There are already concerts with paid tickets going on in platforms like Fortnite, that just happen to be able to act as multi-user VR environments, even though that wasn't their designed purpose. The demand is real.
I don't see it as much of a bet that "people are already creating these events, and want to build professional services around doing so; these people would appreciate a platform to run such events on that won't be shut down/go unmaintained in two years just because the game that the platform was built for ceases to be relevant; and people who pay to attend these events are willing to download a client to consume the content they paid for." That just seems to be a series of common-sense facts to me.
Whether Facebook can actually end up as the platform of choice for hosting said events is entirely non-obvious. But, if nothing else, they do have connections, channel partners, global scale to deploy reliable infrastructure that can be trusted to not buckle under event load, etc. It's up in the air how much things like "the aesthetics of the experience" really matter, compared to those. How much does a band care about the aesthetics of the venue?
You have that the other way around. Fortnite was able to host a concert because people like to play Fortnite. There is no demand for VR concerts, there is perhaps some demand for concerts in already-populated online spaces.
People aren't flocking to Fortnite because of the concerts. People who play Fortnite are flocking to these concerts when they happen in their game.
Megan Thee Stallion, Billie Eilish, and the Foo Fighters are all releasing VR concerts this year.
My wife, who has never played Fortnite, attended several VR concerts over the past few years.
Given how popular listening to music is on services like Youtube, I believe it is short-sighted to fail to see the appeal of an immersive 3D-audio VR experience for music fans.
New toys are fun to play with, for a bit. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to stick around or have much long term relevance.
There's no demand to watch computer animated concerts through heavy glasses in Fortnite coming from people who don't already spend a bunch of time playing Fortnite. This is an add-on to Fortnite, not anything that anybody really wants to do for its own sake.
What's the point of watching a computer animated "concert" in VR anyway? Who would get any joy out of that?
There is no way to convey this without being a little bit of a jerk, but I think your take demonstrates being out of touch, in the "no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame, also Dropbox is just some tooling around rsync" sense that HN tends to get sometimes. This is enough of a phenomenon that other mainstream artists are starting to get into it, which means there are enough people getting joy out of it for it to have a market of its own.
I think you ignore the metaverse (the concept, not Facebook's janky implementation) at your own peril. The next generation is growing up with virtual concerts, and in many cases virtual artists.
[1] https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/travis-scott-fortnite-...
And that's not counting the upcoming stuff. Trying to write off something this successful as a pandemic driven fad kinda speaks to that whole being out of touch thing I was talking about.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/28/22699014/fortnite-soundwa...
If they can execute (I believe they can't) and if the Metaverse is the next huge thing that some are predicting (I think their vision is too dependent on VR/AR magically becoming practical)
They still have a huge reputation issue; they are already bleeding users on FB and Insta.
They need a miracle.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1222146/xr-headset-shipm...
I mean, engagement, not market share, total time spent by users with the headset on.
My intuition is that 90% of that "market share" is collecting dust.
As for that new intuition, what good reason is there to believe Oculus headsets are so vastly underused after-purchase compared to competitors? And what has that to do with Meta's reputational issues?
Because everybody I know who's bought a VR headset (any brand) lets it collect dust after a month, and I don't think that's a fluke. Buying a VR headset is not using a VR headset.
The company sure has reputational issues, but as much as people hate it (I have my own deep issues with it), it's not stopping the larger masses of people from using their products. In fact, >85% of humans (ex-China) with an Internet connection to their apps and >70% of VR headset purchasers.
Whether VR is a fad, people who buy headset find long-lived utility from them or the push is a good/bad bet for $META is unrelated to what I meant to say, which is their reputation is not stopping them from currently dominating the VR space (non-premium only so far, but maybe with Cambria). Doesn't seem reasonable to think the 7-8 digits of current VR enthusiasts are less morally principled then the 9-10 figure masses would be.
Thats like trying to tag your kid as a Heisman trophy winner as the kid is being birthed. Sure be a proud parent but understand you are delusional.
Facebook is a company with nearly two decades of big tech experience, 40,000+ employees, and unfathomable amounts of capitol/IP/assets. To see them make the same logical leap as a two person startup of fresh-out-of-college optimists.
That'd amount to converting 30% of all Facebook users to VR users, worldwide, in four months. Including a bunch of users internationally who don't even own computers, and certainly can't afford VR hardware. "Delusional" is absolutely the word for it.
I am curious, but I have low expectations.
Who says they’re replacing ads with VR?
It's a moon shot, but I wouldn't call it dumb, it's actually a pretty obvious business decision. Keep in mind, Oculus (now being rebranded as Meta) is currently the preeminent VR platform and has sold more devices than every other competitor combined. This is a potentially huge opportunity for them to expand their social media reach into a completely pristine market that they already dominate. Meta is in a unique opportunity to define the future of VR, it'd be dumb not to try something like this.
Of course, none of this addresses the abysmal branding or Meta's horrible reputation or the public's perception of Zuck as the herald of a technocratic dystopia. I also agree that VR will indefinitely remain within the realm of videogames, and gaming is not in Meta's DNA which I think will probably be their biggest barrier to success. Still... they own the VR market, they also have plenty of cash on hand, and that goes a very long way when trying to make the impossible possible, e.g. the xbox...
