Further, VR does not work well for switching - you can't be in VR and scribble notes at the same time. AR might be an improvement, but not by much.
Video conferencing does not suffer from any of these problems, and works pretty well for collaboration. 'Zoom fatigue' is definitely a thing though - it's unclear whether VR fatigue would be better or worse.
VR/AR will see limited adoption for certain specialised use cases only.
In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment into the virtual environment. So there is no deficit there. I think you haven’t tried these things before so you are just speculating.
Video conferencing didn't fail because video conferencing is fundamentally bad but because:
- meetings are often done in a fundamental bad way, where people don't have any "felling together" even is they sit physically in the same room.
- people having bad microphones, the video part in a video conference is the least important the audio part is what makes it work or fail (because meetings are all about speaking, except if you are mute/deaf, in which case VR might help).
- technical difficulties all over the place, there is no reason for this to get better with VR
- peoples homes being fundamental unsuited for conferences (i.e. a lot of background noise), again nothing which will change with VR
- also VR headsets and mimic don't work well together, proper gestic is possible but often requires full body tracking which put more requirements to the environment you use it in.
- VR headsets are much more straining to use then audio-only conferences, and somewhat more straining then video conferences. Which can be a major no-go for anyone doing many conferences, like the management deciding weather or not to buy into it.
- Companies want virtual meeting rooms not a meta-verse, something which already exists, and looks better then the honestly crappy looking thinks Facebook presented.
Video conferencing has certainly been wildly successful in actually getting (collaborative) work done - though in fact it is screen sharing that is the secret ingredient here. Would screen sharing in VR be any different? I guess 3D models or images could be shared usefully.
It is notable the difference between tele conferencing and video conferencing - and that difference is faces (and screensharing). Until VR can show faces, it is basically a tele conference with a puppet show.
My point about switching is that in VR you are completely immersed, so are limited to what the VR provides, whereas with a vid conference I can e.g. go make some coffee while still participating. I'm limited mainly by social convention, not the technology itself. The nature of modern work is we are at the centre of various tools and technologies (half of which are a bit broken) that we choreograph together to get useful stuff done. No VR system could hope to replicate it all.
Actually I'm currently working on a VR project (amongst other things), so these concerns are real and pertinent to me.
(As ever with engineering there is a tendency to focus on the what and the how, instead of the who and the why. Furthermore, people will use technology as they see fit, which might be quite different from how it's inventors intended or envisioned. To develop on this point, even the most 'non-technical' human is an accomplished tool user, and they won't be reading the manual anymore than they absolutely have to.)
Writing/typing would be really bad in VR though, and that's a major need for meetings, I don't see a good solution for that.
In what terms does it "beat it"? I still have Zoom meetings where people just dial-in, have crappy video, etc. In other words, video conferencing is still being adopted decades after it was introduced.
> In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment into the virtual environment.
Multi-tasking isn't a real thing. The overhead from context switching is real and no amount of technology will improve this human deficiency.
You could do a LOT of avatar face reconstruction with that.
In VRChat, you could write something in the air by hands, or even play the piano. The problem might be the user experience is not as good as real world hand writing/typing, and there is no physical feedback when writing/typing. That might make people feel weird.
It's out of question that Facebook (and other companies) did a good job in progressing VR headsets technology (through I wouldn't call it a miracle).
But the meta-verse idea as presented by Facebook doesn't look too promising IMHO. It looks out of touch with reality and it's from Facebook. A company well known to try to force their world view onto all other people around the world, ignoring any ethical questions arising. Sure by renaming themself they will manage to somewhat run away from their responsibilities, but as they don't really change their ways it's just a mater of time until we will have the next batch of scandals, now attached to the "meta"-name instead of Facebook.
I am deeply skeptical meta is going to make the kinds of fundamental breakthroughs that will make VR mainstream and useful to people. Right now they are basically brute forcing the issue with tons of money and even then I am a bit underwhelmed and I use my quest almost daily.
https://i.cdn.turner.com/adultswim/big/image-upload/thumbnai...
Please read this, and then read up on why everyone is talking about web 3.0.
This isn't a phase of the metaverse that is going to be different because of screen and control technology, it's an ownership and control shift.
For example, I'd much prefer a "mirror-sized realtime video" (i.e. a "window into the other office") kind of experience, where I don't actually need to wear a helmet.
And there aren't even that many technological obstacles to that; just good TVs, with good software, and fast enough internet connection. Add a bit of eye/head tracking (to approximate 3D from different viewpoints) and it'll be very real-like.
The bottleneck for adoption is probably mostly about UX, comfort, norms, marketing, etc. Not raw capabilities.
The uncanny valley on the raw capabilities of these current products is a grand canyon. Holodeck it ain't.
There is a limit and a point where this can make things worse, but if it approximates what a person expects well enough and never conflicts with that expectation it’s a good tool.
