Re:Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the...
by dathinab on Sunday November 07, 2021 @12:21PM
(#29141375)
> fail to deliver what academics call “social presence”, which is the feeling of being together in unmediated communication
Do they fail? I don't thinks so, when I e.g. play D&D like games over voice only chat + a shared map it totally convoys the "felling of being together" (just one of many examples).
On the other side when in-person sitting in a conference room where a person takes 30min to convey some (for me) mostly irrelevant facts which could have been summarized in a single slide there isn't really any "feeling together" and weather I'm sitting there or at home or use a headset on a train station makes literally no difference.
What makes people "feel together" is interaction and being focused together on a specific think. This doesn't need VR or AR at all.
Also what people totally forget is that moving company meetings and similar into VR has a number of problems:
- everyone needs to have a VR headset with them and a reasonable good internet connection
- everyone needs to be able to use a VR headset, but even with the best headset there are tons of people out there which get motion sickness from it (or from many things which convey 3D weather it's in VR or in a PC game) this people are much less rare then many thing.
- the platform needs to convey the feeling, as I mentioned above "just putting it in VR" doesn't mean it works. Also more important the "virtual venue" you meet has no reason to be anything like the real world, like at all. So there is no reason to replicate all the limitations from the real world. But Facebook seems to be exactly trying to do this.
Facebook positioned themself well by owning one of the most affordable VR headsets.
But the meta-verse thing isn't looking too good IMHO.
What companies want isn't a virtual world, but a virtual meeting room.
What people want is being whatever they want to be in VR, and potentially have different identities for different social cycles (mainly work, friends, family). So not quite what Facebook is building, to some degree even the opposite thing.
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.