3 ms·

"Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR

"Speaking of cutting costs, the company is still pouring multiple billions of dollars into vaporware called “the metaverse”. News flash: no one wants to wear VR goggles to spend any time in a digital heaven where the role of God is played by Mark Zuckerberg and you can do anything you can imagine, including “work” and “shop”." This is so true. Facebook must die.

echelon 4y ago
I'm not a fan of Meta, but they're doing the cutting edge research in VR/AR that nobody else is [1]. Hardware, algorithms, attention to details like blend key-based lip syncing, markerless tracking algorithms, low latency posture correction, mocap compression and keyframing, fresnel optics, thin layer physics... They're going to own this space for decades to come, and everyone will license from them. It may seem impractical, but five years ago so did AI/ML. Meta is tackling all of the constituent pieces before they draw them together. [1] Apple may be a major player in this space, but their rumored efforts are still behind closed doors. Meta understands that Apple and Google won the smartphone era of tech, which is why they want to control their hardware destiny in AR/VR. Valve simply isn't investing as much, and they'll fall behind.
- stonogo 4y ago
  The detail they have failed to pay attention to is "what the hell good does this do anyone." Still.
- jimbob45 4y ago
  I don't think anyone can or will disagree with you. What Facebook is doing with VR/AR is technologically beyond anything anyone else is doing. We just don't think the ultimate application of all that research is going to be the Metaverse. Pretending that the ultimate goal is the Metaverse is masking the fact that this VR/AR research is all exploratory. We can assume Wall Street would otherwise heavily punish Facebook for investing blindly so heavily in R&D. The willingness of Facebook to mask the Metaverse as something other than R&D and not Eric's team, which allegedly paid for itself, is what is so baffling.
- landswipe 4y ago
  No one company will own this space, for it to succeed, it needs open standards like the browser.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    Like the open standards of iPhones?
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > Hardware, algorithms, attention to details like blend key-based lip syncing, markerless tracking algorithms, low latency posture correction, mocap compression and keyframing, fresnel optics, thin layer physics... Microsoft R&D built and patented many of those things and already pushed things through the entire loop from R&D to practical "fun" hardware (Kinect) to boring Enterprise hardware ("Azure Kinect" and HoloLens) and allegedly back to plenty of closed doors R&D again. It's easy to ignore Microsoft because they "failed" in the consumer space a few times in that loop already, but since no one has proven yet that there is a long-term consumer space (and don't forget the Kinect actually was a very successful consumer item for a brief Wii-epoch moment) and their "unsexy" Enterprise tech has found comfortable niches to serve it is still very possible to see them as the easy "leader" in this space, even if they've never been crazy enough to rename the whole company after it.

echelon 4y ago

I'm not a fan of Meta, but they're doing the cutting edge research in VR/AR that nobody else is [1]. Hardware, algorithms, attention to details like blend key-based lip syncing, markerless tracking algorithms, low latency posture correction, mocap compression and keyframing, fresnel optics, thin layer physics... They're going to own this space for decades to come, and everyone will license from them. It may seem impractical, but five years ago so did AI/ML. Meta is tackling all of the constituent pieces before they draw them together. [1] Apple may be a major player in this space, but their rumored efforts are still behind closed doors. Meta understands that Apple and Google won the smartphone era of tech, which is why they want to control their hardware destiny in AR/VR. Valve simply isn't investing as much, and they'll fall behind.

stonogo 4y ago
The detail they have failed to pay attention to is "what the hell good does this do anyone." Still.
jimbob45 4y ago
I don't think anyone can or will disagree with you. What Facebook is doing with VR/AR is technologically beyond anything anyone else is doing. We just don't think the ultimate application of all that research is going to be the Metaverse. Pretending that the ultimate goal is the Metaverse is masking the fact that this VR/AR research is all exploratory. We can assume Wall Street would otherwise heavily punish Facebook for investing blindly so heavily in R&D. The willingness of Facebook to mask the Metaverse as something other than R&D and not Eric's team, which allegedly paid for itself, is what is so baffling.
landswipe 4y ago
No one company will own this space, for it to succeed, it needs open standards like the browser.
- MikusR 4y ago
  Like the open standards of iPhones?
WorldMaker 4y ago
> Hardware, algorithms, attention to details like blend key-based lip syncing, markerless tracking algorithms, low latency posture correction, mocap compression and keyframing, fresnel optics, thin layer physics... Microsoft R&D built and patented many of those things and already pushed things through the entire loop from R&D to practical "fun" hardware (Kinect) to boring Enterprise hardware ("Azure Kinect" and HoloLens) and allegedly back to plenty of closed doors R&D again. It's easy to ignore Microsoft because they "failed" in the consumer space a few times in that loop already, but since no one has proven yet that there is a long-term consumer space (and don't forget the Kinect actually was a very successful consumer item for a brief Wii-epoch moment) and their "unsexy" Enterprise tech has found comfortable niches to serve it is still very possible to see them as the easy "leader" in this space, even if they've never been crazy enough to rename the whole company after it.