Watching TV or playing a game in an immersive, distraction-free VR environment sounds great, and will happen, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR.
Working in a virtual home office has the potential to be extremely productive, ergonomic, and space-saving, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR.
A metaverse involves some kind of shared space and shared experience across a networked medium. Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR.
VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for that user interface.
Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got the screen and mouse user interface, and with it FPS, RTS, like Warcraft and Doom. Touch screens were again a new user interface and with it came games like Fruit Ninja. VR now exists as a user interface (although still needs to be improved) and many people love playing Skyrim with it, or Beat Saber.
All of these were mostly local experiences with different (better?) user interfaces.
Meanwhile, each user interface had its own networks that were built on them. e.g. Email is a "first class network" built on the text based user interface. e.g. WWW is a "first class network" built on the mouse based user interface.
The metaverse isn't a new user interface. The metaverse is a "first class network" built on top of the VR based user interface.
The only thing linking metaverse and VR is basic buzzword bingo, they don’t gain anything from being linked.
I mean, yes I agree. There are some workarounds, i.e. you could jump, in VR it’s very fast to swivel your head, look around the people in front of you or look behind you.
That said, I very much agree, I wouldn’t want to play WOW in VR. The DBM style warning zones on the ground alone would kill the UX. Meanwhile, as a HPally, I played WOW primarily in 2D :)(specifically raid frames). I’m very certain I would continue to play VR WOW in 2D as well. Some sort of console attached to my arm or floating in front of me to 1. See who has my beacon/buffs/debuffs 2. Quickly chose targets to spot heal or cure.
However, I’m very excited to try the second big VR-first MMO (basically the WOW not the EverQuest) built exclusively for VR!!!
Maybe, it’s a lot more skill shots, maybe it’s more aoe heals. I can’t even imagine how spot heals or cures would be targeted. Maybe it would feel like being a QB and Id need to literally throw Madden style spirals to land my spot heals??? THAT COULD BE SICK (although that skill floor/cap might be too high to balance boss fights well).
I’m not smart enough to predict the actual implementation. But I know there is enough money to be made that someones will iteratively make it happen.
Give it a few years and every new VR headset will have facial expression sensors.
I'm sure some clever folks will find a way to build a MMO that works for VR. Maybe characters will have magical x-ray glasses that renders other characters semi-transparent, so they can look through the crowd? Perhaps VR MMO games will be grander in spatial scale with lots of small towns to limit players clumping together city centres. Maybe, trying to find something in a crowded marketplace with lots of distractions, could be a part of the quest?
Second Life is a tiny niche. Connecting Minecraft servers with portals has been possible for ages, and smooth connections seems like it wouldn't be terribly difficult, yet no one uses it because no one wants it.
And despite the huge increases in VR quality that has happened already, none of this has changed.
You suggest it's because the VR isn't good enough yet, but I think the evidence so far suggests VR is not the missing ingredient for people to want to live in a common virtual world.
While I agree with you on this; online dating was seen as something only desperate people would do, until it was for everyone.
I'm sorry, I think if you want to broaden this term like this you're going to have to stipulate some new boundaries. Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway".
And when Di died or 9/11 happened I had a "shared experience across a networked medium" about them, for concrete examples.
Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember? So I'm not sure where this idea even comes from.
Yes, this is absolutely correct.
A "metaverse" exists in contrast to meatspace. In meatspace I walk down the street, I look through a shop window, I see you browsing inside, I spray some graffiti on the wall, you see the graffiti when you come out of the shop. We have a shared space with the qualities of presence (I passively saw you while you were browsing) and persistence (the graffiti will be there for anyone to see).
In the metaverse, I open some application on a computer, I look at some window or readout, I see that you're online (maybe I just see a light next to a username, or maybe I see your WoW character dancing shirtless outside of Goldshire), I leave something persistent (maybe a comment on a blog post, maybe a spray on the wall in an MMOFPS), which is available for you to see at some point. There are hundreds of metaverses (that's nearly the whole point; a metaverse is a virtual space that isn't bound by the rules and limits of physical space, so why not inhabit a few dozen?) of varying complexity (many websites, IRC, BBSes) and immersiveness (Minecraft, Second Life, PlayStation Home). VR isn't intrinsic to the idea of a metaverse, it's just one potential realization of the idea.
> Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember?
Stephenson depicted his metaverse as a virtual space for the sake of the reader's imagination, so that they could envision something real and familiar instead of just a bunch of people clacking away on keyboards. The "virtual street" metaphor used in Snow Crash was always just a convenient literary device, and not at all the point of the metaverse, which to reiterate is the idea of a virtual shared universe in which to exist that is unbound from the restrictions of the physical universe.
Its been around for longer than Second Life in pancake kvm forms but the latest iteration is based on Immersion or Embodied experience facilitated by the new hardware price/performance advances.
VR hardware is just about over the chasm and proper wide fov AR is on the horizon although semi AR/MR is possible today (e.g. Pokemon Go as a shared overlay of digital world space on to a shared real world space).
The Immersive Embodied Metaverse is available over the internet using open W3C WebXR standards today and this will get better as the space and infrastructure matures.
Virtual shopping malls where you would "walk" around by clicking around websites.
It’s clear from Facebook’s presentations for instance that they consider text messaging via WhatsApp to class as part of the metaverse.
It’s not anything new, but I think the metaverse strategy is basically Facebook saying “we want to own all communications, and push the boundaries of what owning communications even means”. That’s my take anyway, but I have found most people are focused on the VR aspect and have missed the more scary all-encompassing and broader definition.
So think that every user is an inhabitant, a citizen, a potential buyer in the virtual and the real world, but also a potential business owner in the virtual world. Business owners will be tax payers that must pay fees to operate on this city-state that will have internal laws that except for few cases (at most) will not be subject to government laws and constitutional protection, and if you are difficult or problematic the authority will be able to expatriate you without prior notice, regardless of time or money invested in the platform. Maybe, at most, they could offer arbitration with a company that knows that if they don't favor Meta the contract will not be renewed. So yeah. It is a good idea, if they can pull it.
There was a two dimensional interface called Flatland that worked like a CLI. Hiro used it to manipulate the virus without viewing it.
A lot of home office workers never learned to touch type. How the heck are they supposed to do office work if they can't see their fingers on the keyboard? Voice recognition is no solution, it still sucks for text entry and is completely useless for anything like slide presentations or spreadsheets.
There is legitimate potential for workers doing 3D stuff like CAD, architecture, and data visualization but that's a tiny niche of the workforce.
Also most CAD users would probably not want cludgy UI like VR has today, they want keyboard and mouse too.
I suggest looking at the demo/videos of Horizon Workspace (by meta). It works really well, although the resolution is too low for me tooday.
Then there is this guy that was on HN recently:
I have seen a video, IIRC it was from SimulaVR, in which the user had a virtual window which showed a camera view facing the real-world keyboard. So this is easy to solve: these people who need to see their fingers on the keyboard (and probably everyone else when doing a real-world action like getting a cup with a drink) would open a window with an external camera view.
I’ve switched out my keycaps for blanks recently to try to force myself to get better at working in VR but I’m still struggling a bit with all the symbols.
To clarify, when I say "tracking", I don't mean just being able to use your keyboard in VR. I mean being able to actually see your keyboard in VR, along with being able to see keycaps on the virtual representation of your keyboard.
0. https://uploadvr.com/immersed-real-keyboard-support/
1. https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/typing-in-vr-how-to-connect...
Good typing skills are a super-power in today's world.
These days in Teams it will tell you when someone's typing. It amazes me how long people need to type just to get a simple point across.
eg. maybe your vr home has digital art, but that art can also exist and be viewed in other mediums. Or you can all sit at home and watch VRTV with friends, but one friend just watches on their phone on the bus.
Or a virtaul office desk, that can have coworkers visiting. The office server can be hosted on your corp servers (or, the social networking, maybe you self host your personal office), but when you leave to go virtually home, you're now in your home, hosted by fb nee meta.
