSVR2 has.
| bitwize wrote:
| TIL that Rez Infinite on PSVR2 has eye tracking! I only
| played it on OG PSVR.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Players figured out WSAD and mouse, they'll figure out this for
| a game that makes it worth it.
|
| It's just nothing has made it worth it yet.
|
| And as for CSGO type things, too many players find traditional
| FPS gameplay on VR to be puke-city.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| This is why I'm really tempted by Gran Turismo on PS5 with VR.
| You just use your normal controller or wheel.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| This is fascinating, because my instinct is completely opposite
| :)
|
| I enjoy VR games for their easy-start/easy-stop hassle-
| free/memorization-free aspect. If I want a 3 hour session of
| complex game, I start my PC. If I have 10 minutes and just want
| to PLAY during those 10 minutes, I pick up my Quest2 and
| just... go. Whether I played yesterday or month ago, they tend
| to be intuitive. I absolutely positively do not want mouse and
| keyboard to be part of my VR experience :-).
|
| Maybe your complaint is about _bad_ VR games, because those
| certainly exist!
| crazygringo wrote:
| Yup I was going to say the same.
|
| If I want to go back and play GTA V or RDR2 after a few
| months, I'm going to spend ~10 minutes finding a guide to my
| Xbox controller and trying to remember how you do all ~30
| actions. And then still spend the next 30 minutes pressing
| the wrong buttons until I finally get back in my muscle
| memory.
|
| On my Quest 2, you just go. Of course the games tend to be
| much simpler too. But memorizing how to use the controllers
| has just never been something I had to do.
| spookie wrote:
| The VR version is more often than not more intuitive than the
| mouse/keyboard combo or even a traditional controller.
|
| Furthermore, the idea that having to stand up (not always true)
| and perform natural arm movements being bad is just silly to
| me. Arguably, the best performing VR game is Beat Saber.
| [deleted]
| spudlyo wrote:
| Any game where you're seated in some kind of cockpit is my idea
| of a perfect VR game. This way you can be comfortably sit at
| your desk with familiar controls, but still have immersive head
| tracking. For me, I'd love to see a WWI or WWII air combat kind
| of game like the old Red Baron or IL-2 Sturmovik.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I find those types of games intolerable due to motion
| sickness - the inner ear is at odds with what the eyes are
| seeing.
|
| In-game, the aircraft's seat is constantly rotating and
| accelerating all over the place. The seat I'm physically
| sitting on is not moving. This causes a great deal of motion
| sickness.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| Is that why I got motion sickness I wonder? I spent a
| couple of hours trying out various vr experiences and after
| sitting to look at a video of whales, standing to play
| various first person shooters I sat down to play a racing
| game and got motion sickness. Affected me for the rest of
| the day and really put me off vr, which is a shame as I
| thought it was incredible at first.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| VR motion sickness is a tricky problem. Much like regular
| motion sickness, some people get over it after a period
| of time, and some never do.
|
| It's highly dependent on the type of VR content you're
| looking at. For most people, the moment the camera or
| your character moves at odds with your real head, they
| get uncomfortable. My job is developing VR stuff and
| still when head tracking gets out of sync for more than a
| second, I get dizzy and have a headache the rest of the
| day.
|
| If you want to continue with VR, I'd say stick with
| standing experiences. Try out the racing game now and
| then, but quit at the first sign of discomfort. You may
| find that your brain gets used to the conflicting input
| over time, or it might not. No way to tell without trying
| it.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's a big part of the "comfort" rating that Oculus has
| in their store. Some games have a lot of movement (e.g. a
| table tennis simulator), but as long as the movement
| matches up there's minimal risk of motion sickness.
|
| I even can't handle first person shooters where the
| camera moves around using a control stick (the sensation
| of movement is unpleasant). Some games solve this with a
| mode where you sort of "snap" from one position to
| another rather than "moving".
| spudlyo wrote:
| Interesting! I just assumed if the latency was consistently
| good enough that motion sickness wouldn't be a problem. I'd
| feel dumb buying a fancy VR rig only to not be able to play
| for fear of barfing all over my keyboard.
|
| I played a lot of Descent in the 90s and beyond, and got
| really used to 6dof flying, which at the time some folks
| couldn't stomach, so perhaps I'd do OK.
| montag wrote:
| Same. Then I tried Overload VR (Descent remake) with the
| Oculus and lasted about 50 seconds...
| fknorangesite wrote:
| Overload is the _only_ game that has ever made me motion
| sick in VR.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Have you tried doing "VR" with a large monitor or TV and a
| simple webcam on top? There are apps available that let you
| do this. Basically it just adds some basic head tracking
| (limited range of course) using off the shelf hardware you
| probably already own. I have yet to see anyone in my
| personal life (limited anecdotal evidence of course here)
| get sick from this type of "VR" and it is also much easier
| for your computer to run (basically just requires as much
| compute as the game without head tracking) since there is
| only one screen instead of two. Also allows you to make
| sure to keep a very high framerate which is the most common
| cause of motion sickness.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Do you have an example of a game/app that lets you do
| this? I've never heard of this before but I'm super
| interested.
| soylentcola wrote:
| I messed around with ViewTracker and FaceCamNoIR years
| ago before I got one of the early Oculus dev kits. You
| had to limit your motion a bit, but it was somewhat cool
| for changing the angle of perspective in flying games.
| But honestly it just made me want to try out VR even
| more.
|
| Nowadays I haven't used any of them in a long time
| because the Oculus is outdated and barely usable. None of
| the newer options seem worth the cost for me (in money or
| Facebook attachment) so I haven't played with any of that
| in a while.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Supposedly you get much better results using a phone
| actually ( maybe becuase of the DoF camera?). SmoothTrack
| for iOS comes up ( I have not personally used it). I was
| already using an old phone as a webcam however for my
| desktop so I have the thing on a big gooseneck arm
| already - might try this myself!
|
| Looks like people are saying the other issue with webcams
| is they are low framerate - there are dedicated devices
| it seems like TrackIR (more money) but I bet a phone with
| a decent FPS camera could work well. Theres also software
| called OpenTrack (and people are saying to get a high FPS
| webcam with low latency). Some people on reddit are even
| using a wiimote to reduce CPU useage supposedly.
