The metaverse is bullshit • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#651

Post by mlac » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:21 PM UTC

redisman wrote: post #515

mlac wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will use VR when I can put on my headset, anywhere, and be transported to my "desk". I want to be able to take documents and move them around in VR, read them, put them on my "table", and then have apps that appear as monitors. So I can move and pull up email in front of me, "grab" an attachment, and "put" it into another email that I will compose. And have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually…

> have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan For some reason this is a hilarious image in many ways. Perfect example of imagining the future being a better horse. But it also does sound cool

I enjoyed it too (I’d love to just light my files on fire when I’m not happy with a draft).

But I don’t see “email” going anywhere for a long time. At its core, it is text information and serves as a record of a transaction, usually related to the real world. If we think VR will take us past email, it means setting up a new standard for communication that is somehow better and will have enough network effects to take over from email (e.g. - everyone will need to migrate to VR before abandoning email).

So processing email more effectively is an open problem of VR. VR isn’t going to hook into our brains more than video or audio or text, so I view it as about how someone interacts with that in a VR environment.

So I think the way we process things will matter and could be massively improved. For example, you could have a “workbench” for insurance related items. Where you go and all of the things you were working on and relevant communications are neatly organized and sandboxed. You effectively wouldn’t have to put anything “away”. It would just be sitting there on a desk until you returned to it.

Training for work environments would be amazing - you could copy the environment for your employees and it would be intuitive. Right now companies often give people just a vanilla machine with basic office apps and expect them to find their optimal setup.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#652

Post by mlac » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

r-w wrote: post #563

redisman wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan For some reason this is a hilarious image in many ways. Perfect example of imagining the future being a better horse. But it also does sound cool

Or more aptly, a car with reins.

I hear you. But it is also about effectively processing information in that environment.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#653

Post by mlac » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

mlac wrote: post #651

redisman wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have emails look like a stack of papers that you could actually process - pick up, hold, throw in a trashcan For some reason this is a hilarious image in many ways. Perfect example of imagining the future being a better horse. But it also does sound cool

I enjoyed it too (I’d love to just light my files on fire when I’m not happy with a draft). But I don’t see “email” going anywhere for a long time. At its core, it is text information and serves as a record of a transaction, usually related to the real world. If we think VR will take us past email, it means setting up a new standard for communication that is somehow better and will have enough network effects to take…

I would also join a startup to work on this stuff if someone is interested in B2B VR productivity software.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#654

Post by short12 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #231

mlindner wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a much younger cousin who's in their teens. Teens of today prefer text messaging because they don't have to show their face. Even when my cousins video chat they don't like to show their face and will aim the camera in other directions despite being in video chat.

I feel nobody “likes” video chat beyond small children and grandparents- I know I always endeavor to have connection issues.

I like them for doctor appointments and basically hate them for absolutely everything else. Job interviews, meetings, family things. They are all a terrible experiences

Virtual medicine is the one thing that is really useful because the majority are of doctor visits are a waste of time and I go to the doctor a lot, if not once a week sometimes 3 in a single week. That doesn't even count the 2 times a week I usually have to go for a blood draw. Outside of the lab I honestly can't recall the last time in person part being necessary

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#655

Post by grumbel » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

lordloki wrote: post #418

mox111 wrote: post #416

I think that a lot of the cynicism about this space comes from theorisers who have not yet tried VR for themselves and experienced viscerally + emotionally for themselves, the fact that it is a total game-changer for work and play. The thing with this space is, enough smart people are sufficiently excited by this new media and working on realising its potential, that it will inevitably end up producing value that can…

Even the 13-25 year old males who are excited about this will tire of VR quickly. VR is comparable to 3-D movies and televisions, exciting the first few times you try it but once the novelty fades you just don't care enough about it.

Even if all the novelty fades away, you'll still be left with a gigantic virtual TV that you can carry everywhere. VR gaming doesn't need to succeed for AR/VR to be able to replace every display you have.

