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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?

#251

Post by tehbeard »

nkingsy wrote: post #183
delecti wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Never say never. A “stuff” import seems like the kind of feature that would have to be copied by other platforms as soon as one does it, but there’s a chicken and egg aspect. I disagree with the whole “value of ownership” thing. Making knock off nfts is trivial, so this relies on people caring enough about provenance to police this and shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment. Digital goods can…

> shame people that have knock offs in their virtual environment

Because the bullying at school for having non-brand clothing or things wasn't enough. You'll need Supreme(TM) nfts, or become a digital pariah?

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

#252

Post by gfodor »

johnny53169 wrote: post #242
gfodor wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re posting here is “common knowledge”, but it is actually in conflict with social presence research. VR beats video conferencing even without any facial tracking, and the abject failure of video conferencing in the pandemic to replace most of the feeling of face to face communication should be enough to convince people there is merit to the studies that have been done showing it scores poorly. In VR you mult…

> In VR you multitask by bringing the computing environment into the virtual environment. So there is no deficit there. Writing/typing would be really bad in VR though, and that's a major need for meetings, I don't see a good solution for that.

The solution is you use a keyboard and mouse. No need to reinvent the wheel. It can be brought in via passthrough camera tracking.

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

#253

Post by gfodor »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #241
gfodor wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you’re posting here is “common knowledge”, but it is actually in conflict with social presence research. VR beats video conferencing even without any facial tracking, and the abject failure of video conferencing in the pandemic to replace most of the feeling of face to face communication should be enough to convince people there is merit to the studies that have been done showing it scores poorly. In VR you mult…

And the actual benefit of the feeling of face to face communication is?

We spend a sizable % of US energy moving physical bodies around, so apparently people do in fact like face to face communication.

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

#254

Post by mulderc »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #240
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…

All of these points could start with the word, "Currently, ". Don't you think having one of the world largest companies throwing massive amounts of time and money into these issues could solve a few of these?

Given that several of the largest and wealthiest companies (google and Microsoft) in the world can’t make decent chat apps and meta seems unable to make a product that doesn’t incite ethnic tensions around the world. I’m skeptical of such organizations to solve many of these issues.

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

#255

Post by gfodor »

buu700 wrote: post #250
gfodor wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah the headsets are a distraction, the way to think about this is there are three distinct tech tracks: - full photonic override (HMDs -> passthrough visors (lynx-r is a half step) -> passthrough swim goggles -> contact lenses) - partial photonic override (HoloLens -> AR glasses -> contact lenses) - magic windows (google’s thing) They all have trade offs but the first track in particular it is an error to look at c…

Rather than contact lenses, how plausible would it be to project an image into someone's eyes from a distance? As in you'd have an external VR unit that's as bulky as needed to handle face tracking, photonic override, etc. without any direct physical contact or uncomfortable accessories. Does that kind of tech sound further or closer than contact lenses, or would it be so different as to be hard to say?

Yeah I would put that into the same bucket as contact lenses: really hard to imagine tech in terms of execution, but probably possible from first principles. The invariant is basically if code is determining what photons you see, and if it has full governance or partial governance (ie, the real world has the ability to leak in or not.)

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

#256

Post by gfodor »

mulderc wrote: post #254
AlwaysRock wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these points could start with the word, "Currently, ". Don't you think having one of the world largest companies throwing massive amounts of time and money into these issues could solve a few of these?

Given that several of the largest and wealthiest companies (google and Microsoft) in the world can’t make decent chat apps and meta seems unable to make a product that doesn’t incite ethnic tensions around the world. I’m skeptical of such organizations to solve many of these issues.

The progression from DK1 to Quest 2 proves that effective technological miracles are in the reach of Facebook’s VR group. It’s pretty insane what has been done so far.

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

#257

Post by gfodor »

tehbeard wrote: post #248
shafyy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ... social presence is the most underrated aspect of VR ... Of course, it's not there yet, ... All this "body language" talk neglects that vr tracks at most your head and hands. Not how people are stood, or even facial expressions. "Body language" indeed. Too day nothing of the whirly Hurley motion sickness from it. Maybe one day, but I put it in the same bucket as fusion.

No, we were doing full body tracking with perception neuron inertial sensors tracking 7 years ago in AltspaceVR. My guess is the zero cost option is going to be using a home mirror, as recently demoed. It can also be done with outside in cameras, was done with Kinect literally almost a decade ago or with lighthouse pucks from valve 4-5 years ago. Facial and eye tracking will almost certainly be in the next meta headset.

Motion sickness goes down with each generation and is also largely a function of software design anyway. You’re very behind the curve.

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

#258

Post by shafyy »

gfodor wrote: post #223
shafyy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree Facebook is kinda taking their eye off the prize by focusing on the metaverse concepts. But they’re not dumb, they understand what I wrote above, so there might be a reason this is being done towards that end.

No, they are not dumb at all. That's why they are rebranding "social media" as "metaverse" and trying to own the whole stack (hardware + software) this time around. They are not taking their eye off the prize. The VR tech they build is objectively amazing, and if they continue like this they will own the biggest VR social network, at least initially.

Edit: All I'm saying is that the metaverse is not some new concept. It's bascially social media enabled by the internet, but for some reason we start calling it metaverse when access through the medium of VR.

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

#259

Post by dathinab »

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…

> 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.

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

#260

Post by gfodor »

tomc1985 wrote: post #249
gfodor wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultimate scarcity is human attention and creativity - so in the limit that will always be a thing that is a form of wealth. The ownership of digital assets (NFTs or not) is fundamentally an output of a system where someone chooses to expend creative energy into making the asset, and traded that opportunity cost off based on the expected outcome. A scenario where that work would not be something they could capture…

But digital is a realm of infinite copying, and where true ownership of bits means that you can never show them off (like Shkreli and that A Tribe Called Quest album). NFT 'ownership' is an additional layer on top of the data that can easily be stripped away, as the exclusivity only exists in the minds of those gullible enough to actually value it. I am very tired of watching humans constantly try to impose real-worl…

People who want to create works that can be infinitely copied, will. People who want to create works that have various kinds of cultural norms imposing scarcity, will. There is no “fight”, it’s just saying that you’d prefer less options for people to choose how to expend their creative energy. Nobody is stopping a person from turning the knob all the way to “infinite free copies,” but the idea here is to make a knob that is granular, multidimensional, and under their control, as opposed to under the control of a few centralized actors.

Besides, NFTs actually embrace your philosophy: allow copies, and shift scarcity elsewhere to things like social status. It is not DRM, obviously. You should be a fan.

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