8 ms·

The Metaverse: A brave, new virtual world

65 points by laurex 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
titzer 5y ago
After you upload your brain, how do you pay them to keep running you?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mattkevan 5y ago
  You’ll get stuck on the equivalent of cheap shared hosting. Try to think and you’ll crash from hitting memory limits. Hit your processor quota and you’ll be spun down for the rest of the month. Like a forgotten Wordpress install you’ll be ravaged with malware, only able to talk about cheap v1agra, frantically spamming all your contacts.
  - lmas 5y ago
    Wow that was a dystopic and horrifying image you painted.
    - titzer 5y ago
      Just an extrapolation from the ad-monetization of everything.
jerf 5y ago
Alright, I smell a submarine PR campaign here. Who's trying to make "metaverse" happen and why? Some initial suggestions: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4lpg.2.6 https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4... https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4lpg.2.3 https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4... https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4lpg.2.1 https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4... Although they could just be people trying to get ahead of the curve.
- hprotagonist 5y ago
  Too late.
  - gallegojaime 5y ago
    Posting on HN in work hours? Uncle Enzo will hear of this!
- Animats 5y ago
  There's a huge effort to hype NFTs in "the metaverse". They need excessive hype, because the dirty little secret of crypto based metaverses is that nobody uses them. Decentraland concurrent user count link: [1] 252 right now. Sominium Space concurrent user count link: [2] 25 right now. Yes, the user counts really are that tiny. Both have been live for more than a year, so it's not that they're new. Somebody just paid almost a million dollars for a plot of land in Decentraland. Sotheby's has an outlet there. But nobody goes there. The real metaverses are Roblox (about 1.8 million concurrent users today), Second Life (about 50,000) and VRChat (about 17,000). Maybe IMVU, but haven't found numbers for them. Fortnite is even bigger, but is more game than metaverse. The big ambitions outlined by Epic's CEO have not yet materialized. [1] https://catalyst-monitor.vercel.app/ https://catalyst-monitor.vercel.app/ [2] https://somniumspace.com/parcel/4326?elv=0 https://somniumspace.com/parcel/4326?elv=0
  - soared 5y ago
    Stretching the definition of Metaverse also gets you the bank/exchange/commerce areas of major MMO's where little to no gameplay occurs, just people chatting through their avatars.
- gallegojaime 5y ago
  I've seen a few other links on these last weeks talking specifically about the 'metaverse', it doesn't seem implausible.
- sceew 5y ago
  I think Matthew Ball on Twitter is responsible for the increased usage of "Metaverse" amongst investors, business strategists, etc. He recently launched an ETF ($META) that indexes to "Metaverse" companies (Roblox, Unity, etc.). I have always been pretty cynical about his takes and usage of "Metaverse." There's a lot of hand-waving and ted-talky grandstanding to make the "Metaverse" concept seem like something new, exciting and inevitable. But using "Metaverse" seems overly complicated, its just describing a large, centralized online community which isn't a new concept. World of Warcraft or Minecraft may have been the peak of the "Metaverse" so far, so it seems disingenuous to treat the "Metaverse" as something new and novel. Kinda've stream of consciousness from me - but all this really seems like is someone with a consultant background applying frameworks and buzzwords to concepts that felt childish and unserious for so long (WoW, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc.), but now people are realizing that these companies and games can spit out serious cash, so they love someone who can package it together nicely through these frameworks and thought pieces. Boomers love this! https://twitter.com/ballmatthew https://twitter.com/ballmatthew
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kaetemi 5y ago
Any commercial company building a "metaverse" will to some extent just end up with another walled garden. Which, I suppose, goes against the ideals of a metaverse. Only a fully open source project could give the freedom to do anything in a virtual world. Something you can run yourself, fully modify, and connect to others. Then again, open source gaming isn't a very big scene. Something usable on this scale seems unlikely for now. So... commercial virtual spaces it'll end up being. Enjoy your ads.
- fastball 5y ago
  I wouldn't say it needs to be fully open source, it just needs to be federated, like the internet.
- g5095 5y ago
  As someone who's been part of a number of communities in SecondLife for 15+ years, this is exactly the problem that platform has had in becoming THE metaverse. Despite technically having everything required to tick that box, development is shackled to the funding capability of a single company, land values are extortionary considering the cost of server hosting these days ($300+ for a 'sim' a month, when they shard them up 100s to a server). The solution has to be a set of standard protocols and interfaces that can be implemented by anyone, just as 'the web' was. Every time I see a 'Secondlife killer' come along I judge it's success at taking out the incumbent on it's openness, and I'm yet to see a real contender.
  - cblconfederate 5y ago
    Opensimulator exists
  - Animats 5y ago
    Actually, each full region (256m x 256 m) uses about one CPU and costs $350/month. Hundreds to one server, no. 16 on a 16 CPU server, yes. The architecture is rather expensive to run. Operating cost is per region, not per user. Regions run 24/7 regardless of whether any user is in them. Trains continue to run, crops continue to grow, grazing animals graze, a few cars drive themselves around, traffic lights continue to change... Improbable's Spatial OS tried a more flexible architecture, where regions were dynamically resized as users entered and left. It cost US$400 million to develop, was expensive to run, and all four games based on it shut down due to high costs. A big seamless virtual world is a hard problem. Except for the voxel crowd (Roblox, Minecraft, Dual Universe) who seem to be good at scaling, at the cost of being blocky.
the__alchemist 5y ago
Tangent: Many people on HN are probably familiar with Snow Crash; for those who aren't, you might enjoy it, or its less-sarcastic meta-sequel, The Diamond Age.
ilaksh 5y ago
It's strange how people usually completely ignore decades of efforts like Second Life and several other companies that were less successful when they talk about this concept. And also how multiplayer gaming in general isn't really included. To me, multiplayer gaming is where the real numbers have gone for the multiverse. It's just that most people don't care so much about things being completely open, configurable and user-scriptable as much as they do about other parts of the experience being smooth. I actually think that the fact that these platforms such as SL and many others no one has heard of are so configurable makes a lot of people want to avoid them because it seems like work rather than play for them. And also the lack of constraints can be an intellectual burden for people. But we do have things like Roblox and other contenders now that are more open. I think to really get to the original cyberpunk spirit of the metaverse, we are going to be waiting for more comfortable VR gear to be widely available and cheap. Such as VR/AR using new technology that is much more like wearing a normal pair of glasses. I also think that wide deployment of new faster low-latency Wifi is going to make a difference in what applications can do. Technology improvements like these are coming up over the next few years.
machinehermiter 5y ago
I was into VRML in the late 90s and have been in love with VR since the Lawnmower Man. The kicker for me was the VR conference last year at the start of the pandemic that while anyone could attend in VR, only 25% did. Most thought attending on zoom was just easier. If it is not worth using VR for a VR conference then it seems pretty hopeless. Maybe "virtual reality" has always been a mistake as a name as it is always going to under deliver. I should be helping to build the Metaverse but I just don't believe in the concept anymore. At least not headset VR and I don't think I will live long enough to see an alternative.
- musingsole 5y ago
  Augmented Reality seems to be where the true value of any of these systems will be. Virtual realities will necessarily be devoid of both the rich detail and meaningful adversity that comes with actual reality. However, enhancing reality to be more comfortable or entertaining to the mind tethered to it offers more avenues.

