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The metaverse is bullshit

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Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#331

Post by toofy »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #192
Jasper_ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might not know this, but Second Life was not, uh, a wide success. And Second Life is the one we remember from that era. There are dozens of these metaverse things from the mid-90s through the 2000s, none of which achieved the notoriety anywhere near Second Life. Off the top of my head: Sony's SAPARi / Community Place (1994), ActiveWorlds.com (1995), There.com (1998), Habbo Hotel (2000), myCoke (2002), Google Live…

how come nobody is mentioning the inevitable cancer that kills every metaverse given enough time: griefers.

While I’m not seeing much around this topic in this particular forum, it is being discussed in many places.

The general consensus seems to be (and at this point I wholeheartedly agree) FB attempting to build a meta world is hysterical considering their seeming complete inability (with some unwillingness sprinkled in) to address trolls/astroturfing /misinformation on their flagship site was a significant driver of many people ceasing to use the site.

If they screw up something like a vanilla social network, they have no shot at running an entire second life derivative. At least one where anyone other than NFT sneakerhead type marketing victims will willingly spend their valuable free time.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#332

Post by Gys »

Bullshit or not, it seems to involve high tech gear and THE company able to make a hardware/software combination that people will actually buy is Apple…

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#333

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

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 it works a bit like Second Life, the creator of a thing (like a car) can define the behavior of the car. So people wanting to put their car into the metaverse presumably could expend as much effort on it as they want.

I mean now if they simulate a car for Grand Turismo, they also use some kind of API (Unity Engine, OpenGL, whatever) to encode the behavior. Likewise a metaverse will have some API which you can use to encode behavior.

It remains to be seen what options it provides. In SL I think you wouldn't have been able to create a very good car simulator because the engine was too limited. But the situation might be improved for newer metaverse attempts.

I think most people in this thread are missing the point. It is not that people could only experience VR without the metaverse. People can still surf the internet, yet most people chose to spend their time on Facebook, because it is more convenient and makes some things easier. To the point that some non-Facebook internet sites make you sign in with your Facebook account.

If everybody is on meta, it makes no sense for Mercedes to create an independent VR experience to advertise their cars. It makes more sense to do it in meta, where Facebook can direct users to the Mercedes VR world.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#334

Post by noir_lord »

fredophile wrote: post #110
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…

> 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.

Books tap directly into the imagination in a way that films (very) rarely do.

The most amazing special effects in the world can't match my imagination for fidelity and if they did, they'd still not be mine.

I've noticed that the book to TV/movies I like aren't because they are good adaptations so much as they are close to what I imagined.

It's rare that happens but when it does it makes the TV show a deeply enjoyable, Season 1 of Altered Carbon and all the seasons of The Expanse did/do it but not much else in the last 5 years has.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#335

Post by laumars »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #248
laumars wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think the potential around VR is greatly oversold however there are still benefits outside of gaming: concerts, remote conferences, having kick ass multi-screen home office for those who don’t have the space for one.

The office example is the real winner for me. But imagine what it would take: a wireless VR headset with massive resolution that still allows me to look at my surroundings so I can drink a coffee or eat my lunch and is comfortable enough to use for several hours with no breaks. A huge monitor is way cheaper.

That’s why I said “for those who don’t have the space”. You might live in a one bed apartment and not have the room for a dedicated work space so VR might be the alternative in such a situation.

I appreciate this isn’t going to be a super common use case but it’s definitely something that might appeal to some who have well paid jobs in expensive to live locations (like London and SV).

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#336

Post by jillesvangurp »

schleck8 wrote: post #313
emilsedgh wrote: post #305

Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Facebook has _nothing_ for the future. * Blue app is already on it's death bed. * Instagram is already seeing a massive decline in quality and engagement as its getting close to the end of its lifecycle. * They managed to survive Snapchat, but I think that made them think Instagram is too big to fail. Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. * What's…

> What's App is not monetizable It is, they talked about introducing ads to the status tab before. I agree on the rest though

The second they turn that on, Signal and Telegram will get an even larger influx of users than they got last year when the FB lawyers tried to weasel in some language enabling that and some other features in the Whatsapp terms of use.

I still have not agreed to the terms of use since I continue to be able to opt out and am amused by FB basically chickening out requiring their users to actually agree. The normal course of action would be to eventually block access to the app. That hasn't happened.

So, they could turn on ads but then they'd have to get me to agree to that first or risk losing me. They really want to do that but at the same time they are afraid of what will happen.

In the same way they chickened out of their blockchain plans by simply not talking about it anymore. The Meta announcements featured a large absence of any of that. Which basically means they are probably giving up on the whole notion.

I'm guessing Meta might turn out to be more of the same. FB is struggling to come up with things that actually work. A lot of their efforts just fizzle out. Facebook bots kind of never happened. Payments are dead in the water. They threw out the baby with the bathwater when they had an actual gaming platform with gamers on facebook and shutdown the platform in favor of a glorified ad platform.

Actually a good plan for them would be to rewind fifteen years of bad decision making. Of course that would require getting rid of the chief decision maker.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#338

Post by ikr678 »

jonplackett wrote: post #115
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 wonder if this has it backwards. Cars are a symbol of status and people will want to have that status wherever they are - look at how much people will pay for a skin in Fortnite. I think it’s more likely car manufacturers (the expensive ones) will only let you drive their car in the metaverse if you buy it for real in the real world. If this metaverse really does come to pass, it will be just as (if not more) valua…

So, BMW amiibos?

Sport team season ticket holders getting exclusive digital jerseys to wear? College students getting a code to unlock digital shirt of their alma mater?

Brand affiliation as an identity marker in a virtual space makes sense.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#339

Post by __jerbl »

emilsedgh wrote: post #305

Metaverse is not bullshit. It's a sign of desperation. Facebook has _nothing_ for the future. * Blue app is already on it's death bed. * Instagram is already seeing a massive decline in quality and engagement as its getting close to the end of its lifecycle. * They managed to survive Snapchat, but I think that made them think Instagram is too big to fail. Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. * What's…

this.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#340

Post by drvdevd »

arisAlexis wrote: post #308

This is a huge ignorant rant and expresses the anger of the unknown that is coming and anger for missing out. For every new technology there are always articles condemning them. People are resistent to change and that has been proven.

I wouldn't call it an ignorant rant per se, unless the author has not spent much time in an Oculus headset.

I had a dev kit in 2013, forgot about it and now have a Quest 2.

Will it take over the world? I'm not sure yet but it is a breathtaking improvement in the past decade IMO.

If I had a sufficiently advanced, light headset, that could mimic all the functions of my smartphone in VR/AR, I can tell you I would ditch my smartphone and probably never look back.

So it's a rant but I'm not sure what about: has the author spent much time in VR lately? Is it Zuckerbergs idea of VR in terms of the sci-fi fictional "metaverse" that bugs them?

I mean the author could be right about this being a flop.. but I'm not sure who it will be a flop for - us or Meta.

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