8 ms·

The Missing Link to the Metaverse

38 points by godber 5y ago

godber 5y ago
Following a link in VR breaks the user our of the browsers VR mode to show the "2D" browser window. It's time to improve this behavior.
- petermcneeley 5y ago
  The example works perfectly fine in chrome fullscreen mode.
  - godber 5y ago
    Cool, thanks for the feedback.
account-5 5y ago
>Rule #2: The Metaverse is for everyone. >Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse. I'm no expert and to be honest, a bit like I was with the internet back in the day, don't see the point but if those two rules aren't adhered to then the "metaverse" is dead on its feet. I feel the internet had an advantage in that at the start there was no Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, either around or interested in it. If these companies get in at the start of this thing their wall gardens will kill the metaverse just like they're current effort to create wall gardens on the internet are chipping away at what made the internet what it is today.
- gear54rus 5y ago
  Well yeah, but walled gardens are there, right? On mobile phones which appeared after google and facebook. No one cared that their rights got taken away, they just want new shiny toy. VR has all the 'wow' effect to be that toy. Never will buy any of facebook's shit but I damn well did invest in their stock cuz it's evident that no one sees the problem with selling their souls away be it in the browser or in virtual reality (where there's even more opportunity to influence you).
- Applejinx 5y ago
  Those are not rules. Those are fantasies. As long as humans are implementing all this, struggles to control it are going to be a thing, and the very people most likely to abuse the situation will be the people who wrest control of it from others. In some ways this isn't a new problem, though. The challenge here is defining a collective good and valuing it over individual power, and that might not be a wholly solveable problem but it's certainly a negotiation that takes place as long as there is not only one power that exists. In that way, these rules (fantasies as they are) become valid. They're not laws as in 'gravity', they're laws as in 'enforceable and societally agreed upon'. I'm a bit puzzled how you enforce 'nobody controls the Metaverse' but it is quite a stake in the ground: you can sure tell when it's NOT being honored.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    They are not fantasies. They're one set of potential outcomes. The fundamental laws that determine whether decentralization or centralization dominates is the rate of accessible content creation. If a centralized organization (AOL & Yahoo, early and late 90s respectively) can create more content than the Internet (decentralized, early/mid 90s), then the former dominates. If the greater number of content developers afforded by a decentralized system can create more content (Internet, late 90s - 10s), then it dominates. Attempting to co-opt both strengths via platforms (Google & Facebook, 10s - now) is a newer phenomenon, but fundamentally still has the same tension. If anyone wants decentralized metaverse to prevail, work on open dev tooling, content creation tools, and client standards. Not because they'll shift the balance, but because with them creators will shift the balance.
    - ngokevin 5y ago
      I've lived through this with aframe.io and as part of the original WebVR team. It was one of the top frameworks with a large community, but content creators at a nascent stage can't shift the balance without control of the browsers or spec
      - prox 5y ago
        Can you elaborate? You mean Content creators need control of the browser (development) ?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  That may be it. The internet was not a business project ( attempts were made before Darpa, but those failed ), but rather some technically-minded people trying to make it work. Metaverse, if such thing is to come forth, should be in the same category. But it won't. Internet was already too much of a proof that we are not ready for it as a species. I am not just talking about powers-that-be getting riled up over how it took some of the power away. I am talking about how it laid bare how downright awful average human can be. But I hear metaverse and I chuckle, because the best comparison for it for me is Fed-issued crypto coin. Completely misses the point, but it runs on blockchain. Yay.