Mobile phones offers people a very comfortable and easy UX that blends well with the requirements of the real world, you could say it does it too well as you often see people walking down the street faces glued to their screen and not looking where they're walking.
VR needs the power of immersion, but right now it comes at great cost. The friction of entering and exiting is big, the time between task switching of virtual and real is big.
You mentioned this:
> In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment into the virtual environment. So there is no deficit there.
You cannot and bring all required tasks into the virtual. You can't quickly check on your dog, grab a drink, glance over to a person in your physical space, grab that note from your desk. We rely heavily on the real world and VR right now presents a big barrier. Phones do not, you can watch a movie on TV and glance at the message that pops up on your phone. Even desktop computing allows you to comfortably multitask by glancing between monitors. Some stuff can bring virtualized into VR windows, but it's limited.
I exited VR in 2018 after a few years of working on it. My conclusion was that we're still too early to get bullish. We still need to overcome some big technological hurdles that bridge the gap between comfortable and complete immersion (100% audio & visual simulation), a blend (AR), and 100% real world. We also needs to better address other immersive factors such as haptics and interfacing, because as you increase the potency in one area (visuals) the requirements in other areas start to rise as the playing field demands completeness or risks breaking that desired immersion level.
Even without those technologies current VR is quite different in terms of social presence to interacting on a flat screen. A lot of body language comes through even just tracking the head and hands.
I think we’re quite a bit away from having mass adoption of VR though. But that’s more form factor and comfort.
Would a high quality VR version of Zoom/Teams be awesome? Of course it would, it would be freaking amazing! But the “metaverse” ain't that, it's supposed to be a virtual universe (hence the name), where everything happens, including games, watching movies, etc. A gigantic MMORPG, containing every possible kind of online interaction and games. And this part is complete bullshit.
Which user story seems the most likely:
- the user open the app, select their contact or group, puts the VR headset on, join the chat room.
- the user puts the VR headset on, login in in “virtual flat”, go out, jump in his virtual (flying, as a DLC) car, and go to a virtual bar where your friends are waiting.
Only the second one is worth the “metaverse” name (the first one being just a “virtual chat over the internet”®), and even if it could be really fun in the beginning, and could even have a decent success as an MMO, it won't be the mainsteam way of communication.
Do they fail? I don't thinks so, when I e.g. play D&D like games over voice only chat + a shared map it totally convoys the "felling of being together" (just one of many examples).
On the other side when in-person sitting in a conference room where a person takes 30min to convey some (for me) mostly irrelevant facts which could have been summarized in a single slide there isn't really any "feeling together" and weather I'm sitting there or at home or use a headset on a train station makes literally no difference.
What makes people "feel together" is interaction and being focused together on a specific think. This doesn't need VR or AR at all.
Also what people totally forget is that moving company meetings and similar into VR has a number of problems:
- everyone needs to have a VR headset with them and a reasonable good internet connection
- everyone needs to be able to use a VR headset, but even with the best headset there are tons of people out there which get motion sickness from it (or from many things which convey 3D weather it's in VR or in a PC game) this people are much less rare then many thing.
- the platform needs to convey the feeling, as I mentioned above "just putting it in VR" doesn't mean it works. Also more important the "virtual venue" you meet has no reason to be anything like the real world, like at all. So there is no reason to replicate all the limitations from the real world. But Facebook seems to be exactly trying to do this.
Facebook positioned themself well by owning one of the most affordable VR headsets.
But the meta-verse thing isn't looking too good IMHO.
What companies want isn't a virtual world, but a virtual meeting room.
What people want is being whatever they want to be in VR, and potentially have different identities for different social cycles (mainly work, friends, family). So not quite what Facebook is building, to some degree even the opposite thing.
High-fidelity, lifesize, no stuttering, etc. plus collaborative docs and I'm pretty sure you may have a better experience than VR.
- full photonic override (HMDs -> passthrough visors (lynx-r is a half step) -> passthrough swim goggles -> contact lenses)
- partial photonic override (HoloLens -> AR glasses -> contact lenses)
- magic windows (google’s thing)
They all have trade offs but the first track in particular it is an error to look at current form factors as a fixed condition. They will be changing rapidly insofar as traction and/or investment continues.
As in you'd have an external VR unit that's as bulky as needed to handle face tracking, photonic override, etc. without any direct physical contact or uncomfortable accessories. Does that kind of tech sound further or closer than contact lenses, or would it be so different as to be hard to say?
When we have Star Trek's transporters, we can achieve "social presence". Until then, you can have "this is cool". There is a real problem with VR: it requires way more focus and attention that being live, in person. Where VR does shine is shared experiences you can't have in real life. Those shared experiences are really cool, but are not such that people want to have them whenever they want to interact with grandma or Bob in accounting.
