11 ms·

I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually really insightful answer. 1) Most ame

I read a recent interview from mark zuck about the metaverse and someone asked him a similar question. He had an actually really insightful answer. 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. (The actual per-person-per-day numbers are very high compared to the average 2hr/week i watch tv but whatever). Most of TV and Video Games are about ignoring reality for entertainment in a fake world already. thats a few hours people can dedicate. 2) The metaverse can be more than traditional video game type entertainment. WFH has turned the office as a destination into a keyboard/monitor as a destination. You can use VR to have a much more immersive/focused work destination than either office or WFH desk. Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse. (I have tried the Oculus workrooms and if the virtual screen resolution was higher then i'd personally work in it.)

nsxwolf 5y ago
I have a Quest 2 and had a Vive before that. The Quest 2 is way more convenient. But I'm still too tired/lazy to put it on most of the time and would rather veg out on the couch. I can't be the only one who feels this way?
kibwen 5y ago
I'm frustrated that everywhere I look I keep seeing "metaverse" and "VR" used interchangeably. All of the things described above are VR, and none of them are the metaverse. Watching TV or playing a game in an immersive, distraction-free VR environment sounds great, and will happen, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR. Working in a virtual home office has the potential to be extremely productive, ergonomic, and space-saving, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR. A metaverse involves some kind of shared space and shared experience across a networked medium. Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  I think part of the plan is to build VR spaces and then connect them together. Take the "things" in that space and expose them to non-vr software clients. eg. maybe your vr home has digital art, but that art can also exist and be viewed in other mediums. Or you can all sit at home and watch VRTV with friends, but one friend just watches on their phone on the bus. Or a virtaul office desk, that can have coworkers visiting. The office server can be hosted on your corp servers (or, the social networking, maybe you self host your personal office), but when you leave to go virtually home, you're now in your home, hosted by fb nee meta.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Absolutely, the idea of a shared virtual office (as opposed to just a solitary home office) would be a realization of a VR metaverse. Of course, aside from meetings (where the whole point is to interact with other people), I think it remains to be seen whether the idea of a shared virtual office is actually something that anyone really wants, or whether it's simply a case of a lack of imagination from people who are so accustomed to the idea of shared office space that they try to shoehorn it into the virtual world without really considering if it makes sense to. Personally, if I'm going to be working in a virtual space, I'm going to be working somewhere in Earth's orbit, or under a tree on a hill on a rainy evening surrounded by fireflies, and not in a 3D-rendered cubicle.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  > Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR. It does not matter because for the public and the media Zuckerberg is redefining the meaning of the word right in front of our eyes. Give it a few years and everybody will believe VR is an inherent feature of metaverse. Just like those of us who had been using the word "crypto" to mean "cryptography" for decades were trying to explain in vain what the word originally mean - but it made no sense as the new meaning was already popularized.
  - WorldMaker 5y ago
    Arguably that's probably why Facebook's efforts are doomed to fail before they've even started. By branding and marketing and tying all of their "metaverse" activities to VR they've already lost in a lot of user mindset. The retrending blog post on the Requiem for the HMD [1][2] is more than enough reason to believe that VR (at it exists today, as it existed in 2019 when that blog post was written) is an albatross that Facebook has now tied around its neck as Meta. People are already dismissing this "metaverse" furor as just more VR hype with a stupider name and the company "Meta" is risking killing the entire term "metaverse" and any usefulness it might have had altogether. Ironically, by owning Facebook "Meta" should be in one of the best positions to build/sell a 2D "metaverse plane" as well as just about anyone else possibly could. Tear down some of the garden walls, allow a bit more of the old MySpace and Blog anarchy of clashing styles and user control, be a better web citizen. They aren't likely to do that because they are using "metaverse" as attempt to make more Oculus money and risking the Facebook lock in and walled garden for a vision with actual guts and takes risks doesn't seem to be in their interest. [1] https://www.highfidelity.com/backlog/requiem-for-the-hmd https://www.highfidelity.com/backlog/requiem-for-the-hmd [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29069381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29069381
    - imiric 5y ago
      That Requiem for the HMD article has not aged well. All of those issues are a matter of iterative improvements over what we have today, and the devices will be ready for mass adoption. Have you seen the leaked Quest Pro design[1]? It's already close to being ski goggle size, and it's only a couple of generations away from something the size of sunglasses. Displays are getting cheaper, better and higher resolution. UX is being improved, passthrough cameras already exist. My estimate is that towards the end of this decade we'll see unprecedented adoption of VR/AR outside of the few niche use cases we see today. Meta is jumping on the bandwagon early, making their brand synonymous with VR, and betting big that this will change how everyone uses computers today, and that it will be the tech to replace smartphones. As much as I dislike that such a user hostile company is trying to popularize the metaverse/VR, I'm sure they did their research and are confident this will eventually sell like crazy. I think they're right. [1]: https://nitter.eu/basti564/status/1452366495053488135 https://nitter.eu/basti564/status/1452366495053488135
- stormbrew 5y ago
  > Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR. I'm sorry, I think if you want to broaden this term like this you're going to have to stipulate some new boundaries. Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway". And when Di died or 9/11 happened I had a "shared experience across a networked medium" about them, for concrete examples. Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember? So I'm not sure where this idea even comes from.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    > Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway". Yes, this is absolutely correct. A "metaverse" exists in contrast to meatspace. In meatspace I walk down the street, I look through a shop window, I see you browsing inside, I spray some graffiti on the wall, you see the graffiti when you come out of the shop. We have a shared space with the qualities of presence (I passively saw you while you were browsing) and persistence (the graffiti will be there for anyone to see). In the metaverse, I open some application on a computer, I look at some window or readout, I see that you're online (maybe I just see a light next to a username, or maybe I see your WoW character dancing shirtless outside of Goldshire), I leave something persistent (maybe a comment on a blog post, maybe a spray on the wall in an MMOFPS), which is available for you to see at some point. There are hundreds of metaverses (that's nearly the whole point; a metaverse is a virtual space that isn't bound by the rules and limits of physical space, so why not inhabit a few dozen?) of varying complexity (many websites, IRC, BBSes) and immersiveness (Minecraft, Second Life, PlayStation Home). VR isn't intrinsic to the idea of a metaverse, it's just one potential realization of the idea. > Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember? Stephenson depicted his metaverse as a virtual space for the sake of the reader's imagination, so that they could envision something real and familiar instead of just a bunch of people clacking away on keyboards. The "virtual street" metaphor used in Snow Crash was always just a convenient literary device, and not at all the point of the metaverse, which to reiterate is the idea of a virtual shared universe in which to exist that is unbound from the restrictions of the physical universe.
- yazaddaruvala 5y ago
  Frankly the problem is, none of these are really well defined. I think Zuck wants the general consensus to lean towards: VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for that user interface. Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got the screen and mouse user interface, and with it FPS, RTS, like Warcraft and Doom. Touch screens were again a new user interface and with it came games like Fruit Ninja. VR now exists as a user interface (although still needs to be improved) and many people love playing Skyrim with it, or Beat Saber. All of these were mostly local experiences with different (better?) user interfaces. Meanwhile, each user interface had its own networks that were built on them. e.g. Email is a "first class network" built on the text based user interface. e.g. WWW is a "first class network" built on the mouse based user interface. The metaverse isn't a new user interface. The metaverse is a "first class network" built on top of the VR based user interface.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 5y ago
    The issue is VR is in practice a really terrible interface for widespread shared user experiences. MMO’s are almost exclusively played in 3rd person perspective in part because looking at eye level prevents you from seeing behind the person in front of you, and removing collision detection doesn’t help. Think of walking around a crowded convention and you really can’t see many people at the same time. You can of course swap perspectives with VR, but face to avatar conversations don’t add much. Their missing out on facial expressions so in practice it’s mostly just shared voice chat with a tiny percentage of body language. The only thing linking metaverse and VR is basic buzzword bingo, they don’t gain anything from being linked.
    - ano88888 5y ago
      but you need to realize what is possible today will not be the same as what will be available 10 or 20 years down to road with so much dollars pouring into research from all these big corporations/governments around the world.
- nradov 5y ago
  I see a lot of assumptions about office worker productivity with zero real world evidence. A lot of home office workers never learned to touch type. How the heck are they supposed to do office work if they can't see their fingers on the keyboard? Voice recognition is no solution, it still sucks for text entry and is completely useless for anything like slide presentations or spreadsheets. There is legitimate potential for workers doing 3D stuff like CAD, architecture, and data visualization but that's a tiny niche of the workforce.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Matticus_Rex 5y ago
    How is touch typing (or lack of it) related to working in a home office?
    - pitched 5y ago
      Most office work that I’ve seen requires text entry (email, spreadsheets, proposals, etc) and that’s always today done through a keyboard. Doing that work in VR where you can’t see the keyboard is surprisingly tough, even if you can touch type! I’ve switched out my keycaps for blanks recently to try to force myself to get better at working in VR but I’m still struggling a bit with all the symbols.
      - Sunspark 5y ago
        Why can't you have printed keycaps in VR?
        pitched 5y ago
        I switched out keycaps IRL, not in VR. The idea was that, not being able to cheat by looking down would help improve my typing faster by forcing me to memorize the keys better. I’ve only gone from mid-50s wpm to now about 60ish but it’s helped more with the uncommon keys that don’t move the average as much. It’s those uncommon keys that kill me in VR though so it feels like a bigger bump.
- Kiro 5y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure. Bigscreen in VR is amazing. Hanging out inside a virtual cinema auditorium watching stuff together with other random people is way better than I could ever have imagined.
- mbesto 5y ago
  The fact that the definition of the "metaverse" is stipulating so much disagreement and discussion is itself the problem. When smartphones were launched there was a simple description - "oh cool, it's a traditional phone but it has a computer running inside of it? makes sense"
  - er4hn 5y ago
    I'd say that this is closer to when "the cloud" came about. No one was quite sure what it was, but everyone wanted in. To quote (some) of Larry Ellisons famous statements about it: "The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion." "Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"
    - darkerside 5y ago
      It's funny, all I hear now is, "I don't understand it, so it must be useless"
      - simonh 5y ago
        I think that's unfair in the context of the time. There really was a lot of crap talked about cloud this and cloud that back then.
      - _carbyau_ 5y ago
