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As someone getting into the technology behind VR and VR-adjacent content creation (vTubing, motion capture, sensor fusion, etc) … meta is a god damn fucking jok

As someone getting into the technology behind VR and VR-adjacent content creation (vTubing, motion capture, sensor fusion, etc) … meta is a god damn fucking joke… not because of any technology failure, they are working their asses off to make good technology. It’s a joke because it’s Facebook, it’s a joke because the only way Mark Zuckerberg could be less human than his already uncanny valley self is in real life is with the weird VR avatar version of himself. It’s a joke because they are on the back foot with old grudges some hold about what they did to Oculus, because of people rejecting the hubris in the Meta rebranding. Plain and simply they had no damn fucking clue how to pioneer a hardware vertical, institutionally speaking. No matter how much the former Oculus engineering and business teams gave them confidence they could, Facebook upper management does not at all know how to pioneer anything. Facebook has grown defensively by acquisitions like WhatsApp and instagram, they have an thousands of people working hard at sanding down the rough edges on global online interaction funded by the ability to shove targeted advertising at people. NONE of this is conducive to a massively simultaneous online collaboration environment where people might want to “hang out” or let’s use the low bar “want to hold a meeting”. If they actually wanted to do things right they should have pulled out the big piggy bank and bought what’s left of Linden Labs and renovated the ever loving fuck out of Second Life. But they thought they could build a cozy corporate modern art style bubble behind the visors, where no one could potentially be offended by what’s going on, in order to maximise potential global market size … and you know what that is … (excuse the shouting) … ITS FUCKING BORING!!! Duh! I mean seriously, Facebook is not in a position to be offensive, and if you can’t give someone the finger in VR what’s the fucking point? It’s a muted beige apathy that does nothing to encourage anyone outside the most die hard circles to want to use it. The most valuable thing I’ve ever heard is that it has slightly better latency than video … that’s not something most people or organisations (who have lots of physical offices they want to get people back to… yet another layer of wtf are Facebook doing) are willing to spend over a thousand dollars per employee on. I’m watching closely the Apple hardware rumours because I believe the market itself has a future… but Meta’s VR efforts with Horizon Worlds look firmly set for the Virtual Boy shelf of irrelevance, and hopefully for the existing customers it doesn’t drag all of Meta’s Oculus hardware with it. Once again to counter the negativity I’m throwing around, I’m bullish on the market I just think, for all the outlined reasons, Meta are institutionally incapable of success in this market.

livueta 4y ago
Good post. > if you can’t give someone the finger in VR what’s the fucking point? Bingo. IMO, the Facebook efforts in this area are doomed by Zuck's "one identity" obsession. I've spent enough hours follow-dancing at the Grand Exchange / trying to jump on the head of the statue in the fountain in front of the Stormwind bank to buy the idea that people can have fun hanging out in a virtual space even without AR/VR, but in each case that virtual space isn't just a Corporate Memphis translation of some middle manager's conception of real life - it's a rich world in which I'm driving a character that's not intended to be a googly-eyed representation of myself; there's at least some level of RP going on, even if I'm not making cat noises at the end of every sentence or whatever. In contrast, if I am just me and the person I'm trying to flip off is maybe my boss, that's a lot less fun. What's the fucking point? If that's the constraint, boring old me may as well take off to a meatspace bar or something. I almost feel like the initial Facebook planning involved big assumptions about the future of pandemic lockdowns that didn't pan out - unless they expected to have less competition from the real world, a lot of these actions look pants-on-head crazy. Admittedly, also a possibility. It's like someone asked: "how can we unite the shittiest aspects of real life and virtual spaces, without preserving any of the virtues of either?"

livueta 4y ago

Good post. > if you can’t give someone the finger in VR what’s the fucking point? Bingo. IMO, the Facebook efforts in this area are doomed by Zuck's "one identity" obsession. I've spent enough hours follow-dancing at the Grand Exchange / trying to jump on the head of the statue in the fountain in front of the Stormwind bank to buy the idea that people can have fun hanging out in a virtual space even without AR/VR, but in each case that virtual space isn't just a Corporate Memphis translation of some middle manager's conception of real life - it's a rich world in which I'm driving a character that's not intended to be a googly-eyed representation of myself; there's at least some level of RP going on, even if I'm not making cat noises at the end of every sentence or whatever. In contrast, if I am just me and the person I'm trying to flip off is maybe my boss, that's a lot less fun. What's the fucking point? If that's the constraint, boring old me may as well take off to a meatspace bar or something. I almost feel like the initial Facebook planning involved big assumptions about the future of pandemic lockdowns that didn't pan out - unless they expected to have less competition from the real world, a lot of these actions look pants-on-head crazy. Admittedly, also a possibility. It's like someone asked: "how can we unite the shittiest aspects of real life and virtual spaces, without preserving any of the virtues of either?"