6 ms·

What is the metaverse?

26 points by n4r9 5y ago

jimmySixDOF 5y ago
It will be interesting to see where Gartner place the Metaverse on their Hype Cycle and track it going forward but there is no doubt it is already in the Amara's Law phase where we are overestimating the short term and underestimating the long term. Yet, even overhyped as it may currently be, the actual short term impacts will still be significant. Real Time Edge Rendered Cloud Pixel Streaming, Digital Twins, AI/ML/ Computer Vision, and social platform avatars etc are the escape velocity needed to extend XR beyond the gaming community into ordinary personal and business interactions. In so many cases, just adding an interactive layer of 3D imaginative space can make the things we do better. People who are in the space have experienced several false dawn episodes but the intersection of hardware capabilities and software use cases has never been so virtuous as they are now so strap in & hang on to your hats folks !
thesketh 5y ago
Hasn't this been done already? Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?
HiroProtagonist 5y ago
Beware the Nam-Shub of Enki.
- arrakis2021 5y ago
  Snow Crash needs a movie
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    It's a perfectly fine book as it is.
    - EvanAnderson 5y ago
      Agreed. I'm horrified by how Hollywood would bungle it. I've always been glad that Snow Crash and Neuromancer have stayed out of the movies.
  - HiroProtagonist 5y ago
    There’s an HBO show in development now. I’m looking forward to it!
  - garmaine 5y ago
    If any of his books need a movie (or HBO series), it is probably Cryptonomicon. Even more relevant now than when it was written with the rise of crypto currency.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
donogh 5y ago
I struggle with the constant stream of fad terminology, the latest being Metaverse and Web 3.0. In some ways, Metaverse appears to be simply a new way of describing what we already have —- aren’t social networks themselves already metaverses? In others, the likes of FB and Apple are pushing technologies to enhance “Metaverse immersion” (made that up), none of which is gaining significant traction. VR and AR headsets continue to improve, and yet still fail to extend beyond the realm of tech demos for most people. (I understand AR has decent uses in industry: hardly a metaverse.) This criticism is coming from someone who was an enthusiastic early adopter with Oculus, and who currently owns a Quest 2, which is excellent at gathering dust, and at occasionally wowing VR noobs (who are amazed but never end up buying one). Then you have iOS AR, another technology devoid of practical and compelling uses. I love the Measure app with the LiDAR sensor —- is that a metaverse, an electronic tape measure? I guess so. My take: the Metaverse is the new chatbot.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Maybe you don't like your VR but I actually know more and more people who use their headsets and looking at the stores and forums and so on it seems like it's gaining real traction. Less so for AR but Pokemon Go still has users an I see ARish features integrated by default into my default Samsung camera, and ARish stuff into meeting software, streamers etc. It's not super advanced yet but hardly dead and I wouldn't be convinced something big won't come out of it. >My take: the Metaverse is the new chatbot. I'm not a fan of most chatbots but they've been very successful, improving and you see more of them. An apt comparison even if made for the wrong reasons.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Had the "knotted rope" moment with the term "Web3" the other day, came across about 6 different uses of the word in a 2 hour period; and every one was someone who was (being charitable) fully bought into and enthused about "cryptoeconomy". They seemed to be using the term to mean "the web, but fully monetized on an NFT-like basis" but in some way that seemed to denote an ideological significance on par with the concept of the Trinity. If I heard either term being used like this at a conference, I'd be wary of the kool aid.
skywhopper 5y ago
There’s a hype phase like this every ten years or so since the 70s or earlier that VR is going to revolutionize the world. It’s not going to happen this time either. What’s really sad about this time, though, is that the Metaverse name comes from a dystopian sci-fi novel in which people retreat to a VR world because the real world is such a miserable place where corporations and organized crime runs the world. Instead of embracing that, maybe we should be striving to avoid that state of affairs.
- wsjtho55 5y ago
  You’d have to implode startups then since deflating others buying power and wages is what props up VCs that fund them You should probably also avoid Ycombinator which is basically seeding reality with pointless corpo brands, many with their own brand bucks for you to spend All in cahoots with government Like an organized crime syndicate And we all go online to distract from and support it There’s no getting around a police state; the goal of a state will always be to insure people accept what’s politically correct. If it’s politically correct there are billionaires that always win, political policy will enable it.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Funny, because our internet has become a miserable place where corporations run everything.
  - gmuslera 5y ago
    ...internet has become a miserable place where corporations ruin everything. FTFY
mattlondon 5y ago
