8 ms·

Love the Neal Stephenson quote in here: “The assumption that the Metaverse is primarily an AR/VR thing isn’t crazy. In my book [Snow Crash, published in 1992]

Love the Neal Stephenson quote in here: “The assumption that the Metaverse is primarily an AR/VR thing isn’t crazy. In my book [Snow Crash, published in 1992] it’s all VR. And I worked for an AR company [Magic Leap]--one of several that are putting billions of dollars into building headsets. But I didn’t see video games coming when I wrote Snow Crash… Thanks to games, billions of people are now comfortable navigating 3D environments on flat 2D screens. The UIs that they’ve mastered [keyboard and mouse for navigation and camera] are not what most science fiction writers would have predicted. But that’s how path dependency in tech works. We fluently navigate and interact with extremely rich 3D environments using keyboards that were designed for mechanical typewriters. It’s steampunk made real. A Metaverse that left behind those users and the devs who build those experiences would be getting off on the wrong foot… My expectation is that a lot of Metaverse content will be built for screens (where the market is) while keeping options open for the future growth of affordable headsets.”

astlouis44 4y ago
Agreed, fantastic quote. My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, leveraging emerging technologies such as WebAssembly and WebGPU. As headsets become more widely adopted, WebXR is what will extend the web into VR. There won't be a metaverse based around an app store model. It has to be open to everyone, built with standards and protocols in mind from the very start, and most importantly: no 30% fees from walled gardens.
- WXLCKNO 4y ago
  I would definitely take the time to shop on an AR/VR based e-commerce site that had all products as visible demos. For certain categories of products anyways.
  - TylerE 4y ago
    Amazon already has at for a lot of furniture
- jcelerier 4y ago
  > My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, I interacted with a lot of 3D content, games, apps when I was a child / teen but nowadays I largely prefer 2D for all my interactions with computers, be it games, softwares, etc. 3D just feels gimmicky and less productive than WIMP, especially on all the VR headsets I tried. I'm curious if other people feel different.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    There's an intentionality or exclusive focus aspect to 3D content. When you're working in a 2D desktop alt tabbing or rapidly task switching between monitors feels very low friction and natural. When you load up a game, a CAD app, etc, there's much more of a "ok I'm just going to do only this now" aspect that I think is interesting. For this reason I'm highly skeptical 3D will replace 2D.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      > "ok I'm just going to do only this now" for most of the games and other VR entertainment stuff, this is precisely what the producers what of you. they throw around terms like immersive. they want you in the world they created and believe that it make the experience that much more when you forget about where you really are and believer yourself to be in the virtual place. there's a definite time and place for that idea, but have never once felt that the content i was "immersed" in really had me at a level of suspension of disbelief to the level the producers had hoped. at that point, what is the point of it. i am not one bit intrigued by theZuck's vision. i do not want to hang out in a virtual conference room around a virtual conference table looking at cartoon versions of people because it's cute. you can cute the fuck out of it until the knob goes to eleven, but it doesn't make this boring as meeting any more enjoyable.
  - rngname22 4y ago
    Can you explain how you interacted with 3D content when you were a child/teen? I think you might be conflating 3D graphics engines that render a 2D image on a 2D monitor with modern stereoscopic 3D headsets.
labrador 4y ago
An important consideration for me is that a 43" TV with a 4K HD screen is beautiful to look at, while Oculus screens are not. For 300 dollars I can get a beautiful portal into 3D worlds in the form of a monitor in front of my face and I don't have to wear anything or change anything about the way I see or hear. And also, I don't like the way things move in the VR I've seen. It lags and jumps bit and does not scroll smoothly as I look around.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  Maybe in 5 years it’ll be great but I found the Quest 2 to be very blurry and “streaky” compared to a decent monitor. It also still gives me nausea if I play a game for a few hours which I like to do
  - Scalene2 4y ago
    When is the last time you tried an extended session? It is now possible to do 120Hz on the quest for some games and on PCVR. Earlier versions were limited to 72Hz. There have been other improvements too. Maybe update your headset, tweak some settings, find games that will work at 120Hz and give it another go. Also, the Quest 2 is kind of old now, newer headsets are vastly superior with regards to blur and streaks.
  - anonred 4y ago
    I find the Quest Pro lenses and screen to be a significant improvement over Quest 2 in terms of clarity. You’ll find many other people saying the same thing. So your 5-year timeline seems off to me.
    - coffeebeqn 4y ago
      The quest pro costs as much as a gaming pc. So I guess I’ll have to wait. Also disappointing they didn’t increase the resolution. I’m not looking to pay 5x for marginally better lenses
      - anonred 4y ago
wahern 4y ago
