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I would not invest in Meta's metaverse future. It feels like Windows Mobile. Meta has the early start, money, captive audience and enthusiasm, but they don't h

I would not invest in Meta's metaverse future. It feels like Windows Mobile. Meta has the early start, money, captive audience and enthusiasm, but they don't have the hardware/software edge (that Apple coincidentally also has this time around) to really make the idea work. The headsets are not going to revolutionize much running Facebook games on budget Qualcomm SoCs, and Facebook cant buy an Unreal Engine or an M2 Pro overnight.

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hackernewds 4y ago
Facebook can, and still could totally buy Unity. This is something that they've discussed years before the pandemic or metaverse hype. https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1619818349525086208?s=20 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1619818349525086208?s=... From internal emails from Zuck^. Also has a bonus glimpse into their VR/AR strategy
- tapoxi 4y ago
  This makes a ton of sense because a lot of Unity's business is in their ad platform, not engine licensing. Horizon Worlds is written in Unity, and it gives them full control over their hardware/software platform. It would do a lot of harm to Unity's relationship with smaller developers though, to Godot's benefit.
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    Unity has already done a lot of harm to Unity's reputation.
- achow 4y ago
  Excerpt from this 2015 email.. "An innovation brand comes from building tangible new products. Our work in VR/AR is the best example we have. Our core social networking work is no longer new, Internet.org is extending something rather than inventing it, and AI is not yet tangible... succeeding in VR/AR has the most innovation potential in the next 5-10 years." > AI is not yet tangible Did Meta bet on the wrong horse?
  - typon 4y ago
    FAIR has been one of the best AI labs in the world, with one of the godfathers of AI leading it. What do you mean by "bet on the wrong horse?"
    - achow 4y ago
      Not spend $10B/year on AI, not change the name of company from Facebook to 'AIBook', not launch equivalent of ChatGPT instead buy Occulus and then launch MetaQuest.. and similar such bets?
    - bitL 4y ago
      Meta AI employees will privately tell you Google, Open AI and a bunch of others are much more advanced than them. For some reason Google can't capitalize on it and it can't be because "AI is not in their DNA"...
      - brutus1213 4y ago
        Interesting comment. Curious who you see to be the winning horses, or at least candidates. OpenAI is certainly something special. Not sure who else I'd add to the list. AirBnB has a really strong culture of experimentation and infra for it. Their product is boring though. From your perspective, is it about culture, product, people, something else?
sm_1024 4y ago
Latest qualcomm SoCs seem pretty competitive in mobile market (3d mark): Snapdragon 8 Gen 2: 12726 (76 fps) A16 Bionic: 9827 (58 fps) https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-2-vs-apple-a16-bionic https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-...
- yftsui 4y ago
  A16 should be compared with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Samsung and Qualcomm always play this release half year later with “better performance at cost of energy consumption” game.
  - jsnell 4y ago
    I don't understand at all where you're coming from. Phones with a SM8450 (Snapdragon 8 gen 1) were available in January, 2022. Phones with A16 were available in September 2022. Phones with a SM8550 (Snapdragon 8 gen 2) were available in January, 2023. You're saying it is unreasonable to compare the last two (4 months apart), and instead the valid comparison is between the first two (8 months apart). That doesn't seem fair.
    - yftsui 4y ago
      You pretty much described the game's timeline, in order for a phone available in September, you have to compete all resources as everybody is competing for the holiday shopping season, the EVT/DVT probably are done latest in May otherwise you will see a major news piece says Apple is having difficulties doing ABC. However, if you push the release date to a few months later into early next year, all the resources along is available idle for you and naturally more buffer everywhere. Samsung/Qualcomm used to do the "June release / Sep available" model about 10 - 12 years ago, they always lose to Apple from every aspect. So instead of directly compete with the "in cycle" release for the holiday season, they made the release looks earlier in the year, but then compete with a product released last year for the holiday season.
      - 4y ago
29athrowaway 4y ago
Or the Pocket PC, or the Zune, or Microsoft Bob, or Bing, or The Microsoft Network, or Clippy.
taeric 4y ago
I don't think you are wrong. I do think vr is Sony's to lose, though. The number of PlayStations they have in consumers houses is insane. And the new vr2 is quite impressive.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
  It’s also $150 more than the Quest 2 which has also been out for 2.5 years, I don’t really think it’s going to put any sort of dent into the Quest 2s numbers. There’s about 7 million PS5s sold in the last quarter and about 1 million Quest 2s sold in Q2 last year. I somehow doubt that every one of, or even 1/7th of those PS5 owners will spend the cost of a console on PSVR so I would argue that it’s still very much Meta’s game to lose. Edit: clarified the sales numbers are for a single quarter. The point is that even if there’s a lot of potential buyers for the PSVR I don’t think there will be nearly enough conversions.
  - brucethemoose2 4y ago