If you have to wear physical goggles or glasses, it's not going to happen apart from some very niche areas. Anyone remember 3D films and TV? Apparently the real killer for that was that people didn't like sitting wearing glasses, and those who have to wear glasses all the time anyway couldn't take part. So can we expect 4 year old kids to patiently wear an expensive VR headset to chat to granny? I doubt it. People can't even be bothered to turn their webcam on for meetings - they're certainly not going to bother putting on a VR headset and grabbing controllers for a 30 minute status update meeting. That said, I am intrigued by using a VR headset for a virtual display (rather than monitors). In my limited experience of using VR stuff from 2 or 3 years ago the per-eye resolution sucks though and there is no pupil tracking so I can't imagine it being a great experience, but perhaps that is solved now?
- Tenoke 5y ago
  3D movies are sadly still super popular. I couldn't find a single high quality streaming of Dune that wasn't 3D in the capital I live in.. It does seem like most people don't have problems wearing the glasses.
  - ekianjo 5y ago
    > 3D movies are sadly still super popular. Wrong incentives at play. It's not that people want it, they force 3D movies on you and charge you for the glasses. Easy money.
    - Tenoke 5y ago
      I don't know. After asking people around and checking online plenty of people seem to prefer 3D and allegedly it sells more seats when there are 3d viewings.
    - atombender 5y ago
      I've seen many 3D movies in theaters, and they never charged extra for the glasses. Where are they doing this? It would only make sense if there was an option to bring your own, but that's not the case.
lucideer 5y ago
Is this journalist trying to be "first" on this or something? Did they coin the term? I'm pretty up to date on what trends and fads are happening in tech: this is the first I've heard of the term "metaverse". > It's attracting attention - and money - from some of of tech's biggest names, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Epic Games' Tim Sweeney. Sounds like by "some" the mean "two". Or are Zuck & Sweeney just backing VR and as clueless about this new metaterminology as I am? This reminds me of the attempt 2 years ago to rebrand AR&VR collectively as the even more confusing "XR". It's just VR. Call it VR. And it's not a new trend, VR undergoing a resurgence for some time now.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  The concept dates back to at least the novel Snow Crash, if not earlier. Not sure if the term was coined back then too, but just do a quick search. The tech press and a lot of the industry have really been pushing it hard lately.
- psyc 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
- Tenoke 5y ago
  No, it's a popular term that has gained a lot of usage in the last 2 years[0] coined in Snow Crash in 1992[1]. You might not have heard it but if you read a lot about tech or follow the right people on Twitter (often intersected with crypto and NFTs in particular) it would've been hard to miss it[2]. 0. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Metaverse https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Metavers... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse 2. https://twitter.com/search?q=metaverse&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=metaverse&src=typed_query
Graffur 5y ago
My understanding is that the term 'metaverse' is just VR or Virtual Reality rebranded.
- psyc 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwdecro 5y ago
Who actually wants this? I don't want to stare at digital copies of people I'm trying to communicate with, whilst trapped in a digital maze designed by someone trying to keep me engaged. If the "digital twin" is exactly the same, there's no point, and if it's not exactly the same, it's just weird (i.e. "uncanny"). This "metaverse" is some kind of deranged trap. Social media is a hellscape of misunderstanding and conflict already. A further layer of indirection and reduction in "humanness", in the form of "cartoonifying" everyone, is going to further erode society's foundations.
- libertine 5y ago
  >Who actually wants this? Folks who played Secondlife, Farmville, Animal Crossing, etc. But I think that part of the problem seems to be that some of us have negative emotion towards Facebook, and we feel uncomfortable even just knowing Facebook is working on this.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
    It's kinda funny, the Japanese anime space has explored the idea of a metaverse extensively if this is the case. Although for me "metaverse" is the stuff Marvel does to ensure every super hero becomes dull and boring
sbuttgereit 5y ago
Once upon a time, Second Life was that metaverse. Big companies had Second Life strategies and big media organizations breathlessly covered it as the next big thing changing our culture and experiences. While I'm pretty sure Linden Labs still exists, it never did much more than get an initial buzz from people that could only see the possibilities disconnected from the what it actually means to be an organic, living entity in a very real world. It also gained attention from those that feared missing out on the promises made by that early buzz. But even Second Life couldn't avoid the reality of the physical world that preceded it. Second Life is still with us, but it's an unimportant niche player with little lasting impact on society, such that many articles touting the new metaverse don't even acknowledge its existence. Journalists don't recognize that they're simply jumping on that hype train which leads nowhere again. Yes technology has come a long way since then, but probably not as far as we imagine either. And the companies best positioned to deliver a "metaverse" can barely get their own products working to a level where they can even be described a "useful" (try using a pixel phone, a chromecast, and youtube together and see how much just doesn't work reliably)... a sustained alternative existence will necessarily have a lower tolerance for poor quality delivery: I don't think any