If a rich, interconnected 3D world at the scale of the WWW added significant value, then interest and uptake of Croquet would have taken off 10+ years ago. Croquet is technology-wise as close to the science fiction ideal of the Metaverse as anything that has existed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS With Croquet, you could literally jump from, say, your favorite 3D game into a virtual business meeting, controlling your same avatar, and without either 3D space being hosted by the same entity--directly or indirectly. It's the embodiment of some of the most fanciful visions of a Metaverse, and it has existed for quite some time. But Croquet hasn't taken off, despite intensive efforts, which tells me that not only will our 2D interfaces continue to stick around, the 2D digital world is likely to remain overwhelmingly predominate for quite some time still. At least outside isolated islands. And in any event, I don't see how that could change unless and until a fundamentally open, interconnected, and extensible platform like Croquet sees adoption. A world of closed gardens could never be as immersive and expansive. As large as Facebook has become (and as AOL before it), it simply doesn't and couldn't have the same underlying impact as the WWW collectively. [1] NB: the Wikipedia article for Croquet_project now forwards to Croquet_OS, a commercial project. I hope Croquet OS finds success. I can understand the thinking that on the modern internet new technologies necessarily require commercial backing. But ultimately I think that's a reflection of some fundamental dilemmas on the modern internet regarding the uptake of new technologies; a dilemma that likely has no real solution unless or until something else comes out of left field to toss the ecosystem into disarray. That something is unlikely to be the Metaverse because otherwise Croquet or something substantially similar would have already taken off long ago.
- alanbernstein 4y ago
  It's amazing that I've never even heard of this. As we have seen time after time, the best technology doesn't always win, marketing is a huge factor. Does the organization behind this do any marketing?
- bitwize 4y ago
  I like to say that with Croquet, Alan Kay built the Metaverse from Snow Crash... but that was just a step toward his actual goal, which is to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age (Dynabook).
saurik 4y ago
And before we had moving 2D graphics in the form of movies and video games we had text descriptions of action with the occasional illustration or even (much later) photograph, which allowed people to build not only deep stories but rich worlds that have caused entire generations of people to enter what amounts to a shared hallucination (maybe more reminiscent of Vurt than Snow Crash). If only there were some way to use networked computers to allow users to navigate a world written by such authors... imagine how egalitarian that could be, without the large production budgets of 3D modelling and graphic artists enforcing large barriers to entry for aspiring contributors! Alas, no such future could ever be possible for The Metaverse--and it is almost ridiculous to imagine such--as the birth of The Internet in the same year as Nintendo invented the modern computer has guaranteed that no one, anywhere, has any interest in reading anything.
- DennisP 4y ago
  And yet here we are on this site, typing and reading text, while Amazon has sold almost half a billion books on kindle alone. https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlimited-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlim...
  - Scalene2 4y ago
    So that means that Amazon has sold a kindle book to at absolute best, less than 1 in 16 people.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      1 in 16 seems like really high market penetration for a device that (practically) requires special-purpose hardware and whose offerings are primarily in English. Meta gives away not just it's platforms, but in many countries the data that those platforms need. In some cases it's the only zero-rated app. And they have gotten maybe 6 in 16 people to make accounts.
      - bombcar 4y ago
hinkley 4y ago
Where I see VR go the most wrong is, particularly when business people get involved, is the mistake of trying to recreate reality. I have at least a Library of Congress on my computer, which I can access without having to deal with Euclidean Geometry. I don't schlep through miles of shelves looking for something. I just look for it. That's profoundly important to the reasons why we went to digital from analog. If you want to make VR "work", you have to also have non-Euclidean Geometry. Things need to be smaller on the outside. You need to be able to affect the "world" through intention, not action. In a word, you need magic. Which dovetails pretty well with video games.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  The trying to create reality is simply recreating familiar paradigms to help new users hat a foothold. You can't jump right into the most modern user interface. Even voor advanced users. This is why a 'modern' desktop still mimicks a messy desk from a 70s office worker. The very easiest computers skipped that step due to technical limitations but the mainstream users had a hard time grokking them. Only with the mobile phone have we started to really leave that behind. VR will be similarly rooted in the past until people find their footing and embrace new ways to interact. And why meeting rooms in VR have to have chairs, tables and people have to draw on virtual whiteboards instead of just in the space in front of them in 3D. The tech is getting there, but our minds take even more time.
  - duxup 4y ago
    Does anyone want that? A meeting room? They are familiar sure, but who wants to put on a headset for a meeting…. I feel like being familiar here is also being uninteresting.
    - chaostheory 4y ago
      Conversely, who wants to look at flat boxes of people on a flat screen? Imo the best use case for VR isn’t in replacing reality. Its best use case is to mimic reality for people who are remote. VR meetings are way better than zoom or teams video meetings. I can also tell you that VR ping pong or VR mini golf are both way better than just having a FaceTime call. People who refuse to even try modern VR aren’t going to come to this realization.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Not necessarily disagreeing but I wonder how that applies to the yet to be born audiences. Maybe they will be used to it. The killer app (maybe remote travel, or vocational training) delivered via VR will make them used to it. To them 2D would be like using emacs having only used an IDE

