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

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#171

Post by JohnFen » Tue, May 30, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

jillesvangurp wrote: post #126

It's a bit of a repeat of the early nineties and various companies trying to own the internet. None of it worked until people rallied around a bit of technology that worked based on open standards. Neal Stephenson published Snow Crash around the same time Tim Berners Lee worked on Mosaic, the first proper web browser. One of those things worked. In the years after we had crap like Compuserve, AOL, and others trying t…

> Movie producers have been producing 3D movies for ages.

And they do a reasonably good job of it now. And yet -- 3D movies are still not as attractive to most people as the studios expected.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#172

Post by JohnFen » Tue, May 30, 2023, 10:31 PM UTC

therealbilly wrote: post #149

I have no doubt the metaverse will be the future. Obviously it's hard for people to imagine the possibilities. It's also hard to explain it to people who lack imagination. I think it opens up amazing new horizons for humans to be a part of. From work to recreation. One example, you are working, writing code. You have virtual monitors hanging in front of you. No need to have a physical monitor with limited real estate…

> It's also hard to explain it to people who lack imagination.

Be careful about assuming that people who disagree with your predictions do so because they lack imagination.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#173

Post by rchaud » Tue, May 30, 2023, 11:45 PM UTC

wnscooke wrote: post #117

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…

“Metaverses need to look as good and play as well as AAA title games.” Strange that this line has been misunderstood when ppl write that (of all thing) email has done fine in community building without looking great. I think it’s the perspective - metaverses expect us to be _inside_ looking around, not looking at it from the outside. Who hasn’t thought, while playing an AAA title game, “aw man, this would look so coo…

Email has done well because it was part and parcel of general internet adoption. Email is also free, whereas a standalone VR set is not.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#174

Post by wkat4242 » Wed, May 31, 2023, 12:21 AM UTC

pmontra wrote: post #165

wkat4242 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By the way, everybody spends at least half of their career with prescription glasses: presbyopia hits as early as 40 if you're unlucky. Even at a more normal 50 it's a long time to retirement. Imagine the success of mobile phones if you had to slowly use them less and less after you turn 40. VR headsets are focused about 1.5m away. You don't need glasses even if you need them to read normally. Unless you can't see…

I need glasses too read my screen which is at a arm length from my face, about 70 cm. Myopia is also a thing and if it starts it starts much earlier than presbyopia.

Not everyone gets myopia. Everyone gets presbyopia to some extent at least if they live to a high age.

In fact I wish they had a fix for that like they can simply laser eyes now to fix myopia :(

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#175

Post by charcircuit » Wed, May 31, 2023, 1:00 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #147

charcircuit wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your point. Your eyes have no way of detecting the origin of light. When using VR there is no way for your eyes to know that the screen is that close.

My point is that you don't have any clue how my eyes feel with two tiny TVs a couple of centimeters away from them vomiting direct light with high intensity into them, and wide open pupils. Not a single clue, and if you think natural light is the same, I suggest a new posture to watch TV. Maybe you will learn something, maybe not.

>two tiny TVs a couple of centimeters away

Distance doesn't matter for light. It just adds a delay that is the distance divided by the speed of light

>vomiting direct light with high intensity into them

Most VR headsets are only 100 nits. That's less intense than than the intensity of light by being in an indoor room. Going outside is many magnitudes more intense.

>natural light is the same

What is "natural light"?

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#176

Post by eternityforest » Wed, May 31, 2023, 1:02 AM UTC

ahzhou wrote: post #163

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…

It’s incredibly hard (read: impossible) to make top-down dogfood pushes across a massive company like Meta. You have three options: 1) Create an team to internally sell it 2) Make it an ultimatum, and fire people if they don’t agree 3) Hope your marketing is good enough that you get grassroots adoption Option 1 is a waste of money - your best sales folks should be making money, not doing internal processes. Option 2…

I think the metaverse would kill morale regardless of how it was implemented or who's idea it is.

I mean, just thinking about it kills most people's morale instantly.

It will be great for disabled people who can't do these things in the real world, but at the moment the tech is not good enough to complete with anything that has a real life equivalent already.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#177

Post by charcircuit » Wed, May 31, 2023, 1:03 AM UTC

jurimasa wrote: post #152

charcircuit wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What glasses fix this? One with a strong prescription. If you are fully blind in one eye you can still use VR. You will just see monoscopic just as you do outside of VR.

No it doesn't work like that. I'm amblyopic. I only have like 10 or 20% visual capacity on my right eye. Using those devices suck even more than a 3D movie.

Even if you close an eye entirely VR still works. I don't understand what your point is. If your eye only has 10 to 20% clarity than VR headsets are already clear enough that your right eye can't see a difference in clarity between real life and VR.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#178

Post by prawn » Wed, May 31, 2023, 1:36 AM UTC

bandrami wrote: post #51

Animats wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. When gamers try Second Life, they complain that it's s-l-o-w. That's a fixable problem for people with gamer PCs. They have enough CPU and GPU to do this right. The classic clients are single-thread and OpenGL, so they can't use modern gamer hardware effectively. If you get rid of the sluggishness, user acceptance improves considerably. Or so says the literature on game design. You get flow. Performanc…

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.

Watch what people do in game lobbies like Fortnite, which are a bit of an open world: mindlessly destroy things, troll other people, show off superficial things like dance moves. A metaverse needs a bit more purpose, and constraints - a theme, or something that people strive for, or competition.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#179

Post by Animats » Wed, May 31, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #94

Animats wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are test users. I'm not promoting it here.

Drat. Well, I'd love to see it if there's some way to do that. Is there Linux support?

> I'd love to see it if there's some way to do that.

Email info@animats.com

> Is there Linux support?

Yes.

Re: The metaverse was never alive in the first place

#180

Post by eternityforest » Wed, May 31, 2023, 3:55 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #146

pjmlp wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the same, as any ophthalmologist will gladly educate you on the matter.

What is your point. Your eyes have no way of detecting the origin of light. When using VR there is no way for your eyes to know that the screen is that close.

Your eyes physically bend to focus at different distances.

VR can simulate a specific distance, and your eye will focus on that, but the common current tech can't simulate different distances.

Your eye focus will be telling you it's a 12ft away screen or whatever, even when your binocular vision is telling you a flying tomato is right next to you.