> it’s all about removing the need for physical co-location to communicate, work, and spend time together with full social presence.
We already have technology that may be "good enough". The issue with VR is that it requires so much cognitive effort to work... so you really are dealing with something that is cool. Cool to the level that it seems magical, but not cool enough to beat the ease we can communicate via other channels. Playing a flight sim with VR? actually great. Trying to have a conversation with my kids via VR? Not so great.
Note this has nothing to do with photo realism, seeing the physical form of people, or cool immersive environments. It’s the feeling of unmediated communication.
I suspect you haven’t actually tried hanging out with your kids in VR on a reasonable setup when they are physically far away from you. I’d suggest trying it to get a more concrete view on what is probably going to happen with regards to physical co-locality and it’s value prop.
However, that has nothing to do with the "metaverse". Metaverse is just a fancy word Facebook is trying to establish to somehow rebrand their walled-off social media platforms.
All this "body language" talk neglects that vr tracks at most your head and hands. Not how people are stood, or even facial expressions. "Body language" indeed. Too day nothing of the whirly Hurley motion sickness from it.
Maybe one day, but I put it in the same bucket as fusion.
Motion sickness goes down with each generation and is also largely a function of software design anyway. You’re very behind the curve.
Edit: All I'm saying is that the metaverse is not some new concept. It's bascially social media enabled by the internet, but for some reason we start calling it metaverse when access through the medium of VR.
> That is the core capability that will disrupt all industry, it is more a matter of when not if.
Sure, but the "when" is trying to be forced down our throats. The media is perplexed by it in the same way they are about autonomous vehicles. We know its the future but tech oligarchs are trying to slam something down our throat with marketing/pr BS because they're scared shitless they'll lose their position on top of the throne. Most revolutionary tech has come from underdogs (Apple's iPod and iPhone come to mind, Zoom for video conferencing) and not from already established firms saying "this is the future, take this now".
The web 1.0 and 2.0 way of thinking if we build the product, then we own the community.
The web 3.0 way of thinking is there are existing communities out there (BAYC, Punks, etc.) that we can enable to use our product and come into our space.
And this is already happening.
It seems to me that they need Twitter (and Discord, etc) way more than the other way around. No enabling required.
Their parties this last week in NYC for NFT week pretty much locked them as the model to strive for. I don't know if others can do it, but they've set the standard.
C'mon. This is very "rich nerds desperately trying to be cool", it's not an actual thing that normal people will ever care about. We already have status symbols that you can show off in the real world.
I disagree with the whole “value of ownership” thing. Making knock off nfts is trivial, so this relies on people caring enough about provenance to police this and shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment.
Digital goods can be copied for free. It’s the killer feature of digital. No more scarcity!! Any system that fails to embrace this will be outcompeted long term. See the music industry.
Because the bullying at school for having non-brand clothing or things wasn't enough. You'll need Supreme(TM) nfts, or become a digital pariah?
People care about status and authenticity.
Imagine a virtual world where
1. You have the validate you are an avatar you own
2. You can be anything you want
The virtual world 1 is way more interesting because it's authentic and the people of status will want to use it and people of less status will build towards being higher status.
E.g. if someone _does_ try to create an NFT for the Mona Lisa, our ability to refute / accept its authenticity is premised on the knowledge that in the real world, the French Republic itself owns the work. How would we trust that the keys associated with minting the NFT were controlled by the French Republic? Presumably we'd need some public statement of attestation from an official French government body, and perhaps with the concurrence of others, to have confidence that this wasn't a rogue intern at the Ministry of Culture, or a hacker that got control to some official accounts or pages.
But applying this logic to "avatars" seems to be either broken or creepy. Who has the authority to say that you are or aren't you?
You’re presuming a scenario where the structure of government changes is the same as a civilizational collapse. That’s not a given.
> Future metaverse platforms will partner with high quality communities
How does one decide authenticity?
> That's the whole innovation behind the blockchain. Decentralized ownership claims.
And once you have an answer to such a question (relying on some preexisting system of ownership in the real world), then why should we care about tokens?
> For example, you could care about the token for the specific "metaverse" you're playing in
Who has the authority to say that you are or aren't you?
> I think you're touching on a very philosophically deep question of who you are. You think that the things you are and that you own are inherently yours, but I would argue your stuff and even your identity is all a social construct.
> For example, if you woke up tomorrow and everyone around you collectively agreed to say that you're insane and that you're an alien. Are you going to trust your own memories or are you going to trust the people around you.
> But I think you're missing out on the core innovation of blockchain which mimics the same way we determine who owns anything, which is completely a social construct.
