The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#641

Post by dandotway » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

ianai wrote: post #415

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.” I’m not sold on this. Twitter is more of a mechanism for group totalitarianism than productive conversation.

Perhaps because politics is more of a mechanism for group totalitarianism than productive governance.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#642

Post by emilsedgh » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:02 PM UTC

parasubvert wrote: post #558

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…

I think this is optimistic. Oculus is winning the early rounds of the VR market war. Google in 1998 was just another search engine. Netflix mailed DVDs. Amazon grew from $150 to 600m revenue and had just started selling music and movies. Facebook non-ad revenue is $3b annually and growing. Oculus store and devices account for easily half or more of that number. Beat Saber on the Quest 2 alone has cracked $100m. Beat…

> The biggest drag on Oculus right now is the need for a Facebook account.

Maybe within the tech circles and HN crowd. But outside these circles nobody even feels like something is off.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#643

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:03 PM UTC

13415 wrote: post #578

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…

Whatsapp is monetizable. They're tapping into the almost realtime conversations of a billion users, their images and videos. They can extract a ton of information from that to sell to advertisers. And unlike Facebook, Whatsapp is still used actively,

The money are coming from the FB app/site though, trying to sell ads in WA would probably kill it.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#644

Post by emilsedgh » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

orasis wrote: post #537

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…

Sorry, have you seen their profits? Facebook is not going away any time soon.

I know it's not. Im talking about long term survival. They are gonna be like Yahoo: Years in decline. Except a little worse. Yahoo was incredibly diverse.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#645

Post by emilsedgh » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:06 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #636

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…

> Thus, they didn't go after TikTok. It was a mistake. What are you talking about - they went after TikTok exactly the same way as they did after Snapchat: By cloning the feature and making it prominent in the app, then double-listing them in the main Big Blue App, too. Instagram added Stories to copy Snapchat and they are still prominently at the top of the app. Then they added Reels to copy Tik Tok and it's the pri…

That's exactly what Im talking about. They thought they can win this round by copying features of TikTok into Insgagram, just like they did with Snapchat.

They were wrong. They should've gone after TikTok by acquiring it. Just like they did with Instagram.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#646

Post by mlac » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

KeeganS wrote: post #616

mlac wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lastly! You only need 1 device. So spending $5k+ on a device that could provide a better experience than your TV, iPad, laptop, desktop, monitors, headphones, and everything else would be reasonable. The way we interact with tech today is a semi-distracted state. There is always some sort of "real world" going on, and we're not immersed. It would take more energy to be fully immersed, but we would be more productive…

In the case of watching TV with another person, the being in the same room together is often the point. Sharing a virtual space makes less sense when you have this option. The form factor of an iPad makes it portable in a way today’s headsets are not, and I can access a desktop computer remotely if I am away on travel. I agree with you about immersion but it’s hard for me to see headsets as anything but another devic…

Fair. I’m hoping for a “portable” headset even if it goes into a backpack and may have layers (like an astronaut helmet) where you have transparent for AR and then blackout for full immersion.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#647

Post by meheleventyone » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:08 PM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #639

meheleventyone wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not correct because gravity only acts downwards. This means a lower center of gravity will always be more stabilizing for a vehicle the right way up. As the car rolls the center of gravity is pushed outward. When it’s too high it quickly passes over the pivot point of the wheels and the car will roll as gravity is applying additional moment about the wheel. When it’s lower than the pivot point which is not us…

In your video you show the force in red being applied somewhere up top. What is this force? What applies it? Your force sideways is actually from the ground, on the tyres. This acts on the CoG (or better to call it Center of Mass), so if this CoM is above the tyres you get a torque, because the mass doesn't instantly accelerate, but resists the force. This torque then needs to be countered by having more force on the…

The torque to roll the car in my example is provided by an external force, the dark brown/red arrow being applied to the top right of the 'car'. This is why the car would still roll even if you had the CoM at the ground level. I'm simplifying the true situation (suspension, roll due to the forces involved in turning and so on) to isolate just the impact of CoM position on body roll. So you need a force to induce roll otherwise the car would just sit still.

If you don't believe me you can download Unity, UE, Godot or the rigidbody simulator of your choice and just setup the experiment. Of the engines mentioned UE is perhaps the easiest to set this up with a straightforward car example.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#648

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #587

LegitShady wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah but I'm not going to push my real car anything like I would a video game car because I do not wish to damage it or injure myself.

I have literally hundreds of hours in VR racing and driving down a winding highway at 100km/h is still more fun. They sound the same on paper but they don't feel the same. Maybe if I had a full simulator that could replicate the feeling of acceleration but I don't - and nobody on metaverse on their $200 VR headsets will either.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#649

Post by LegitShady » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #352

LegitShady wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ad…

yes it's marketing wank, but how is marketing wank made - probably by a bunch of idiots (of which I am sometimes one) - sitting around a table brainstorming what they can do to sell this tech to others. And then someone says an idea and everyone says hey that's great even though it is sort of crap, and that becomes the marketing wank they're releasing.

I don't really care how marketing wank is made especially when its obviously lying marketing wank. Calling it the metaverse doesn't make it any more appealing.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#650

Post by tsimionescu » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #540

danaris wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The shape of the metaverse will be formed by a new generation Even this begs the question. Why do people take it as a given that there will be a "metaverse"? I mean, personally, I think that a genuinely interoperable, decentralized VR/AR infrastructure would be pretty neat—I have no idea if it would solve any specific real-world problems, but "decentralized and interoperable" is a world better than the systems we'v…

The idea of a metaverse of some form or another falls out as a consequence of an assumption that there will be devices people wear that allow software to fully override their visual and auditory experience. These kinds of devices in their most rudimentary form have already arrived for experiences that do not incorporate the physical world (or other people in the physical world), but the ones that fully "close the loo…

> There are no great incentives for Meta or whoever to make their vision of the metaverse align with the openness of the web or Internet, other than perhaps a desire by their leader to do something good for the world to cement his legacy.

Wow, have you ever seen Mark Zuckerberg talking, or noticed any of his actions? To imagine he would drive Facebook to do something out of "a desire to do something good for the world to cement his legacy" is comically outside any realistic possibility.