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Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#151

Post by msoad »

gfodor wrote: post #146

It’s simple really, and most commenters don’t “get” what is going on with all this. 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…

The hardware is so behind this kind of application that Facebook’s pitch sounds like selling billboard ads on future Mars highways!

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#152

Post by tjpnz »

ravenstine wrote: post #136

I would not take marketing around things like VR and AR very seriously because nobody knows whether any of them will catch on, and their track record isn't very good. Oculus, for the most part, is a niche. A lot of people have an Oculus but it's primarily for games, and it hasn't reached the level where everyone's gotta have one . Only time can tell whether Metaverse has something that Second Life did not. My guess i…

>Overall, I think Silicon Valley is overestimating people's willingness to wear headsets and paddles for extended periods of time.

I think the issue is that a significant portion of the population will have issues consuming the content and not ending up with eye strain or getting sick. It was one of the factors which killed off the resurgence of 3D in the 2010s and VR headsets suffer from many of the same problems.

Bumping up the frame rate didn't fix it, nor did all the other tricks cinematographers and cinemas employed to make stereo screenings less jarring.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#153

Post by charlesju »

gfodor wrote: post #146

It’s simple really, and most commenters don’t “get” what is going on with all this. 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…

I agree this is one facet, but other is we now have a trustless ownership protocol (ie. cryto + NFTs) that will lay the foundation for people "caring" about the stuff and status you have in the metaverse.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#154

Post by manquer »

nowherebeen wrote: post #115
manquer wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that different from FB 1.0 or apple under jobs for that matter ?. Money is always needed, but money alone is not enough. Every funded startup has some money, many have raised a ton of money only to fail badly. Also it is not his money i.e. he is not selling/leveraging his FB stock to invest personally. FB is investing shareholder money of which he only owns 16.7% .

> FB 1.0 or apple under jobs Two very different companies and scenarios. Jobs as famous for cutting down >10 products product offerings down to 1-2 to refocus the company. His skillset was very much product strategy. He used money mostly for marketing and design. Two things Apple is very much well known for. Facebook is known for copy, acquire, kill. They offer tons of money to try to acquire competitors. If they say…

Control doesn't make it his money. His money is only small fraction of the money being spent.

You made two statements that he is spending his money and spending money makes it not an achievement if it successful.

Neither of it is true , bootstrapping your way to success may make it even more impressive achievement, but success with or without money is difficult achievement that shouldn't be belittled.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#155

Post by ravenstine »

jostmey wrote: post #148
ravenstine wrote: post #136

I would not take marketing around things like VR and AR very seriously because nobody knows whether any of them will catch on, and their track record isn't very good. Oculus, for the most part, is a niche. A lot of people have an Oculus but it's primarily for games, and it hasn't reached the level where everyone's gotta have one . Only time can tell whether Metaverse has something that Second Life did not. My guess i…

Palm pilots didn’t become pervasive. So you could have applied that argument to iPhones. It is a matter of if the technology is ready. When it is, it will take off

That's definitely a factor, but these technologies need to solve real problems for people. Modern phones have a clear advantage over not having one because they are so general purpose. They've effectively out-tricorder'd the tricorders from Star Trek in their usefulness. VR not only pales in comparison to the holodeck, but it isn't clear whether they have any real utility beyond being a toy. Is VR more efficient at relaying information than a standard phone or laptop? That's yet to be seen. Is VR better for socializing than real life or even Discord? Maybe for some people, sure, especially for the immobile or those who can't leave home, but the answer isn't clear for a wide general audience. Does VR help people do their jobs? There are already VR surgical operations, but is Zuckerborg the one who's gonna make it even better?

My best guess is that until we can beam visions directly into our eyes and brains, VR will end up in a similar domain as 3D printers (remember all those articles touting how we would have "santa claus machines" in every home by now?). For the average person, 3D printers don't solve anything despite how many people would consider a 3D printer to be a "cool" thing. Most people won't deny the cool-factor of VR, but that doesn't mean they will use it for any reason. After all, personal computing didn't really take off until it started to solve more problems for the average person other than word processing and playing Oregon Trail. (yes I'm oversimplifying, don't jump down my throat, I was using computers before we had the web)

Again, I don't really know, and nobody really does. Maybe people will want to join the Metaverse. Hopefully Zuckerborg doesn't set back the adoption of VR by virtue of association with Facebook.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#156

Post by Havoc »

gfodor wrote: post #146

It’s simple really, and most commenters don’t “get” what is going on with all this. 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…

Pretty clear explanation. Thanks for posting

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#157

Post by meheleventyone »

msoad wrote: post #151
gfodor wrote: post #146

It’s simple really, and most commenters don’t “get” what is going on with all this. 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…

The hardware is so behind this kind of application that Facebook’s pitch sounds like selling billboard ads on future Mars highways!

It’s surprisingly not that far behind. We’re already close to having commercial headsets with full-body tracking, eye tracking and facial tracking.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#158

Post by gfodor »

msoad wrote: post #151
gfodor wrote: post #146

It’s simple really, and most commenters don’t “get” what is going on with all this. 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…

The hardware is so behind this kind of application that Facebook’s pitch sounds like selling billboard ads on future Mars highways!

No, there is a study that was done on PC rift hardware that showed it was already competitive with f2f on most measures of social presence except for facial expressions (which makes sense, given the lack of facial tracking.)

The bottleneck for adoption is probably mostly about UX, comfort, norms, marketing, etc. Not raw capabilities.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#159

Post by coffeefirst »

jostmey wrote: post #148
ravenstine wrote: post #136

I would not take marketing around things like VR and AR very seriously because nobody knows whether any of them will catch on, and their track record isn't very good. Oculus, for the most part, is a niche. A lot of people have an Oculus but it's primarily for games, and it hasn't reached the level where everyone's gotta have one . Only time can tell whether Metaverse has something that Second Life did not. My guess i…

Palm pilots didn’t become pervasive. So you could have applied that argument to iPhones. It is a matter of if the technology is ready. When it is, it will take off

Sure, but it was always clear what the palm pilot was for, even if the early versions were scrappy they had use cases that made sense.

Re: Ask HN: How is the “metaverse” concept different from the Second Life boom?

#160

Post by manquer »

retrocryptid wrote: post #87
manquer wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

honestly I am not sure how actually are they spending that kind of money. I dont see a ton of fb recruiters hiring for VR skills, I dont see a lot of training/certifications /open source libraries /platform Sdks for other devs etc that feels like $10B a year kind of budgets are behind VR/AR. That's a lot of money, Hard space companies like SpaceX or Blue Origin which have big hardware expenses spend only 1-2 billon/y…

you're looking in the wrong place. i have reality labs recruiters calling me frequently and my linked in feed is a never ending cascade of sponsored posts about how working ar FB^H^HMMVRS is so much fun.

> FB^H^HMMVRS No sure what this meant

I am sure FB is recruiting, my point is not that reality labs is fake , I am sure it is real and they do recruit, it just that I don't see recruitment that would signal that large a number of investment.

I wasn't saying from a personal engineer anecdotal experience, but as some one working in recruitment tech, I keep an eye on industry patterns.

I could be wrong in my impression but I think they are just doing bit of creative accounting on existing expenses to show high spends on their flagship project.

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