dannyw 5y ago
Who controls WebXR? I hope my smell is wrong, but it sounds like Chrome (Google) don't want the open Web to be the metaverse. We have fullscreen mode. That gives complete rendering control to the content. Mouse can also be captured. The "security" concerns are a solved problem.
- ngokevin 5y ago
  It's controlled by representatives from big tech companies whose sole job became to tweak and perfect the spec There was a working WebVR spec in 2015 shipped in two browsers. Big companies including Google jumped in and delayed the spec on the order of 4+ years in favor of "WebXR" with many "it'll be ready in just a few more months". When it was released, it was neutered with no tracked controller support, no haptics, no link traversal, and forced every site to migrate At one point, we lobbied for link traversal, but despite having existing solutions it was pushed further and further back for improbable and benign security issues More things kept getting added to the spec based on incorrect assumptions. 6DOF (Quest, Rift, Index) was clearly the future, but a lot of the focus was spent on Cardboard and 3DOF (Daydream) Framework maintainers, VR developers, and users didn't have much control. As common with many other Web specs, things are done from an ivory tower, detached from developers, and just bogged down with a lot of bikeshedding and backpatting That's just my take since I think it's relevant for HN and with the announcement of Meta. It's hard for Web to compete when someone at Meta can just snap their fingers and things will get done. Ironically, Meta has done the best job carrying WebVR with Oculus Browser.
prox 5y ago
Can’t wait for the day we get actual virtual cookies thrown at my VR set and a pop-up that comes with it. Or maybe an NPC telling me about cookies on their Verse.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Or the NPC bouncer telling me they value me some much as a European visitor, and that they are working on complying with the GDPR. So get lost, scum. Meanwhile the American next in line gets to enter and promptly receives that handful of virtual cookies.
imwillofficial 5y ago
Yeah these “rules of the metaverse” are a fever dream of somebody who cant see the way the cookie is crumbling. Our future is looking more like a cyberpunk dystopia than libertarian wonderland.
endisneigh 5y ago
If you have a rich social life with friends you can interact with in person frequently (say in San Francisco, Manhattan, or locale of choice) why would you want to be in VR all day? I understand the scenarios where your friends are far, or you're tired, or you're introverted (like me!), or you want to do things you cannot do in reality like fly, but I don't see how it will be anything more than a niche. I know people like to compare VR with the internet, using the internet as a counterexample, but the internet is different because the internet does not require you to isolate yourself physically the same way VR does. I know the metaverse is not VR, but right now it seems AR is very much in its infancy. edit: and to clarify, I think even 10 million yearly active users would be "niche" (fb is ~3 billion active users for comparison).
- farias0 5y ago
  The same was said about "classic" social networks (like Facebook and Instagram) when they first appeared. What happened is that they didn't replace IRL interactions -- instead, they invented new ways of interacting, new social dynamics. Why can't this be the case for VR? To be neither real-life nor classic social media, but something else entirely.
  - endisneigh 5y ago
    the difference is that VR requires you to literally isolate yourself. instagram, facebook, text messages, phone calls. you can do all of those things and share them with real people in real life. you cannot do so with VR. it's literally and inherently isolating. just the other day I was at a restaurant and a group of people were typically all on their phones while waiting for their food. eventually one of them found something amusing and put their phone on the table propped up by a salt dispenser and they watched some video together. that's the difference.
    - farias0 5y ago
