The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#221

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 1:37 AM UTC

beebmam wrote: post #50

clpm4j wrote: post #18

(Aware of the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to read HN) I really wonder how many adults > 25yrs and < 60yrs have the time to immerse themselves in any type of digital world / metaverse experience. If I was a teenager or in college, then yeah I can see it... but there are so many things to do in the 16hrs we have each day, and I already kick myself for not finishing that book, or getting an extra workout in,…

The time I spend in Minecraft is either meditation time or social time. It's an even better experience when there's a modpack on the server with a near-infinite number of things to do, too.

> near-infinite number of things to do

I've been having a great time going the other way - Skyblock! Start with very little, build up from there.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#222

Post by eropple » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

wruza wrote: post #172

echelon wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The metaverse that wins will allow 18+ content. Not Zuckerberg.

But there is no P in FAANG. And Steam/etc don’t make their living on adult games. And youtube has no porn on it. I think the issue with winning it with adult content will remain unchanged, at least for a while. Porn is so classic, that it cannot tunnel through this potential barrier.

Steam absolutely sells a whole bunch of porn. It may not be a majority, but it sells plenty.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#223

Post by steve_adams_86 » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 1:58 AM UTC

clpm4j wrote: post #18

(Aware of the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to read HN) I really wonder how many adults > 25yrs and < 60yrs have the time to immerse themselves in any type of digital world / metaverse experience. If I was a teenager or in college, then yeah I can see it... but there are so many things to do in the 16hrs we have each day, and I already kick myself for not finishing that book, or getting an extra workout in,…

I don't mean this as a criticism of anyone. I do find though that there are types of people (likely including you and I) who feel compelled to move and do things such that our down time is extremely valuable. I do have kids which makes it quite a bit more challenging. I feel motivated on an hourly basis to accomplish things, though - it matters to me to make progress on the things I care about.

There are other people who very much don't care. To them, progress might be watching the next episode of a show, or grinding in some game they love.

I'm fine with either type of person, really. It does explain why what seems like an impossible use of time to us is actually very appealing to others. Why would we be in there when there's a book to read, a concept to learn, people we don't see often enough, etc? And yet, why wouldn't they?

I think the metaverse aims to appeal to us as well eventually; imagine interactive classes on X or Y to help you learn faster with tools that are currently impossible? What if we could save time by seeing loved ones more easily in the metaverse, making more time for those things we want to make progress on? I'm not bullish on that, though. It sounds creepy. I want to hug the people I love, hear them laugh in person, make them nice food. I'm not interested in expediting that facet of my life.

Even now, despite growing up with webcams around I still find FaceTime fairly impersonal and uninteresting. I use it only when I really need to.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#224

Post by FooHentai » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

nightpool wrote: post #135

astlouis44 wrote: post #87

No, it is not. Neither is Roblox or Fortnite, or VRchat. A single game or world is NOT the metaverse, what is so hard to understand about that for journalists and companies? The metaverse is the immersive internet, as a successor to our current one that is more 2D oriented around photos/videos/text today. It's a paradigm shift in how we interact, but most importantly there will be many of these virtual worlds/spaces…

Minecraft is actually a great example here—the client and server ecosystem is extremely, extremely diverse, with lots of different choices for users. Almost everyone who uses Minecraft on desktop is running some mod, if only Optifine, and the server landscape is even more diverse, with dozens of competing reimplementations, all communicating over a shared protocol. I think Minecraft is a great example in the current…

Agree with everything you said, but to me one key piece of the minecraft ecosystem rules it out as a meta verse contender - every one of those permutations you mentioned drops players into their own isolated environment which does not interact with any others. At best you can pop a few hundred people into a server specially configured for that, or use a discord/irc shim to bridge chat across a few instances.

I get the sense something more integrated at the user experience level is being suggested here as ‘metaverse’. I guess part of my read on that is cynical - if true it suggests a winner takes operator all at the centre with some kind of app/content ecosystem alongside. Perhaps I’m reading the roblox comparisons too literally.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#225

Post by encryptluks2 » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 2:14 AM UTC

astlouis44 wrote: post #87

No, it is not. Neither is Roblox or Fortnite, or VRchat. A single game or world is NOT the metaverse, what is so hard to understand about that for journalists and companies? The metaverse is the immersive internet, as a successor to our current one that is more 2D oriented around photos/videos/text today. It's a paradigm shift in how we interact, but most importantly there will be many of these virtual worlds/spaces…

I think you at least get the vision, however I believe the current web standards is what is preventing forward progress. What you describe could be achieved much easier by moving sandboxing into the OS and using containers. I'd much rather see a modern markup format for describing content and data than what we have today. Not 1000x bloated frameworks to do simple things. I believe it we are ever going to make the metaverse a reality we have to really reenvision our current technology not on what we have today by trying to incorporate next gen solutions into a failing model but create something new and expandable that is easy to get started.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#226

Post by uhtred » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #41

clpm4j wrote: post #18

(Aware of the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to read HN) I really wonder how many adults > 25yrs and < 60yrs have the time to immerse themselves in any type of digital world / metaverse experience. If I was a teenager or in college, then yeah I can see it... but there are so many things to do in the 16hrs we have each day, and I already kick myself for not finishing that book, or getting an extra workout in,…

I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually really insightful answer. 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video Games are about ignoring re…

But I work from home because I hate the office, why would I want to visit a virtual one. It sounds terrible!