Also, MS had quite a bit of experience in building/maintaining a platform for developers.
Frankly, we're not talking about the same kind of leap.
I don't want to strap a thing to my face and "be in VR" for a long period of time, navigating menus by pressing giant virtual buttons or pointing lasers at them. I want to, while using google maps on a phone or computer, be able to hold the headset up to my face and look around briefly and then take it back off. Same with data visualizations, 3D models, short-form entertainment, etc.
Standing in VR looking at loading screens is an awful experience. It should already be loaded to what I want to do.
It's hard to imagine Meta making that pivot since they seem to want to have a walled garden like Apple's. But they could at the very least make navigating/loading by a phone app an option. Even track the phone in VR, have a mirrored twin of it (with a kind of blown-up holographic version of it you can more easily read), that you can use in and outside of VR, and instead of their controllers.
I see it as an attempt to keep propping up the stock value, I don't even think they believe it themselves
Talk to anyone you know who works at Meta - it's obviously the top thing on Zuck's mind (and that's been clear every Thursday for years now). FRL is getting huge funding in a way it wouldn't if this were just to prop value.
(personally, I admire that - FB has pushed VR technology forward a couple of generations, singlehandedly)
10 Billions a year.
edit: it coincided with fb reporting saturated user numbers
Whether Meta can execute on the metaverse bet is fair question, but I expect most of the changes they are envisioning will come one way or another.
There's a lot of IP and patent rights to be gained. Even if Metabook shrinks back, they will always have a possible revenue stream in enforcing those rights and collecting royalties on newcomers to the VR market.
Second, Meta is a huge corporation, the money makers don't let the kids play for too long, and they won't let Zuck burn all the cash, no matter how much theoretical power he has in his hands, they won't let him bleed the cash cow to death.
Third, we have enough History to see a pattern, Nokia and Kodak saw the iceberg, it didn't matter.
And small things like Carmack leaving and Zuck being delusional are clear hints of what is going on internally.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAL2JZxpoGY
Just a ton of little things. Woman floating horizontally in space. Possible to render. Not possible to convey to the player. Cards, basically impossible to actually have cards that have good physics in a networked game like that. The smooth floaty motion and spinning is particularly dumb.
You could just have head and hand tracking with the rest of the body rigged and animated separate from the tracking. Player doesn't control the legs, they just dangle and animate.
The cards are technically possible. The trick is you just fake the physics. It doesn't need to be networked in a low latency way at all.
I would say the least realistic is the fine grained tracking and handling of things as thin as cards. Hand tracking isn't tight enough to manipulate a hand of cards naturally yet. That said, if you give some leeway to what the first person UX is vs how other avatars are displayed, its not so far off from whats possible especially if you would allow "reveal your hand and have it float away in zero G" to be pre-canned animations that the user triggers.
But you cannot feel that way. Yes, you can render it. You cannot make a player actually feel like they're there. You can't have fun doing loops like that. Even if we could somehow suppress the immense nausea of doing it, you would not be having fund doing a loop because you are not doing a loop. This is the big lie of VR. It's just the eyes, not the body, and there's a huge difference. You arguably get more bodily immersion with a 3rd person view watching your avatar's body do things.
"I am the person I'm watching doing the thing" > "I'm literally me, and I'm going to try to believe that the weird body ik is what I'm doing".
Ready Player One (which I don't like but is the poster child for fake VR UX) does this a lot with subtle things, like the characters jump from a precarious ledge and then struggle for balance on the precipice. That's impossible to achieve! You may struggle for balance irl, you may put balance mechanics into your game, but you cannot force a player to FEEL off balance because their VR foot is now on a ledge.
> I would say the least realistic is the fine grained tracking and handling of things as thin as cards. Hand tracking isn't tight enough to manipulate a hand of cards naturally yet. That said, if you give some leeway to what the first person UX is vs how other avatars are displayed, its not so far off from whats possible especially if you would allow "reveal your hand and have it float away in zero G" to be pre-canned animations that the user triggers.
There's a really big gap between what they're implying and what we can actually do though. Cards are super thin, and bendy. You can stack them together. You can manipulate them with your fingers. You can fan them out and shuffle them. Paper thin collisions are not something that any game engine really tries to support. You get fake deformation (bending) of meshes, but it's always kind of shit. The physics of it is extremely difficult to do, and trying to replicate that level of precision is probably impossible in the foreseeable future for a number of reasons including the ones you mention.
Can you make a great player UX with cards? Absolutely. You can do all sorts of stuff to give the visual implication of bendy cards and shuffling and fancy finger work. But you cannot actually let the players do it with their hands. You're not there. You're interacting with a very, very high level interface to the game world. We won't ever get the user experience meta is implying. It's pretty much impossible without a fundamental shift in how game engines work.
I think something that can improve the remote work experience could be worth a lot. It’s still to early to judge.
They will survive, but they will bleed and shrink a lot, and their relevance will likely be insignificant ten years from now.
The Metaverse bet is dumb, they simply can't execute and even if they could this whole Metaverse thing is likely to stay in the videogame's realm for a very long time.