It will still need some resolution improvements to replace a 4k display, but the latest headsets are already getting pretty close to replacing a 1080p display. And of course that isn't limited to one 1080p screen, it's all virtual, so you can have a tripple screen setup, a big cinema screen or whatever else you want.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#656

Post by short12 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

mytherin wrote: post #320

Zanni wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids prefer messaging because it's asynchronous, not because they prefer text.

You can send both audio and video messages asynchronously using any major chat client, so that cannot be the (only) reason.

Audio file txt messages are so stupid I just delete them. It says "you were not important enough to talk to, fuck you"

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#657

Post by short12 » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #200

Zanni wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids prefer messaging because it's asynchronous, not because they prefer text.

Now here is free startup idea: Instant messaging of vines or tiktoks. Just send videos of your messages to your friends or groups. Maybe even try to replace twitter... Probably 3 different apps really...

That honestly sounds incredibly awful. I would block those messages from even coming through. Ugh. I can't overemphasize how terrible that would be if it becomes standard

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#658

Post by b0rsuk » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

nunodonato wrote: post #235

b0rsuk wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So if I just use every window in maximized mode, what's the big advantage of i3?

None. But I think you won't feel the need to maximize all if you use screen space efficient apps. When you use a tiling WM, you care about it much more. Old applications like winamp and even old skype had to fit inside resolutions like 800x600 or 1024x768. But UI designers and programmers started being lazy, just like they no longer care much about CPU/memory efficiency so we get lots of Electron and badly optimized websites(JS). And if tiling WMs became more common, developers would make fewer apps that waste screen space.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#659

Post by didibus » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #526

didibus wrote: post #119

I think the only BS is the way we.all talk about this stuff, same way the cloud is all hyped up. AR and VR are great tech, when it gets good enough that it's a simple comfortable accessory to wear, and it incurs no strain on your eyes, it'll definitely find many uses. And for sure we'll pursue the tech for better full body tracking, walking in-place, simulated touch, and all that, and if all that one day works simila…

That's the problem, isn't it... we barely have support for this kind of thing in 2D. If I make a chair in SolidWorks, I can't even drag-and-drop it into a 3D printer, let alone open the document to use it in the Sims or in an email client. When I drag and drop an email into Excel I get a dialog box asking about what the delimiters are, and woe is me if I want to drag and drop an image to share it with another network…

Absolutely, interop will be just as janky as it is today, if not more.

It will probably be a combination of "works but with problems" and explicit deals between some companies for certain things where they explicitly put the work in to allow some things to carry over.

But my point is the whole Metaverse is marketing hype. The premise is really just that if the real world is one 3 dimensional surround universe you can experience, the Metaverse will deliver other such 3 dimensional surround experiences for you to go from one to the other.

The amount of things you can also move between all these "real"/"virtual" worlds is probably gonna suffer from all the issues we have today as well when moving from the real world and all the various 2D worlds.

But again, take out all the expensive hyperbolic terms. What we're talking about are just very obvious logical next step.

Assume a very good VR setup, now assume a scanner that can take a 3D surround image of say your favorite teddy bear. What do you do? You make a feature that lets you bring that 3D scan into VR.

This is the same as bringing a 2D photo of your teddy bear into your current 2D computer environment.

In my opinion, nothing here is far fetched, even though people will probably have patents for these ideas, they just logically come out as obvious next step for this new technology.

And it'll go the other way around too. You will be able to carve some 3D cup in VR, and then 3D print it into the real world. And that's the same as drawing something in Photoshop and printing it.

The only change here is that when you add that third dimension and make it surround, everything starts to feel more "real". Which is where people are starting to hype it up with mental hyperboles like a Metaverse, or calling things New Worlds, Other Universes, etc. But the only change from today is adding the 3rd dimension.

Think about a Zoom videoconference call with 5 of your friends where you make the background a photo of Mars. The only reason we call that videoconference and not: "Jump into a parallel universe in the deep landscape of Planet Mars with your friends and experience a new reality" is because it doesn't have the 3rd surround dimension.

Re: The metaverse is bullshit

#660

Post by gfodor » Sat, Oct 30, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #650

gfodor wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worl…

I was talking about companies in general, and wasn’t suggesting these were likely possibilities for any of them.