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When I was a child I was in an "Odyssey of the Mind" group and in one competition we had to solve some problem and the plan my team came up with had a few steps

When I was a child I was in an "Odyssey of the Mind" group and in one competition we had to solve some problem and the plan my team came up with had a few steps, one of which was "Build a robot". We were all children and none of us had even the slightest idea of how to build a robot or any relevant technical experience or ability. But somehow, we never realized this deficit and came up with our plan and tried to execute it. It wasn't until we had destructively disassembled a power tool that one of us had access to, on the theory that we could use whatever motor was inside of that tool to drive our robot, that we realized we had no idea what we were doing nor any conception of how to build a robot. I had a feeling of amazement that sticks with me today that we were able to articulate our plan to solve the problem, which depended on our robot helping us with some sub-task, but were completely unaware of the fact that the robot was far beyond our ability to construct. Our plan was like something that might have worked in a cartoon but not in reality. That feeling comes back to me as a kind of "Build a robot" moment in cases like this. "In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs!" Okay, but what you have is a screen that you can strap to your face and is nothing like a virtual reality metaverse and you have no idea how to get there. Another way of thinking about it is taking the hardest part of the problem and hand waving it away to solve the easier parts and then forgetting that there is a big blank spot in your plan. It's easy and fun to think about all the stuff you can do in a compelling virtual reality metaverse, but you don't have one and aren't likely to get one any time too soon.

vineyardmike 5y ago
> In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs! I completely agree that this sort of marketing of metaverse entirely misses the reality of tech we have and expectations. I think its also a great analogy, and i had a similar experience when i myself did Odyssey of the mind :) Based on the article, however, it seems clear that we could be around the corner from real use-cases for this tech that are actually an improved experience. I think VR tech could def improve "mise en place" tech use, where a user is focused on accomplishing one goal at a set time and place using tech. This could even be as vague as "do my remote job".
shuntress 5y ago
I think we are actually much closer to being able to "build the robot" than you seem to think. The "Metaverse" is not necessarily anything more magical than HTTP serving 3d models rendered on the screens strapped to our faces (rather than 2d documents rendered on the screens strapped to our desk) I think the bigger questions is, will people driving this shift try to keep it a part of the decentralized Internet or will they try to put up walls around their gardens?
- WorldMaker 5y ago
  I think that's why Facebook wants to own it so hard they made it the parent brand and are trying to steal what the word "metaverse" even means so that people expect to always mean Facebook's ideal of a walled garden they control.
  - marocan 5y ago
    Facebook's MetaVerse is a human farming facility. Something like Matrix. You get into a pod, and you are farmed by Facebook. Cool!
- msbarnett 5y ago
  > The "Metaverse" is not necessarily anything more magical than HTTP serving 3d models rendered on the screens strapped to our faces (rather than 2d documents rendered on the screens strapped to our desk) But that's just it, isn't it? GP said: > > That feeling comes back to me as a kind of "Build a robot" moment in cases like this. "In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs!" Okay, but what you have is a screen that you can strap to your face and is nothing like a virtual reality metaverse and you have no idea how to get there. Why would most people want "HTTP serving 3d models to a screen strapped on their face" to take the place of "attending concerts with one another"? Without significant, ground-breaking advancements in freedom of movement/input and feedback/presence beyond the screen & headphones strapped to their face and maybe some shitty rumble from a playstation controller, this isn't "attending a concert with one another" in any meaningful sense, this is just "watch a concert from your couch while talking to your friend over discord", except with a more expensive screen fewer people own or seem inclined to buy, and clumsier input.
auggierose 5y ago
I am pretty sure that Zuckerberg has already attended such a concert or similar in high-quality VR and knows that it is possible. It is expensive now, but that price will come down. I have tried out some VR, and apart from the thick cable coming out of my gear, I was blown away by how cool it is. Not that cool that I would really want to use it currently, but hey, that will certainly improve. It reminds me a bit of my sister. She was swearing that she will never need another phone than her Nokia more than a decade ago when I showed her my iPhone 3G. Yeah, right :-)
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  I bought a Vive when they first came out. I have a Quest 2. My first VR experience I was blown away - but that only lasted a few minutes for me before I got bored. I hardly ever use the VR headsets even after trying a number of different games. The problem is that it's not so much virtual reality as it is strapping a screen to your face. You run into the limits of the system pretty fast. One example, you can play poker in a VR casino. But, it doesn't feel at all like playing poker in a casino in reality. It feels like watching goofy cartoon characters play poker while you try to clumsily control one without proprioception. I enjoy playing in my browser much more than in VR. Another example, I like VR boxing. It's probably my favorite VR game - but even in the best such game I've found (Thrill of the Fight) the limitations are obvious. The game can't really tell where your hands are, what they're doing, if you block or dodge, etc. I can flick my wrist, the way you might playing Wii Sports Tennis and smash the other guy in the face with an uppercut. Or, I can try to throw a real punch the game will decide it missed for some reason though my own sense of reality has me putting my elbow through the opponent's body. On top of input and accuracy limitations there is the fundamental limitation that you cannot feel what's happening. Getting hit doesn't feel like anything. Sometimes you can't even tell if you are blocking or dodging a shot or getting hit by it - very different from real boxing. You likewise can't tell if you're hitting the opponent. These things are called virtual reality but aren't there yet. I agree they're making progress and they are okay toys. I'll keep buying new versions because I want to help support the effort and I like such toys, but they aren't like reality. They're missing a part of it.
  - 5y ago
GekkePrutser 5y ago
> That feeling comes back to me as a kind of "Build a robot" moment in cases like this. "In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs!" Okay, but what you have is a screen that you can strap to your face and is nothing like a virtual reality metaverse and you have no idea how to get there. I don't really agree.. We have amazing 3D and VR games. We have amazing highend headsets. We have great 2D collaboration software. Gesture recognition is improving rapidly, one year ago we didn't even have handtracking yet on the standard quests. All the individual pieces are available. It's just a matter now of bringing them together and driving the prices down with scale.
- nightowl_games 5y ago
  Thank you for embodying the straw man we are trying to argue against. I guess the issue is "we" here. Sure "humanity" as a "we" has all the tools. But humanity has all the tools to solve world hunger and perhaps reach net Zero green house gas emissions. The metaverse is being sold as some sort of universal VR app, but it's being pursued through a capitalist system. It won't work. "It" referring to whatever Facebook pumps out and calls the metaverse. It'll just be another game. In order to "work" or to realize its massive ambiguous vision it has to reach critical mass of adoption such that any competitor simply must build onto the Facebook controlled platform. I think we are years away from seeing that, and I don't think the people pursuing the metaverse right now are capable of building it. The only company I see actually open sourcing the tech is Nvidia. Nvidia is closer to building the metaverse than Facebook is, mark my words on that. But either way, the metaverse is a bit of a joke. It's kinda like saying "VR chat, but like _really good_". I think eventually maybe we get there, but it could be literal lifetimes away. I think the haters are afraid that the companies pursuing metaverse are just wasting human and financial capital that needs to be allocated towards potential existential crises, or barring that, just towards more important or more immediately useful things. These capitalist companies want to be the platform owner of the metaverse, ala apple to the App Store. It's not a vision of the future that is powering them, it's a faint mirage of $ and power. It's envy of the app store. That's what I think powers the resentment of the metaverse that so many people feel.

