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Conceptually speaking, the difference with AR/VR is that you can have a truly immersive experience, which really does give you more possibilities than just Seco

by Shank 5y ago

Conceptually speaking, the difference with AR/VR is that you can have a truly immersive experience, which really does give you more possibilities than just Second Life, which was always just a 3D game world on a 2D screen. The pitch from Meta and with AR/VR is that with the ability to use 3D space, you can actually turn Second Life-style virtual worlds into something useful with actual tangible benefits. For example, VR/AR sense-of-presence totally outclasses video calls, if the intent is to feel like you're really in a room with someone. VRChat is already one of the most popular VR apps for a reason. Long term, I think that you have to look at it like this: most desktop computing is very very 2D centric and touch centric. If you want to, e.g., buy a product on Amazon, you're dealing with photos and imagery of a product, and reviews. But if you had a "Metaverse equivalent" you could view a 3D model, see it in action, and physically size compare it to other objects in your house much easier than manually checking dimensions. Obviously the applications and benefits aren't as clear cut right now. I'm not sure that the windowed operating systems we have today would have been the obvious way that computers would be used if it weren't for constant iteration on keyboard centric UI and experimentation over many years. That same innovation trend hasn't happened with AR/VR, and "the metaverse" that people talk about now will likely be totally different 20 years after it becomes a thing, post-iteration and innovation.

dudul 5y ago
I understand that you point is that it would be such a new paradigm that it's hard to imagine applications. That being said, it is funny that the only 2 use cases you mentioned are 1) a way to see people in person less frequently and 2) a way to buy more stuff.
noduerme 5y ago
I'm pretty skeptical it'll ever take off. Having tried to hang around in the Oculus Go spaces early on, it was pretty clear no one really had a great reason for being there. You'd sit around a badly rendered bonfire and hear people talking, sometimes interestingly, but it had about the same level of interest as getting on a CB and talking to strangers. There are two kinds of people you can meet in VR: Friends and strangers. Friends, you can meet privately. You don't need a public space 'verse for that. And as for jostling around or randomly talking to strangers, well, you can walk outside or go to a bar. It seems pretty nuts that Facebook would actually put its chips on this proposition. I can only view it as a totally desperate attempt to distract from the train wreck of their core business model.
- arisAlexis 5y ago
  This sounds like Krugman's fax machine prediction
- kristiandupont 5y ago
  >Friends, you can meet privately if you live close to one another. If you don't, I guess this could be interesting? I don't really see myself using it but I am so old fashioned that I prefer my laptop over my phone so I get that the world doesn't always agree with me.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    My friends are far-flung and we meet privately in our Discord. We have an audio channel, and anyone who's free hops into it at their leisure. VR wouldn't add much there; to take advantage of it would require us to look at each other, which precludes doing an actual activity like playing a game together.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    Well, or you can meet privately on Zoom, or in VR if you prefer to see fake bodies instead of actual faces. I mean. My friends from around the country have a Zoom poker night every week or two which we started during the pandemic. I'd rather just see their ugly mugs and their kids in the background than sit in a fake room with a bunch of cartoon avatars.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      The photo realistic avatars they showed off change this. They were impressive - still in research stage, but it’s not just a cartoon.
      - samuli 5y ago
        Not really sure if photorealistic avatar can really express all the emotions and facial expressions in a detail that people perceive subconsciously. This might lead to people becoming more tone-deaf and having less empathy when reading others.
hakfoo 5y ago
To me, the problem is finding situations where immersiveness actually adds value. I think for a lot of social interactions, it doesn't, or it offers rapidly diminishing value. This conversation would not be meaningfully better as a virtual/augmented reality 3D live chat. The Google Hangouts (or whatever it's called this week) meetings with my team at work would not be better either. I'm not even sure it would beat playing a pen-and-paper RPG with friends over Discord and Roll20. Now, there's two ways this could end up panning out: 1) The "metaverse" ends up sticking to the scenarios where immersive experiences add value. I'd expect this would be mostly gaming, media consumption, and some specific built-for-the-platform educational products. 2) We figure out new paradigms that make it worthwhile to replace current collaboration or communications tools. What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to have to basically invent new paradigms for "window management". The thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint presentation in VR. We'd have people jostling for the best view, and whatever "immersive" metaphor for presenting is likely to be clunkier than a classic Zoom call where the slides are just walked through on one big window. I'm not sure the 3D shopping model will come to meaningful fruition. We have plenty of retailers who can't even get text descriptions right, especially when it comes to huge catalogues. Are they really going to spend bazillions of dollars building accurate models, making sure the sizes track properly, etc?
- kibwen 5y ago
  Note that Amazon already supports product listings with interactive 360 degree product visualizations. It's only a small step from there to full 3D modeled product renderings. That said, I can't say I would find it especially compelling to peruse a 3D model in VR as opposed to perusing it on a normal screen. Either way it just involves rotating our perspective around the rendering and observing it via the 2D planes of our eyes. I can imagine some small utility if I could accurately measure the dimensions of the product at arbitrary angles in VR, as a sort of freeform replacement for schematic diagrams, but that requires trust that the product listers will actually get the scale correct, and it would not be an overwhelmingly common use case.
  - goopthink 5y ago
    From experience in DTC retail, this is more of an AR (not VR) benefit. I think (because I can’t remember the exact examples) that Amazon, IKEA, and a few others already do a “See it in your room!” feature. With smartphones with LiDAR/equivalent scanning this becomes really easy. Other retailers like H&M already use digital human models and clothes so it’s a short leap there as well.