    PSVR and the Quest are kinda different markets.
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      How so? They really are not. The VR market is not really big enough to have devices specialized for one part of VR vs another. You put either of them on to play games. That’s it. Where’s the market differentiator? To a common person, they’re not going to see the differences that exist. They will say “oh Timmy wants to play VR” and get whatever option they can to allow Timmy to play VR. Both the Quest and PSVR2 are options for that. And the Quest has been out longer, has an existing user base 1/7th of a PS5 and doesn’t cost the same price as a new console. All of those very much work in it’s favor.
      - taeric 4y ago
        Probably more accurate to say they are different demographics. Is laughably odd if you consider facebook to be social. Either bragging about doing things with others or to others. Current VR is very much not social. Largely single player games where you are literally disconnected from the people in the same room as you.
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ehnto 4y ago
They don't have the enthusiasm I don't think, and I believe that is where it falls flat. The technology is not currently something that everyone wants and definitely not something everyone needs. VR is not good at general computing yet, and the form factor and way you engage with it means people won't be using it in the same way they use TVs, game consoles or smart phones. Mass adoption takes apealing to the lowest common denominator and VR doesn't do that, which is eventually going to be an issue of fashion as much as utility. No one wants to sit on a bus in a Quest headset, no one wants to sit alone when their friends are in the same room, no one wants to look like a dork at work. Mass adoption is no where near happening to the current state of the art, we have more technology leaps and form factor pivots before we arrive at something a mass adopted social network would work, let alone something aiming to replace segments of business and commerce use cases.
- zmmmmm 4y ago
  I think the tipping point is closer than you may realise. There has been material progress in form factors in the last year or so and we are not nearly done with the improvements that are on the radar. Once we hit a certain point with the form factor, quite a wide range of use cases will become a no-brainer (for example, sitting on the bus with it).
  - nivenkos 4y ago
    > for example, sitting on the bus with it You'd use an $800 device (with limited awareness of your surroundings) on the bus?
    - dbspin 4y ago
      People use their 1200 dollar / euro phones on the bus and in the street at night all the time. Not sure what you're suggesting specifically about public transport - but I would never wear a visually occluding headset on a bus in Ireland. But I would wear it on a coach here, or on a bus in Germany, which has a much safer public culture. Providing it had a small form factor, was relatively discrete etc.
mach1ne 4y ago
I think they're also targeting the very wrong audience. Metaverse feels like a weird incarnation of Microsoft Teams - from corporate, to corporate. It's really not for young people. One has difficulty finding examples from history where something new was first adopted by older people and then by younger folk. Even Facebook started as a social network for university students and then spread across the population generation by generation. Meta has apparently forgotten the prime rule of trendsetting; it must always be done by cool people.
threatripper 4y ago
Is the Metaverse something that wants to be done and Meta is its birth helper OR is Meta inventing the Metaverse because it needs something immensely big for its business strategy? My feeling is that Meta is rather running away from a failing business and less running towards a new green meadow.
- bsaul 4y ago
  i really feel like metaverse is only a dream to people with extreme social anxiety. Which may represent a large share of software developers, but only a minority of the general population.
  - schnitzelstoat 4y ago
    I think it may be popular among kids too - look at Roblox, Fortnite etc. But for adults.. well after staring at a screen all day the last thing I want to do is stare at another screen, I'd rather lift weights or play guitar or whatever.
    - reidjs 4y ago
      Why do you have to stare at a screen all day as an adult?
      - cassianoleal 4y ago
        As with everything else, it doesn't apply to every adult all the time. That said, most adults need to work in order to survive. Couple that with the fact that most jobs these days are done either directly in front of a computer or using some screen-enabled device, and it's not hard to see that most adults will have been staring at a screen all day most days.
  - blensor 4y ago
    I don't believe this describes only software developers. Disclaimer: we are the devs behind VRWorkout In the fitness space there is a huge group of people who would like to go to the gym but don't because of social anxiety. And VR fitness is already one of the major pillars for the headset manufacturers ( Meta, Pico and HTC ). So the social anxiety issue may very well be a driving factor overall
tjpnz 4y ago
Could you imagine your Facebook using parents and grandparents donning a VR headset and regularly interacting with the metaverse? I couldn't, not unless the technology improved dramatically to the point where the headset more closely resembled glasses than yuppie techno goggles. I can't see that happening anytime soon, which is a problem if they're trying to build something with mainstream appeal.
- hellweaver666 4y ago
