Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

clivethompson.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 377 posts

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

#231

Post by karaterobot »

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…

It's not a great sign for the metaverse that it's such a nebulous concept for so many people. Even "the cloud" could be boiled down to "other people's computers". The internet was hard for people to understand at first, but it didn't have a unified marketing push behind it. So far, a unified marketing push is all there is to the metaverse, and still nobody knows with the f*ck it's supposed to be.

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

#232

Post by elcano »

thrashh wrote: post #86
vineyardmike wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the metaverse itself is not content. Instead it’s another medium to consume content. Therefore the metaverse isn’t a replacement for a video games or TV. You would simply watch TV or play a video game while in the metaverse. The metaverse in that regard isn’t a new concept, because VR spaces have existed for a long time now. I’ve watched movies in Minecraft more recently, for example. I’ve seen every idea in the…

What are you saying? Lol

I could attribute the little use of internet pre-1994 to lack of ISP services, or the fact that people preferred html and modern search engines to the old protocols (ftp, archie, gopher), etc. But 2008, seriously?

I spent lots of hours in internet in college (pre-www) and later paid for CompuServe. By then www was already becoming known. Again, 2008. In what country do you live?

And you should try consuming internet in a desktop or laptop. Even a Chromebook works ok (but a gaming PC is better). Most apps offer a limited experience in mobile, or tablet (it sucks) and seriously, sites render much faster on a fast PC. I can right-click 10 links on the browser, send them to open in the background, consume each tab a close what doesn't work. It is so much nice and faster experience.

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

#233

Post by throwawaywindev »

polycaster wrote: post #113

Since I watched the highlights reel mentioned in the article [1] I wonder if there exists sort of a doctrine in recent PR video production to always include a super annoying aspect of choreography to keep people from thinking too long about the actual message. Here Zuck and friends are trying neurotically to keep their fingertips at 1cm distance at any time. Waving their hands as if they were mockups. In recent Apple…

They teach that stuff in business school.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFLjudWTuGQ

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

#234

Post by EastOfTruth »

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…

It is a current form of the metaverse... and I think that you underestimate how it could evolve... but I sure hope that WebAssembly never takes over.

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

#235

Post by alehlopeh »

jimmySixDOF wrote: post #230
jacquesm wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 horiz…

“The internet with a Z axis in the DOM” doesn’t really make sense when you consider that the DOM already has a Z axis, and it’s a web thing not an internet thing.

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

#236

Post by r00fus »

fullshark wrote: post #143
phailhaus wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty wild that Meta has gone all-in on this "metaverse" concept when VR as a platform has completely stagnated to date. VR still hasn't found its killer app, why is Meta so convinced that it's going to look like Second Life?

Maybe they know that VR and Second Life may have stagnated but are going nowhere and as tech improves, the "Metaverse" is inevitable? The fact that Second Life is still a thing in 2021 is actually impressive.

VR is as inevitable as "AI".

Hint: we don't actually have anything like the AI you read about in the books in play - they're just algorithms that search patterns.

I expect the same for "VR"

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

#237

Post by Retric »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #132
kibwen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm frustrated that everywhere I look I keep seeing "metaverse" and "VR" used interchangeably. All of the things described above are VR, and none of them are the metaverse. Watching TV or playing a game in an immersive, distraction-free VR environment sounds great, and will happen, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR. Working in a virtual home office has the potential to be extremely productive, ergonomic, and s…

Frankly the problem is, none of these are really well defined. I think Zuck wants the general consensus to lean towards: VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for that user interface. Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got th…

The issue is VR is in practice a really terrible interface for widespread shared user experiences. MMO’s are almost exclusively played in 3rd person perspective in part because looking at eye level prevents you from seeing behind the person in front of you, and removing collision detection doesn’t help. Think of walking around a crowded convention and you really can’t see many people at the same time. You can of course swap perspectives with VR, but face to avatar conversations don’t add much. Their missing out on facial expressions so in practice it’s mostly just shared voice chat with a tiny percentage of body language.

The only thing linking metaverse and VR is basic buzzword bingo, they don’t gain anything from being linked.

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

#238

Post by spoonjim »

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,…

Depends what you mean by “metaverse.” I have 3 kids and use my Oculus maybe 3 times a week for 30-45 minutes each time. Lovely escapism. I can go to the beach and the mountains and back in a half hour.

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

#239

Post by ano88888 »

Retric wrote: post #237
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly the problem is, none of these are really well defined. I think Zuck wants the general consensus to lean towards: VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for that user interface. Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got th…

The issue is VR is in practice a really terrible interface for widespread shared user experiences. MMO’s are almost exclusively played in 3rd person perspective in part because looking at eye level prevents you from seeing behind the person in front of you, and removing collision detection doesn’t help. Think of walking around a crowded convention and you really can’t see many people at the same time. You can of cour…

but you need to realize what is possible today will not be the same as what will be available 10 or 20 years down to road with so much dollars pouring into research from all these big corporations/governments around the world.

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

#240

Post by kristopolous »

Facebook is a cloner. They were first a Myspace clone. Then they invented the feed, "like" and "share" when Twitter came around with their feed, heart and retweet and "disappearing" stories when Snapchat started and then "reels" when tiktok picked up.

At first Twitter didn't support images and the Facebook feed didn't either. Then Twitter did and the Facebook feed did. Whoop dee doo

There's nothing mysterious about this. Just see what's popular and imagine it blue, boxy, and boring. Congratulations, that's Facebook's next feature.

Even the strategy itself is just a copy of the Bill Gates playbook from the 80s and 90s.

They should have renamed themselves "Derivative" instead

Post reply on HN