        And "the cloud" as a phrase was/is indeed useless to those who want to know how things work. The point of "the cloud" was the concept of users not needing to think where their device is communicating. The device might as well be talking to "the cloud" in the sky. The point of "the cloud" was the occlusion to the end user. I don't see much value in the phrase as it doesn't help me know what is going on in any way.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    Not a problem. An opportunity. It took a decade from the first smartphones until iPhone/Android like devices with a mostly uniform appearance and UI had decisively won, though. There was a lot of rapid exploration of design space first. As for VR/metaverse, there's been constant exploration of this space for decades. The VR boom in the 90s was killed by cost and primitive hardware, but we still have surviving persistent 3d worlds that came out of that wave. We've also seen a lot of non-VR exploration. Aside from Minecraft, we have Roblox, which while a lot more limited in some ways is also a lot more meta: you have an identity that persists across worlds, with a social layer across that. Minecraft looks to be slowly moving in that direction. We'll see people exploring a lot of other variants, and most will fail. But in the process we'll start to learn what will work. I doubt Facebook, or Minecraft/Microsoft, or Apple, or Google will turn out to be the winner though. Maybe they'll manage to buy the winner.
- wvenable 5y ago
  We got the giant world-wide networked communication interface decades before we got the virtual-reality side of the metaverse. It turns out connecting billions of humans together on a single network was the easy part! So all the interesting parts of the metaverse going forward are all the VR aspects which is why the discussions are focused on that.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  "Metaverse" is starting to sound like Zombo.com.
- tlrobinson 5y ago
  When people talk about VR experiences in the context of “the metaverse” I assume it’s implied there’s a shared space connecting those individual experiences.
Corence 5y ago
Yeah, even things like gather.town people have said worked well for things like happy hours for teams working remotely. Having some virtual equivalent of physical space helps people socialize more naturally.
01100011 5y ago
TV is relaxing. I can turn my brain off and don't need to do anything. The metaverse is just a fancy videogame that big tech companies need to invent so they can monetize another platform and sell more HW. Sure, if you pay me to work in the metaverse I'll be happy to hang out there. Otherwise I'm not interested.
- wruza 5y ago
  We’ll do the same thing we are mostly doing with games now: watching somebody playing it sitting next to you, like you’re friends, on some sort of in-game cloud.
ribosometronome 5y ago
Conceptually, a VR workroom sounds like it could be extremely nifty. As someone easily distracted, I'd love to be able to sit in space with only a text editor open and do my thing. In practice, excluding resolution, wearing a headset for hours on end seems even more straining both for the neck and eyes than the alternative real life workstation.
- pram 5y ago
  It only sounds cool until you have to be sitting in a virtual room for 8 hours while your work engagement is analyzed for various micromanagers to sift through
derac 5y ago
I'm incredulous that having a screen strapped half an inch from your eyes for 8+ hours is desirable. I have an Oculus Rift, my face is sweaty/red in a couple of hours and there is an indent around my eyes. I'm sure newer tech can be much better, especially with airflow and an AR set that lets in natural light. We're not there yet, though.
- darkwater 5y ago
  I just got to try an Oculus Quest 2 and I was really blown away by how advanced it is, I didn't expect that. But at least in my case and at my age after a 2-3 hours of full use (when you run out of battery) my eyes are really tired and I was scratching them for a few days after. So, it still need one extra generation at least, probably an "iPhone-like" moment but it's definitely addictive.
  - roywiggins 5y ago
    The Quest gave me persistent "seasickness" after use the first half dozen times I used it (this was last winter, I had nothing better to do than see if I could get better at tolerating it). I eventually got more tolerant of it, but after not using it for a while I'm hesitant to pick it up again in case I am back to square one. During use I could handle stationary scenes okay, but the after-effect was nasty. An incredible piece of technology, though. The VR-sickness persisted for hours until I realized that the solution was to try and reset my system by walking outside and gazing at the horizon (which also works on seasickness to a point).
- me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
  In thirty years there will be a startup that you can get affordable eye replacements. Keep burning those eyes!
  - jdshaffer 5y ago
    "If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes..." -- R.B. grin
- 5y ago
thrashh 5y ago
But the metaverse itself is not content. Instead it’s another medium to consume content. Therefore the metaverse isn’t a replacement for a video games or TV. You would simply watch TV or play a video game while in the metaverse. The metaverse in that regard isn’t a new concept, because VR spaces have existed for a long time now. I’ve watched movies in Minecraft more recently, for example. I’ve seen every idea in the metaverse attempted in some game or application already. The reason these VR spaces have not taken off, however, is because the medium to access these VR spaces have been pretty disappointing. It’s the reason why the Internet took a long time to take off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When smartphones took off, so did the Internet. Facebook has not fixed the medium problem as I see it. I have never gotten motion sickness, but I do not want to put on a VR headset for more than a few hours. I don’t even want to put on a VR headset to be honest. I’ve owned one for two years and it just sits in a drawer. I can’t imagine that many people want to put on a VR headset either if they could just watch TV while sitting on the couch, grabbing real drinks on their real table, and texting their friends.
- lottin 5y ago
  > It’s the reason why the Internet took a long time to take off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When smartphones took off, so did the Internet. What?
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    Honestly pre-2008 spending time online was pretty niche. I spent maybe a couple hours a day max on MySpace and LiveJournal and maybe a couple of forums once or twice a week. This was between pirating music and burning CDs for friends in high school which gave me a pretty high score on the nerd-index. I was listening to a podcast on Flat Earthers and the host basically traced the explosion of True Believers to the advent of the smartphone circa 2008 onwards; suddenly hundreds of millions more people were spending hours a day online.
- toto444 5y ago
  A big reason the internet took off is one that I guess will be banned by default in the metaverse : 18+ content.
8note 5y ago
Can you actually wear the heavy goggles for that long?
- ksaj 5y ago
  Between that and staring downward at the phone while walking down the street, this will all be a blessing for chiropractors.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  Yes, and HMDs are only going to get lighter in the coming years.
- PeterisP 5y ago
  Probably - there are various large groups of people who wear a helmet every day for most of the day, and goggles are comparable in weight to that.
bamboozled 5y ago
"Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse." I hope he plans to be spending 8 hours a day in "metaverse" but I'm sure as fuck not going to be.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  I'm going to sleep in the metaverse
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    The metaverse? That's where I'm a viking!
nradov 5y ago
I hardly ever "watch" TV. But I often have the TV on while I'm doing something else. With this metaverse stuff you have to wear the stupid goggles. You can't just have it on in the background and glance up if something interesting comes on. This is why 3D TVs failed in the market. The technology worked fine but most regular people didn't want to wear the goggles just to watch a movie.
robbiep 5y ago
I think those are reasonable points - one thing from my life as someone who has basically turned my back on gaming due to the ‘real life game’ I’m involved in is that tv is a good escape/unwind when I can’t be arsed exercising/socialising but one of the reasons it is compelling is because the start-up times/stopping cost is basically zero - compared to either a pc or console game where not only do I have startup times to contend with but also the possibility of getting sucked towards the event horizon I can’t get out of and neglecting my level-ups in life
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Sure, that's also what sport coaches, musician teachers, people teaching cooking on youtube and librarians say. Also you should get 8 hours of sleep, buy food at the farmers market, spend time with your familly, meditate, get this GTD rolling, and learn a new skill for your carreer. But honestly, the truth is, as soon as VR is cheap and comfy, I think people will rush to it anyway for one reason: porn. So the metaverse can grow, if like in second life, it allows for porn to develop. But since FB tend to want a family friendly experience, I think we got a betamax vs VHS situation here.
- VLM 5y ago
  Second Life was big into online gambling. There was a side dish of turn of the century real estate hucksterism. Buy because everyone else is buying. Buy high sell low as retail always does LOL. And pr0n as you mention. Also 3d modelers and CAD folks built elaborate structures that were always empty but impressive to admire. The supply of skilled draftsmen and architects willing to work for free VASTLY exceeds the demand. The most interesting meta activity on second life was stuff that doesn't require second life or 3d or any of that, it was just a fancy screen saver behind people doing simple IRC texting, etc. The philosophy club meetup sounded fun but it was basically walk to a virtual campfire then watch people too high to think, try to instant message philosophical stuff to sound wittier than the next guy. Like karma farming with people too high to succeed but its OK because the platform doesn't have karma LOL. Didn't go many of those LOL. Second life had a weird attitude toward real life where it was not allowed to use your real name. To prevent "funny names" they gave a huge list of first and last names and let you pick. I found Turbo Pascal and thought it witty because I used that once rather expensive ($250 for a pascal compiler used to be a bargain compared to what D.E.C. charged...) software package 20 yrs previously (now more like 40 yrs) and unfortunately the only reactions I got were confusion and "hey did you know your name is an actual program my dad used?" so it wasn't so fun. I'd rather have used my name. But that was it, those five things and the rest was empty. I was there, that's how I remember it.
- Kye 5y ago
  You haven't lived until a dragon apologizes for stepping on you at a furry night club.
wvenable 5y ago
The problem is that the more you make the virtual world like the real world the less relaxing it is. I don't have the mental energy these days for things that are too immersive. Some people are just not going to want to spend 8 hours a day interacting with people to go home and interact with other real people in a reality-like medium.
- charcircuit 5y ago
  It's up to you what you do in the metaverse. No one is forcing you to socialize.
  - wvenable 5y ago
    Then it's just VR
hellbannedguy 5y ago
Rebut to 1: I watch tv to relax. It doesn't talk back. It's my semi-mute friend. I don't even look at it most of the time. I seem to need mindless taking to drown out my negative thoughts. When the tv is not on, I have my AM radio. I've never tried VR. Games always put me in a weird mood. I once got 300 Halo 3's at a bankruptcy sale. I couldn't get out of the first room. I tried a few more games, and just didn't get it. My hope for VR is not being lonely, and bringing more people into my life. And even then--it just sounds awful unless I was in a good mood.
grayfaced 5y ago
Assume Joe spends 3 hours of TV a night. How much of that time is uninterrupted focused time? While watching TV, I can cook and eat dinner, do a load of laundry, answer email, casually browse the web, feed and let the dog out and at least minimally engage in small talk with family. None of that I can do when fully immersed in VR. Which is probably why Facebook cares about it. Ads on TV are time to get up, in VR they can fully measure you engagement. Fully engaged in game and hungry, food delivery is one button press away.
uhtred 5y ago
But I work from home because I hate the office, why would I want to visit a virtual one. It sounds terrible!
karaterobot 5y ago
It's not a great sign for the metaverse that it's such a nebulous concept for so many people. Even "the cloud" could be boiled down to "other people's computers". The internet was hard for people to understand at first, but it didn't have a unified marketing push behind it. So far, a unified marketing push is all there is to the metaverse, and still nobody knows with the f*ck it's supposed to be.
resonious 5y ago
I'll bite back on these 2 points, even though you're just paraphrasing Zuck. 1) I'm definitely willing to believe that most adults spend a lot of time vegging out, even if I/we don't. Does this mean that one goal of the metaverse is to suck cash out of those folks? "People already waste a lot of time. The metaverse is great because it makes money off of that." I could also interpret this one in a lighter way. Perhaps the metaverse is somehow better than regular vegging out; gives you exercise or something. 2) My take here is similar to some sibling comments. This just sounds like a VR application, and I'm not sure where the "metaverse" comes in. Unless by "metaverse" we mean "internet", which already exists and is (thankfully) not run by Facebook. And even then, I don't see where the internet comes in either! I can dev/create offline, can't I?
cjonas 5y ago
Ah yes... The company that created the biggest productivity sink ever will solve all of our work from home issues...
denkmoon 5y ago
If you thought zoom/teams for 6-8-10hrs a day was bad, try doing it in VR!
krzyk 5y ago
> 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. Isn't that still about <25 and > 60, or those without kids? I hardly can find a calm 30-60 mins per day to just sit and read, sometimes play for 30 mins (2 kids) just before sleep.