It does not matter because for the public and the media Zuckerberg is redefining the meaning of the word right in front of our eyes. Give it a few years and everybody will believe VR is an inherent feature of metaverse. Just like those of us who had been using the word "crypto" to mean "cryptography" for decades were trying to explain in vain what the word originally mean - but it made no sense as the new meaning was already popularized.
People are already dismissing this "metaverse" furor as just more VR hype with a stupider name and the company "Meta" is risking killing the entire term "metaverse" and any usefulness it might have had altogether.
Ironically, by owning Facebook "Meta" should be in one of the best positions to build/sell a 2D "metaverse plane" as well as just about anyone else possibly could. Tear down some of the garden walls, allow a bit more of the old MySpace and Blog anarchy of clashing styles and user control, be a better web citizen. They aren't likely to do that because they are using "metaverse" as attempt to make more Oculus money and risking the Facebook lock in and walled garden for a vision with actual guts and takes risks doesn't seem to be in their interest.
[1] https://www.highfidelity.com/backlog/requiem-for-the-hmd
Have you seen the leaked Quest Pro design[1]? It's already close to being ski goggle size, and it's only a couple of generations away from something the size of sunglasses.
Displays are getting cheaper, better and higher resolution. UX is being improved, passthrough cameras already exist.
My estimate is that towards the end of this decade we'll see unprecedented adoption of VR/AR outside of the few niche use cases we see today.
Meta is jumping on the bandwagon early, making their brand synonymous with VR, and betting big that this will change how everyone uses computers today, and that it will be the tech to replace smartphones.
As much as I dislike that such a user hostile company is trying to popularize the metaverse/VR, I'm sure they did their research and are confident this will eventually sell like crazy. I think they're right.
Whether or not they did their research, whether or not we are just a few iterative improvements away from mass adoption, there's still just too much feeling of "same hype cycle, different day" from the average consumer (which is the point of that article, and my implication that VR is dead right now but it was Facebook's lucky albatross so they're tying it around their necks in the hopes it is still lucky while dead [1]).
[1] Spoiler alert for a classic poem used as a metaphor here: in the poem things do not go well from here. I am pessimistic about this marketing play for "Meta".
They used to be open. Cambridge Analytica came along and congress made them decide open was a liability. Sure they were starting to close down before congress, but now they're sure as hell not opening up.
I don't care if the data is locked down or not, the social graph isn't the interesting part of a "metaverse" and in some ways it is probably better locked up and that can remain Facebook's lock in to keep them interested in the project. The kind of garden walls I was talking about are more federative: bringing external content in, but in ways that are true to the outside content; not just confined to Facebook looks and styles and components, not confined to a bare amount of customization of boring card styles, not embedded in a "Facebook way" but in a "web way" (whatever that means, and it doesn't really feel like it means much at all after the imagination and wilds of the 1990s).
I referenced the anarchy and chaos of blogs and MySpace, specifically: it's about user control to "do ugly things", to escape the gray walls and graffiti "their spaces". If Facebook is a "space" today, it's a building full of cubicles all alike. Sure, you can hang photos in the cubicles and they've got colorful stock ones, but your still constrained to just those cubicle walls and they mandate a lot about the allowed size and frame styles. That's almost directly the antithesis of a user owned "metaverse" whether 2D or 3D.
When smartphones were launched there was a simple description - "oh cool, it's a traditional phone but it has a computer running inside of it? makes sense"
It took a decade from the first smartphones until iPhone/Android like devices with a mostly uniform appearance and UI had decisively won, though. There was a lot of rapid exploration of design space first.
As for VR/metaverse, there's been constant exploration of this space for decades. The VR boom in the 90s was killed by cost and primitive hardware, but we still have surviving persistent 3d worlds that came out of that wave.
We've also seen a lot of non-VR exploration. Aside from Minecraft, we have Roblox, which while a lot more limited in some ways is also a lot more meta: you have an identity that persists across worlds, with a social layer across that. Minecraft looks to be slowly moving in that direction.
