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As I understand it, that's exactly the plan. The metaverse will be an open, standards based network of VR environments, each analogous to a web site. Each could

by simonh 5y ago

As I understand it, that's exactly the plan. The metaverse will be an open, standards based network of VR environments, each analogous to a web site. Each could be based on different products, in the way that a web site can run on apache or nginx. The key to it will be a public set of standards for avatars, identity management, authentication and persistent assets which is potentially where a blockchain comes in as a public ledger for shared information. Imagine being in Minecraft, then walking your avatar through a portal that takes you into Roblox. Or more likely just hitting a button and being there. This is exactly what Zuck is working on, plus of course a proprietary VR stack and suite of applications for his own implementation. there are other firms working on pieces of this too though and they are talking to each other. Here's another voice on this, independent of FB/Meta: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/11/02/herman-narula-on-why-the-metaverse-matters https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2021/11/02/herman-na... I'm a skeptic that it will be as big as they reckon, we're physical beings living in a real world and I think that will always be prime reality. Also mobile isn't going away, I'm still going to have my phone on me all the time, not so much a VR head set, but they do seem to have thought all of this through.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago
My hesitation about this is that he also said that Oculus was going to operate independent inside of Facebook: https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-why-facebook-bought-oculus-2014-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-why-facebook-boug... That lasted a few years and then was tossed away. It looks like, after a fairly huge backlash and a lot of technical issues, they've finally decoupled the Facebook account requirement.
kurthr 5y ago
Zuck wants to know where your eyes are pointed, in what order, and for how long. Whether he is showing you "user content" (user generated for free) or "sponsored content" (customer generated for free), they will build an adaptive attention model for you. Then they will show you what is most distracting/engaging. You have no control over where your eyes look. It is a gold standard in advertising. That attention model is likely worth more than even an extremely high end VR/AR/MR/XR setup. Guess what high resolution low latency binocular video requires, eye tracking for foveal rendering. You can do the calculations for 2x120Hzx(100deg)^2x(60pix/deg)^2 and multiple gaming GPUs can't keep up, transport HDMI/DP can't keep up, and display (MIPI/lpDP) can't keep up. Foveal rendering allows ~10x reduction in bandwidth, which makes it possible on mobile/wireless. "Sorry, honey, for all the billy goats in high heels... it was just a phase in college"
babyshake 5y ago
It seems to be against the fiduciary duty of Meta the company to encourage a truly open environment where it would be easy to escape their advertising and other modes of generating revenue. As usual, the corporation says one thing while intending to essentially do the opposite.
- simonh 5y ago
  It's not against facebook's fiduciary duty to allow you to post links to other sites in facebook, so I don't see why this would be different.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  > the fiduciary duty of Meta the company This argument for public comapanies needs to be de-bunked. This isn't a real thing, "fiduciary duty" means don't burn money and don't fraud your investors not don't do a slightly-less-shortterm business decision. Also zuck owns a majority, so even if it was a real thing, if he approves, no other shareholder's opinion on duty matters.
XMPPwocky 5y ago
"Imagine being in Minecraft, then walking your avatar through a portal that takes you into Roblox. Or more likely just hitting a button and being there." Microsoft has actually been experimenting with this technology for a while - their implementation is quite sophisticated, and it's shipping in Windows now. You can actually try it out today: open Minecraft, then press the World Switcher hotkey combination (press the Tab key while holding Alt), press the Windows key, type "Roblox", and press Enter. If done correctly, your avatar will now be in Roblox! It's pretty groundbreaking stuff, to be honest. Under the hood, the old universe is dynamically unloaded (possibly swapped out to disk) while the new one loads in. And, even better, if you press the World Switcher hotkeys again, you'll be right back in Minecraft - exactly where you left off. ... Of course, I'm sure you meant that you'd somehow share information between Minecraft and Roblox- I'm sure you'd agree that arbitrary in-game items are unlikely to be transferable, but at least avatar appearance, surely? Well, hmmm, that'd make both games look worse, with awful art-style clash. Well, I guess you could store a few parameters and transfer those, and let each game interpret them to render an avatar that fits in the game's style? ... Ah, I've just made Miis again. Okay, well, hm, if transferring avatar appearance isn't especially interesting, what about stuff that doesn't directly correlate to anything in-game? For example, the social graph, friends list, communications. Imagine being able to see what worlds your friends are in, talk to them while in your current one, and join their worlds with just a cli- ... oh, that's just Steam and Discord. So... what's new, here?
- simonh 5y ago
  Right, Miis and Steam chat, but in VR and shared between services. I'm the wrong person to boost this stuff, I think it will work but I don't think it's the next big thing. What you are describing is custom built individual partial integrations, many of which aren't even VR. They're the equivalent of Gopher while the Metaverse is the equivalent of HTTP web sites. Right now you can't seamlessly transition your digital presence across thousands of virtual worlds and service, with a variety of independent services having integration points and presences in each other's virtual worlds and interoperating with a variety of VR equipment. That's what they're building.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> The metaverse will be an open, standards based network of VR environments, each analogous to a web site. I think an important enabler of websites is the click-to-download nature of web surfing. You download the HTML site at read-time without worrying about installs. This makes it a lot easier to jump around.

