Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The metaverse is bullshit

outline.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 780 posts

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#121

Post by wruza »

narrator wrote: post #78
modeless wrote: post #64

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…

VR is great for video games, sure. What if I don't like video games though?

What do you like?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#122

Post by masswerk »

I think, one aspect mostly overlooked is the media aspect of the Metaverse.

We love media. A medium is a type of projection of a perceived reality and/or an imagination. The important word here is "projection": This includes distortion, bias, texture, it's never lossless, it introduces artefacts, it's also a kind of hashing as we transgress dimensions, projection comes with boundaries and constraints, and by this creates a specific horizon. We love that sort of thing. (For the programmers out there: This is also true for programming languages: these provide a specific projection as a medium for functional thought. It's ok to like or dislike a language.) Creating and loving media is one of the most human things I can think of. But it only works, because there's a variety to it: if there was just one artist, projecting her specific mediality onto innumerable works of art, art and arts in general were quite boring.

And here comes the problem: By mashing up all media in a more general one, by generalising them in the frame of a super-projection, the Metaverse also puts an end to media, as an immeasurable plurality and variety of specific projections. The Metaverse is just boring, because it is the same Metaverse, always. It may be a capitalist's dream, but it's also the consumer's thermal death of interest.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#124

Post by noduerme »

Jasper_ wrote: post #104
noduerme wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, yeah. Honestly, a massively multiplayer GTA V or Red Dead 2 would basically be the whole Metaverse concept. The only differences would be: (1) You aren't there to complete missions; there's no storylines and it's totally open-ended. There are no writers, and (2) The spaces and content are created by anyone, not a central company, and (3) You can go from GTA world to Red Dead world to tons of other worlds without changing missions or skins or avatars or whatever; they're part of the same huge space you can traverse without leaving VR. (4) You can code your own physical spaces and code your own avatar's abilities.

So, like, yes Stephenson's metaverse is similar to a lot of video games we have now, but it's critically different because his characters are "heroes" in that universe specifically because they coded their own avatars and their own environments.

Which is another way of saying that it rewards thought, code, and creativity -- exactly the things that video games steal people away from.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#125

Post by ToJans »

Disclaimer: I'm bullish on 3d interaction because I own company related to this, so my opinion might be a bit colored.

What surprised me the most is how fake and forced the conversations and interactions looked. It reminded me of those first blue screen effects you see in these old movies from the sixties. I would assume that Facebook/metaverse spent an enormous budget on it, but nevertheless the outcome still looks creepy. In my opinion we have mostly figured out how to avoid the uncanny valley for rendering, so I'd guess improving conversations and interactions are up next. Until the techniques are on par with what we need, I'd heavily avoid trying to model a real world representation in a virtual world. (Think about the early Pixar movies: instead of trying to create the most realistic world possible, they embraced their current constraints and turned them into a feature that made their movies instantly recognizable.)

This being said, I see one big use case for AR/VR adaptation during the next decade: digital twins with simplified, tailored representations for development, marketing, education and operational purposes, as well as amusement. My best guess and personal bet is on this space.

And even though we've had VR and more recently AR getting more accessible to the consumers, it's still at least 5 years too soon for mass adaptation; most people still consider it a novelty.

In my experience interactive 3d will emerge next in the mass-market. Up until now I had the best conversion ratios by having a conventional 2d GUI/wizard and some very conceptually simple 3d drag and drop to create simplified 3d representations of products one could buy (think sheds, carports, verandas etc). First consumers will have to get familiar with 3d annotations, before we can make them interactive as well...

So yes, I see a future for (some version of) the metaverse, but the implementation they showed right now was a bit meh, because they tried to model it just like the real world, and the techniques to do so properly still aren't there yet...

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#126

Post by can16358p »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #88
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,…

bruce willis surrogates anyone? https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263

Exactly what I had in mind. Underrated movie. Maybe metaverse will end up somewhere between the currently envisioned one and like the surrogates physically existing and people at their homes interacting with the world via them, where tech companies even give the main unit for free but sell unlockable content for their surrogates.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#127

Post by cblconfederate »

Nice title, although he refutes himself with the correct assertion that we already live in the metaverse, the internet itself is another reality, and people curating their profile and likes are already curating an avatar. I mean just look at us

> We've been playing games and chatting for decades! What do we truly have to gain by trying to merge all entertainment into one giant Ivan Ooze of content?

There are some uses for which gaming will be important commercially going forward, as things turn remote. gaming mechanics are going to be useful with:

- remote work, where the 3d representation gives occasionally a sense of immersion with the team, permanence/continuity, and a graphical sense of "where is everyone"

- remote education, where kids will be lured by avatars and follow interactive demonstrations of things, making it a lot more engaging.

VR is not needed for any of this, but a bit of gaming environment and mechanics are the natural evolution of texting.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#128

Post by laurent92 »

dandotway wrote: post #71

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…

> News and politics junkies prefer reading text tweets on Twitter to watching talking news anchors.

Try prefixing text with 15 lines of advertising text that you must read, and people will prefer video quickly. In the current world, I don’t click on 30s video quotes because it is prefixed by 30s of ads.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#129

Post by Aeolun »

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,…

I dunno man, if Ferrari drops their car into the game then that’s going to be more awesome then I can ever model on my own.

Even if I can drive a square block by designating it a car, it’s not really a car I want to drive in.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#130

Post by hliyan »

What we need to counter this insane trend toward unnecessary graphical representations, is to double down on a plain-text knowledge graph version of the Internet. Something that is completely devoid of formatting, with only semantic markup (hyperlinks, emphasis etc). Something that is composed of small, single-purpose units of text smaller than current "documents" or pages. Something that can be fetched, composed and rendered entirely based on the client application's requirements (yes, I'm familiar with Xanadu).
Post reply on HN