meaningful player out there has a culture of quality sufficient to get a compelling product out the door that can establish itself as such an alternative existence. Finally, as a physical being in a physical world: you won't sustain yourself with virtual food, doctors will not be able effectively to cure your physical ailments without examining your physical body, and other realities will almost certainly mean you're spending more time experiencing the real universe than the metaverse. The plumber, electrician, construction worker, farmer, fireman, policeman, garbageman, etc. won't do their work in the metaverse. Maybe a metaverse can consist of some office workers and those people with enough free time and money to spend their leisure time in a constructed fantasy world, but that doesn't strike me as game changing. I think the best technologies that have potential to have an impact on our view of reality will be augmented reality technologies. Those products seeking to replace reality with something different will just be a fad to be gushed over by journalists and influencers.
Pxtl 5y ago
"what is the metaverse?" A solution looking for a problem. Snow Crash was an excellent book, but irl virtual reality doesn't add any conveniences over simple documents. Sure it's more "immersive", but does a virtual, immersive version of the world wide Web actually accomplish anything besides shininess?
- herval 5y ago
  Do UIs accomplish anything that a terminal doesn’t, besides shininess? Do color screens accomplish anything besides shininess? Why does one need a mouse? It’s surely a solution looking for a problem.
  - Pxtl 5y ago
    UIs provide far better discoverability than console. Color provides additional information density, plus allows images and video to be displayed in better fidelity. The main thing VR provides is the ability to examine 3d objects. Considering that most of the content online (other than gaming) is 2D text, forms, images, and video, VR doesn't add much. Look how 3D movies failed to catch on.
rswail 5y ago
As with all other technological advances VR/AR will take off when porn is made using the technology.
- psyc 5y ago
  Um… VR porn is being cranked out at a pretty good clip. IMO it is the most compelling application, actually. The effect is quite extraordinary.
  - kmlx 5y ago
    i have a bit of experience in this. yes, there is VR porn. and yes, companies continue producing it. unfortunately the number of views on actual VR devices is very low due to low VR adoption. as such VR investment in porn is in a ping-pong phase. a couple of years of investment, then no investment, then repeat. basically the market isn’t there yet, and everyone is tried to guess when this mass adoption will actually happen.
MayeulC 5y ago
I've read the term defined as MMORPG. Virtual reality MMORPGs, maybe. But it sounds like some non-gamer marketting people discovered MMOs and decided the name wasn't cool enough.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  It will probably be more MMO and less RPG. More club penguin than WoW.
_8j50 5y ago
That's all nice but I am still failing to see how it solves problems for people outside of the niche within a niche of privacy conscious tech enthusiasts. I can see how it can solve real problems, I just never hear it doing so. From my observation (correct me if I am mistaken), these projects add a lot of features continually, which is what devs are great at. But I don't see work or an investment being made in quality,reliability and performance. They desparately need central servers that use the metaverse behind the scenes but invest heavily on good UX. Is mastodon inherently better quality than fb? Is matrix more reliable than signal and whatsapp or better performing/moderated than discord? For most people , the decentralized and privacy sensitive features are merely the decoration on the icing of the cake.
- danschuller 5y ago
  I see this term used a lot more by investors than tech people. We already had, at least one, "metaverse" in Second Life, right? What's the difference this time? VR? - not with the current delivery mechanisms. Too uncomfortable for extended use and not enough value provided. Another decade maybe. Did second life lose popularity because it wasn't a VR-first experience? NFTs? - game developers are not going to spend their time recreating your NFT as a custom asset in their game world. There aren't great inter-op standards for taking assets between games. We have fbx as model format, kind of, but then how that's rendered is going to vary. There's also all sorts of potentially liability issues in regards to taking a random image / asset off the internet and injecting it into your game. Unless the game world itself is decentralised. I don't see this going anywhere. "Crypo-gaming" sure, some kind of "metaverse" no. If the "metaverse" is some AR stuff with your phone then sure, that's coming - putting down virtual furniture in your home, trying on virtual shoes or clothing etc. But that doesn't sound anything like what Facebook is pursuing. I'm not saying it's not possible and maybe this post will look archaic in five years but I don't see it on the horizon at the moment.
meh2frdf 5y ago
I think they are fixating too much on the vr aspect (ie the virtual model/graphics), I think the world you perceive via sight and sound being processed/mined and providing useful personal context aware applications is the key. For example an app that can whisper in you ear the name of every person you meet.
sasaf5 5y ago
In the metaverse the blockchain technology keeps track of your VR assets using non-fungible tokens where you interact with AI-powered IoT devices. You might even 3D print your own self-driving virtual-electric car! I mean, the previous big things haven't even had the chance to become big... When can we go back to hyping the wavelet transform?