      Sure, this is something you can do with smartphones, but people used Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, etc. before this was a thing. In other words, the fact that they can show their memes around the table isn't the reason they use this apps.
cblconfederate 5y ago
The missing link is identity, and sadly open technologies have not solved that, and crypto-based identities are already demonized.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
Sorry but the "metaverse" is a joke, and I say this as a person who loves VR and is optimistic for its future. VR is just not immersive enough and I don't think even next-gen tech will be good enough. It's not just the hardware but the whole kinaesthetic experience you're not getting just by having your brain tricked into seeing things in three dimensions. Even tiny jumps in latency between frames is enough to completely throw off any immersion, and unfortunately the operating systems we have today like to do tasks in the background at any time which can cause this. Let's stop fantasising about a Ready Player One world and be realistic about what we can achieve with what we have.
- mym1990 5y ago
  Maybe, but I wouldn't be so dismissive. A lot of very mainstream things today started out as a 'joke', but they did start somewhere. Given all the sci-fi on metaverses, it is not that surprising that someone is trying to make that happen, unfortunately its one of the worst people one could think of for the job.
astlouis44 5y ago
Yeah interoperability and the ability to travel between worlds is key. Just the other day I implemented a portal between two virtual worlds in WebGL, it works on mobile/desktop but as stated in this thread the experience is ruined when in VR because selecting a link pops you out to a 2D view. To sustain the feeling of immersion, the user's state needs to be maintained when hopping between worlds. This is something the folks at Oculus Browser/Meta are considering though! Ideally it needs to be a standard, just like HTTP and TCP/IP. I'm incredibly bullish that the metaverse needs to be built on top of our current World Wide Web, so the ecosystem itself isn't owned by any one corporation. The destinations themselves, sure, they can be properties of a startup or larger co like Meta or Microsoft. https://youtu.be/r07VAb0DFgc https://youtu.be/r07VAb0DFgc
indymike 5y ago
Everytime I read about the metaverse, it reminds me of all the hype around VRML back in the late 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML
- godber 5y ago
  Funny you mention that. The author of the Metaverse Manifesto I link to in the blog post is named Toni Parisi ... and one of the co-creators of VRML. He even brings it up in this podcast where he and Kent Bye discuss the 7 rules: https://voicesofvr.com/parisis-metaverse-manifesto-unpacking-his-seven-rules-for-the-metaverse/ https://voicesofvr.com/parisis-metaverse-manifesto-unpacking...
wayeq 5y ago
"Rule #1. There is only one Metaverse." "Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse." "Rule #4: The Metaverse is open." the metaverse hasn't even been invented yet and they are already trending false.
Animats 5y ago
There are some groups talking about "metaverse standards", but they're off in philosophical territory and nobody is paying much attention to them. We need metaverse standards in at least three areas: - Portals. You should be able to move your avatar through a portal from system A to system B, and it should Just Work, assuming B will let you in. That's what the author is talking about here. Systems not resident inside a web browser need to do more work to do this, but it should be made to work. This is what makes multiple virtual worlds a metaverse. - Assets. You should be able to take your purchased asset, if you really own it, from system A to system B, assuming B will let it in. The NFT crowd does not have this. Try to export an NFT from Decentraland. - Money. When in system A, you should be able to buy from anyone who wants to sell to you, and not be required to use system A's currency or payment system. This is what Apple and Epic are currently litigating. For standards purposes, it's time to talk about the mechanics of this. If it works and some systems offer those features, users will clamor for interconnection. (And third parties will somehow bolt it on whether the systems like it or not.)