|
| Biggest thing though is you want the largest screen
| possible - otherwise you will barely be able to move your
| head and still be looking at the monitor (best experience
| I had was in a theater with 3 full imax screens side by
| side)
| soylentcola wrote:
| I found cockpit games to be the least nauseating since my
| "avatar" was seated, just like I was. The only thing moving
| was the view outside of the cockpit so it was like having a
| window into another scene. For bonus points, I would
| arrange the throttle and stick so they were in the same
| place as their virtual representations, so when I moved my
| hands, they matched the character's hands in the game as
| long as I kept them on the throttle/stick controllers.
|
| Anything where I was "walking" around gave me the same
| disconnect you mentioned - my avatar was walking around but
| my body was seated in a chair with hands on a controller or
| joystick.
| rabf wrote:
| Sounds like you need a motion simulator.
|
| For example:
|
| https://www.yawvr.com/
| TylerE wrote:
| Ironically you get motion sickness on a real plane, as a
| passenger, for the opposite reason... you can feel the
| forces, but you can't really see the motion.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| That's not ironic, it is perfectly consistent with the
| phenomena of motion sickness -- sight not correlating to
| motion. Irony is when Ronald Reagan got a gunshot wound
| when the bullet bounced off the bulletproof window and
| hit him in the chest.
| singlow wrote:
| Neither you nor GP gave an example of a traditional
| meaning of the word Irony. Both of the examples represent
| the more modern definition of situational irony as
| "something that is amusingly unexpected". I don't think
| you can say anything is not ironic under that definition.
| After all, everything makes sense if you understand it
| well enough, so any level of surprise would be ironic
| because what you understood pointed to one outcome and a
| different outcome was produced. All that is left is
| whether you find the difference to be amusing or not.
| TylerE wrote:
| I disagree. I think my original post is perfect irony.
|
| Effect X being caused by Y and solved by Z AND X being
| caused by Z and solved by Y is irony.
|
| Dictionary definition: " a state of affairs or an event
| that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects"
| singlow wrote:
| You selected the relatively modern definition from the
| dictionary. That usage is fairly recent and is very broad
| in definition. The verbal and literary definitions are
| usually the ones that pedants are protective of. I
| specifically said that it fits that modern definition. I
| was actually criticizing the parent for calling out your
| usage, as if his example was more ironic than yours.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| It is the act of 'the thing that is designed to protect
| you has caused your injury' that is ironic; not that it
| is 'amusingly unexpected'.
|
| What is this 'traditional meaning' that you speak of?
| singlow wrote:
| Older usage of the word does not include amusing
| coincidences such as this. It used to be used to describe
| speech which intentionally meant the opposite of its
| plain meaning for humor or emphasis, such as sarcasm, or
| in dramatic context a situation where the audience has
| greater awareness than a character.
|
| Words change and this is a meaning everyone seems to want
| I guess. I was just pointing out that once you go down
| this route, its pretty hard to differentiate between what
| is ironic or not because its a broad and subjective
| definition.
|
| Your assertion does not make sense to me. Your definition
| is that the situation is ironic because a slightly
| broader statement of that situation is ironic? It sounds
| like you are just saying its ironic because it seems
| ironic. All that means is that it gives you a feeling
| which you associate with that word. The reason it seems
| ironic is that the unexpected outcome of a "life-saving"
| thing actually resulting in injury, is amusing, because
| it is the opposite of its intention. In fact almost every
| time something has a net positive influence on overall
| outcomes, there will be cases where some outcomes are
| worse. If you are shot and the surgeon goes to perform
| life-saving surgury, but it turns out you have an allergy
| to the anesthetic and it kills you, is that ironic? A
| doctor who was intending to save you actually killed you.
| I don't know about this definition but I guess its the
| one we're stuck with. I'll probably just call it an
| amusing coincidence though.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > If you are shot and the surgeon goes to perform life-
| saving surgury, but it turns out you have an allergy to
| the anesthetic and it kills you, is that ironic? A doctor
| who was intending to save you actually killed you.
|
| Oh come on.
|
| A device which was made for one purpose and one purpose
| only -- _to stop the president from getting shot_ ends up
| _getting the president shot_. This is the direct opposite
| of the intention of the thing 's existence -- hence
| "intentionally ... the opposite of its plain meaning".
|
| If you want to purposefully dilute things to make a point
| you can do that, but it is dishonest.
| [deleted]
| swsieber wrote:
| Solution: wear a VR headset on the plane which displays
| the horizon in a way that makes motion visible, and keeps
| a book in the center of your view :)
| HPsquared wrote:
| That's actually a great idea for a niche app. Could
| probably work for seasickness and carsickness as well.
| swsieber wrote:
| It was inspired by motion sickness prevention glasses I
| heard about. They are hollow with water inside halfway to
| provide a horizon that reflects real motion. I think the
| perk to the VR thing is to be able to watch movies or
| read books without that little line getting in your way.
| But I don't know how pronounced that line is.
|
| Edit: Interesting, the glasses actually have hollow rims
| with a blue fluid.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It seems like the kind of thing a small number of people
| would be interested in, but they'd be happy to spend a
| lot if it actually works.
| jraph wrote:
| I wonder if the smallest delay or lag rendering this
| horizon line would make things even worse. I guess this
| thing needs to be very timely.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| You can get motion sickness in a real plane as a pilot
| too. In flight school I saw many cases, in the summer
| they used to fly early morning and late afternoon to
| avoid strong thermal currents. The situation is more
| similar to seasick on rough seas, everything is moving
| and sometimes in unpredictable manner.
| gausswho wrote:
| You might enjoy the IL-2 Flying Circus series in particular,
| done by many of the former Rise of Flight team. The WWI era
| dogfights suit VR very well.
|
| Also have a look at VTOL VR if you're interested in using
| motion controllers for all cockpit interaction.
| Arrath wrote:
| VTOL VR is fucking amazing for this. You're right there in
| the cockpit, and you have to reach out and hit buttons and
| fiddle with dials around the MFDs and everything. Its so, so,
| so good.
| Wojtkie wrote:
| Star Wars Squadrons really excels with this. It seemed like
| it was a VR only game before being released non-VR, but the
| style of game really would take well to VR.
| bitL wrote:
| I couldn't get that one working with my controllers in VR
| (HP Reverb G2). I could see the initial screen and being
| seated in a cockpit, but nothing responded to anything I
| was doing.
| soylentcola wrote:
| I couldn't even get a handle on mapping to my
| throttle/stick. There were so many odd controls that
| didn't map to intuitive keys and I got frustrated trying
| to manually map everything when I didn't have any real
| idea of what all of the controls were without playing a
| bit of the game.