26 points by n4r9 5y ago

It will be interesting to see where Gartner place the Metaverse on their Hype Cycle and track it going forward but there is no doubt it is already in the Amara's Law phase where we are overestimating the short term and underestimating the long term. Yet, even overhyped as it may currently be, the actual short term impacts will still be significant. Real Time Edge Rendered Cloud Pixel Streaming, Digital Twins, AI/ML/ Computer Vision, and social platform avatars etc are the escape velocity needed to extend XR beyond the gaming community into ordinary personal and business interactions. In so many cases, just adding an interactive layer of 3D imaginative space can make the things we do better. People who are in the space have experienced several false dawn episodes but the intersection of hardware capabilities and software use cases has never been so virtuous as they are now so strap in & hang on to your hats folks !

thesketh 5y ago

Hasn't this been done already? Where's Bruce Willis when you need him?

HiroProtagonist 5y ago

Beware the Nam-Shub of Enki.

arrakis2021 5y ago
Snow Crash needs a movie
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  It's a perfectly fine book as it is.
  - EvanAnderson 5y ago
    Agreed. I'm horrified by how Hollywood would bungle it. I've always been glad that Snow Crash and Neuromancer have stayed out of the movies.
- HiroProtagonist 5y ago
  There’s an HBO show in development now. I’m looking forward to it!
- garmaine 5y ago
  If any of his books need a movie (or HBO series), it is probably Cryptonomicon. Even more relevant now than when it was written with the rise of crypto currency.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

donogh 5y ago

I struggle with the constant stream of fad terminology, the latest being Metaverse and Web 3.0. In some ways, Metaverse appears to be simply a new way of describing what we already have —- aren’t social networks themselves already metaverses? In others, the likes of FB and Apple are pushing technologies to enhance “Metaverse immersion” (made that up), none of which is gaining significant traction. VR and AR headsets continue to improve, and yet still fail to extend beyond the realm of tech demos for most people. (I understand AR has decent uses in industry: hardly a metaverse.) This criticism is coming from someone who was an enthusiastic early adopter with Oculus, and who currently owns a Quest 2, which is excellent at gathering dust, and at occasionally wowing VR noobs (who are amazed but never end up buying one). Then you have iOS AR, another technology devoid of practical and compelling uses. I love the Measure app with the LiDAR sensor —- is that a metaverse, an electronic tape measure? I guess so. My take: the Metaverse is the new chatbot.