65 points by laurex 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

titzer 5y ago

After you upload your brain, how do you pay them to keep running you?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mattkevan 5y ago
You’ll get stuck on the equivalent of cheap shared hosting. Try to think and you’ll crash from hitting memory limits. Hit your processor quota and you’ll be spun down for the rest of the month. Like a forgotten Wordpress install you’ll be ravaged with malware, only able to talk about cheap v1agra, frantically spamming all your contacts.
- lmas 5y ago
  Wow that was a dystopic and horrifying image you painted.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Just an extrapolation from the ad-monetization of everything.

jerf 5y ago

Alright, I smell a submarine PR campaign here. Who's trying to make "metaverse" happen and why? Some initial suggestions: https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4lpg.2.6 https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4... https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4lpg.2.3 https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4... https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4lpg.2.1 https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4803:l4... Although they could just be people trying to get ahead of the curve.

hprotagonist 5y ago
Too late.
- gallegojaime 5y ago
  Posting on HN in work hours? Uncle Enzo will hear of this!
Animats 5y ago
There's a huge effort to hype NFTs in "the metaverse". They need excessive hype, because the dirty little secret of crypto based metaverses is that nobody uses them. Decentraland concurrent user count link: [1] 252 right now. Sominium Space concurrent user count link: [2] 25 right now. Yes, the user counts really are that tiny. Both have been live for more than a year, so it's not that they're new. Somebody just paid almost a million dollars for a plot of land in Decentraland. Sotheby's has an outlet there. But nobody goes there. The real metaverses are Roblox (about 1.8 million concurrent users today), Second Life (about 50,000) and VRChat (about 17,000). Maybe IMVU, but haven't found numbers for them. Fortnite is even bigger, but is more game than metaverse. The big ambitions outlined by Epic's CEO have not yet materialized. [1] https://catalyst-monitor.vercel.app/ https://catalyst-monitor.vercel.app/ [2] https://somniumspace.com/parcel/4326?elv=0 https://somniumspace.com/parcel/4326?elv=0
- soared 5y ago
  Stretching the definition of Metaverse also gets you the bank/exchange/commerce areas of major MMO's where little to no gameplay occurs, just people chatting through their avatars.
gallegojaime 5y ago
I've seen a few other links on these last weeks talking specifically about the 'metaverse', it doesn't seem implausible.
sceew 5y ago
I think Matthew Ball on Twitter is responsible for the increased usage of "Metaverse" amongst investors, business strategists, etc. He recently launched an ETF ($META) that indexes to "Metaverse" companies (Roblox, Unity, etc.). I have always been pretty cynical about his takes and usage of "Metaverse." There's a lot of hand-waving and ted-talky grandstanding to make the "Metaverse" concept seem like something new, exciting and inevitable. But using "Metaverse" seems overly complicated, its just describing a large, centralized online community which isn't a new concept. World of Warcraft or Minecraft may have been the peak of the "Metaverse" so far, so it seems disingenuous to treat the "Metaverse" as something new and novel. Kinda've stream of consciousness from me - but all this really seems like is someone with a consultant background applying frameworks and buzzwords to concepts that felt childish and unserious for so long (WoW, Minecraft, Fortnite, etc.), but now people are realizing that these companies and games can spit out serious cash, so they love someone who can package it together nicely through these frameworks and thought pieces. Boomers love this! https://twitter.com/ballmatthew https://twitter.com/ballmatthew