38 points by godber 5y ago

Following a link in VR breaks the user our of the browsers VR mode to show the "2D" browser window. It's time to improve this behavior.

petermcneeley 5y ago
The example works perfectly fine in chrome fullscreen mode.
- godber 5y ago
  Cool, thanks for the feedback.

account-5 5y ago

>Rule #2: The Metaverse is for everyone. >Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse. I'm no expert and to be honest, a bit like I was with the internet back in the day, don't see the point but if those two rules aren't adhered to then the "metaverse" is dead on its feet. I feel the internet had an advantage in that at the start there was no Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, either around or interested in it. If these companies get in at the start of this thing their wall gardens will kill the metaverse just like they're current effort to create wall gardens on the internet are chipping away at what made the internet what it is today.

gear54rus 5y ago
Well yeah, but walled gardens are there, right? On mobile phones which appeared after google and facebook. No one cared that their rights got taken away, they just want new shiny toy. VR has all the 'wow' effect to be that toy. Never will buy any of facebook's shit but I damn well did invest in their stock cuz it's evident that no one sees the problem with selling their souls away be it in the browser or in virtual reality (where there's even more opportunity to influence you).
Applejinx 5y ago
Those are not rules. Those are fantasies. As long as humans are implementing all this, struggles to control it are going to be a thing, and the very people most likely to abuse the situation will be the people who wrest control of it from others. In some ways this isn't a new problem, though. The challenge here is defining a collective good and valuing it over individual power, and that might not be a wholly solveable problem but it's certainly a negotiation that takes place as long as there is not only one power that exists. In that way, these rules (fantasies as they are) become valid. They're not laws as in 'gravity', they're laws as in 'enforceable and societally agreed upon'. I'm a bit puzzled how you enforce 'nobody controls the Metaverse' but it is quite a stake in the ground: you can sure tell when it's NOT being honored.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  They are not fantasies. They're one set of potential outcomes. The fundamental laws that determine whether decentralization or centralization dominates is the rate of accessible content creation. If a centralized organization (AOL & Yahoo, early and late 90s respectively) can create more content than the Internet (decentralized, early/mid 90s), then the former dominates. If the greater number of content developers afforded by a decentralized system can create more content (Internet, late 90s - 10s), then it dominates. Attempting to co-opt both strengths via platforms (Google & Facebook, 10s - now) is a newer phenomenon, but fundamentally still has the same tension. If anyone wants decentralized metaverse to prevail, work on open dev tooling, content creation tools, and client standards. Not because they'll shift the balance, but because with them creators will shift the balance.
  - ngokevin 5y ago
    I've lived through this with aframe.io and as part of the original WebVR team. It was one of the top frameworks with a large community, but content creators at a nascent stage can't shift the balance without control of the browsers or spec
    - prox 5y ago
      Can you elaborate? You mean Content creators need control of the browser (development) ?
A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
That may be it. The internet was not a business project ( attempts were made before Darpa, but those failed ), but rather some technically-minded people trying to make it work. Metaverse, if such thing is to come forth, should be in the same category. But it won't. Internet was already too much of a proof that we are not ready for it as a species. I am not just talking about powers-that-be getting riled up over how it took some of the power away. I am talking about how it laid bare how downright awful average human can be. But I hear metaverse and I chuckle, because the best comparison for it for me is Fed-issued crypto coin. Completely misses the point, but it runs on blockchain. Yay.

dannyw 5y ago

Who controls WebXR? I hope my smell is wrong, but it sounds like Chrome (Google) don't want the open Web to be the metaverse. We have fullscreen mode. That gives complete rendering control to the content. Mouse can also be captured. The "security" concerns are a solved problem.

ngokevin 5y ago
It's controlled by representatives from big tech companies whose sole job became to tweak and perfect the spec There was a working WebVR spec in 2015 shipped in two browsers. Big companies including Google jumped in and delayed the spec on the order of 4+ years in favor of "WebXR" with many "it'll be ready in just a few more months". When it was released, it was neutered with no tracked controller support, no haptics, no link traversal, and forced every site to migrate At one point, we lobbied for link traversal, but despite having existing solutions it was pushed further and further back for improbable and benign security issues More things kept getting added to the spec based on incorrect assumptions. 6DOF (Quest, Rift, Index) was clearly the future, but a lot of the focus was spent on Cardboard and 3DOF (Daydream) Framework maintainers, VR developers, and users didn't have much control. As common with many other Web specs, things are done from an ivory tower, detached from developers, and just bogged down with a lot of bikeshedding and backpatting That's just my take since I think it's relevant for HN and with the announcement of Meta. It's hard for Web to compete when someone at Meta can just snap their fingers and things will get done. Ironically, Meta has done the best job carrying WebVR with Oculus Browser.

prox 5y ago

Can’t wait for the day we get actual virtual cookies thrown at my VR set and a pop-up that comes with it. Or maybe an NPC telling me about cookies on their Verse.

Freak_NL 5y ago
Or the NPC bouncer telling me they value me some much as a European visitor, and that they are working on complying with the GDPR. So get lost, scum. Meanwhile the American next in line gets to enter and promptly receives that handful of virtual cookies.

imwillofficial 5y ago

Yeah these “rules of the metaverse” are a fever dream of somebody who cant see the way the cookie is crumbling. Our future is looking more like a cyberpunk dystopia than libertarian wonderland.

endisneigh 5y ago

If you have a rich social life with friends you can interact with in person frequently (say in San Francisco, Manhattan, or locale of choice) why would you want to be in VR all day? I understand the scenarios where your friends are far, or you're tired, or you're introverted (like me!), or you want to do things you cannot do in reality like fly, but I don't see how it will be anything more than a niche. I know people like to compare VR with the internet, using the internet as a counterexample, but the internet is different because the internet does not require you to isolate yourself physically the same way VR does. I know the metaverse is not VR, but right now it seems AR is very much in its infancy. edit: and to clarify, I think even 10 million yearly active users would be "niche" (fb is ~3 billion active users for comparison).