Tenoke 5y ago
Maybe you don't like your VR but I actually know more and more people who use their headsets and looking at the stores and forums and so on it seems like it's gaining real traction. Less so for AR but Pokemon Go still has users an I see ARish features integrated by default into my default Samsung camera, and ARish stuff into meeting software, streamers etc. It's not super advanced yet but hardly dead and I wouldn't be convinced something big won't come out of it. >My take: the Metaverse is the new chatbot. I'm not a fan of most chatbots but they've been very successful, improving and you see more of them. An apt comparison even if made for the wrong reasons.
h2odragon 5y ago
Had the "knotted rope" moment with the term "Web3" the other day, came across about 6 different uses of the word in a 2 hour period; and every one was someone who was (being charitable) fully bought into and enthused about "cryptoeconomy". They seemed to be using the term to mean "the web, but fully monetized on an NFT-like basis" but in some way that seemed to denote an ideological significance on par with the concept of the Trinity. If I heard either term being used like this at a conference, I'd be wary of the kool aid.

skywhopper 5y ago

There’s a hype phase like this every ten years or so since the 70s or earlier that VR is going to revolutionize the world. It’s not going to happen this time either. What’s really sad about this time, though, is that the Metaverse name comes from a dystopian sci-fi novel in which people retreat to a VR world because the real world is such a miserable place where corporations and organized crime runs the world. Instead of embracing that, maybe we should be striving to avoid that state of affairs.

wsjtho55 5y ago
You’d have to implode startups then since deflating others buying power and wages is what props up VCs that fund them You should probably also avoid Ycombinator which is basically seeding reality with pointless corpo brands, many with their own brand bucks for you to spend All in cahoots with government Like an organized crime syndicate And we all go online to distract from and support it There’s no getting around a police state; the goal of a state will always be to insure people accept what’s politically correct. If it’s politically correct there are billionaires that always win, political policy will enable it.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
Funny, because our internet has become a miserable place where corporations run everything.
- gmuslera 5y ago
  ...internet has become a miserable place where corporations ruin everything. FTFY

mattlondon 5y ago

If you have to wear physical goggles or glasses, it's not going to happen apart from some very niche areas. Anyone remember 3D films and TV? Apparently the real killer for that was that people didn't like sitting wearing glasses, and those who have to wear glasses all the time anyway couldn't take part. So can we expect 4 year old kids to patiently wear an expensive VR headset to chat to granny? I doubt it. People can't even be bothered to turn their webcam on for meetings - they're certainly not going to bother putting on a VR headset and grabbing controllers for a 30 minute status update meeting. That said, I am intrigued by using a VR headset for a virtual display (rather than monitors). In my limited experience of using VR stuff from 2 or 3 years ago the per-eye resolution sucks though and there is no pupil tracking so I can't imagine it being a great experience, but perhaps that is solved now?

Tenoke 5y ago
3D movies are sadly still super popular. I couldn't find a single high quality streaming of Dune that wasn't 3D in the capital I live in.. It does seem like most people don't have problems wearing the glasses.
- ekianjo 5y ago
  > 3D movies are sadly still super popular. Wrong incentives at play. It's not that people want it, they force 3D movies on you and charge you for the glasses. Easy money.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    I don't know. After asking people around and checking online plenty of people seem to prefer 3D and allegedly it sells more seats when there are 3d viewings.
  - atombender 5y ago
    I've seen many 3D movies in theaters, and they never charged extra for the glasses. Where are they doing this? It would only make sense if there was an option to bring your own, but that's not the case.