vineyardmike 5y ago

> In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs! I completely agree that this sort of marketing of metaverse entirely misses the reality of tech we have and expectations. I think its also a great analogy, and i had a similar experience when i myself did Odyssey of the mind :) Based on the article, however, it seems clear that we could be around the corner from real use-cases for this tech that are actually an improved experience. I think VR tech could def improve "mise en place" tech use, where a user is focused on accomplishing one goal at a set time and place using tech. This could even be as vague as "do my remote job".

shuntress 5y ago

I think we are actually much closer to being able to "build the robot" than you seem to think. The "Metaverse" is not necessarily anything more magical than HTTP serving 3d models rendered on the screens strapped to our faces (rather than 2d documents rendered on the screens strapped to our desk) I think the bigger questions is, will people driving this shift try to keep it a part of the decentralized Internet or will they try to put up walls around their gardens?

WorldMaker 5y ago
I think that's why Facebook wants to own it so hard they made it the parent brand and are trying to steal what the word "metaverse" even means so that people expect to always mean Facebook's ideal of a walled garden they control.
- marocan 5y ago
  Facebook's MetaVerse is a human farming facility. Something like Matrix. You get into a pod, and you are farmed by Facebook. Cool!
msbarnett 5y ago
> The "Metaverse" is not necessarily anything more magical than HTTP serving 3d models rendered on the screens strapped to our faces (rather than 2d documents rendered on the screens strapped to our desk) But that's just it, isn't it? GP said: > > That feeling comes back to me as a kind of "Build a robot" moment in cases like this. "In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs!" Okay, but what you have is a screen that you can strap to your face and is nothing like a virtual reality metaverse and you have no idea how to get there. Why would most people want "HTTP serving 3d models to a screen strapped on their face" to take the place of "attending concerts with one another"? Without significant, ground-breaking advancements in freedom of movement/input and feedback/presence beyond the screen & headphones strapped to their face and maybe some shitty rumble from a playstation controller, this isn't "attending a concert with one another" in any meaningful sense, this is just "watch a concert from your couch while talking to your friend over discord", except with a more expensive screen fewer people own or seem inclined to buy, and clumsier input.