nsxwolf 5y ago

I have a Quest 2 and had a Vive before that. The Quest 2 is way more convenient. But I'm still too tired/lazy to put it on most of the time and would rather veg out on the couch. I can't be the only one who feels this way?

kibwen 5y ago

I'm frustrated that everywhere I look I keep seeing "metaverse" and "VR" used interchangeably. All of the things described above are VR, and none of them are the metaverse. Watching TV or playing a game in an immersive, distraction-free VR environment sounds great, and will happen, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR. Working in a virtual home office has the potential to be extremely productive, ergonomic, and space-saving, and it's not the metaverse, it's just VR. A metaverse involves some kind of shared space and shared experience across a networked medium. Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR.

vineyardmike 5y ago
I think part of the plan is to build VR spaces and then connect them together. Take the "things" in that space and expose them to non-vr software clients. eg. maybe your vr home has digital art, but that art can also exist and be viewed in other mediums. Or you can all sit at home and watch VRTV with friends, but one friend just watches on their phone on the bus. Or a virtaul office desk, that can have coworkers visiting. The office server can be hosted on your corp servers (or, the social networking, maybe you self host your personal office), but when you leave to go virtually home, you're now in your home, hosted by fb nee meta.
- kibwen 5y ago
  Absolutely, the idea of a shared virtual office (as opposed to just a solitary home office) would be a realization of a VR metaverse. Of course, aside from meetings (where the whole point is to interact with other people), I think it remains to be seen whether the idea of a shared virtual office is actually something that anyone really wants, or whether it's simply a case of a lack of imagination from people who are so accustomed to the idea of shared office space that they try to shoehorn it into the virtual world without really considering if it makes sense to. Personally, if I'm going to be working in a virtual space, I'm going to be working somewhere in Earth's orbit, or under a tree on a hill on a rainy evening surrounded by fireflies, and not in a 3D-rendered cubicle.
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR. It does not matter because for the public and the media Zuckerberg is redefining the meaning of the word right in front of our eyes. Give it a few years and everybody will believe VR is an inherent feature of metaverse. Just like those of us who had been using the word "crypto" to mean "cryptography" for decades were trying to explain in vain what the word originally mean - but it made no sense as the new meaning was already popularized.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  Arguably that's probably why Facebook's efforts are doomed to fail before they've even started. By branding and marketing and tying all of their "metaverse" activities to VR they've already lost in a lot of user mindset. The retrending blog post on the Requiem for the HMD [1][2] is more than enough reason to believe that VR (at it exists today, as it existed in 2019 when that blog post was written) is an albatross that Facebook has now tied around its neck as Meta. People are already dismissing this "metaverse" furor as just more VR hype with a stupider name and the company "Meta" is risking killing the entire term "metaverse" and any usefulness it might have had altogether. Ironically, by owning Facebook "Meta" should be in one of the best positions to build/sell a 2D "metaverse plane" as well as just about anyone else possibly could. Tear down some of the garden walls, allow a bit more of the old MySpace and Blog anarchy of clashing styles and user control, be a better web citizen. They aren't likely to do that because they are using "metaverse" as attempt to make more Oculus money and risking the Facebook lock in and walled garden for a vision with actual guts and takes risks doesn't seem to be in their interest. [1] https://www.highfidelity.com/backlog/requiem-for-the-hmd https://www.highfidelity.com/backlog/requiem-for-the-hmd [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29069381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29069381
  - imiric 5y ago
    That Requiem for the HMD article has not aged well. All of those issues are a matter of iterative improvements over what we have today, and the devices will be ready for mass adoption. Have you seen the leaked Quest Pro design[1]? It's already close to being ski goggle size, and it's only a couple of generations away from something the size of sunglasses. Displays are getting cheaper, better and higher resolution. UX is being improved, passthrough cameras already exist. My estimate is that towards the end of this decade we'll see unprecedented adoption of VR/AR outside of the few niche use cases we see today. Meta is jumping on the bandwagon early, making their brand synonymous with VR, and betting big that this will change how everyone uses computers today, and that it will be the tech to replace smartphones. As much as I dislike that such a user hostile company is trying to popularize the metaverse/VR, I'm sure they did their research and are confident this will eventually sell like crazy. I think they're right. [1]: https://nitter.eu/basti564/status/1452366495053488135 https://nitter.eu/basti564/status/1452366495053488135
stormbrew 5y ago
> Not only is it more than just doing things in VR, a metaverse doesn't even require VR. I'm sorry, I think if you want to broaden this term like this you're going to have to stipulate some new boundaries. Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway". And when Di died or 9/11 happened I had a "shared experience across a networked medium" about them, for concrete examples. Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember? So I'm not sure where this idea even comes from.
- kibwen 5y ago
  > Else, we've got the metaverse: it's just the internet, and metaverse is just the latest in a long line of silly names for it back to the "internet superhighway". Yes, this is absolutely correct. A "metaverse" exists in contrast to meatspace. In meatspace I walk down the street, I look through a shop window, I see you browsing inside, I spray some graffiti on the wall, you see the graffiti when you come out of the shop. We have a shared space with the qualities of presence (I passively saw you while you were browsing) and persistence (the graffiti will be there for anyone to see). In the metaverse, I open some application on a computer, I look at some window or readout, I see that you're online (maybe I just see a light next to a username, or maybe I see your WoW character dancing shirtless outside of Goldshire), I leave something persistent (maybe a comment on a blog post, maybe a spray on the wall in an MMOFPS), which is available for you to see at some point. There are hundreds of metaverses (that's nearly the whole point; a metaverse is a virtual space that isn't bound by the rules and limits of physical space, so why not inhabit a few dozen?) of varying complexity (many websites, IRC, BBSes) and immersiveness (Minecraft, Second Life, PlayStation Home). VR isn't intrinsic to the idea of a metaverse, it's just one potential realization of the idea. > Metaverse comes from Snowcrash, and there it was... very unquestionably a VR experience as far as I can remember? Stephenson depicted his metaverse as a virtual space for the sake of the reader's imagination, so that they could envision something real and familiar instead of just a bunch of people clacking away on keyboards. The "virtual street" metaphor used in Snow Crash was always just a convenient literary device, and not at all the point of the metaverse, which to reiterate is the idea of a virtual shared universe in which to exist that is unbound from the restrictions of the physical universe.