We'll see people exploring a lot of other variants, and most will fail. But in the process we'll start to learn what will work.
I doubt Facebook, or Minecraft/Microsoft, or Apple, or Google will turn out to be the winner though.
Maybe they'll manage to buy the winner.
To quote (some) of Larry Ellisons famous statements about it:
"The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion."
"Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"
The point of "the cloud" was the concept of users not needing to think where their device is communicating. The device might as well be talking to "the cloud" in the sky.
The point of "the cloud" was the occlusion to the end user.
I don't see much value in the phrase as it doesn't help me know what is going on in any way.
So all the interesting parts of the metaverse going forward are all the VR aspects which is why the discussions are focused on that.
The VR-sickness persisted for hours until I realized that the solution was to try and reset my system by walking outside and gazing at the horizon (which also works on seasickness to a point).
None of that I can do when fully immersed in VR. Which is probably why Facebook cares about it. Ads on TV are time to get up, in VR they can fully measure you engagement. Fully engaged in game and hungry, food delivery is one button press away.
Sure, if you pay me to work in the metaverse I'll be happy to hang out there. Otherwise I'm not interested.
Therefore the metaverse isn’t a replacement for a video games or TV. You would simply watch TV or play a video game while in the metaverse.
The metaverse in that regard isn’t a new concept, because VR spaces have existed for a long time now. I’ve watched movies in Minecraft more recently, for example. I’ve seen every idea in the metaverse attempted in some game or application already.
The reason these VR spaces have not taken off, however, is because the medium to access these VR spaces have been pretty disappointing.
It’s the reason why the Internet took a long time to take off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When smartphones took off, so did the Internet.
Facebook has not fixed the medium problem as I see it. I have never gotten motion sickness, but I do not want to put on a VR headset for more than a few hours. I don’t even want to put on a VR headset to be honest. I’ve owned one for two years and it just sits in a drawer. I can’t imagine that many people want to put on a VR headset either if they could just watch TV while sitting on the couch, grabbing real drinks on their real table, and texting their friends.
This is not true, the Internet took off in the U.S. in the mid-90s: https://ourworldindata.org/internet
The driving force was the WWW, not smartphones.
Personally, I would say exactly the opposite, the only advantage a smartphone has over a desktop computer for Internet usage is portability, otherwise the experience is worse in every way.
Not Zuckerberg.
I think the issue with winning it with adult content will remain unchanged, at least for a while. Porn is so classic, that it cannot tunnel through this potential barrier.
People use their Apple devices for porn, controlling sex toys, and much more.
Amazon sells lube, sex toys, lingerie, and a whole host of other totally NSFW products.
Netflix has a ton of shows with nude actors bearing their breasts. Their show "Sex/Life" shows penises in a very sexual way.
Twitter, though admittedly not FAMNGA, notoriously allows and supports porn. They're very much the opposite of Tumblr, which died the moment they banned it.
Patreon thrives on porn.
What?
I was listening to a podcast on Flat Earthers and the host basically traced the explosion of True Believers to the advent of the smartphone circa 2008 onwards; suddenly hundreds of millions more people were spending hours a day online.
But that hasn't happened. I'm thinking the problem isn't lack of good VR, it's that a truly shared metaverse isn't really something we want.
We want our own spaces. We want to have the option to just "watch", to be invisible to the world we're exploring (or to lurk, in forum/chat terms).
When even better VR comes, I think it will be used for far more solitary activities than social ones. We do see some hints of a dose-response relationship there, with reasonably popular VR games like Half Life Alyx.
I could attribute the little use of internet pre-1994 to lack of ISP services, or the fact that people preferred html and modern search engines to the old protocols (ftp, archie, gopher), etc. But 2008, seriously?
I spent lots of hours in internet in college (pre-www) and later paid for CompuServe. By then www was already becoming known. Again, 2008. In what country do you live?