by simonh 5y ago

UnpossibleJim 5y ago

My hesitation about this is that he also said that Oculus was going to operate independent inside of Facebook: https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-why-facebook-bought-oculus-2014-3 https://www.businessinsider.com/zuckerberg-why-facebook-boug... That lasted a few years and then was tossed away. It looks like, after a fairly huge backlash and a lot of technical issues, they've finally decoupled the Facebook account requirement.

kurthr 5y ago

Zuck wants to know where your eyes are pointed, in what order, and for how long. Whether he is showing you "user content" (user generated for free) or "sponsored content" (customer generated for free), they will build an adaptive attention model for you. Then they will show you what is most distracting/engaging. You have no control over where your eyes look. It is a gold standard in advertising. That attention model is likely worth more than even an extremely high end VR/AR/MR/XR setup. Guess what high resolution low latency binocular video requires, eye tracking for foveal rendering. You can do the calculations for 2x120Hzx(100deg)^2x(60pix/deg)^2 and multiple gaming GPUs can't keep up, transport HDMI/DP can't keep up, and display (MIPI/lpDP) can't keep up. Foveal rendering allows ~10x reduction in bandwidth, which makes it possible on mobile/wireless. "Sorry, honey, for all the billy goats in high heels... it was just a phase in college"

babyshake 5y ago

It seems to be against the fiduciary duty of Meta the company to encourage a truly open environment where it would be easy to escape their advertising and other modes of generating revenue. As usual, the corporation says one thing while intending to essentially do the opposite.

simonh 5y ago
It's not against facebook's fiduciary duty to allow you to post links to other sites in facebook, so I don't see why this would be different.
vineyardmike 5y ago
> the fiduciary duty of Meta the company This argument for public comapanies needs to be de-bunked. This isn't a real thing, "fiduciary duty" means don't burn money and don't fraud your investors not don't do a slightly-less-shortterm business decision. Also zuck owns a majority, so even if it was a real thing, if he approves, no other shareholder's opinion on duty matters.

XMPPwocky 5y ago

"Imagine being in Minecraft, then walking your avatar through a portal that takes you into Roblox. Or more likely just hitting a button and being there." Microsoft has actually been experimenting with this technology for a while - their implementation is quite sophisticated, and it's shipping in Windows now. You can actually try it out today: open Minecraft, then press the World Switcher hotkey combination (press the Tab key while holding Alt), press the Windows key, type "Roblox", and press Enter. If done correctly, your avatar will now be in Roblox! It's pretty groundbreaking stuff, to be honest. Under the hood, the old universe is dynamically unloaded (possibly swapped out to disk) while the new one loads in. And, even better, if you press the World Switcher hotkeys again, you'll be right back in Minecraft - exactly where you left off. ... Of course, I'm sure you meant that you'd somehow share information between Minecraft and Roblox- I'm sure you'd agree that arbitrary in-game items are unlikely to be transferable, but at least avatar appearance, surely? Well, hmmm, that'd make both games look worse, with awful art-style clash. Well, I guess you could store a few parameters and transfer those, and let each game interpret them to render an avatar that fits in the game's style? ... Ah, I've just made Miis again. Okay, well, hm, if transferring avatar appearance isn't especially interesting, what about stuff that doesn't directly correlate to anything in-game? For example, the social graph, friends list, communications. Imagine being able to see what worlds your friends are in, talk to them while in your current one, and join their worlds with just a cli- ... oh, that's just Steam and Discord. So... what's new, here?

simonh 5y ago
Right, Miis and Steam chat, but in VR and shared between services. I'm the wrong person to boost this stuff, I think it will work but I don't think it's the next big thing. What you are describing is custom built individual partial integrations, many of which aren't even VR. They're the equivalent of Gopher while the Metaverse is the equivalent of HTTP web sites. Right now you can't seamlessly transition your digital presence across thousands of virtual worlds and service, with a variety of independent services having integration points and presences in each other's virtual worlds and interoperating with a variety of VR equipment. That's what they're building.

vineyardmike 5y ago

> The metaverse will be an open, standards based network of VR environments, each analogous to a web site. I think an important enabler of websites is the click-to-download nature of web surfing. You download the HTML site at read-time without worrying about installs. This makes it a lot easier to jump around.