yazaddaruvala 5y ago
Frankly the problem is, none of these are really well defined. I think Zuck wants the general consensus to lean towards: VR - Is a user interface. Metaverse is a network built for that user interface. Historically, we had screen and keyboard based user interfaces, and with it text based gaming like Zork. Then we had screen and controller based user interfaces, and with it games like Pong. At a certain point we got the screen and mouse user interface, and with it FPS, RTS, like Warcraft and Doom. Touch screens were again a new user interface and with it came games like Fruit Ninja. VR now exists as a user interface (although still needs to be improved) and many people love playing Skyrim with it, or Beat Saber. All of these were mostly local experiences with different (better?) user interfaces. Meanwhile, each user interface had its own networks that were built on them. e.g. Email is a "first class network" built on the text based user interface. e.g. WWW is a "first class network" built on the mouse based user interface. The metaverse isn't a new user interface. The metaverse is a "first class network" built on top of the VR based user interface.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 5y ago
  The issue is VR is in practice a really terrible interface for widespread shared user experiences. MMO’s are almost exclusively played in 3rd person perspective in part because looking at eye level prevents you from seeing behind the person in front of you, and removing collision detection doesn’t help. Think of walking around a crowded convention and you really can’t see many people at the same time. You can of course swap perspectives with VR, but face to avatar conversations don’t add much. Their missing out on facial expressions so in practice it’s mostly just shared voice chat with a tiny percentage of body language. The only thing linking metaverse and VR is basic buzzword bingo, they don’t gain anything from being linked.
  - ano88888 5y ago
    but you need to realize what is possible today will not be the same as what will be available 10 or 20 years down to road with so much dollars pouring into research from all these big corporations/governments around the world.
nradov 5y ago
I see a lot of assumptions about office worker productivity with zero real world evidence. A lot of home office workers never learned to touch type. How the heck are they supposed to do office work if they can't see their fingers on the keyboard? Voice recognition is no solution, it still sucks for text entry and is completely useless for anything like slide presentations or spreadsheets. There is legitimate potential for workers doing 3D stuff like CAD, architecture, and data visualization but that's a tiny niche of the workforce.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Matticus_Rex 5y ago
  How is touch typing (or lack of it) related to working in a home office?
  - pitched 5y ago
    Most office work that I’ve seen requires text entry (email, spreadsheets, proposals, etc) and that’s always today done through a keyboard. Doing that work in VR where you can’t see the keyboard is surprisingly tough, even if you can touch type! I’ve switched out my keycaps for blanks recently to try to force myself to get better at working in VR but I’m still struggling a bit with all the symbols.
    - Sunspark 5y ago
      Why can't you have printed keycaps in VR?
      - pitched 5y ago
        I switched out keycaps IRL, not in VR. The idea was that, not being able to cheat by looking down would help improve my typing faster by forcing me to memorize the keys better. I’ve only gone from mid-50s wpm to now about 60ish but it’s helped more with the uncommon keys that don’t move the average as much. It’s those uncommon keys that kill me in VR though so it feels like a bigger bump.
Kiro 5y ago
I wouldn't be so sure. Bigscreen in VR is amazing. Hanging out inside a virtual cinema auditorium watching stuff together with other random people is way better than I could ever have imagined.
mbesto 5y ago
The fact that the definition of the "metaverse" is stipulating so much disagreement and discussion is itself the problem. When smartphones were launched there was a simple description - "oh cool, it's a traditional phone but it has a computer running inside of it? makes sense"
- er4hn 5y ago
  I'd say that this is closer to when "the cloud" came about. No one was quite sure what it was, but everyone wanted in. To quote (some) of Larry Ellisons famous statements about it: "The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. … The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion." "Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?"
  - darkerside 5y ago
    It's funny, all I hear now is, "I don't understand it, so it must be useless"
    - simonh 5y ago
      I think that's unfair in the context of the time. There really was a lot of crap talked about cloud this and cloud that back then.
    - _carbyau_ 5y ago
      And "the cloud" as a phrase was/is indeed useless to those who want to know how things work. The point of "the cloud" was the concept of users not needing to think where their device is communicating. The device might as well be talking to "the cloud" in the sky. The point of "the cloud" was the occlusion to the end user. I don't see much value in the phrase as it doesn't help me know what is going on in any way.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Not a problem. An opportunity. It took a decade from the first smartphones until iPhone/Android like devices with a mostly uniform appearance and UI had decisively won, though. There was a lot of rapid exploration of design space first. As for VR/metaverse, there's been constant exploration of this space for decades. The VR boom in the 90s was killed by cost and primitive hardware, but we still have surviving persistent 3d worlds that came out of that wave. We've also seen a lot of non-VR exploration. Aside from Minecraft, we have Roblox, which while a lot more limited in some ways is also a lot more meta: you have an identity that persists across worlds, with a social layer across that. Minecraft looks to be slowly moving in that direction. We'll see people exploring a lot of other variants, and most will fail. But in the process we'll start to learn what will work. I doubt Facebook, or Minecraft/Microsoft, or Apple, or Google will turn out to be the winner though. Maybe they'll manage to buy the winner.
wvenable 5y ago
We got the giant world-wide networked communication interface decades before we got the virtual-reality side of the metaverse. It turns out connecting billions of humans together on a single network was the easy part! So all the interesting parts of the metaverse going forward are all the VR aspects which is why the discussions are focused on that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
heavyset_go 5y ago
"Metaverse" is starting to sound like Zombo.com.
tlrobinson 5y ago
When people talk about VR experiences in the context of “the metaverse” I assume it’s implied there’s a shared space connecting those individual experiences.