astlouis44 4y ago

Agreed, fantastic quote. My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, leveraging emerging technologies such as WebAssembly and WebGPU. As headsets become more widely adopted, WebXR is what will extend the web into VR. There won't be a metaverse based around an app store model. It has to be open to everyone, built with standards and protocols in mind from the very start, and most importantly: no 30% fees from walled gardens.

WXLCKNO 4y ago
I would definitely take the time to shop on an AR/VR based e-commerce site that had all products as visible demos. For certain categories of products anyways.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Amazon already has at for a lot of furniture
jcelerier 4y ago
> My personal belief is that the browser as we know it today will evolve to be more based around 3D, I interacted with a lot of 3D content, games, apps when I was a child / teen but nowadays I largely prefer 2D for all my interactions with computers, be it games, softwares, etc. 3D just feels gimmicky and less productive than WIMP, especially on all the VR headsets I tried. I'm curious if other people feel different.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  There's an intentionality or exclusive focus aspect to 3D content. When you're working in a 2D desktop alt tabbing or rapidly task switching between monitors feels very low friction and natural. When you load up a game, a CAD app, etc, there's much more of a "ok I'm just going to do only this now" aspect that I think is interesting. For this reason I'm highly skeptical 3D will replace 2D.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    > "ok I'm just going to do only this now" for most of the games and other VR entertainment stuff, this is precisely what the producers what of you. they throw around terms like immersive. they want you in the world they created and believe that it make the experience that much more when you forget about where you really are and believer yourself to be in the virtual place. there's a definite time and place for that idea, but have never once felt that the content i was "immersed" in really had me at a level of suspension of disbelief to the level the producers had hoped. at that point, what is the point of it. i am not one bit intrigued by theZuck's vision. i do not want to hang out in a virtual conference room around a virtual conference table looking at cartoon versions of people because it's cute. you can cute the fuck out of it until the knob goes to eleven, but it doesn't make this boring as meeting any more enjoyable.
- rngname22 4y ago
  Can you explain how you interacted with 3D content when you were a child/teen? I think you might be conflating 3D graphics engines that render a 2D image on a 2D monitor with modern stereoscopic 3D headsets.

labrador 4y ago

An important consideration for me is that a 43" TV with a 4K HD screen is beautiful to look at, while Oculus screens are not. For 300 dollars I can get a beautiful portal into 3D worlds in the form of a monitor in front of my face and I don't have to wear anything or change anything about the way I see or hear. And also, I don't like the way things move in the VR I've seen. It lags and jumps bit and does not scroll smoothly as I look around.

coffeebeqn 4y ago
Maybe in 5 years it’ll be great but I found the Quest 2 to be very blurry and “streaky” compared to a decent monitor. It also still gives me nausea if I play a game for a few hours which I like to do
- Scalene2 4y ago
  When is the last time you tried an extended session? It is now possible to do 120Hz on the quest for some games and on PCVR. Earlier versions were limited to 72Hz. There have been other improvements too. Maybe update your headset, tweak some settings, find games that will work at 120Hz and give it another go. Also, the Quest 2 is kind of old now, newer headsets are vastly superior with regards to blur and streaks.
- anonred 4y ago
  I find the Quest Pro lenses and screen to be a significant improvement over Quest 2 in terms of clarity. You’ll find many other people saying the same thing. So your 5-year timeline seems off to me.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    The quest pro costs as much as a gaming pc. So I guess I’ll have to wait. Also disappointing they didn’t increase the resolution. I’m not looking to pay 5x for marginally better lenses
    - anonred 4y ago