farias0 5y ago
The same was said about "classic" social networks (like Facebook and Instagram) when they first appeared. What happened is that they didn't replace IRL interactions -- instead, they invented new ways of interacting, new social dynamics. Why can't this be the case for VR? To be neither real-life nor classic social media, but something else entirely.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  the difference is that VR requires you to literally isolate yourself. instagram, facebook, text messages, phone calls. you can do all of those things and share them with real people in real life. you cannot do so with VR. it's literally and inherently isolating. just the other day I was at a restaurant and a group of people were typically all on their phones while waiting for their food. eventually one of them found something amusing and put their phone on the table propped up by a salt dispenser and they watched some video together. that's the difference.
  - farias0 5y ago
    Sure, this is something you can do with smartphones, but people used Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, etc. before this was a thing. In other words, the fact that they can show their memes around the table isn't the reason they use this apps.

cblconfederate 5y ago

The missing link is identity, and sadly open technologies have not solved that, and crypto-based identities are already demonized.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

Sorry but the "metaverse" is a joke, and I say this as a person who loves VR and is optimistic for its future. VR is just not immersive enough and I don't think even next-gen tech will be good enough. It's not just the hardware but the whole kinaesthetic experience you're not getting just by having your brain tricked into seeing things in three dimensions. Even tiny jumps in latency between frames is enough to completely throw off any immersion, and unfortunately the operating systems we have today like to do tasks in the background at any time which can cause this. Let's stop fantasising about a Ready Player One world and be realistic about what we can achieve with what we have.

mym1990 5y ago
Maybe, but I wouldn't be so dismissive. A lot of very mainstream things today started out as a 'joke', but they did start somewhere. Given all the sci-fi on metaverses, it is not that surprising that someone is trying to make that happen, unfortunately its one of the worst people one could think of for the job.

astlouis44 5y ago

Yeah interoperability and the ability to travel between worlds is key. Just the other day I implemented a portal between two virtual worlds in WebGL, it works on mobile/desktop but as stated in this thread the experience is ruined when in VR because selecting a link pops you out to a 2D view. To sustain the feeling of immersion, the user's state needs to be maintained when hopping between worlds. This is something the folks at Oculus Browser/Meta are considering though! Ideally it needs to be a standard, just like HTTP and TCP/IP. I'm incredibly bullish that the metaverse needs to be built on top of our current World Wide Web, so the ecosystem itself isn't owned by any one corporation. The destinations themselves, sure, they can be properties of a startup or larger co like Meta or Microsoft. https://youtu.be/r07VAb0DFgc https://youtu.be/r07VAb0DFgc

indymike 5y ago

Everytime I read about the metaverse, it reminds me of all the hype around VRML back in the late 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML

godber 5y ago
Funny you mention that. The author of the Metaverse Manifesto I link to in the blog post is named Toni Parisi ... and one of the co-creators of VRML. He even brings it up in this podcast where he and Kent Bye discuss the 7 rules: https://voicesofvr.com/parisis-metaverse-manifesto-unpacking-his-seven-rules-for-the-metaverse/ https://voicesofvr.com/parisis-metaverse-manifesto-unpacking...

wayeq 5y ago

"Rule #1. There is only one Metaverse." "Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse." "Rule #4: The Metaverse is open." the metaverse hasn't even been invented yet and they are already trending false.

Animats 5y ago

There are some groups talking about "metaverse standards", but they're off in philosophical territory and nobody is paying much attention to them. We need metaverse standards in at least three areas: - Portals. You should be able to move your avatar through a portal from system A to system B, and it should Just Work, assuming B will let you in. That's what the author is talking about here. Systems not resident inside a web browser need to do more work to do this, but it should be made to work. This is what makes multiple virtual worlds a metaverse. - Assets. You should be able to take your purchased asset, if you really own it, from system A to system B, assuming B will let it in. The NFT crowd does not have this. Try to export an NFT from Decentraland. - Money. When in system A, you should be able to buy from anyone who wants to sell to you, and not be required to use system A's currency or payment system. This is what Apple and Epic are currently litigating. For standards purposes, it's time to talk about the mechanics of this. If it works and some systems offer those features, users will clamor for interconnection. (And third parties will somehow bolt it on whether the systems like it or not.)