|
| I kept getting stuck unable to control or do things
| during the game and eventually gave up since it had been
| a promotional free download and I wasn't invested enough
| to spend more than an hour or two trying to get it set
| up.
| izacus wrote:
| Well, you're in luck since IL-2 does support VR. So does DCS
| which has a sizeable set of WW2 planes to fly as well.
| TylerE wrote:
| The IL-2 series has seen continual releases. The most recent,
| IL-2 Sturmovik: Battle of Normandy, was released last year.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| And works in VR and has a small but enthusiastic
| multiplayer scene. It's easily the thing I've spent most
| time doing in VR.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Isn't your head supposed to be the mouse?
| CSSer wrote:
| Don't shoot me for being facetious but I'm picturing someone
| making chicken-like pecking/bobbing motions with their head
| to select things.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I assumed this was possible - it was when I was working with
| very early VR prototypes.
|
| I think what is going to end up being big is the setup where
| you have a camera on top of a monitor or TV that just does head
| tracking. As TV's get larger and cheaper (and projectors better
| and better) having no headset but nice head tracking is a great
| middleground to VR. Plus other people can easily watch you play
| (and it is easier for noobs to get into). Most games do not
| really need full 360 degree head movement - you can just turn
| around with a keyboard or controller as you normally would.
| sli wrote:
| This seems like a strange example because out of my fairly
| large VR game collection, I can't think of a single shooter
| where reloading is anything different from just physically
| doing a reload action like you would with a real gun. I can
| only think of two games where the ammo is stored differently
| than real life (Compound and Alyx), the rest have ammo pouches
| and belts.
|
| I can think of one smaller game where reloading is different,
| and that's Space Pirate Trainer, where you bring your guns
| behind your back for a moment. But that's more of an arcade
| game than what most people mean when they talk about shooters.
|
| Maybe give Subnautica a try. Or the old version of HL2 on VR.
| cableshaft wrote:
| I'm kind of sick of the realistic reloading being so
| prevalent (and mandatory) in VR. It was novel for a while,
| but it really takes me out of focusing on what the enemies
| are doing. Especially since it's not something that 'just
| works if you get it somewhat right' for pretty much any of
| those games and sometimes requires more precision for
| grabbing ammo out of your belt than for shooting the damn
| enemies.
|
| Many of them require you to grab something in your belt area
| (and I'm a fat guy, so several games already require me
| pushing into my body to get to the right position), and/or
| I'll try to do it without looking down (like I would in real
| life) but then the game thinks I clicked in the wrong area,
| so I have to look down each time and even then it seems I
| clicked just slightly off 2-3 times before I can grab the
| damn clip off my belt, and by then the zombie or whatever has
| closed half the distance to me.
|
| You're already breaking immersion for movement by having a
| stick to move you around and not walking 1 to 1, just let me
| press a damn button, wait a couple seconds while focusing on
| the enemy, and keep shooting.
|
| Also, requiring you to grab ammo from your belt pretty much
| stops the game from being able to be played seated, because
| you'll be jabbing your couch or chair arm trying to get to
| your virtual belt. Sometimes I just don't want to stand in
| place for an hour. For most of those games, that's the only
| thing keeping them from being playable while seated.
|
| One of the reasons I like Space Pirate Trainer so much is
| because there's no immersion breaking there, it's all energy
| weapons and you just have to slow down or stop shooting for a
| moment for it to recharge enough to shoot again, no reload
| required. And I can keep my focus on the enemies swarming
| around me. But I want more games besides that, and there
| doesn't seem to be that many (at least not that I'm aware
| of).
|
| Compound is another one I like, although it does have several
| steps for its more complicated guns (although not the basic
| guns, and I tend to rely heavily on those), and sometimes
| requires you to drop your second gun (for it to float in
| midair, mind you) so you have a hand free to reload your
| other gun. How's that for immersion breaking?
| acid_burn wrote:
| > physically doing a reload action like you would with a real
| gun
|
| More like physically doing a reload action while wearing a
| thick pair of well-buttered gloves.
|
| Each game does have small differences in the reloading
| process, be it pressing a specific button to release the
| slide or (strangely) pulling the charging handle every
| reload. Even firearms enthusiasts would have to learn these
| details.
|
| Beyond that, VR controls are still limited. You have little
| to no tactile feedback, so you don't intuitively know when
| you failed to grab the magazine off of your belt or failed to
| grip the bolt. You have to learn the exact positions and
| tolerances to avoid slipping up and botching an entire reload
| in the heat of the moment. I find this to be completely
| unsatisfying in comparison to mastering a real life manual
| task.
|
| I also often find myself banging my controllers together,
| especially when handling pistols.
|
| I think most people find this kind of thing frustrating and
| immersion breaking, which pretty much defeats the draw of VR
| gaming.
|
| My favorite VR game is Resident Evil 4 partly because it
| seems that they focused on reducing the friction of weapon
| handling. Most processes are fairly simplified and the
| tolerances are generous, but you still get that heightened
| level of intractability in VR vs a simple button press.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Even firearms enthusiasts would have to learn these
| details.
|
| And they do, even without VR, because every gun is
| different. They all have different mag ejection and safety
| methods too:)
| mkehrt wrote:
| > I can't think of a single shooter where reloading is
| anything different from just physically doing a reload action
| like you would with a real gun.
|
| This seems exactly what the OP is complaining about. Why
| would you want that, rather than just hitting 'r' or
| whatever?
|
| (I literally have no idea how to reload a gun, FWIW. Having
| it be "realistic" doesn't actually make it easy or
| discoverable.)
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > Why would you want that, rather than just hitting 'r' or
| whatever?
|
| Because it's more immersive.
|
| > Having it be "realistic" doesn't actually make it easy or
| discoverable.
|
| Isn't it the games job to teach you this? Like it's
| teaching you which button to use?
| ambyra wrote:
| It's common beginner gamedev thinking that making things
| more realistic makes them better. It's only fun if it's
| fun. Realistic is usually != fun. Maximizing the core fun
| element, taking away everything else, is a good way to
| make a fun game.
|
| Realistic skydiving game: Start! Drive your civic to the
| DZ. Oh no there's traffic! Wait for plane. Get in plane.
| Take 20 minutes to fly to altitude. Fall for 1 minute.
| There are no obstacles, nothing around you so you don't
| die. Land. Wait to get picked up, take 1 hr to repack
| your parachute. Talk to your friends about how cool it
| was.
|
| Fun skydiving game: Start! Jump out of airplane
| immediately. Skydive for 15 minutes. Surf on the wing of
| a plane. Avoid obstacles. Fly around buildings. Try to
| land in a swimming pool on the side of a mountain. Land.