wahern 4y ago

If a rich, interconnected 3D world at the scale of the WWW added significant value, then interest and uptake of Croquet would have taken off 10+ years ago. Croquet is technology-wise as close to the science fiction ideal of the Metaverse as anything that has existed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Cobalt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_OS With Croquet, you could literally jump from, say, your favorite 3D game into a virtual business meeting, controlling your same avatar, and without either 3D space being hosted by the same entity--directly or indirectly. It's the embodiment of some of the most fanciful visions of a Metaverse, and it has existed for quite some time. But Croquet hasn't taken off, despite intensive efforts, which tells me that not only will our 2D interfaces continue to stick around, the 2D digital world is likely to remain overwhelmingly predominate for quite some time still. At least outside isolated islands. And in any event, I don't see how that could change unless and until a fundamentally open, interconnected, and extensible platform like Croquet sees adoption. A world of closed gardens could never be as immersive and expansive. As large as Facebook has become (and as AOL before it), it simply doesn't and couldn't have the same underlying impact as the WWW collectively. [1] NB: the Wikipedia article for Croquet_project now forwards to Croquet_OS, a commercial project. I hope Croquet OS finds success. I can understand the thinking that on the modern internet new technologies necessarily require commercial backing. But ultimately I think that's a reflection of some fundamental dilemmas on the modern internet regarding the uptake of new technologies; a dilemma that likely has no real solution unless or until something else comes out of left field to toss the ecosystem into disarray. That something is unlikely to be the Metaverse because otherwise Croquet or something substantially similar would have already taken off long ago.

alanbernstein 4y ago
It's amazing that I've never even heard of this. As we have seen time after time, the best technology doesn't always win, marketing is a huge factor. Does the organization behind this do any marketing?
bitwize 4y ago
I like to say that with Croquet, Alan Kay built the Metaverse from Snow Crash... but that was just a step toward his actual goal, which is to build the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer from The Diamond Age (Dynabook).

saurik 4y ago

And before we had moving 2D graphics in the form of movies and video games we had text descriptions of action with the occasional illustration or even (much later) photograph, which allowed people to build not only deep stories but rich worlds that have caused entire generations of people to enter what amounts to a shared hallucination (maybe more reminiscent of Vurt than Snow Crash). If only there were some way to use networked computers to allow users to navigate a world written by such authors... imagine how egalitarian that could be, without the large production budgets of 3D modelling and graphic artists enforcing large barriers to entry for aspiring contributors! Alas, no such future could ever be possible for The Metaverse--and it is almost ridiculous to imagine such--as the birth of The Internet in the same year as Nintendo invented the modern computer has guaranteed that no one, anywhere, has any interest in reading anything.

DennisP 4y ago
And yet here we are on this site, typing and reading text, while Amazon has sold almost half a billion books on kindle alone. https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlimited-statistics/ https://wordsrated.com/amazon-kindle-e-book-and-kindle-unlim...
- Scalene2 4y ago
  So that means that Amazon has sold a kindle book to at absolute best, less than 1 in 16 people.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    1 in 16 seems like really high market penetration for a device that (practically) requires special-purpose hardware and whose offerings are primarily in English. Meta gives away not just it's platforms, but in many countries the data that those platforms need. In some cases it's the only zero-rated app. And they have gotten maybe 6 in 16 people to make accounts.
    - bombcar 4y ago

hinkley 4y ago

Where I see VR go the most wrong is, particularly when business people get involved, is the mistake of trying to recreate reality. I have at least a Library of Congress on my computer, which I can access without having to deal with Euclidean Geometry. I don't schlep through miles of shelves looking for something. I just look for it. That's profoundly important to the reasons why we went to digital from analog. If you want to make VR "work", you have to also have non-Euclidean Geometry. Things need to be smaller on the outside. You need to be able to affect the "world" through intention, not action. In a word, you need magic. Which dovetails pretty well with video games.

wkat4242 4y ago
The trying to create reality is simply recreating familiar paradigms to help new users hat a foothold. You can't jump right into the most modern user interface. Even voor advanced users. This is why a 'modern' desktop still mimicks a messy desk from a 70s office worker. The very easiest computers skipped that step due to technical limitations but the mainstream users had a hard time grokking them. Only with the mobile phone have we started to really leave that behind. VR will be similarly rooted in the past until people find their footing and embrace new ways to interact. And why meeting rooms in VR have to have chairs, tables and people have to draw on virtual whiteboards instead of just in the space in front of them in 3D. The tech is getting there, but our minds take even more time.
- duxup 4y ago
  Does anyone want that? A meeting room? They are familiar sure, but who wants to put on a headset for a meeting…. I feel like being familiar here is also being uninteresting.
  - chaostheory 4y ago
    Conversely, who wants to look at flat boxes of people on a flat screen? Imo the best use case for VR isn’t in replacing reality. Its best use case is to mimic reality for people who are remote. VR meetings are way better than zoom or teams video meetings. I can also tell you that VR ping pong or VR mini golf are both way better than just having a FaceTime call. People who refuse to even try modern VR aren’t going to come to this realization.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Not necessarily disagreeing but I wonder how that applies to the yet to be born audiences. Maybe they will be used to it. The killer app (maybe remote travel, or vocational training) delivered via VR will make them used to it. To them 2D would be like using emacs having only used an IDE