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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?

#171

Post by delecti »

charlesju wrote: post #153
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.

The virtual stuff you "own" in virtual environments are going to be siloed in individual companies' ecosystems. Just like GTA Online is never going to give me any sort of benefit from the fancy sword I have in World of Warcraft, neither is Facebook/Meta going give me any benefit from the couch I have in whatever system Microsoft or Valve puts out. NFTs are never going to materialize into that sort of cross-ecosystem unified ownership because no large company benefits from honoring assets obtained in another company's ecosystem.

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

#172

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#173

Post by pessimizer »

eismcc wrote: post #122
brundolf wrote: post #54

My question with the metaverse concept is always, "Why? What's the point?" I can think of two parties that have their own answers: 1) A certain group of people who like computers and grew up reading sci-fi think it would be cool; some even tell themselves it's very important, but for vague reasons that they can't really articulate 2) Centers of capital are interested in it as yet another platform for consumption, att…

Maybe like Ready Player One, people will use Meta if the outside / real word sucks enough. Here you can be anything you want to be…

Only if what you want to be is two floating eyes and two floating hands in a videogame.

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

#174

Post by roywiggins »

charlesju wrote: post #153
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.

What stops me from minting an NFT that says I own anything I want? If platforms are only honoring NFTs minted by other platforms then they might as well just share that information in a database.

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

#175

Post by snarf21 »

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…

Yeah, I think the main use case for VR will be just be porn with connected devices. I do think there is some ability to do a VR-ish remote tele-presence use case. Think Google Street View data capture for walking the Great Wall of China. So real life data used to power a VR world you can explore as you wish.

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

#176

Post by runnerup »

mettamage wrote: post #169
somewhereoutth wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The HP Omnicept, based on the Reverb G2, adds a camera that points at the lower half of the face and a Tobii eye tracker looking at the eyes.

You could do a LOT of avatar face reconstruction with that.

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

#177

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

gfodor wrote: post #158
msoad wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Laughable - that's like saying "this cake has 80% of the required ingredients, we're almost there with the exception of flour and sugar".

The uncanny valley on the raw capabilities of these current products is a grand canyon. Holodeck it ain't.

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

#178

Post by [deleted] »

mettamage wrote: post #169
somewhereoutth wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#179

Post by footlose_3815 »

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…

We all just need our own Council of Thirteen (From the Venture Bros)

https://i.cdn.turner.com/adultswim/big/image-upload/thumbnai...

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

#180

Post by shafyy »

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 that social presence is the most underrated aspect of VR, especially from people who have never tried it. Of course, it's not there yet, but if you experience it today you can see glimpses of how it will be in the future.

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.

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