| Parachute repacks automatically. You're back in the air
| automatically.
| dilznoofus wrote:
| *full packing physics for the parachute! Frayed lines,
| tangling, dodgy mechanisms! The risk of plummeting to
| your account's demise.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > It's common beginner gamedev thinking that making
| things more realistic makes them better. It's only fun if
| it's fun. Realistic is usually != fun.
|
| As another case in point: movement speeds in most first-
| person 3D games are unrealistically fast (like, walking
| at 10 mph, running at 20+ mph), because realistic
| movement speeds would make navigating around the game
| world painfully slow.
| matthews2 wrote:
| We need a cops and robbers game where the robbers serve
| their prison sentence in real time, and the cops have to
| fill in mountains of paperwork for every shot fired :)
| phailhaus wrote:
| Because if you hit "R" and your in-game model _does
| something that you are not doing physically in real life_ ,
| you will likely get motion sick or at least disoriented. It
| is a very unnatural feeling, and why VR games are so hard
| to design for.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| That's the R in VR: reality.
|
| The focus in VR games right now is creating realistic
| interactions. Ideally, your controllers should be only for
| interacting with meta content, like menus and other things
| "outside" of the game, or for controlling virtual hands.
|
| Pushing a button to trigger a visible sequence of actions
| from your character breaks the immersion. It creates a
| separation between you and your character in a scenario
| where you're supposed to _be_ the character.
|
| Ultimately it is a stylistic choice. There's definitely
| room for both types of game in this space, but combining
| realistic and arcade style interactions in the same game
| tends to not work that well.
|
| A big part of VR is manipulating psychology to fool you
| into feeling more immersed. It works pretty well until it
| doesn't, then users can become very uncomfortable.
|
| I think the main problem here is semantics. We use the term
| VR to describe wholly-immersive games as well as
| traditional flat games with a 3D head mounted display, and
| everything in between. OP seems to just want a HMD
| experience tied to a traditional game. The industry really
| needs to come up with new terms to disambiguate these
| ideas.
| bitwize wrote:
| Reloading typically involves disengaging and removing the
| empty magazine, sliding in a fresh magazine, and then
| pulling back on the gun's slide to chamber a round.
|
| If you shoot real guns a lot, it's probably second nature.
| But it's a fairly involved motor process that's cumbersome
| to implement in VR. Furthermore, different guns in FPS
| games can have different (often creative) reload
| animations; Reaper from _Overwatch_ for instance, simply
| discards his twin short-barrel shotguns and pulls out two
| new ones. Will these different reload animations
| necessitate different VR gestures?
|
| Going for realism in VR or any video game is fraught with
| these kinds of problems. "The more you get specific about
| situations analogous to reality, the more you have to
| stipulate on." --Egoraptor
|
| (There's a YouTube channel of a guy who makes different
| "reload animations" of himself wielding various objects
| (smoke detectors, caulk guns, toasters, Furbies, etc.) as
| "guns" with a different, unique way of reloading each:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHi-xECyGTU )
| jkubicek wrote:
| > I can't think of a single shooter where reloading is
| anything different from just physically doing a reload action
| like you would with a real gun.
|
| I'm fairly confident that more people have experience
| reloading video game guns (just press Square) vs. the motions
| required to reload a real gun.
|
| I know that when I'm playing Pavlov, every time I spawn with
| a new gun, I have to relearn how to reload it (and then die
| surrounded by all the clips I've dropped).
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > I know that when I'm playing Pavlov, every time I spawn
| with a new gun, I have to relearn how to reload it (and
| then die surrounded by all the clips I've dropped).
|
| That is realism. Real guns are quite different in this
| regard too.
|
| I understand you would prefer to just push a button but
| this makes it more realistic and adds another factor of
| skill.. Just like taking cover in real life.
|
| Situational awareness in VR is better than pancake games.
| But a lot of other things are more difficult because it's
| more realistic.
| jkubicek wrote:
| No, you misunderstood me. I like the realistic reload
| mechanisms in Pavlov, I think they're fun and wouldn't
| change anything.
|
| But the parent comment complained about having to relearn
| complex control schemes every time they pick up a VR
| game, _which is valid_. Effectively nobody is going to
| have the muscle memory for reloading a gun, making it
| strictly more complicated than just mashing a reload
| button.
| bitL wrote:
| MS Flight Simulator 2020 or Automobilista 2 are absolutely
| awesome VR games that can be controlled by keyboard only in
| real time and there is vorpX allowing older games to be played
| in VR. Surely, Alyx is slow, Hellblade has restricted movement,
| but those strange VR controllers allow some interesting
| experiences like Adr1ft when one feels like a real astronaut in
| open space.
| nanidin wrote:
| Red Alert VR! I too thought RTS would be awesome in VR. But
| alas, making games was beaten out of me by the sentiment that
| game development isn't professionally viable without major
| crunch time. Failing of my own, but I hope someone tries!
|
| I had Oculus Rift in my living room, then upgraded to Index.
| The difference in lighthouse placement basically reduced my
| usage of Index vs Rift by 75%. It's impossible to get out and
| use casually.
| Delento wrote:
| But you can do that with a lot of games?!?
|
| Did you never just tried that out?
|
| Lime you can stay seated in Skyrim and co
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Seems like a wild take to me. VR is not nearly as immersive as
| people say. But reloading guns with physical interactions is
| one of the few bits that does feel very good.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > I want Cities Skylines VR
|
| that exists. there's a version in the occulus app store as we
| speak
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Weird take if you ask me. The 2D versions of those games seem
| to be what you want, but with 3D visuals I guess. Some kind of
| 3D monitor seems more fitting than "VR".
|
| VR is all about the immersion, and that means doing physical
| actions that approximate real world actions. That's the whole
| point, and that's why the vast majority of VR games (and the
| popular ones of course) incorporate that physicality.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > only to forget how to reload your damn gun after a couple of
| weeks/months of not playing.
|
| I played that Jedi game on PS5 the other day and found it
| really intuitive how they implemented the reloading. There you
| have to pull back this little virtual lever with your non-gun
| hand. I liked that much better than remembering some button
| even if it's not 100% realistic.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I don't agree. I think console games with their complex button
| combos are much harder to memorize.
|
| In VR you can do a lot with your hands using the controllers.
| No button to reload but you insert a new clip and slide back if
| you emptied the chamber.