lucideer 5y ago

Is this journalist trying to be "first" on this or something? Did they coin the term? I'm pretty up to date on what trends and fads are happening in tech: this is the first I've heard of the term "metaverse". > It's attracting attention - and money - from some of of tech's biggest names, such as Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Epic Games' Tim Sweeney. Sounds like by "some" the mean "two". Or are Zuck & Sweeney just backing VR and as clueless about this new metaterminology as I am? This reminds me of the attempt 2 years ago to rebrand AR&VR collectively as the even more confusing "XR". It's just VR. Call it VR. And it's not a new trend, VR undergoing a resurgence for some time now.

jakelazaroff 5y ago
The concept dates back to at least the novel Snow Crash, if not earlier. Not sure if the term was coined back then too, but just do a quick search. The tech press and a lot of the industry have really been pushing it hard lately.
psyc 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse
Tenoke 5y ago
No, it's a popular term that has gained a lot of usage in the last 2 years[0] coined in Snow Crash in 1992[1]. You might not have heard it but if you read a lot about tech or follow the right people on Twitter (often intersected with crypto and NFTs in particular) it would've been hard to miss it[2]. 0. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Metaverse https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Metavers... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse 2. https://twitter.com/search?q=metaverse&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=metaverse&src=typed_query

Graffur 5y ago

My understanding is that the term 'metaverse' is just VR or Virtual Reality rebranded.

psyc 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwdecro 5y ago

Who actually wants this? I don't want to stare at digital copies of people I'm trying to communicate with, whilst trapped in a digital maze designed by someone trying to keep me engaged. If the "digital twin" is exactly the same, there's no point, and if it's not exactly the same, it's just weird (i.e. "uncanny"). This "metaverse" is some kind of deranged trap. Social media is a hellscape of misunderstanding and conflict already. A further layer of indirection and reduction in "humanness", in the form of "cartoonifying" everyone, is going to further erode society's foundations.

libertine 5y ago
>Who actually wants this? Folks who played Secondlife, Farmville, Animal Crossing, etc. But I think that part of the problem seems to be that some of us have negative emotion towards Facebook, and we feel uncomfortable even just knowing Facebook is working on this.
- Fire-Dragon-DoL 5y ago
  It's kinda funny, the Japanese anime space has explored the idea of a metaverse extensively if this is the case. Although for me "metaverse" is the stuff Marvel does to ensure every super hero becomes dull and boring

sbuttgereit 5y ago

Once upon a time, Second Life was that metaverse. Big companies had Second Life strategies and big media organizations breathlessly covered it as the next big thing changing our culture and experiences. While I'm pretty sure Linden Labs still exists, it never did much more than get an initial buzz from people that could only see the possibilities disconnected from the what it actually means to be an organic, living entity in a very real world. It also gained attention from those that feared missing out on the promises made by that early buzz. But even Second Life couldn't avoid the reality of the physical world that preceded it. Second Life is still with us, but it's an unimportant niche player with little lasting impact on society, such that many articles touting the new metaverse don't even acknowledge its existence. Journalists don't recognize that they're simply jumping on that hype train which leads nowhere again. Yes technology has come a long way since then, but probably not as far as we imagine either. And the companies best positioned to deliver a "metaverse" can barely get their own products working to a level where they can even be described a "useful" (try using a pixel phone, a chromecast, and youtube together and see how much just doesn't work reliably)... a sustained alternative existence will necessarily have a lower tolerance for poor quality delivery: I don't think any meaningful player out there has a culture of quality sufficient to get a compelling product out the door that can establish itself as such an alternative existence. Finally, as a physical being in a physical world: you won't sustain yourself with virtual food, doctors will not be able effectively to cure your physical ailments without examining your physical body, and other realities will almost certainly mean you're spending more time experiencing the real universe than the metaverse. The plumber, electrician, construction worker, farmer, fireman, policeman, garbageman, etc. won't do their work in the metaverse. Maybe a metaverse can consist of some office workers and those people with enough free time and money to spend their leisure time in a constructed fantasy world, but that doesn't strike me as game changing. I think the best technologies that have potential to have an impact on our view of reality will be augmented reality technologies. Those products seeking to replace reality with something different will just be a fad to be gushed over by journalists and influencers.

