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The metaverse is bullshit

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101–110 of 780 posts

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#102

Let me be honest: the metaverse may or may not be bullshit. But the Zuck is a doer. Y’all are talkers. Your opinion counts for as much as it did back when you cheered FB down to $13. Y’all don’t have a clue. Blind men trying to describe why color doesn’t matter. Less memory than a nomad. No insight. Lame.

Zuck stole one idea, a good idea, and ran with it.

Everything since has been damage control, copying, and buying.

Zuck is a determined person at the right place at the right time. Nothing wrong with that. But a 'doer' or even idea guy? We'll see.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#103

Yes, we have the internet, but Facebook managed to dominate a huge part of it. No wonder they want to keep their dominance in the next level of it. And I would be careful about calling their domination plans bullshit, seeing as they already succeeded once before. Second Life was phantastic, I still miss it to this day. It just had a very clunky interface, which modern devices like VR gear might improve upon. (I know…

>Yeah, the "absolute hell" of billionaires investing lots of money to create fun and immersive entertainment options for the rest of us. Truly the worst dystopia imaginable?

Yes, the "circuses" part of "bread and circuses".

Superficial appeasement doesn't really outweigh the all the many other unethical actions made by billionaires - in this case, vying for be the proprietary controllers of the literal reality of the future.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#104
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say a sizable majority play Gran Turismo because it's a fun test of skill -- learning the controls of an intricate machine, the layout of the game's tracks, and achieving some form of mastery over it. And I'm also sure some people play it for the fantasy of doing car racing in a safe environment, which is a very dangerous, expensive, and inaccessible sport for a lot of people. So, perhaps I misread Tim Sweeney's…

I have two cars - a 1980 Datsun and a Fiat Spider. They're both a "test of skill". There's no reason it wouldn't be massively fun to play with lots of other cars on tracks or in all kinds of conditions in VR. "Fun test of skill" is the whole point. The original, like, Stephenson-ish "metaverse" was somewhere people fought with swords . This was getting directly at the idea that skill and challenge were more valuable…

You're just describing multiplayer video games. We've already had those for more than 20 years.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#105

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…

Yea, the major problem with this take by the OP author is it assumes that a cynical attitude and some questionable analogies means there is nothing new left to invent in how we use the internet.

This seems extremely dubious to me and also shows a severe lack of humility. There are many very smart people at these companies and Mark Zuckerberg has consistently shown himself to be a canny and innovative founder (even if you dislike him for whatever reason).

It may end up being BS but dismissing it out of hand seems extremely foolish.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#107
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the metaverse is truly a decentralized, collaborative space, how can we add these limitations without others breaking them? If all that's stopping them is code, why wouldn't everyone have all the most powerful items, all the time? If the metaverse ever becomes a reality, I promise I will publish a blog post for people to copy/paste some code to make their own custom overpowered equipment and free food and break th…

Hey now, you wouldn't download a car

who would win: company burning $10,000,000,000 trying to create a brand new capitalist techno-utopia, or 1 GitHub repo boi

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#108
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'd say a sizable majority play Gran Turismo because it's a fun test of skill -- learning the controls of an intricate machine, the layout of the game's tracks, and achieving some form of mastery over it. And I'm also sure some people play it for the fantasy of doing car racing in a safe environment, which is a very dangerous, expensive, and inaccessible sport for a lot of people. So, perhaps I misread Tim Sweeney's…

I thought modeless was wrong and that you weren't discounting the experience of driving, but rather the experience of driving a mediocre car. However, with your followup comment, it seems you're discounting the experience of driving.

Suffice it to say that plenty of people genuinely love driving, both in video games and in the real world.

Flying won't make driving obsolete any more than mountain biking has made hiking and trail running obsolete in places that are accessible to mountain bikes.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#109
post #61
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

I agree other than facial tracking being super expensive or not commercially available, because you can get it right now[1].

[1] https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/facial-tracker/ & https://www.hp.com/us-en/vr/reverb-g2-vr-headset-omnicept-ed...

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#110

Text is mightier than the Metaverse. Kids can do video calls with their smartphones but prefer texting. We could discuss Hacker News stories with video chat but we prefer text. News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors. Once upon a time Amazon was a company that only sold books. Dried ink on dead trees. And in the early internet age this book seller outperformed…

> Billions and billions spent on making movies as polished as possible, yet "I thought the book was better" is what we always hear.

How many people watched game of thrones? How many people read all of the published books in a song of ice and fire? The book might be better but movies and TV are a lot more popular.

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