by Shank 5y ago

dudul 5y ago

I understand that you point is that it would be such a new paradigm that it's hard to imagine applications. That being said, it is funny that the only 2 use cases you mentioned are 1) a way to see people in person less frequently and 2) a way to buy more stuff.

noduerme 5y ago

I'm pretty skeptical it'll ever take off. Having tried to hang around in the Oculus Go spaces early on, it was pretty clear no one really had a great reason for being there. You'd sit around a badly rendered bonfire and hear people talking, sometimes interestingly, but it had about the same level of interest as getting on a CB and talking to strangers. There are two kinds of people you can meet in VR: Friends and strangers. Friends, you can meet privately. You don't need a public space 'verse for that. And as for jostling around or randomly talking to strangers, well, you can walk outside or go to a bar. It seems pretty nuts that Facebook would actually put its chips on this proposition. I can only view it as a totally desperate attempt to distract from the train wreck of their core business model.

arisAlexis 5y ago
This sounds like Krugman's fax machine prediction
kristiandupont 5y ago
>Friends, you can meet privately if you live close to one another. If you don't, I guess this could be interesting? I don't really see myself using it but I am so old fashioned that I prefer my laptop over my phone so I get that the world doesn't always agree with me.
- kibwen 5y ago
  My friends are far-flung and we meet privately in our Discord. We have an audio channel, and anyone who's free hops into it at their leisure. VR wouldn't add much there; to take advantage of it would require us to look at each other, which precludes doing an actual activity like playing a game together.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Well, or you can meet privately on Zoom, or in VR if you prefer to see fake bodies instead of actual faces. I mean. My friends from around the country have a Zoom poker night every week or two which we started during the pandemic. I'd rather just see their ugly mugs and their kids in the background than sit in a fake room with a bunch of cartoon avatars.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    The photo realistic avatars they showed off change this. They were impressive - still in research stage, but it’s not just a cartoon.
    - samuli 5y ago
      Not really sure if photorealistic avatar can really express all the emotions and facial expressions in a detail that people perceive subconsciously. This might lead to people becoming more tone-deaf and having less empathy when reading others.

hakfoo 5y ago

To me, the problem is finding situations where immersiveness actually adds value. I think for a lot of social interactions, it doesn't, or it offers rapidly diminishing value. This conversation would not be meaningfully better as a virtual/augmented reality 3D live chat. The Google Hangouts (or whatever it's called this week) meetings with my team at work would not be better either. I'm not even sure it would beat playing a pen-and-paper RPG with friends over Discord and Roll20. Now, there's two ways this could end up panning out: 1) The "metaverse" ends up sticking to the scenarios where immersive experiences add value. I'd expect this would be mostly gaming, media consumption, and some specific built-for-the-platform educational products. 2) We figure out new paradigms that make it worthwhile to replace current collaboration or communications tools. What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to have to basically invent new paradigms for "window management". The thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint presentation in VR. We'd have people jostling for the best view, and whatever "immersive" metaphor for presenting is likely to be clunkier than a classic Zoom call where the slides are just walked through on one big window. I'm not sure the 3D shopping model will come to meaningful fruition. We have plenty of retailers who can't even get text descriptions right, especially when it comes to huge catalogues. Are they really going to spend bazillions of dollars building accurate models, making sure the sizes track properly, etc?

kibwen 5y ago
Note that Amazon already supports product listings with interactive 360 degree product visualizations. It's only a small step from there to full 3D modeled product renderings. That said, I can't say I would find it especially compelling to peruse a 3D model in VR as opposed to perusing it on a normal screen. Either way it just involves rotating our perspective around the rendering and observing it via the 2D planes of our eyes. I can imagine some small utility if I could accurately measure the dimensions of the product at arbitrary angles in VR, as a sort of freeform replacement for schematic diagrams, but that requires trust that the product listers will actually get the scale correct, and it would not be an overwhelmingly common use case.
- goopthink 5y ago
  From experience in DTC retail, this is more of an AR (not VR) benefit. I think (because I can’t remember the exact examples) that Amazon, IKEA, and a few others already do a “See it in your room!” feature. With smartphones with LiDAR/equivalent scanning this becomes really easy. Other retailers like H&M already use digital human models and clothes so it’s a short leap there as well.