Pxtl 5y ago

"what is the metaverse?" A solution looking for a problem. Snow Crash was an excellent book, but irl virtual reality doesn't add any conveniences over simple documents. Sure it's more "immersive", but does a virtual, immersive version of the world wide Web actually accomplish anything besides shininess?

herval 5y ago
Do UIs accomplish anything that a terminal doesn’t, besides shininess? Do color screens accomplish anything besides shininess? Why does one need a mouse? It’s surely a solution looking for a problem.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  UIs provide far better discoverability than console. Color provides additional information density, plus allows images and video to be displayed in better fidelity. The main thing VR provides is the ability to examine 3d objects. Considering that most of the content online (other than gaming) is 2D text, forms, images, and video, VR doesn't add much. Look how 3D movies failed to catch on.

rswail 5y ago

As with all other technological advances VR/AR will take off when porn is made using the technology.

psyc 5y ago
Um… VR porn is being cranked out at a pretty good clip. IMO it is the most compelling application, actually. The effect is quite extraordinary.
- kmlx 5y ago
  i have a bit of experience in this. yes, there is VR porn. and yes, companies continue producing it. unfortunately the number of views on actual VR devices is very low due to low VR adoption. as such VR investment in porn is in a ping-pong phase. a couple of years of investment, then no investment, then repeat. basically the market isn’t there yet, and everyone is tried to guess when this mass adoption will actually happen.

MayeulC 5y ago

I've read the term defined as MMORPG. Virtual reality MMORPGs, maybe. But it sounds like some non-gamer marketting people discovered MMOs and decided the name wasn't cool enough.

AlwaysRock 5y ago
It will probably be more MMO and less RPG. More club penguin than WoW.

_8j50 5y ago

That's all nice but I am still failing to see how it solves problems for people outside of the niche within a niche of privacy conscious tech enthusiasts. I can see how it can solve real problems, I just never hear it doing so. From my observation (correct me if I am mistaken), these projects add a lot of features continually, which is what devs are great at. But I don't see work or an investment being made in quality,reliability and performance. They desparately need central servers that use the metaverse behind the scenes but invest heavily on good UX. Is mastodon inherently better quality than fb? Is matrix more reliable than signal and whatsapp or better performing/moderated than discord? For most people , the decentralized and privacy sensitive features are merely the decoration on the icing of the cake.

danschuller 5y ago
I see this term used a lot more by investors than tech people. We already had, at least one, "metaverse" in Second Life, right? What's the difference this time? VR? - not with the current delivery mechanisms. Too uncomfortable for extended use and not enough value provided. Another decade maybe. Did second life lose popularity because it wasn't a VR-first experience? NFTs? - game developers are not going to spend their time recreating your NFT as a custom asset in their game world. There aren't great inter-op standards for taking assets between games. We have fbx as model format, kind of, but then how that's rendered is going to vary. There's also all sorts of potentially liability issues in regards to taking a random image / asset off the internet and injecting it into your game. Unless the game world itself is decentralised. I don't see this going anywhere. "Crypo-gaming" sure, some kind of "metaverse" no. If the "metaverse" is some AR stuff with your phone then sure, that's coming - putting down virtual furniture in your home, trying on virtual shoes or clothing etc. But that doesn't sound anything like what Facebook is pursuing. I'm not saying it's not possible and maybe this post will look archaic in five years but I don't see it on the horizon at the moment.

meh2frdf 5y ago

I think they are fixating too much on the vr aspect (ie the virtual model/graphics), I think the world you perceive via sight and sound being processed/mined and providing useful personal context aware applications is the key. For example an app that can whisper in you ear the name of every person you meet.

sasaf5 5y ago

In the metaverse the blockchain technology keeps track of your VR assets using non-fungible tokens where you interact with AI-powered IoT devices. You might even 3D print your own self-driving virtual-electric car! I mean, the previous big things haven't even had the chance to become big... When can we go back to hyping the wavelet transform?