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The metaverse is bullshit

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Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#61

Post by gitgud »

VRay wrote: post #20
gitgud wrote: post #9

> "The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet > Being 'inside' a virtual world was never really the important part" Well, the facebook keynote presents a compelling argument how social interaction with VR can be more meaningful than through a 2D screen in many situations. However, what IS bullshit, is the display of obviously fake demonstrations with highly experimental and expe…

What’re you talking about? You can make a low end VR headset out of a $100 smartphone and a $5 plastic box today 5-10 years after VR starts to really take off, you’ll be able to get a decent standalone VR headset for $200 or less. They’ll probably be cheaper to make than laptops or TVs in the long run because of the smaller displays.

> "You can make a low end VR headset out of a $100 smartphone and a $5 plastic box"

Have you ever tried that? Smart phones as VR are extremely disorientating and the latency of the gyro makes it unusable.

I've got an Oculus Quest and it's amazing how well it works using the 4 camera vision-system instead of a gyro.

What they were demonstrating in the meta-verse was facial-tracking attached to VR headsets, which is super expensive experimental technology which is not going to be commercially available for quite some time.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#63

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

Jasper_ wrote: post #52

> In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there,…

In Second Life, you could create islands with their own rules, for example you could create a car racing game. Then when you enter the game, you can not fly around while you play the game. It really was very interesting, and amazing how many things people created in a very short time span.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#64

Post by modeless »

Jasper_ wrote: post #52

> In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there,…

> why the heck am I driving a car around? I can fly, can't I?

By this logic nobody should play Gran Turismo because a Superman game exists.

> You can't test legroom or the seat cushions, because your avatar doesn't don't have a body. So I don't see how you can realistically sell an actual real-world car, because isn't most of its function and design unnecessary in the metaverse?

By this logic it's pointless to make a website to promote your car because you don't need a car to surf the web and you can't test the car by visiting the website.

The web is pretty analogous to the metaverse and the most plausible path to an actual metaverse may be an evolution of the web browser. It's the only platform with a sandbox strong enough to run completely untrusted code on your local device with no centralized gatekeeper manually enforcing rules, which I think is a hard requirement for a real metaverse. Any metaverse contender that doesn't start with that is doomed to eventual irrelevance.

But I don't think, as the author of the article seems to, that today's web is already the metaverse and nothing will change. What really drives platform change is input methods. The iPhone was a new platform because it used capacitive touch instead of mouse and keyboard, and the web evolved with it. The metaverse will be a new platform because it will use still different input methods (yet to be determined, probably not the VR controllers we use today) and the web will have to change again, perhaps more radically this time.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#65

Post by emodendroket »

Jasper_ wrote: post #52

> In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there,…

People are willing to pay thousands of dollars on setups precisely to simulate driving a car in VR. It's not totally implausible that if the VR technology gets convincing enough it could help move some cars too.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#66

Post by emodendroket »

wokwokwok wrote: post #43

the good news is that the metaverse and the tech industry's very expensive obsession with trying to make it a reality will be a schadenfreude generator the likes of which we've never seen before The tech landscape is littered with failed attempts, but we have here two very technically successful companies, Epic and Facebook, both trying to re-imagine the internet as something different. I'm not sure I'd write them of…

I find it hard to see much of a serious case for NFTs, but I mostly agree with what you're saying. Even if it is a "schadenfreude generator," Amazon's attempts at having third-party sales on their site with "zshops" were a laughing stock until they weren't.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#67

Post by NortySpock »

AlexandrB wrote: post #54
gfodor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn’t read my article, or you did, and you aren’t understanding anything I wrote. You do have freedom of form, you are just limited in the forms you can change to. You exercise it every time you get a haircut. The question is about what changes if there are a variety of contexts where it is fair to assume most or all participants have photonic override. You are missing the point: this isn’t about goggles. Take a…

So, this idea of avatarism seems to completely ignore the fact that access to avatars (or technologies that allow "photonic override") will be gatekept by profit-maximizing entities like Apple or Facebook. To me it sounds like just another form of conspicuous consumption where the rich will show off their opulence by buying artisanal avatars (on the blockchain, no doubt) and lording them over the plebs. To see this i…

Wouldn't there be Creative Commons licenced, remixable avatars?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#68

Post by AlexandrB »

Jasper_ wrote: post #52

> In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. "A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn't going to run ads," he said. "They're going to drop their car into the world in real time and you'll be able to drive it around. And they're going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there,…

One way to make money in a metaverse would be to artificially create limitations to what a user can do and then sell them the solutions to those problems. So why not add thirst and hunger meters and then sell food items? Or why not make travel non-instantaneous and then sell faster modes of transit?

This is how heavily-monetized games work today and it's not surprising that some in the industry are salivating at the thought of extending this economic model beyond just entertainment.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#69

Post by fivre »

shafyy wrote: post #39
rklaehn wrote: post #35

I think people should not underestimate this. The presentation is cringeworthy, but VR is very attractive for teenagers and preteens. I know this from personal experience with my kids. Same with the concept of NFTs. Using real money to pay for an in game asset like a fortnite skin is completely natural to them.

What's the connection between NFTs and using real money to pay for Fortnite skins?

The notion that people paying for digital assets means that people will pay for NFTs.

It's meaningless, though, since the same (massive) caveats apply as when cryptocoins tried to claim they were a viable and better alternative to traditional financial services: buying and owning digital assets is entirely possible to handle with existing, more efficient technology.

Nobody that sells digital assets has any reason to buy into whatever purported benefits a distributed system provides other than hype: you don't need a distributed system if you already control all the servers and everyone is fine with that. The subset of customers that will be _REALLY MAD_ that they can't use their Fortnite skins should Epic disappear is vanishingly small.

NFTs don't even have the edge case that they're useful for transactions for illegal goods. It's grifters boosting bullshit trying to make a profit through and through.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#70

Post by rklaehn »

shafyy wrote: post #39
rklaehn wrote: post #35

I think people should not underestimate this. The presentation is cringeworthy, but VR is very attractive for teenagers and preteens. I know this from personal experience with my kids. Same with the concept of NFTs. Using real money to pay for an in game asset like a fortnite skin is completely natural to them.

What's the connection between NFTs and using real money to pay for Fortnite skins?

The idea of paying for an unique digital asset, even if it is just unique by social convention, would not be foreign to my kids.

If you think about it, land ownership is also just a very well established social convention.

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