Corence 5y ago

Yeah, even things like gather.town people have said worked well for things like happy hours for teams working remotely. Having some virtual equivalent of physical space helps people socialize more naturally.

01100011 5y ago

TV is relaxing. I can turn my brain off and don't need to do anything. The metaverse is just a fancy videogame that big tech companies need to invent so they can monetize another platform and sell more HW. Sure, if you pay me to work in the metaverse I'll be happy to hang out there. Otherwise I'm not interested.

wruza 5y ago
We’ll do the same thing we are mostly doing with games now: watching somebody playing it sitting next to you, like you’re friends, on some sort of in-game cloud.

ribosometronome 5y ago

Conceptually, a VR workroom sounds like it could be extremely nifty. As someone easily distracted, I'd love to be able to sit in space with only a text editor open and do my thing. In practice, excluding resolution, wearing a headset for hours on end seems even more straining both for the neck and eyes than the alternative real life workstation.

pram 5y ago
It only sounds cool until you have to be sitting in a virtual room for 8 hours while your work engagement is analyzed for various micromanagers to sift through

derac 5y ago

I'm incredulous that having a screen strapped half an inch from your eyes for 8+ hours is desirable. I have an Oculus Rift, my face is sweaty/red in a couple of hours and there is an indent around my eyes. I'm sure newer tech can be much better, especially with airflow and an AR set that lets in natural light. We're not there yet, though.

darkwater 5y ago
I just got to try an Oculus Quest 2 and I was really blown away by how advanced it is, I didn't expect that. But at least in my case and at my age after a 2-3 hours of full use (when you run out of battery) my eyes are really tired and I was scratching them for a few days after. So, it still need one extra generation at least, probably an "iPhone-like" moment but it's definitely addictive.
- roywiggins 5y ago
  The Quest gave me persistent "seasickness" after use the first half dozen times I used it (this was last winter, I had nothing better to do than see if I could get better at tolerating it). I eventually got more tolerant of it, but after not using it for a while I'm hesitant to pick it up again in case I am back to square one. During use I could handle stationary scenes okay, but the after-effect was nasty. An incredible piece of technology, though. The VR-sickness persisted for hours until I realized that the solution was to try and reset my system by walking outside and gazing at the horizon (which also works on seasickness to a point).
me_me_mu_mu 5y ago
In thirty years there will be a startup that you can get affordable eye replacements. Keep burning those eyes!
- jdshaffer 5y ago
  "If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes..." -- R.B. grin
5y ago

thrashh 5y ago

But the metaverse itself is not content. Instead it’s another medium to consume content. Therefore the metaverse isn’t a replacement for a video games or TV. You would simply watch TV or play a video game while in the metaverse. The metaverse in that regard isn’t a new concept, because VR spaces have existed for a long time now. I’ve watched movies in Minecraft more recently, for example. I’ve seen every idea in the metaverse attempted in some game or application already. The reason these VR spaces have not taken off, however, is because the medium to access these VR spaces have been pretty disappointing. It’s the reason why the Internet took a long time to take off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When smartphones took off, so did the Internet. Facebook has not fixed the medium problem as I see it. I have never gotten motion sickness, but I do not want to put on a VR headset for more than a few hours. I don’t even want to put on a VR headset to be honest. I’ve owned one for two years and it just sits in a drawer. I can’t imagine that many people want to put on a VR headset either if they could just watch TV while sitting on the couch, grabbing real drinks on their real table, and texting their friends.

lottin 5y ago
> It’s the reason why the Internet took a long time to take off: using the Internet on a desktop computer sucks. When smartphones took off, so did the Internet. What?
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  Honestly pre-2008 spending time online was pretty niche. I spent maybe a couple hours a day max on MySpace and LiveJournal and maybe a couple of forums once or twice a week. This was between pirating music and burning CDs for friends in high school which gave me a pretty high score on the nerd-index. I was listening to a podcast on Flat Earthers and the host basically traced the explosion of True Believers to the advent of the smartphone circa 2008 onwards; suddenly hundreds of millions more people were spending hours a day online.
toto444 5y ago
A big reason the internet took off is one that I guess will be banned by default in the metaverse : 18+ content.

8note 5y ago

Can you actually wear the heavy goggles for that long?

ksaj 5y ago
Between that and staring downward at the phone while walking down the street, this will all be a blessing for chiropractors.
charcircuit 5y ago
Yes, and HMDs are only going to get lighter in the coming years.
PeterisP 5y ago
Probably - there are various large groups of people who wear a helmet every day for most of the day, and goggles are comparable in weight to that.

bamboozled 5y ago

"Thats 8+ hours a day you can spend in metaverse." I hope he plans to be spending 8 hours a day in "metaverse" but I'm sure as fuck not going to be.

charcircuit 5y ago
I'm going to sleep in the metaverse
- sdenton4 5y ago
  The metaverse? That's where I'm a viking!

nradov 5y ago

I hardly ever "watch" TV. But I often have the TV on while I'm doing something else. With this metaverse stuff you have to wear the stupid goggles. You can't just have it on in the background and glance up if something interesting comes on. This is why 3D TVs failed in the market. The technology worked fine but most regular people didn't want to wear the goggles just to watch a movie.