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kaetemi 5y ago

Any commercial company building a "metaverse" will to some extent just end up with another walled garden. Which, I suppose, goes against the ideals of a metaverse. Only a fully open source project could give the freedom to do anything in a virtual world. Something you can run yourself, fully modify, and connect to others. Then again, open source gaming isn't a very big scene. Something usable on this scale seems unlikely for now. So... commercial virtual spaces it'll end up being. Enjoy your ads.

fastball 5y ago
I wouldn't say it needs to be fully open source, it just needs to be federated, like the internet.
g5095 5y ago
As someone who's been part of a number of communities in SecondLife for 15+ years, this is exactly the problem that platform has had in becoming THE metaverse. Despite technically having everything required to tick that box, development is shackled to the funding capability of a single company, land values are extortionary considering the cost of server hosting these days ($300+ for a 'sim' a month, when they shard them up 100s to a server). The solution has to be a set of standard protocols and interfaces that can be implemented by anyone, just as 'the web' was. Every time I see a 'Secondlife killer' come along I judge it's success at taking out the incumbent on it's openness, and I'm yet to see a real contender.
- cblconfederate 5y ago
  Opensimulator exists
- Animats 5y ago
  Actually, each full region (256m x 256 m) uses about one CPU and costs $350/month. Hundreds to one server, no. 16 on a 16 CPU server, yes. The architecture is rather expensive to run. Operating cost is per region, not per user. Regions run 24/7 regardless of whether any user is in them. Trains continue to run, crops continue to grow, grazing animals graze, a few cars drive themselves around, traffic lights continue to change... Improbable's Spatial OS tried a more flexible architecture, where regions were dynamically resized as users entered and left. It cost US$400 million to develop, was expensive to run, and all four games based on it shut down due to high costs. A big seamless virtual world is a hard problem. Except for the voxel crowd (Roblox, Minecraft, Dual Universe) who seem to be good at scaling, at the cost of being blocky.

the__alchemist 5y ago

Tangent: Many people on HN are probably familiar with Snow Crash; for those who aren't, you might enjoy it, or its less-sarcastic meta-sequel, The Diamond Age.

ilaksh 5y ago

It's strange how people usually completely ignore decades of efforts like Second Life and several other companies that were less successful when they talk about this concept. And also how multiplayer gaming in general isn't really included. To me, multiplayer gaming is where the real numbers have gone for the multiverse. It's just that most people don't care so much about things being completely open, configurable and user-scriptable as much as they do about other parts of the experience being smooth. I actually think that the fact that these platforms such as SL and many others no one has heard of are so configurable makes a lot of people want to avoid them because it seems like work rather than play for them. And also the lack of constraints can be an intellectual burden for people. But we do have things like Roblox and other contenders now that are more open. I think to really get to the original cyberpunk spirit of the metaverse, we are going to be waiting for more comfortable VR gear to be widely available and cheap. Such as VR/AR using new technology that is much more like wearing a normal pair of glasses. I also think that wide deployment of new faster low-latency Wifi is going to make a difference in what applications can do. Technology improvements like these are coming up over the next few years.

machinehermiter 5y ago

I was into VRML in the late 90s and have been in love with VR since the Lawnmower Man. The kicker for me was the VR conference last year at the start of the pandemic that while anyone could attend in VR, only 25% did. Most thought attending on zoom was just easier. If it is not worth using VR for a VR conference then it seems pretty hopeless. Maybe "virtual reality" has always been a mistake as a name as it is always going to under deliver. I should be helping to build the Metaverse but I just don't believe in the concept anymore. At least not headset VR and I don't think I will live long enough to see an alternative.

musingsole 5y ago
Augmented Reality seems to be where the true value of any of these systems will be. Virtual realities will necessarily be devoid of both the rich detail and meaningful adversity that comes with actual reality. However, enhancing reality to be more comfortable or entertaining to the mind tethered to it offers more avenues.