The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#281

Post by akkawwakka » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:24 AM UTC

christophergs wrote: post #264

silvestrov wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results They were successful with one thing. Now they are talking about something else. Why shouldn't "MetaVerse" be compared to the insane optimism of AI in the 1980'ies? Something that seemed just around the corner, but never arrived. It's like Thorium reactors: half the people think it's the next great thing, the other half thinks it will never come into production.

Timing matters. The latest generation of VR headsets are incredible. I feel like this point matters, the same way that Netflix needing broadband to be fast enough to stream video mattered.

Yes, they are. Strap one on and fly a fighter jet in Flight Sim 2020 and tell me they aren’t.

But they are fatiguing, unflattering, and uncomfortable, even for 20 or 30 minutes worth of usage.

Maybe in 10 years when the software stacks are ready the headsets will be good enough for passive use.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#282

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #194

Jasper_ wrote: 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…

>Tim Sweeney is basically saying "hey, look, this is the future, you can put your car in a video game" to Mercedes, who has already been doing this for years. I think the idea is that the Metaverse will give you as close to the real experience of being in that specific car as possible, a video game won't do that because any car placed in a video game must be subservient to the goals and mechanics of the game. The rea…

>I think the idea is that the Metaverse will give you as close to the real experience of being in that specific car as possible, a video game won't do that because any car placed in a video game must be subservient to the goals and mechanics of the game.

Why do you think the metaverse will do a better job than the developers at assetto corsa for whom it is their primary mission?

It's all just marketing wank to get advertisers excited to put product placement in facebook's new second life metagame.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#283

Post by meheleventyone » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

thom wrote: post #262

codingdave wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roblox will be looked back upon as the MS-DOS of metaverses, yet people go gaga over any vehicle you can make. They (mostly kids) spend an absurd amount of hours just jumping from one place to another to prove they can without falling. They spend real money just to turn their hat a new color. Entire genres of games and activities exist basically to just move around, jump on a few things, see numbers get bigger, and s…

People in tech, especially VCs, have this weird habit of seeing something simple (like music sharing, or Roblox) and instead of taking away the simplest lesson (people like free music, games are fun) they feel compelled to extrapolate some sort of vision of the future from it (people love P2P tech! Roblox isn’t just a bunch of games kids like, it’s a _metaverse_!) It’s certainly a fun job to have, massively overthink…

The funniest part of this for me was Roblox changing all their mention of games to experiences earlier this year during the start of the Epic-Apple thing.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#284

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:32 AM UTC

elorant wrote: post #172

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,…

That’s not my concern. My main issue is that it would be pretty much impossible to recreate the dynamics of driving a car the way dedicated video game car simulators do. Who will write the code? The car manufacturer, or the platform? All you’ll end up with will be a precise 3-D model of the car and a generic driving “experience”. When you play Grand Turismo every car behaves differently because the creators took the…

If if the buyer can afford the car they can just to go a dealership and test drive one, and get a 1:1 experience. This is about advertising and trying to sell advertising as experience rather than advertising. What else would you imagine facebook's virtual space to be?

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#285

Post by zyemuzu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

modeless wrote: post #64

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…

Your input methods comment is key. Today we can have an almost true to life virtual driving experience with peripherals like direct drive steering wheels, loadcell pedals, shifters and a motorised driving rig. It's an expensive hobby with great innovation. Until the interface problem is fixed for VR then it will be a very subpar experience compared to what's already available.

You can now extrapolate this to almost any interaction in VR; walking, flying, typing or shooting.

Until there's an input method that is able to emulate these experiences effectively, then it is pure science fiction.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#286

Post by charcircuit » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

nootropicat wrote: post #163

Alternative title: Old man yells at metaverse. The year is 2030. A 5 year old Timmy is bored and demands attention from his mother, currently hooked in VR doing her remote job. She excuses herself for a moment, straps Timmy into a special harness and puts his VR goggles on. Timmy is now in a virtual playground with other kids his age. All his movements, especially facial expressions, are reproduced in virtual reality…

>but once facial expressions tracking arrives it's time do it

NeosVR already supports facial tracking with HTC's face tracker.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#287

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:35 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #65

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.

Very few people are willing to spend it - that's coming from someone who has spent some money on getting a VR racing setup. Many people who have tried it think its fun but then ask me how much it was and say 'well I'm glad you enjoy it'.

Driving a real car down a windy road is 1000x better than the best Vr setup.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#288

Post by njacobs5074 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:36 AM UTC

Always imagined that these places would have more in common with Westworld where we (the product) are there for the pleasure of the rich.

This is just the latest installment of MZ's (literal) self-enrichment. OP have mentioned that people like him don't get it - they're the villain in these narratives - I can only but agree.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#289

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

b0rsuk wrote: post #135

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'm patiently waiting for the desktop metaphor to die. I'm a very happy user of i3 (tiling) window manager and it's beautiful how efficiently it uses space. Meanwhile in the "desktop metaphor" world, interface designers have settled on fullscreen applications (skype, even music players) and tabs. Because no one wants to bother moving application windows around with mouse. i3 is explicitly for power users, but someone…

fancyzones is a free windows powertoy already. Everyone who thinks they need one can have one.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#290

Post by paavohtl » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 9:37 AM UTC

hermitcrab wrote: post #237

VR is the next 3D cinema. In theory it should be a better, more immersive experience. In reality, it just isn't.

VR is very different from 3D cinema, at least in games. A 3D movie is 99.95% the same experience as the 2D version, but VR games are fundamentally different because both the visuals and far more importantly the inputs are in 3D. Many of the player interactions used in Boneworks and Half-Life Alyx are really awkward if not outright impossible in traditional pancake games: using both hands to do different things at the same time, throwing physics objects with specific force and direction or taking cover behind objects of arbitrary size and shape and so on.

Having these capabilities of course does not mean that VR games are automatically superior. In fact, the vast majority of VR games are kinda clunky compared to traditional PC and console games. But they enable fundamentally new interactions which are really interesting to experiment with, and shouldn't be discarded as just gimmicks.