|
| PS I still spend a lot of time in the 'metaverse'. In VR chat,
| in games and I develop for work too.
| baby wrote:
| Wat, everything is so much more instinctive in VR. I guess some
| people really experience things differently oO
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I agree that for AR/VR or motion based "experiences" and games,
| the controls always are the weakest point, and I think this is
| crucial to understand the slow adoption.
|
| This is also more fundamental and difficult to solve than it
| seems.
|
| Beating the seemingly low-tech but widely successful existing
| control systems is not a given.
|
| Most alternatives are inferior.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| There is a _lot_ of work going into hand tracking and natural
| interactions these days. People seem to feel much better and
| more immersed when they can use their hands to manipulate
| virtual objects.
|
| Oculus has this very neat trick with their controllers. Most
| of the buttons and sticks have some type of sensor that
| detects if you're touching it, even lightly. They use that
| information to alter the pose of the virtual hand. When the
| controllers are visible, your virtual fingers mostly match
| where your real ones are on the controller.
|
| At least one company builds unique user profiles that make
| your virtual hands the same size and skin tone as your
| physical hands, as well as adjusting for height and other
| parameters. Personally I find it gimmicky, but some people
| like it.
|
| Unfortunately, the technology isn't quite robust enough that
| we can fully get rid of controllers. Ultraleap is working on
| a system with multiple 3D IR cameras to track hands from
| multiple perspectives. I think this is the most likely path
| forward. There's some really crazy alternatives like
| strapping dozens of electrodes to the forearm to record
| muscle impulses that get fed to an ML model which
| extrapolates hand and finger movement.
|
| You're right, there's a lot of fundamental problems we have
| to work around, and it's far from easy. Even with Facebook's
| ridiculous resources, the oculus hand tracking is hot wet
| garbage for anything even slightly abnormal, like wearing a
| jacket.
|
| But, the industry as a whole is really picking up steam. It
| won't be too much longer before we solve most of the big
| problems.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| The Wii did it easily. Racing simulators and flight
| simulators do it all the time. Gamepad controls exist because
| they have been iteratively refined to be the best way to play
| a game sitting on a couch.
|
| Existing VR controls are great now that the Quest Pro
| controllers can self-track. The problems have been that you
| either had to setup lighthouses around your room to track you
| or have your hands always be in sight of the headset cameras.
| However, the QPro controllers can track independently like
| the headset itself by using SLAM and the difference is huge.
|
| I don't see why you would think that the controls are
| difficult to solve. The problem isn't the controls -- the
| problem is that people don't realize how tiring it is to
| actually physically do the things you do in a video game,
| even on a very basic level. This makes VR great for getting
| physical activity -- but it makes for a very bad 'lazy day
| gaming' or 'after work gaming' recreation.
|
| It sounds awesome to think about being in VR and _being in
| the FPS_ until you realize that people who fight wars as
| infantry for real have to be in amazing shape.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > It sounds awesome to think about being in VR and being in
| the FPS
|
| Yes. This is one of the things that leads to the
| counterintuitive truth that if you want a fully immersive
| and fun game (defining "immersive" as "the player is no
| longer aware that the game world is not their actual
| reality), you don't actually want too much realism.
|
| What you want is an "effortlessness" -- the ability for the
| player to trigger an action without effort or conscious
| thought.
| Melatonic wrote:
| There are places like Two Bit Circus in Los Angeles that do
| this beautifully - they have odd VR games that you could
| never play at home because they have a crazy unique
| controller setup.
|
| One in particular that I feel like is critically underrated
| (mainly due to the game itself being a bit boring) is a
| flying game. You lay down in this bird like giant controller
| with your arms at your sides and there are multiple fans
| blowing in your face. You can tilt the whole thing, move the
| "wings" to change your speed and angle / elevation and do
| lots of other movements. The game itself is basically just
| cruising around a virtual world (they have a few different
| types) but I thought it was super cool. The fans even change
| speed and direction based on how you are flying.
|
| If the game itself was more engaging (like say it was
| multiplayer and maybe you were piloting a mechanical "bird"
| with lasers and whatnot) I think it would be pretty freaking
| awesome. But the "controller" of course must be very
| expensive and takes up a ton of space so it is really not
| useable at home unless you have a ton of extra space and
| disposable income. And of course it is a bit of a one trick
| pony.
| rabf wrote:
| Build an Exit Suit!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_uLksv-x4E
| copymoro wrote:
| > _Nobody seems to mention the fact that most of VR games out
| there require using the hard-to-familiarize hard-to-memorize
| joysticks to interact with the game._
|
| > _I own a Valve Index and I mostly don 't play it because of
| it's just really a hassle to have to physically stand up (or
| even seated) and to wave your arms around, only to forget how
| to reload your damn gun after a couple of weeks/months of not
| playing._
|
| > _I wish that people built simple keyboard-and-mouse VR games
| that I could enjoy the VRness of the experience using my
| fingers and palms like I 'm used to in the past 30 years._
|
| all I hear you saying is that you're an older person now, and
| that you learned to play with a controller and that's how games
| should be.
|
| well, I'm even older (or lazier) because I never even learned
| to play FPS games with a controller. WASD+mouse for me please.
|
| I always see people confusing familiarity with "simplicity" and
| "ease of use". of course familiar things are better! but let's
| not mangle together the simple and well-made with the familiar;
| though it's hard to do this.
| joemi wrote:
| The part that you quoted says "I wish that people built
| simple keyboard-and-mouse VR games" -- that sounds to me like
| they mean the same thing you mean when you say "WASD+mouse
| for me please".
| revlolz wrote:
| No one's 'still in' the METAVERSE cause zuckbuckland isn't what
| people who have VR devices actually want.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This is true. Horizons is so polished and manicured. I don't
| want that. Plastic life is not fun, VR is better when you can
| explore the rough edges like on other platforms.
| asciimov wrote:
| For me the biggest failure of all the VR headsets is there is no
| demo units at big box store and the lack of a TV app to see what
| the user is doing.
|
| People don't want to blindly buy an unproven expensive gaming
| system without trying it out first. You can't go into a local
| Best Buy, Walmart, or Target and try the units out. You have to
| wait till someone you know gets it an is kind enough to let you
| give it a go.
|
| With all the money Zuck has spent on developing these devices, it
| is surprising that no money was spent on demo kiosks.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| They did. That was what lead to me buying my first headset; I
| tried a demo of the Oculus Rift at Best Buy. I'm pretty sure
| they did demos for the Rift S and Quest 1/2 as well once those
| came out. I agree it wasn't nearly as visible as it should have
| been though, and I don't think they were offered for very long.