And you should try consuming internet in a desktop or laptop. Even a Chromebook works ok (but a gaming PC is better). Most apps offer a limited experience in mobile, or tablet (it sucks) and seriously, sites render much faster on a fast PC. I can right-click 10 links on the browser, send them to open in the background, consume each tab a close what doesn't work. It is so much nice and faster experience.
Thats the point. The answer to "when do I have time to use the meta verse" is "you have time to watch tv/entertainment, so yo have time to meta verse". Because people think of this as _something added_ to their life, not something augmented.
With this metaverse stuff you have to wear the stupid goggles. You can't just have it on in the background and glance up if something interesting comes on. This is why 3D TVs failed in the market. The technology worked fine but most regular people didn't want to wear the goggles just to watch a movie.
In practice, excluding resolution, wearing a headset for hours on end seems even more straining both for the neck and eyes than the alternative real life workstation.
Isn't that still about <25 and > 60, or those without kids? I hardly can find a calm 30-60 mins per day to just sit and read, sometimes play for 30 mins (2 kids) just before sleep.
I hope he plans to be spending 8 hours a day in "metaverse" but I'm sure as fuck not going to be.
1) I'm definitely willing to believe that most adults spend a lot of time vegging out, even if I/we don't. Does this mean that one goal of the metaverse is to suck cash out of those folks? "People already waste a lot of time. The metaverse is great because it makes money off of that." I could also interpret this one in a lighter way. Perhaps the metaverse is somehow better than regular vegging out; gives you exercise or something.
2) My take here is similar to some sibling comments. This just sounds like a VR application, and I'm not sure where the "metaverse" comes in. Unless by "metaverse" we mean "internet", which already exists and is (thankfully) not run by Facebook. And even then, I don't see where the internet comes in either! I can dev/create offline, can't I?
I can't be the only one who feels this way?
Also you should get 8 hours of sleep, buy food at the farmers market, spend time with your familly, meditate, get this GTD rolling, and learn a new skill for your carreer.
But honestly, the truth is, as soon as VR is cheap and comfy, I think people will rush to it anyway for one reason: porn. So the metaverse can grow, if like in second life, it allows for porn to develop. But since FB tend to want a family friendly experience, I think we got a betamax vs VHS situation here.
There was a side dish of turn of the century real estate hucksterism. Buy because everyone else is buying. Buy high sell low as retail always does LOL.
And pr0n as you mention.
Also 3d modelers and CAD folks built elaborate structures that were always empty but impressive to admire. The supply of skilled draftsmen and architects willing to work for free VASTLY exceeds the demand.
The most interesting meta activity on second life was stuff that doesn't require second life or 3d or any of that, it was just a fancy screen saver behind people doing simple IRC texting, etc. The philosophy club meetup sounded fun but it was basically walk to a virtual campfire then watch people too high to think, try to instant message philosophical stuff to sound wittier than the next guy. Like karma farming with people too high to succeed but its OK because the platform doesn't have karma LOL. Didn't go many of those LOL.
Second life had a weird attitude toward real life where it was not allowed to use your real name. To prevent "funny names" they gave a huge list of first and last names and let you pick. I found Turbo Pascal and thought it witty because I used that once rather expensive ($250 for a pascal compiler used to be a bargain compared to what D.E.C. charged...) software package 20 yrs previously (now more like 40 yrs) and unfortunately the only reactions I got were confusion and "hey did you know your name is an actual program my dad used?" so it wasn't so fun. I'd rather have used my name.
But that was it, those five things and the rest was empty. I was there, that's how I remember it.
Some people are just not going to want to spend 8 hours a day interacting with people to go home and interact with other real people in a reality-like medium.
1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video Games are about ignoring reality for entertainment in a fake world already. thats a few hours people can dedicate.
2) The metaverse can be more than traditional video game type entertainment. WFH has turned the office as a destination into a keyboard/monitor as a destination. You can use VR to have a much more immersive/focused work destination than either office or WFH desk. Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse.
(I have tried the Oculus workrooms and if the virtual screen resolution was higher then i'd personally work in it.)