  I'm 41 and grew up with access to technology every day of my life. I won't use VR for more than a few rounds of beatsaber. The only way I would use VR for more than shits and giggles is if it was integrated into my standard glasses with very little additional extra bulk/weight. I don't see that happening any time soon. I see AR having a much more useful and tangible impact on our lives. VR is a toy.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  It's not the output, it's the input. To reach the scifi potential of VR, you need to be able to put on your VR headset, recline in a comfy chair, and then run and jump around a virtual world without moving your body. As long as you need a controller or to physically walk around your living room, it's a neat trick, but a limited one.
bmitc 4y ago
Microsoft's failure in mobile was more of a business decision failure than a technology failure, to my understanding. Despite having products ready to launch, both Gates and Ballmer doubled down on the traditional Windows model. For example: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-inside-story-of-... There are some other good articles I remember reading about Pioneer Studios that I am unable to find right now. I think Microsoft could have absolutely dominated the mobile space, but they really sat on their laurels for far too long. I think they had the talent and ability to handle the technology development. They just didn't want to because of Gates and Ballmer.
gumby 4y ago
While I agree Meta probably won't make it on the metaverse side, I disagree with your reasoning. Famously, Facebook "missed mobile" (were focused on the web) and had to scramble to recover, which they did very well. I see the metaverse efforts as a way to avoid that happening to them again. Which is smart. The point is not to make any money on the hardware; the point is to understand the metaverse so well that when it eventually emerges they will know it better than anyone else and can dominate rather than be squeezed out. In other words, under this model, Apple's release of some excellent headset would help meta, not threaten it. All that being said I don't think Meta will succeed. The biggest problem is bootstrap: headsets are clunky and nobody wants to wear them for long, if at all. Because it's early days everybody needs to provide transitional interfaces, but by doing so you are working against learning / predicting what will really happen (remember all those virtual worlds in the early days of the web where you would supposedly move around in a virtual mall? Nobody wants that; they want to jump straight from gap.com to Merrils.com (or in HN case from VScode to Stack Overflow and back), or visit them side-by-side. But the company's efforts are still "me too" like demos from others years ago. They haven't managed to move the state of the art; and if they had would people have booed it too? Probably. Also, decent, non-enthusiast hardware is so far away that it will be difficult for Meta to maintain focus. It should have been a skunkworks project, or at least a side effort, not something as prominent as it has been.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago
  > The point is not to make any money on the hardware; the point is to understand the metaverse so well that when it eventually emerges they will know it better than anyone else and can dominate rather than be squeezed out. Except they dont understand it... We already have pseudo-metaverses in Minecraft, Fortnite, and such, and Meta (so far) is entirely missing the point in their own VR game. Its like they are an AI that has literally forgotten what it is like to be a regular human.
nix23 4y ago
>It feels like Windows Mobile. Wow, that's actually a really good comparison!
coldtea 4y ago
>Meta has the early start, money, captive audience and enthusiasm, but they don't have the hardware/software edge (that Apple coincidentally also has this time around) to really make the idea work I don't think they have any concrete "idea" either, except "let's make some metaverse".
mattbrewsbytes 4y ago
The progress of AI/ML/ChatGPT will squash any notion of VR for Enterprise. If I was running a 500 person call center for a health insurance company, I'd be looking more into research around AI/ML/ChatGPT to reduce costs vs. VR/AR. Getting a private hosted ChatGPT instance/network, train it on medical claims/insurance use cases and facts, feed it statistics about cases and see if it can handle use cases for processing simpler claims. Give it the same oversight you would a call center employee where people are inspecting the results. That has a ROI of possibly increasing claim processing/reducing claim processors by letting humans handle more complex cases that require actual intelligence. The same process could be applied to any industry that has a lot of text data and doesn't change very quickly. VR in the Enterprise just isn't good business sense. The ROI isn't going to be there for an enterprise use case with typical office workers/professionals. As ruthless as it sounds, eliminating the need for people with AI handling easier/simpler tasks is a much better investment that scales than purchasing, supporting and training people on VR hardware for some "productivity" benefit that really can't be defined right now.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago
  Thats an interesting point. I was gonna argue that AI doesn't exclude VR, but you are right. Employees have only so much energy to expend investigating experimental tech.
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  > train it on medical claims/insurance use cases and facts, feed it statistics about cases and see if it can handle use cases for processing simpler claims Isn’t this how insurance companies have operated since the mainframe computer age? Why would an adjuster need to talk to this with chatgpt?

