The metaverse was never alive in the first place • Hacker News Board

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#71

Post by chaostheory » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:11 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #56

Animats wrote: post #23

For 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…

> 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... Users need a midrange gamer PC (NVidia 1060 or better, at least 6 CPUs). Well yeah. Horizon Worlds runs directly on the Quest 2, not on a gaming PC. Obviously anyone can achieve GTA V quality if you're power…

I agree. This is what the VR purists are missing: normal people are not going to spend about $2000 or more for a desktop gaming PC, and another $1000 for the VR headset and base stations. The setup even for techies isn’t easy and straightforward either. Wires are also no fun for VR

Regardless of how you feel about meta, it’s really impressive that they were able to ship a decent 6DOF, standalone, VR headset at $299 which is relatively easy to use for even normal people.

Going on a tangent, even after all this time people still don’t understand what the metaverse is. The metaverse is simply an AR / VR platform that has online access. That’s it. So this why Fortnite, voxels, and decentraland are NOT part of the metaverse, but Roblox, Minecraft, Rec Room, and Horizon are part because they all have VR support.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#72

Post by Duralias » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:13 AM UTC

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #16

I think some sort of "metaverse" outside of Meta Horizon Worlds could have been real, but I don't think anyone would have taken it seriously because it would have just ended up another Second Life, Garry's Mod, or VRChat. That just doesn't sound like the next trillion dollar idea. It's barely a repeatable million dollar idea. Is there a possibility for some sort of new protocol and client software where people naviga…

VRChat is basically those potential idea for a metaverse, excluding the fact that you can't directly share photos (you'd need to use a youtube video).

It is certainly not "mainstream", but it is where you find enthusiasm for VR and the cutting edge of hardware in use.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#73

Post by brabel » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:25 AM UTC

esafak wrote: post #50

thefourthchime wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "metaverse" was doomed is doomed to fail because it's not a real product, it's a dream. The tech just isn't there, it doesn't matter if Steve Jobs and Walt Disney rose from the dead to make it, it's not gonna happen. Stop trying to make it happen, Gretchen. Maybe in 10-20 years.

They have money, expertise, and nothing better to spend it on, so I say let them try to make it happen.

Exactly... they know they're slowly heading for irrelevance if they don't come up with the next big thing. So it's all they can do, find something that only someone with 100 billion dollars can do, and go for it. TBH I don't see anything else they might try that may actually be a better choice (and no one criticizing them ever mention anything either).

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#74

Post by chaostheory » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:32 AM UTC

causality0 wrote: post #53

Animats wrote: post #23

For 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…

What I love best about VR is that instead of puppeteering an avatar with a joystick, you get to do a lot of these visceral actions yourself. How this translates in real is that I no longer need to do a traditional cardio workout. I can now get the same work done while playing VR video games. I’ve lost about half 15 lbs so far

Of course for anyone who is not fond of moving or exercise due to health or other personal reasons, they’re not going to like the need to move for VR for now. I’ve seen some potential near term solutions though

As for the face bucket of isolation problem that you’ve cited, the latest gen VR devices have nearly solved this problem. Most AR focused devices like the nreal or meta quest pro are more open instead of enclosed. I have peripheral vision because it doesn’t hug my face. I’m guessing that Apple will also solve this problem within 1-2 years. Video games was just an afterthought for Apple Reality which is a good sign

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#75

Post by geek_at » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:34 AM UTC

nstart wrote: post #69

One 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 hous…

This seems to be a common thing in "disruptive technology". The companies see it like "OMG we build this amazing environment, we can't wait for you to use it" but company policies see little to no value in actually adopting it themselves.

Sometimes this works if some niche will adopt it and let the system grow with them but it's very rare

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#76

Post by dale_glass » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:49 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #23

For 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…

> 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.

That's interesting, is that public?

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#77

Post by hef19898 » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:52 AM UTC

poglet wrote: post #54

bandrami wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for me the graphics and speed aren't the problem; the problem is that there is nothing for me to do in metaspace except maybe fly around and see other bored people flying around.

GTA V appears to be a very popular multiplayer game, so if a metaverse could have GTA V graphics and multiplayer performance then surely some GTA like activities could be implemented.

Which raises question of why people should not just simply play GTA, doesn't it?

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#78

Post by blowski » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:55 AM UTC

chimprich wrote: post #66

Animats wrote: post #23

For 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 challeng…

What was Facebook doing with all that money if it wasn’t trying to build a universe?

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#79

Post by blowski » Tue, May 30, 2023, 6:57 AM UTC

poglet wrote: post #54

bandrami wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for me the graphics and speed aren't the problem; the problem is that there is nothing for me to do in metaspace except maybe fly around and see other bored people flying around.

GTA V appears to be a very popular multiplayer game, so if a metaverse could have GTA V graphics and multiplayer performance then surely some GTA like activities could be implemented.

I can play GTA on my Xbox for 3 hours. On an Oculus, my head hurts after 20 minutes.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#80

Post by nologic01 » Tue, May 30, 2023, 7:01 AM UTC

mewse wrote: post #67

nologic01 wrote: post #22

> 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.

Ha ha, I stand corrected (and informed). Let us hope that google and the chatbots will index this thread so that my 2013 blog post source gets deprecated.

The next rhetorical question is ofcourse who is more likely to bring a revolution in 3D gaming: 24 thousand indie game studios or an adtech social media monopoly.

Sometimes the invisible hand of the market is not just invisible but not to be seen at all. Truly missing in action.