robbiep 5y ago

I think those are reasonable points - one thing from my life as someone who has basically turned my back on gaming due to the ‘real life game’ I’m involved in is that tv is a good escape/unwind when I can’t be arsed exercising/socialising but one of the reasons it is compelling is because the start-up times/stopping cost is basically zero - compared to either a pc or console game where not only do I have startup times to contend with but also the possibility of getting sucked towards the event horizon I can’t get out of and neglecting my level-ups in life

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Sure, that's also what sport coaches, musician teachers, people teaching cooking on youtube and librarians say. Also you should get 8 hours of sleep, buy food at the farmers market, spend time with your familly, meditate, get this GTD rolling, and learn a new skill for your carreer. But honestly, the truth is, as soon as VR is cheap and comfy, I think people will rush to it anyway for one reason: porn. So the metaverse can grow, if like in second life, it allows for porn to develop. But since FB tend to want a family friendly experience, I think we got a betamax vs VHS situation here.

VLM 5y ago
Second Life was big into online gambling. There was a side dish of turn of the century real estate hucksterism. Buy because everyone else is buying. Buy high sell low as retail always does LOL. And pr0n as you mention. Also 3d modelers and CAD folks built elaborate structures that were always empty but impressive to admire. The supply of skilled draftsmen and architects willing to work for free VASTLY exceeds the demand. The most interesting meta activity on second life was stuff that doesn't require second life or 3d or any of that, it was just a fancy screen saver behind people doing simple IRC texting, etc. The philosophy club meetup sounded fun but it was basically walk to a virtual campfire then watch people too high to think, try to instant message philosophical stuff to sound wittier than the next guy. Like karma farming with people too high to succeed but its OK because the platform doesn't have karma LOL. Didn't go many of those LOL. Second life had a weird attitude toward real life where it was not allowed to use your real name. To prevent "funny names" they gave a huge list of first and last names and let you pick. I found Turbo Pascal and thought it witty because I used that once rather expensive ($250 for a pascal compiler used to be a bargain compared to what D.E.C. charged...) software package 20 yrs previously (now more like 40 yrs) and unfortunately the only reactions I got were confusion and "hey did you know your name is an actual program my dad used?" so it wasn't so fun. I'd rather have used my name. But that was it, those five things and the rest was empty. I was there, that's how I remember it.
Kye 5y ago
You haven't lived until a dragon apologizes for stepping on you at a furry night club.

wvenable 5y ago

The problem is that the more you make the virtual world like the real world the less relaxing it is. I don't have the mental energy these days for things that are too immersive. Some people are just not going to want to spend 8 hours a day interacting with people to go home and interact with other real people in a reality-like medium.

charcircuit 5y ago
It's up to you what you do in the metaverse. No one is forcing you to socialize.
- wvenable 5y ago
  Then it's just VR

hellbannedguy 5y ago

Rebut to 1: I watch tv to relax. It doesn't talk back. It's my semi-mute friend. I don't even look at it most of the time. I seem to need mindless taking to drown out my negative thoughts. When the tv is not on, I have my AM radio. I've never tried VR. Games always put me in a weird mood. I once got 300 Halo 3's at a bankruptcy sale. I couldn't get out of the first room. I tried a few more games, and just didn't get it. My hope for VR is not being lonely, and bringing more people into my life. And even then--it just sounds awful unless I was in a good mood.

grayfaced 5y ago

Assume Joe spends 3 hours of TV a night. How much of that time is uninterrupted focused time? While watching TV, I can cook and eat dinner, do a load of laundry, answer email, casually browse the web, feed and let the dog out and at least minimally engage in small talk with family. None of that I can do when fully immersed in VR. Which is probably why Facebook cares about it. Ads on TV are time to get up, in VR they can fully measure you engagement. Fully engaged in game and hungry, food delivery is one button press away.

uhtred 5y ago

But I work from home because I hate the office, why would I want to visit a virtual one. It sounds terrible!

karaterobot 5y ago

It's not a great sign for the metaverse that it's such a nebulous concept for so many people. Even "the cloud" could be boiled down to "other people's computers". The internet was hard for people to understand at first, but it didn't have a unified marketing push behind it. So far, a unified marketing push is all there is to the metaverse, and still nobody knows with the f*ck it's supposed to be.

resonious 5y ago

I'll bite back on these 2 points, even though you're just paraphrasing Zuck. 1) I'm definitely willing to believe that most adults spend a lot of time vegging out, even if I/we don't. Does this mean that one goal of the metaverse is to suck cash out of those folks? "People already waste a lot of time. The metaverse is great because it makes money off of that." I could also interpret this one in a lighter way. Perhaps the metaverse is somehow better than regular vegging out; gives you exercise or something. 2) My take here is similar to some sibling comments. This just sounds like a VR application, and I'm not sure where the "metaverse" comes in. Unless by "metaverse" we mean "internet", which already exists and is (thankfully) not run by Facebook. And even then, I don't see where the internet comes in either! I can dev/create offline, can't I?

cjonas 5y ago

Ah yes... The company that created the biggest productivity sink ever will solve all of our work from home issues...

denkmoon 5y ago

If you thought zoom/teams for 6-8-10hrs a day was bad, try doing it in VR!

krzyk 5y ago

> 1) Most american adults watch several hours of TV per day. alternatively, many play a few hours of video games. Isn't that still about <25 and > 60, or those without kids? I hardly can find a calm 30-60 mins per day to just sit and read, sometimes play for 30 mins (2 kids) just before sleep.