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#227

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #171

clpm4j wrote: post #18

(Aware of the fact that I'm taking time out of my day to read HN) I really wonder how many adults > 25yrs and < 60yrs have the time to immerse themselves in any type of digital world / metaverse experience. If I was a teenager or in college, then yeah I can see it... but there are so many things to do in the 16hrs we have each day, and I already kick myself for not finishing that book, or getting an extra workout in,…

29 years old no kids here, have lots of coworkers in the same cohort. During the pandemic in particular a lot of friends started to pick up VRChat, and a majority of people in my age group still regularly play games. I think that's not that untypical honestly, I can see quite a few adults sinking at least a few hours per week into it if it gets interesting enough.

Seconding this - have used VRChat a lot during the pandemic. Asking me why I’d spend time on the metaverse is like asking why I’d go to a bar. I won’t defend it as the best possible use of my time, but it’s fun to go meet people.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#228

Post by darkerside » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 2:52 AM UTC

er4hn wrote: post #186

mbesto wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that the definition of the "metaverse" is stipulating so much disagreement and discussion is itself the problem. When smartphones were launched there was a simple description - "oh cool, it's a traditional phone but it has a computer running inside of it? makes sense"

I'd say that this is closer to when "the cloud" came about. No one was quite sure what it was, but everyone wanted in. To quote (some) of Larry Ellisons famous statements about it: "The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion." "Maybe I’m an id…

It's funny, all I hear now is, "I don't understand it, so it must be useless"

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#229

Post by elcano » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 2:57 AM UTC

Closi wrote: post #107

stormbrew wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR. I'm sorry, I think if you want to broaden this term like this you're going to have to stipulate some new boundaries. Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway". And when Di died or 9/11 happened I had a "shared ex…

I think metaverse is just a fancy name for communicating with people online supported by technology (both present technology, future technology and meatspace communications supported by technology). It’s clear from Facebook’s presentations for instance that they consider text messaging via WhatsApp to class as part of the metaverse. It’s not anything new, but I think the metaverse strategy is basically Facebook sayin…

Yeah. We still need to see how Facebook/Meta wants to materialize this. Maybe they want to break the boundaries between your real self (as you consume apps like WhatsApp and Instagram), your social profile (true self in virtual world like the closed garden in Facebook) and the avatar in a world like Second Life. This would be a gold mine, because they already can target ads to you in the real world, so they could do it there too. Doing it were the people use fake avatars is not so easy.

So think that every user is an inhabitant, a citizen, a potential buyer in the virtual and the real world, but also a potential business owner in the virtual world. Business owners will be tax payers that must pay fees to operate on this city-state that will have internal laws that except for few cases (at most) will not be subject to government laws and constitutional protection, and if you are difficult or problematic the authority will be able to expatriate you without prior notice, regardless of time or money invested in the platform. Maybe, at most, they could offer arbitration with a company that knows that if they don't favor Meta the contract will not be renewed. So yeah. It is a good idea, if they can pull it.

Re: The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

#230

Post by jimmySixDOF » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #142

kibwen wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway". Yes, this is absolutely correct. A "metaverse" exists in contrast to meatspace. In meatspace I walk down the street, I look through a shop window, I see you browsing inside, I spray some graffiti on the wall, you see the graffiti when you come out of the s…

The depiction was as relevant to the WWW as the browser is: the presentation is up to the client, remember that Lynx and Firefox are both perfectly good web clients (in principle, we've killed that aspect of the web for the most part by insisting on pixel perfect copies instead of broad rendering hints). But depending on bandwidth and rendering capability of your device you could have the entirety of the gamma rangin…

You have the right take here - the Metaverse is basically the internet with a Z axis in the DOM - and anyone is free to do with that as they may.

Its been around for longer than Second Life in pancake kvm forms but the latest iteration is based on Immersion or Embodied experience facilitated by the new hardware price/performance advances.

VR hardware is just about over the chasm and proper wide fov AR is on the horizon although semi AR/MR is possible today (e.g. Pokemon Go as a shared overlay of digital world space on to a shared real world space).

The Immersive Embodied Metaverse is available over the internet using open W3C WebXR standards today and this will get better as the space and infrastructure matures.