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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?

#161

Post by nbzso »

From accessibility POV - AR/VR is not an easy and comfortable enough to be mass adopted.

If you have to "wear" your Desktop on your head and put on a "sensors" body costume, guess how much people will do it voluntarily. Yep. Small group of people.

You have to provide something "out of this world" to even think for mass adoption. This in my view is just another data-grabbing platform and push to walled garden SaaS. It is logical big tech to push it hard. Microsoft, Apple, you name it.

And this is in my view the controversy with Facebook. FB is mass social network. Successfully integrated in the daily routine of the "normies" trough several apps.

Suddenly they push Meta, which as I mentioned is clearly small use-case. Branching this as a tool for "immersive" experience is vague attempt for justification and clearly PR move for distracting public from the toxic reality of the company which used dopamine hacks and psychology driven dark UX to become "the next advertising" platform.

Until AR/VR is hologram driven, nothing will come out of this Metaverse. Just some corporations capitalizing on "enthusiast" market and suckling more data than usual.

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

#163

Post by tomp »

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…

Just because "remote social presence / coworking" is the future, doesn't mean that Facebook is on track to capitalize on it.

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.

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

#164

Post by PeterisP »

qdot76367 wrote: post #70
abvdasker wrote: post #60

Second Life allowed for a lot of the NSFW content and interactions that people tend to enjoy both in entertainment and in real life (this is also true of VRChat to some extent). Metaverse will be a sanitized, sterile project for children. Fundamentally the people like Zuckerberg responsible for its execution do not understand what people want, which is why Metaverse has no chance of success.

Guard rails never work completely, even in kids worlds (i.e. the "babboing 4 furni" trend in habbo hotel). NSFW content will always find a way. Always.

What is "babboing 4 furni"? Search seems to find only this very comment for these terms.

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

#165

Post by ToddWBurgess »

As a mobile dev (and former Second Life player), I am skeptical about the metaverse due to limitations of current mobile hardware. Using the metaverse is going to require the screen to always be on and will consume the CPU which leads to a huge battery suck. We already saw this play out with Pokemon Go leading to lots of players to carry around external battery packs.

Unless mobile technology has some major revolution with battery life or Facebook/Meta can find a way to use the metaverse without a screen or sucking battery life, I think mobile tech will severely hinder users from using the metaverse.

Now to bring things back to the original quesion, when Second Life was a thing, mobile tech was mostly flip phones and Blackberries so mobile wasn't an option. Users could only use the desktop and were fine with it because it is all we knew at the time. Being a desktop only application was never an issue for the users. The current demand to support multiple platforms when many of those platforms are not capable of supporting the metaverse is what makes the current metaverse different than Second Life.

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

#166

Post by somewhereoutth »

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…

Until we can see each other's faces in VR, this won't work for social presence. Shrinking everything down to contact lenses (even sunglasses get in the way of social contact) is likely to be beyond us for quite some while if ever. I'd rather not put something in my eye anyway.

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.

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

#167

Post by headsoup »

samuli wrote: post #129
gonehome wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The photo realistic avatars they showed off change this. They were impressive - still in research stage, but it’s not just a cartoon.

Not really sure if photorealistic avatar can really express all the emotions and facial expressions in a detail that people perceive subconsciously. This might lead to people becoming more tone-deaf and having less empathy when reading others.

Not to mention Facebook gathering a dataset that is a virtual replica of your physical self. Imagine how much that would me sold on for...

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

#168

Post by geerlingguy »

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…

I'll start thinking more seriously about it when I know anyone who's not hardcore into gaming, or a deep technologist, who owns one.

I can count on one hand the number of people I know with something like an Oculus.

Two of those people don't use it because they couldn't feel comfortable using it, but they like seeing other people try it out the first time, as a novelty.

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

#169

Post by mettamage »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #166
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…

Until we can see each other's faces in VR, this won't work for social presence. Shrinking everything down to contact lenses (even sunglasses get in the way of social contact) is likely to be beyond us for quite some while if ever. I'd rather not put something in my eye anyway. 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…

You don't need to shrink down, you might be able to scan faces in vr glasses and put them in the vr world

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

#170

Post by paulryanrogers »

manquer wrote: post #65
mherrmann wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with that? That meetings are necessary in modern working life is a fact. So might as well have products and services that make them better on some axes. And it doesn't necessarily have to be just office meetings either. University lectures or tutorials this way also sound pretty cool to me. You could have a student from Taiwan, the US, Germany and Sweden sit in the same classroom and interact, without ha…

The point is not that meetings are not a good application, there really doesn't seem to be a lot of useful productivity stuff beyond that.[1] Also in person meetings are useful over a video call largely because there is lot of information from body language you can pick up being up close to someone. There is a lot of information on how someone breathes, moves or posture etc. AFAIK there is no good VR solution that is…

> Also in person meetings are useful over a video call largely because there is lot of information from body language you can pick up being up close to someone. There is a lot of information on how someone breathes, moves or posture etc.

I keep hearing this but don't feel I've lost anything working fully remote for the last five years. Are there experiments proving that a call with high quality audio is so much worse in business than a physical meeting?

Perhaps I'm just not perceptive enough to pick up on all the nonverbal cues. Though even if so I think calls are more equitable and accessible.

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