To my layperson's view (this is def not my wheelhouse), either such an authority exists (even if it's a foundation backed by several "actors who align based on shared interests"), in which case we're going to be required to trust it so we may as well drop the overhead of the blockchain, or no such authority exists, and there's a potentially high degree of fragmentation among platforms recognizing different subsets of ownership (or identity, or canonicity of speech or whatever), in which case ... is it a metaverse or just a bunch of distinct rooms?
> There really won’t be another platform turnover to try to correct the error and disrupt the existing players as there has been for the last several computing platform changes.
What makes you say that with such apparent confidence?
As far as “the final platform” bit, it’s an opinion but if you presume we get to a point where most humans are having their auditory and visual systems being overridden by a hardware/software computing stack, it’s hard to think of a breakout event from that that is analogous to eg PC -> mobile. There will be competition and iteration, but overall the inputs and outputs to that system are (body state) -> (photons, sound) and that seems like it won’t really change for a long time, if ever, so harder to disrupt at the root.
The "metaverse" (not Facebook's) can be an open source platform where anyone can create their own worlds which accept the items they've added support for. This is the direction Decentraland is going in.
The core libraries to build your world will be open source and standardized, like a game engine, but the actual content will be up to the creators.
What use are NFTs in such a world? If it's permissioned anyway, and there's only a few approved vendors, you can do this with a database. Suppose you already developed a Roblox/Fortnite/Minecraft metaverse, why do you want NFTs on top of that?
Ponder that question and you'll have your answer.
What does a Google/Facebook/Microsoft metaverse want NFTs for? Once you start enforcing permissions on which issuers the metaverse honors, the metaverse might as well skip the whole NFT thing and use a database.
It's unlikely there will be one decentralized world (maybe a lobby of some sort, akin to a website directory on the early internet), but instead an Engine + SDK that allows anyone to build their own worlds and choose what NFT's are useable inside it. These worlds can be registered to Ethereum and then users can easily explore and congregate in whatever worlds they wish.
How about a virtual world of no ownership? Why must we give the wealthy yet another venue to lord their status over us?
I am very tired of watching humans constantly try to impose real-world economic scarcity into a digital land of infinite plenty. Rather than fight the nature of a digital economy, why not embrace it?
Besides, NFTs actually embrace your philosophy: allow copies, and shift scarcity elsewhere to things like social status. It is not DRM, obviously. You should be a fan.
Permitting ownership enables an unnecessary layer of stratification that humanity is best without, in a rare environment that actually allows for the lack of it.
Such is the nature of idealism. It is a shame we allow a world of plenty to artificially lock up value so a few people can feel better than others
Alternatively, why is a piece of data not allowed to just be? You can see this everywhere, even outside the digital world and in the realm of the mind. An idea is never allowed to stand on its own merits, we always have to attach our bullshit culture to it
Your proposed world is to say we ought to just not have people create lots of stuff they would have otherwise, in the name upholding a philosophical principle. Which is fine, but own that, and don’t act as though its the just the deficiencies of others leading to a world where you do not get a endless stream of value from them.
If it would mean less profiteers, less fakers, less pretenders, less sharks, less debutantes, less tourists... I'm all for it.
There are plenty of ways to profit as an artist without locking up one's work to a privileged few
Will the artistic landscape be different? Sure. But it would be a worthy change.
NFTs are dumb but so is the concept of no ownership in a way that conflates definitions so.
If it is popular to have say a World Tree in a pool as your spawn point and said map is a popular one you would still have instance ownership even if the map itself is free software. Having your own instance would be found preferrable to most compared to a common flooded one with millions clipping through each other and trolls rampant.
I don't really understand how lack of ownership strips the ability to shard instances.
> because they are the ones making, running, and maintaining the goddamned servers in question!
They are, because they are most capable. But do not underestimate that others do so as well, often in a much more just and equitable fashion. (See: The Pirate Bay/private trackers vs Spotify or Youtube)
And watch what you call juvenile, that perspective explains the world so much more clearly than any explanation that the guilty might offer
Remote communication tools like video conferencing fail to deliver what academics call “social presence”, which is the feeling of being together in unmediated communication. VR and AR have the necessary capabilities to do so, and deliver social presence on par with face to face. With a fully immersive experience, you can feel like you are standing next to a person talking to them, regardless of their physical location. Body language, eye contact, etc all come through.
That is the core capability that will disrupt all industry, it is more a matter of when not if. The current hardware clearly is not hitting the mark for sudden mass adoption. The hardware will eventually, even if we have to wait until it becomes something like sunglasses or even contact lenses.
From first principles, having computers override what photons you see will have huge effects, but don’t focus so much on the shiny video game world aspects: it’s all about removing the need for physical co-location to communicate, work, and spend time together with full social presence. This is why Zuck bought Oculus, and why he has pivoted his company around the entire thing. It’s not because of “Ready Player One”, but because he feels that hardware/software will modulate most person to person communication soon, and he wants it to be his stack.