| the_snooze wrote:
| Fundamentally, VR just isn't very social unless all
| participants have the proper hardware already. Sure, you can
| have a TV output to see what the headset user is seeing, but
| the TV-viewing experience is still very different from the
| headset experience. Not to mention, it looks really jerky and
| jarring as a non-interactive user.
|
| I feel like VR is a technology that has no idea where it fits
| into the world. It's cool, but why should anyone care about it
| before they've put up the money to buy into the ecosystem? It's
| not like a TV which is an easily shared experience.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >it is surprising that no money was spent on demo kiosks.
|
| For the Quest Pro they had demo units in Best Buy. You can
| search YouTube to find videos of people checking it out.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I think that the reason for this is that the devices aren't
| (yet) suitable for the mass consumer market.
| cheeselip420 wrote:
| Yeah I'd love to press my face into a greasy demo headset at
| the local Walmart.
|
| The hygiene aspect of VR is under-appreciated.
| edent wrote:
| I refer you to this _delightful_ paper: "Bacterial Load of
| Virtual Reality Headsets"
|
| > The results of these tests indicated that the Staphylococcus
| aureus strains isolated from the headsets possessed high levels
| of antibiotic resistance.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1145/3385956.3418958
| dehrmann wrote:
| I'm sure the shared controllers on demo units back in the day
| were just as bad.
| Delento wrote:
| Having that thing on/in your face is still different than
| holding it with hands.
|
| Your eyes and nose are much closer and sweat might go down
| your face.
| gretch wrote:
| I remember being a 12 year old running to the video game
| section of walmart to try the latest N64 game while my
| mom did the weekly shopping.
|
| Germs/bacteria were not even 1% of what was running
| through my brain.
|
| You're not the target audience for this, nor am I
| anymore.
| Delento wrote:
| I definitely was the opposite kid then ;P
| smallerfish wrote:
| I suddenly realize how I got sick after visiting Legoland in
| San Jose with my niece - there's a virtual reality "ride"
| there.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Mostly I want to move to Dublin now.
| WhiteNoiz3 wrote:
| I really wish people would stop writing articles about how bad
| Horizon Worlds is. There are so many better and more popular VR
| experiences out there.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Right? It's always just "I got on Horizon Worlds and it sucked"
| like completely ignoring VRChat and RecRoom and all the really
| cool stuff a VR headset can do in favor of just bashing Meta.
| I'm all for bashing Meta but it's so boring at this point.
| Yeah, they suck and Zuck's stuff sucks but VR isn't the
| metaverse. Zuck kind of ruined VR to some degree by buying
| Oculus then locking it to facebook accounts then doing all this
| garbage branding about The Metaverse making it sound like some
| sort of dystopian nightmare for him to mine data from when
| realistically VR games are COOL AS HELL.
|
| Like I've killed the battery on my Q1 multiple times playing
| Minecraft in VR (vivecraft + a host app for Quest) or the TWD
| games. Heck even beat saber. Sure they're not all magical
| social experiences but I hate that Meta turned VR into that.
| That's why I didn't want to link to facebook. I don't play VR
| to play with people I play it to be immersed in the game I'm
| playing.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > so many better and more popular VR experiences out there.
|
| such as?
| WhiteNoiz3 wrote:
| Rec Room and VR Chat are examples, but personally I'm in the
| camp that you should focus on building fun games that people
| want to play first then worry about turning it into an
| evergreen experience if you really want to make a 'Metaverse'
| (ex: like what Fortnite has done).
| thequadehunter wrote:
| VRchat. It's the best or worst VR experience depending on who
| you are.
| chizhik-pyzhik wrote:
| It's disappointing to not see any mention of VRChat in articles
| like this. It's niche, but vrchat has a pretty large and
| consistent fanbase.
|
| Meta gets all the headlines because they tried to create the same
| thing and ended up lighting billions of dollars on fire.
| steveylang wrote:
| They should have literally lit the billions on fire instead and
| made an NFT of it, then they might actually have something of
| 'value'.
| thequadehunter wrote:
| I never understood the metaverse thing. Was Zuck unaware of
| vrchat? I was always confused why they thought users of a niche
| market geared towards hackers and nerds would gravitate towards
| the soul-less corporate solution as opposed to the existing
| one.
| buzzert wrote:
| Safety? One of those things people _say_ they want, but don't
| actually want.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| He bet the farm on VR being "the next big thing". I very much
| think he's right on that count.
|
| The plan was most likely to try and disrupt the VR market
| like they did social media, and attempt to capture (hold
| hostage) a significant share of VR users.
|
| But they forgot that users need a _reason_ to use the
| product. It wasn 't fun, the avatars are bland, sterile Mii-
| like characters that nobody likes, and the disclaimers about
| legs are absurd beyond reason. They failed at every turn.
| VRchat was the main competition, and Facebook forgot that
| they needed to _be competitive_.
|
| Even inside the VR industry, the metaverse is regarded as an
| abject failure. It's more or less the antithesis of what
| makes a good VR experience: fun, engaging, immersive.
| Facebook went with bland, boring, and intrusive.
|
| The only good thing Facebook has done in the VR space is
| getting Quest headsets onto millions of heads. This
| _drastically_ lowered the barrier to entry for new users,
| which increases the audience for good developers. The quest
| hardware isn 't good by any stretch, but it's good enough for
| people to judge whether VR is for them without spending
| $1000.
| wincy wrote:
| I finally tried to make my metaverse avatar a few days ago.
| I couldn't even make my glasses blue. BLUE. My Memoji looks
| just like me, which I recall taking minimal effort. My
| metaverse avatar just looks like a weird pretentious dude
| with a very effete pose and beard. But at least I can give
| myself a bindi if I want. Which like, that's great I'm not
| knocking on it but I don't even know what's going on there
| that I can't make my fantasy avatar have the same glasses
| color I have in real life. Isn't the promise of VR to make
| things more interesting than real life?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| https://www.curbed.com/2022/10/winter-house-jessica-stocker-...
|
| I used to watch this reality TV show with my girlfriend.
| Metaverse was such a big deal in 2022 that one of the main
| characters of the season was a Metaverse real estate agent.
|
| https://www.bravotv.com/people/jessica-stocker
|
| > Jess is a beautiful Metaverse real estate agent, investor and
| entrepreneur from Los Angeles. After Jason slid into her DM's,
| she was excited to join the house and show off her wild side to a
| completely new group of friends. While her party girl behavior
| gets her into hot water with some of her housemates, she'll also
| explore a romance that has the potential to last beyond the
| winter vacation.
|
| I wonder if that's still her job now that it isn't as relevant
| anymore.
|
| Just checked Instagram,
| https://www.instagram.com/blondesbuildingequity/?hl=en
|
| Blondes Building Equity
|
| "Best friends building a Real Estate empire"
|
| They have a podcast. Titles of recent episodes:
|
| "Financially free by age 25 through real estate investing"
|
| "70 rental units in under 4 years"
|
| "The rule breaker who broke the real-estate industry"
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This is what a decade of effective 0 rate interest created.
| Flippers and nonsense that contributes nothing to society. Same
| in China with ghost real estate.
