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The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

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

#291
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Plenty of "metaversy" things are possible today, but rejected by users.

Second Life is a tiny niche. Connecting Minecraft servers with portals has been possible for ages, and smooth connections seems like it wouldn't be terribly difficult, yet no one uses it because no one wants it.

And despite the huge increases in VR quality that has happened already, none of this has changed.

You suggest it's because the VR isn't good enough yet, but I think the evidence so far suggests VR is not the missing ingredient for people to want to live in a common virtual world.

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

#293
post #86

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…

If the problem was really just the quality of headsets, you'd expect some dose-response relationship, I think. Headsets may not be good enough, but they're much better than they used to be, so you'd expect SOME stable growth in using it for shared environments Second Life style.

But that hasn't happened. I'm thinking the problem isn't lack of good VR, it's that a truly shared metaverse isn't really something we want.

We want our own spaces. We want to have the option to just "watch", to be invisible to the world we're exploring (or to lurk, in forum/chat terms).

When even better VR comes, I think it will be used for far more solitary activities than social ones. We do see some hints of a dose-response relationship there, with reasonably popular VR games like Half Life Alyx.

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

#294
The most important fact about Java Minecraft that most people are missing is that long after Notch left the company they started distributing deobfuscation maps for it:

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\versions\1.17.1\1.17.1.json

Look for: client_mappings & server_mappings

https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/e4d540e0cba05a6097e88...

https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/f6cae1c5c1255f68ba483...

The tricky part is they don't provide deobfuscation tools, so everyone makes their own and it's a mess.

But Minecraft is for all practical purposes open-source since 2018!

Legally you cannot distribute the deobfuscated binaries, so most people map the code.

I would probably use the 1.17.1 as the last "open" minecraft and start a fork that you compile and work with after deobfuscation and then re-obfuscate at each release.

Dunno what the legal team at Microsoft would think about that!

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

#295

To be completely honest, I don't really know what people mean when they talk about a "metaverse". But if I had to define it one way or the other, I feel like I already have, and interact with, a sort of metaverse. I play various video games with various people, talking and interacting with friends for these games on Discord, interacting with the larger community of these games on Discord/Reddit, engaging with influen…

The gold standard would be the matrix but one that you’re aware you’re in and can leave at any time.

I am pretty sure that the gold standard would be real life. It doesn't require energy or batteries to just exist in real life, unlike the army of devices that will be required to support all this new tech and network infrastructure.

Very odd that on one hand there is a push towards saving the Earth and the carbon crisis, and on the other hand excitement towards technology that lets everyone stick their head in the sand.

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

#296

I want a single contiguous Minecraft world that everyone can use. Each account could get a range of blocks allocated to them, after Credit Card validation, to prove you're a real person. You could pay to own some more blocks. The blocks you get are just a land grab. You can trade blocks you own for blocks someone else owns, and there could be a monetary transaction to go with it. You can build what you want to on you…

> You could pay to own some more blocks.

Let's bring wealth-gaps to the metaverse, what could go wrong ;)

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

#297
post #294

The most important fact about Java Minecraft that most people are missing is that long after Notch left the company they started distributing deobfuscation maps for it: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\versions\1.17.1\1.17.1.json Look for: client_mappings & server_mappings https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/e4d540e0cba05a6097e88... https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/f6cae1c5c1255f68ba483... The tr…

I wouldn't say "for all practical purposes" because one of the practical parts of open source software is the open source licence. It's more like a "source available" project, and only once you've bought it which seems fair enough to me. I'm sure it makes modding much easier which I'm grateful for.

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

#298
post #294

The most important fact about Java Minecraft that most people are missing is that long after Notch left the company they started distributing deobfuscation maps for it: C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\.minecraft\versions\1.17.1\1.17.1.json Look for: client_mappings & server_mappings https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/e4d540e0cba05a6097e88... https://launcher.mojang.com/v1/objects/f6cae1c5c1255f68ba483... The tr…

> Dunno what the legal team at Microsoft would think about that!

I’m sure they would think something like “No good deed goes unpunished.”

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

#299

Yeah. The totally lawless environments that can be present in Minecraft servers are awesome- the best example of which being 2b2t, a vanilla gameserver running the same map since 2010 that is essentially the 4chan of Minecraft (it even originated there). Despite allowing users to hack to their hearts' content and having no rules, the creativity and sheer amount of media produced by such an environment is stunning. He…

And it turns out it's been pwned for a couple years by people inserting a vulnerability into a dependency by masterful social engineering where the vuln was introduces as an obvious fix to another less exploitable bug.

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It’s obvious a deeply immersive experience will eventually arrive This is like "self driving car" obvious. It seems like we're close, but we're really really not.

I think that’s a very good analogy, not least because our incremental steps to self driving cars and similar to our incremental steps towards immersion - we already have some components (parking assist, social media) but there’s still a large gap.

Though there's no problem understanding what a self driving car should be - like an Uber but with no human driver in. The metaverse on the other hand - no one really knows.
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