auggierose 5y ago

I am pretty sure that Zuckerberg has already attended such a concert or similar in high-quality VR and knows that it is possible. It is expensive now, but that price will come down. I have tried out some VR, and apart from the thick cable coming out of my gear, I was blown away by how cool it is. Not that cool that I would really want to use it currently, but hey, that will certainly improve. It reminds me a bit of my sister. She was swearing that she will never need another phone than her Nokia more than a decade ago when I showed her my iPhone 3G. Yeah, right :-)

ALittleLight 5y ago
I bought a Vive when they first came out. I have a Quest 2. My first VR experience I was blown away - but that only lasted a few minutes for me before I got bored. I hardly ever use the VR headsets even after trying a number of different games. The problem is that it's not so much virtual reality as it is strapping a screen to your face. You run into the limits of the system pretty fast. One example, you can play poker in a VR casino. But, it doesn't feel at all like playing poker in a casino in reality. It feels like watching goofy cartoon characters play poker while you try to clumsily control one without proprioception. I enjoy playing in my browser much more than in VR. Another example, I like VR boxing. It's probably my favorite VR game - but even in the best such game I've found (Thrill of the Fight) the limitations are obvious. The game can't really tell where your hands are, what they're doing, if you block or dodge, etc. I can flick my wrist, the way you might playing Wii Sports Tennis and smash the other guy in the face with an uppercut. Or, I can try to throw a real punch the game will decide it missed for some reason though my own sense of reality has me putting my elbow through the opponent's body. On top of input and accuracy limitations there is the fundamental limitation that you cannot feel what's happening. Getting hit doesn't feel like anything. Sometimes you can't even tell if you are blocking or dodging a shot or getting hit by it - very different from real boxing. You likewise can't tell if you're hitting the opponent. These things are called virtual reality but aren't there yet. I agree they're making progress and they are okay toys. I'll keep buying new versions because I want to help support the effort and I like such toys, but they aren't like reality. They're missing a part of it.
- 5y ago

GekkePrutser 5y ago

> That feeling comes back to me as a kind of "Build a robot" moment in cases like this. "In our virtual reality metaverse people will be able to attend concerts with one another and save the tickets as NFTs!" Okay, but what you have is a screen that you can strap to your face and is nothing like a virtual reality metaverse and you have no idea how to get there. I don't really agree.. We have amazing 3D and VR games. We have amazing highend headsets. We have great 2D collaboration software. Gesture recognition is improving rapidly, one year ago we didn't even have handtracking yet on the standard quests. All the individual pieces are available. It's just a matter now of bringing them together and driving the prices down with scale.

nightowl_games 5y ago
Thank you for embodying the straw man we are trying to argue against. I guess the issue is "we" here. Sure "humanity" as a "we" has all the tools. But humanity has all the tools to solve world hunger and perhaps reach net Zero green house gas emissions. The metaverse is being sold as some sort of universal VR app, but it's being pursued through a capitalist system. It won't work. "It" referring to whatever Facebook pumps out and calls the metaverse. It'll just be another game. In order to "work" or to realize its massive ambiguous vision it has to reach critical mass of adoption such that any competitor simply must build onto the Facebook controlled platform. I think we are years away from seeing that, and I don't think the people pursuing the metaverse right now are capable of building it. The only company I see actually open sourcing the tech is Nvidia. Nvidia is closer to building the metaverse than Facebook is, mark my words on that. But either way, the metaverse is a bit of a joke. It's kinda like saying "VR chat, but like _really good_". I think eventually maybe we get there, but it could be literal lifetimes away. I think the haters are afraid that the companies pursuing metaverse are just wasting human and financial capital that needs to be allocated towards potential existential crises, or barring that, just towards more important or more immediately useful things. These capitalist companies want to be the platform owner of the metaverse, ala apple to the App Store. It's not a vision of the future that is powering them, it's a faint mirage of $ and power. It's envy of the app store. That's what I think powers the resentment of the metaverse that so many people feel.