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm reminded of _Aggretsuko_ where Retsuko and Fenneko become
| obsessed with a VR app that features a virtual romantic partner
| who flirts with you, and after a short while, nags you into
| buying DLC in the form of scenery and outfit packs.
|
| The subtly funny bit is, in this world of talking cartoon
| animals, the virtual romantic partner was an impossibly
| handsome male _unicorn_.
| [deleted]
| havblue wrote:
| There have been studies available for years now that show people
| only spend about twenty minutes at a time in vr. It's ludicrous
| that Zuck was willing to bet the future of his company knowing
| that.
| ar9av wrote:
| this is a great biased TLDR article full of misconceptions as one
| can tell from the headline.
|
| I read through part of it and I had enough. I quote one of the
| many misleading statements:
|
| "So far, the gamble hasn't paid off. Only 20 million Quest
| headsets have been sold"
|
| The Xbox series S/X sold 20 million, the PS5 sold 30 million.
| Looking at these numbers, I'd say the Quest is pretty mainstream,
| no?
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| > I'd say the Quest is pretty mainstream, no?
|
| I think most Quests are doing what mine is doing: sitting in a
| drawer unused.
|
| In my case it was because my pupillary distance is too wide for
| the Quest (and almost every other VR headset) so everything
| looks blurry all of the time no matter what.
|
| It sucks being only slightly smaller than Hafthor Bjornsson.
|
| Every person I know who has a Quest bought Beat Saber and Job
| Simulator, played for a couple of weeks, and then put it away.
| ketchupdebugger wrote:
| Its different. Arguably all 3 is sold at a loss, they make it
| up with additional game/application purchases. Most game
| developers are making their games for xbox, ps5, and/or pc.
| They aren't making it for vr. There is a lack of application
| development for the metaverse. This is why zuck is spending 13
| billion a year. They are trying to make the applications
| themselves. There's a lack of third party app/game developers
| mattl wrote:
| Are they being actively used or are they just sitting in a
| closet somewhere?
| conorcleary wrote:
| The future of VR may be so intoxicating that the best
| proponents of it will be inside the virtual world instead of
| outside promoting it.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I'm a gamer, my spouse is a gamer, and we have a Quest in the
| house because of my spouse's job. We're free to use it to
| play games or whatever, but we never do. We both tried Beat
| Saber the day she got the rig, and haven't done anything with
| it since. That was months ago.
|
| I have a gamer friend with a gamer spouse with multiple VR
| rigs from his spouse's job, similar situation, job doesn't
| care if they play with the hardware. He says he played them a
| bit for a couple months a couple years back, did the very
| small number of must-play games (mostly just Alyx and
| SuperHot, I think) and that was it, all of it's sat unused
| since then.
|
| Maybe we're not representative, but that's four-for-four of
| not really giving a shit about VR even when we're all gamers
| and the hardware's free.
| mattl wrote:
| What's the rig? Is that more than the headset?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| In our case, just the headset. I think my friend has at
| least two or three, and whatever the "good one" is
| requires some sensors around the room or something, so
| there's a bit more to that one.
| mattl wrote:
| I played an HTC Vive once, it was fun but it was a lot of
| stuff to play... I don't have the space for anything like
| that. Happy with consoles and Steam Deck (mostly in
| desktop mode) for video games lately.
| senttoschool wrote:
| > _The Xbox series S /X sold 20 million, the PS5 sold 30
| million. Looking at these numbers, I'd say the Quest is pretty
| mainstream, no?_
|
| Meta spent $100 billion[0] on VR to sell 20 million Quest
| headsets that most people have put in the closet. That's 30
| years of total Sony R&D budget, including all the Playstations,
| Walkmen, VCRs, DVDs, Blu Rays, cameras, sensors, TVs, speakers,
| headphones, and even their own VR device.
|
| [0]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/27/metas-
| sha...
| sho_hn wrote:
| I just can't believe figures like $100bn. How? On what?
| Spending $100bn is _hard_.
|
| For comparison, the Mars Science Laboratory project had a
| $2.5bn budget and sent a spacecraft that landed a rover on
| another planet. Yes, the MSC built on existing NASA infra and
| previous rover R&D ... but so did Meta's VR division.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| I saw a post here yesterday praising Meta for drastically
| raising salaries for devs. Perhaps that has something to do
| with it?
| eclipxe wrote:
| Lots of fundamental investment in hardware and tech that is
| multiple years out. Displays, chipsets, input devices, etc.
| multiple lines of hardware beyond what you see today.
| Multiple OSes, lots of application teams, middleware,
| services, frameworks, etc etc.
| rajman187 wrote:
| It wasn't $100bn spent on VR. There is a ton of research
| happening inside of RealityLabs, which accounts for the vast
| majority of the investment, but yes the only product so far
| is the VR headset. Here's a roadmap (supposedly based on
| leaked presentations) of what's on the horizon--no pun
| intended
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/28/23619730/meta-vr-
| oculus-a...
| tjpnz wrote:
| Carmack strongly hinted that a lot of the research going on
| wasn't productive. How much of it will go anywhere versus
| being another "stupid thing" which takes forever to kill?
| senttoschool wrote:
| Aren't investments for VR software, VR tools, prototypes,
| and hardware manufacturing all to sell a VR Platform that
| starts with the Quest?
|
| So you can say that they did indeed spend $100b on selling
| 20m Quests so far.
| endisneigh wrote:
| The amount of headsets sold isn't a good measure. Better to
| look at total ecosystem revenue.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Does Facebook have any significant VR revenue outside of
| headsets? What is their total ecosystem revenue? They didn't
| break that out in their last filing, so I can't tell.
