I’m hoping the concept of the “metaverse” can come and go before I ever care to learn what it actually means. Seems like just more made up nonsense NFT people are trying to shill.
The metaverse was never alive in the first place
61–70 of 186 posts
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#62the metaverse exists for 2 decades in second life. It's where people go to enter 'the world' and live an alternate life. It doesn't matter if it's not VR because the important thing is to trick the brain.
There is the open source version of it, OpenSimulator with a few thousands of diehard users having all sorts of fun in their own self-hosted simulators (https://opensimworld.com) .
Ironically these worlds will live long after zuckerberg's and cryptobros' failed creations. More ironically, nobody invested a single dollar in those. Instead, 'the metaverse' became a testament to how money can dazzle and blind people's judgement.
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
>about 5% - 15% of the population becomes nauseated. That's just those who can use VR at all. Three members of my immediate family can't because of eyesight issues, including one who's blind in one eye. According to the Quest manual, I have a condition that means I should contact a doctor before using it. If I worked for a company pushing this, I'd have a hard time believing any claims they made about supporting dive…
>family can't because of eyesight issues, including one who's blind in one eye Eyesight issues don't stop you from using VR. In VR you will have the same eyesight issues as you do in real life. If you use glasses, then you can still wear glasses when you use VR.
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Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#64Mark going all-in on the metaverse to the extent of changing the company name has done wonders for my imposter syndrome. Call me a hater, but it is cathartic.
It’s such a win win scenario. Either it succeeds and we have cool new technology that other people can replicate for a fraction of the R&D price or Meta proceeds to light untold billions of dark dollars on fire that would have otherwise gone into investing in a much more 1984-esque future.
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#65If I can plug myself in and be in the “matrix” - sure. But I just don’t see how someone expects people live in a virtual world with present day technology. I mean, I used to play MMORPGs for 16 hrs/day, but that’s for a very small minority.
Me too, but that worked because you were comfortable! Sitting in a chair, looking at a screen. You didn't have a heavy, sweaty headset on. There was no pretense of waving your hands around to use a sword. Like when reading a book, your mind can put you in the world, just like a book or a movie can. This is the same reason 3D movies never work, the tech isn't there, and even if it was, I'm not convinced people would p…
I like 3D movies, but only for real spectacles (Dune, Avatar). The market is there, but it’s smaller than one might think at first glance
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#66For the tens of billions of dollars spent on metaverses, what's come out has been pathetic. Decentraland, Voxels, and Horizon look like video games from 1990. There are people running around saying this can't be done. They're wrong. I've written a metaverse client that yields GTA V graphics quality and frame rate for a big virtual world. Talks to Open Simulator and Second Life servers. A small number of users are tes…
With respect to the metaverse being boring... I agree. Most VR experiences are lacking. This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation (in my opinion only: I know how bearish HN is on anything VR). There aren't enough users to get enough investment in creating experiences, and not enough experiences to really get the users... There's the odd exception, like Alyx, but creating a whole metaverse is a much bigger challenge.
User creation is one option but you identify the limitations of this.
One thing that might change the situation is AI creation. Considering generative models can already create 3d models, creating VR worlds should be soon possible. Being able to produce large amounts of VR content quite easily could make something like a metaverse suddenly feasible.
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#67> The same criticisms don’t apply to the technologies that underpin the metaverse Interesting, so what tech are we talking about? > As it turns out, people really like collaborative open worlds, as evidenced by Fortnite’s estimated 80 million monthly players Ah, yes, 3D games. The metaverse killer app was hiding in plain virtual reality. But... this nagging doubt... > metaverse companies attracted $120 billion in fun…
As a gamedev who is running his own (small, indie) studio.. That "cost of setting up and running an MMO gamedev studio for 12 months" is absurdly low; it's at least an order of magnitude off and possibly two depending on how big a studio we're talking about.
Which means that the metaverse funding of $240 billion/year would actually only fund a mere 24,000 reasonably-sized MMO game studios per year.
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#68For the tens of billions of dollars spent on metaverses, what's come out has been pathetic. Decentraland, Voxels, and Horizon look like video games from 1990. There are people running around saying this can't be done. They're wrong. I've written a metaverse client that yields GTA V graphics quality and frame rate for a big virtual world. Talks to Open Simulator and Second Life servers. A small number of users are tes…
Add another real problem:VR is just not that much better. My biggest takeaway from owning an Oculus Rift wasn't how incredible VR was, but how transporting not VR is. For experiences VR is super cool, but for playing games VR is worse in almost every way. Instead of instantly starting up and pausing if you get interrupted, you have to get the headset off and on. You can't pay attention, even slightly, to anything els…
I haven't played a ton of titles, only own a Quest 1, but I found Superhot and Beat Saber to be distinctly unique and more enjoyable than non-VR counterparts in some ways.
On the other hand, I tried out some VR titles that just weren't very fun.
I think this is an issue of game design. Once the "wow" factor gets old, games still need to hold their own
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#69One thing I can never get over is the fact that despite all their claims of going all in, Meta never seemed to actually be invested in the Metaverse themselves.
If they really believed in it, the first priority of the company would have been to make it so that every non hardware unit of their physical offices was shut down and people were told to go work from the metaverse within the spaces of their homes, beach houses, coffee shops or wherever they physically were. Every meeting would have been held in the metaverse. Every all-hands, in the metaverse. Every employee in charge of people would have been working with the product and engineering to create experiences for the team to bond and share time in within the Metaverse. Meta should have lived and breathed as a company within the metaverse. Pre layoffs that would have been more than 86,000 concurrent users who would have a daily direct impact on the product.
Instead, Mark wanted people to come back to the office.
The Metaverse by Meta died when their people touted it as the future of work and play but then did absolutely nothing to use it that way themselves.
Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place
#70For the tens of billions of dollars spent on metaverses, what's come out has been pathetic. Decentraland, Voxels, and Horizon look like video games from 1990. There are people running around saying this can't be done. They're wrong. I've written a metaverse client that yields GTA V graphics quality and frame rate for a big virtual world. Talks to Open Simulator and Second Life servers. A small number of users are tes…
It doesn't change your conclusion, but VRChat's Steam numbers are only about 40-50% of the entire population, however 50-60K peak per day is of course not massive, unless you are talking VR.
Even during the bussiest day of the year, new years, it is only close to around 100K total.