| simiones wrote:
| I think the point was exactly that - even it the Quest
| numbers don't look so bad when compared with XBox / PS5,
| they Quest ecosystem is actually peanuts when compared to
| the XBox or PS5 ecosystems.
| dtagames wrote:
| It's pretty much an accepted reality that VR has not been a big
| success for anyone. Disney failed early with DisneyQuest.
| Second Life hasn't become popular even though VR hardware has
| existed for a long time. There's the complete joke called Magic
| Leap. MS decided to pivot to military applications because
| theirs didn't sell. Google gave up on Daydream. And Facebook
| just laid of 10,000 people, many of them in the metaverse
| department.
|
| The most likely reason is physics. These devices aren't fun to
| use. They're disorienting and make people sick. In practice,
| they add nothing to the experience -- certainly not the
| experience of a business meeting! It seems quite ridiculous to
| think that would ever have been a use case.
|
| So, the article really isn't a hit piece but perhaps a rather
| late and rather obvious commentary on something that even Zuck
| has to admit isn't a thing.
| trasz3 wrote:
| I'd say PSVR did quite well. Your examples above - from FB or
| Google - failed for the same reason everything else they try
| ends in failure - it's a problem with those corporations and
| their "engineering culture", not with VR.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| A lot of the tech will eventually see widespread use. AR will
| be a huge deal when they get it right, just because having
| HUDs will be a game changer for a lot of jobs.
| eclipxe wrote:
| It's not accurate that many were from the metaverse org.
| iamleppert wrote:
| Microsoft recently laid off nearly the entire HoloLens team.
| Even groups working on AI/ML for things like computer vision
| and scene detection / 3D understanding weren't spared. All
| they care about is a Chatbot these days.
| lib-dev wrote:
| Sound business decisions.
| eclipxe wrote:
| That's not accurate
| ye-olde-sysrq wrote:
| I agree with almost all of what you said. There's basically
| nobody who's made money selling VR hardware, 99% of VR games
| are extraordinarily primitive, motion sickness is a major
| barrier to making more diverse kinds of games, the barrier to
| entry is high (you need a high end PC and you have to set the
| damn thing up, both initially and every time you want to play
| it).
|
| But there's one small thing - it can be fun! and LOTS of it!
|
| Job Simulator is my go-to so-you-wanna-try-VR game. It's fun.
| It knows what its limits are and create fun within them. It's
| silly. Anyone can play it! It's like the fun of the point-
| and-click games of old but in VR.
|
| Every single person who I've shown - from my mom to my wife
| to friends - has been absolutely blown away by how readily
| your brain accepts the VR world as "real". Your brain's
| ability to "adopt" the VR hands is just a magical thing to
| experience, and so fun!
|
| The same goes for the Valve VR demo thing whose name I
| forget, where you're in an Aperture lab or something and can
| go through portals to do different minigames as well as mess
| around in the lab itself.
|
| It reminds me of Wii Sports for the Wii and the motion-
| sensing wiimotes. Some cute demos (and nearly some full games
| in their own right) that show off the hardware, and the spark
| is truly there and your grandparents play 200 hours of wii
| bowling, but then nobody can figure out where to go next.
| People didn't like it in Skyward Sword. So eventually it's
| kind of ditched for the Wii U and then kind of brought back
| for the Switch Joycons but only to be trotted out every once
| in a great while for a quirk.
|
| We seem to kind of be somewhere in there for VR except that
| some companies scented THE NEXT BIG THING and tried to be the
| google/facebook/amazon/etc of this new paradigm but they all
| got collectively wiimote'd. So the comedown is a lot more
| dramatic than just the WiiU not having a remote.
|
| I hope someone figures out google glass and AR stuff though.
| And not just the garbage AR that pokemon go et al call "AR"
| where it's just "look we put your phone's camera as the
| background of the scene" and they use GPS + PoI's. Real AR
| like I'm the pilot of a damn evangelion and it's giving me
| readouts. (JARVIS/Iron Man might be a more recent reference
| that I would also accept as well).
| tytso wrote:
| > motion sickness is a major barrier
|
| I recall a story from a colleague who knew some folks who
| had worked on the game System Shock (this was in the early
| nineties). System shock was one of the first games that had
| an engine that implemented real 3D physics; so when you
| threw a grenade, it would describe a real parabola. And you
| can lean around a corner and sneak a peak without exposing
| your entire body to enemy fire, and when you did that, the
| 1st person shooter rendering would realistically reflect
| that. They had an experimental version of the game that was
| hooked to a virtual reality headset at the time, and gave
| up on it because, as one of them joked, it was "virtual
| reality, _real_ nausea ".
|
| This was 30 years ago, and things haven't improved since
| then.
| VLM wrote:
| "Descent" goes back 28 years and I remember getting
| pretty disoriented and a little nausea, worse than I ever
| experienced flying a small airplane.
|
| "Descent" was the game where you blast robots in a very
| 3-d mine.
|
| One oddity of "VR" is it initially attracts people with
| excellent visuospatial analysis skills; the problem is
| the majority of the population is not good at it. It
| would be like implementing a user interface based on
| bench pressing 275 pounds of real world weights; it would
| be an incredibly popular fad among people already
| qualified to participate, then the general public would
| LOL and that's it. So that's the problem selling VR to
| the general public; most folks aren't very good at
| solving maze puzzles and drawing 3D CAD drawings in their
| heads so a UI based on that will be a hard sell.
| dtagames wrote:
| When I started out in web design and development in 1995,
| a lot of companies were showing early "VR" and 3D
| interfaces, touting them as the next great thing.
| Somehow, people got the idea that reaching around in 3D
| space for everything was better than just picking from a
| menu, a list, or an index -- like we have done for 1,000
| years.
|
| I feel like all the 3D hype is just that. While it could
| be fun in games in a holodeck-type environment (but
| probably not outside of that, 'cause physics), I don't
| think the majority of everyday human interactions with
| information are better off in 3D. Why would anyone think
| so? We don't read in 3D. We don't write in 3D. We don't
| make pictures in 3D. Why would a 3D interface be better?
| jonas21 wrote:
| I think the most promising VR technology might be something
| like Starline [1]. No headset to wear. No disorientation. You
| just sit down and you're there with somebody else. It's a
| more limited use case, but one with many business
| applications as well.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q13CishCKXY
| philipov wrote:
| The metaverse went away when I defeated the final boss, but then
| I started the sequel and now it's back. Who would have thought.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| You killed Bob Rife?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash
| philipov wrote:
| Nah, it was god.
|
| https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Metaverse
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