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hackernewds 4y ago

Facebook can, and still could totally buy Unity. This is something that they've discussed years before the pandemic or metaverse hype. https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1619818349525086208?s=20 https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1619818349525086208?s=... From internal emails from Zuck^. Also has a bonus glimpse into their VR/AR strategy

tapoxi 4y ago
This makes a ton of sense because a lot of Unity's business is in their ad platform, not engine licensing. Horizon Worlds is written in Unity, and it gives them full control over their hardware/software platform. It would do a lot of harm to Unity's relationship with smaller developers though, to Godot's benefit.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Unity has already done a lot of harm to Unity's reputation.
achow 4y ago
Excerpt from this 2015 email.. "An innovation brand comes from building tangible new products. Our work in VR/AR is the best example we have. Our core social networking work is no longer new, Internet.org is extending something rather than inventing it, and AI is not yet tangible... succeeding in VR/AR has the most innovation potential in the next 5-10 years." > AI is not yet tangible Did Meta bet on the wrong horse?
- typon 4y ago
  FAIR has been one of the best AI labs in the world, with one of the godfathers of AI leading it. What do you mean by "bet on the wrong horse?"
  - achow 4y ago
    Not spend $10B/year on AI, not change the name of company from Facebook to 'AIBook', not launch equivalent of ChatGPT instead buy Occulus and then launch MetaQuest.. and similar such bets?
  - bitL 4y ago
    Meta AI employees will privately tell you Google, Open AI and a bunch of others are much more advanced than them. For some reason Google can't capitalize on it and it can't be because "AI is not in their DNA"...
    - brutus1213 4y ago
      Interesting comment. Curious who you see to be the winning horses, or at least candidates. OpenAI is certainly something special. Not sure who else I'd add to the list. AirBnB has a really strong culture of experimentation and infra for it. Their product is boring though. From your perspective, is it about culture, product, people, something else?

sm_1024 4y ago

Latest qualcomm SoCs seem pretty competitive in mobile market (3d mark): Snapdragon 8 Gen 2: 12726 (76 fps) A16 Bionic: 9827 (58 fps) https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-gen-2-vs-apple-a16-bionic https://nanoreview.net/en/soc-compare/qualcomm-snapdragon-8-...

yftsui 4y ago
A16 should be compared with Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Samsung and Qualcomm always play this release half year later with “better performance at cost of energy consumption” game.
- jsnell 4y ago
  I don't understand at all where you're coming from. Phones with a SM8450 (Snapdragon 8 gen 1) were available in January, 2022. Phones with A16 were available in September 2022. Phones with a SM8550 (Snapdragon 8 gen 2) were available in January, 2023. You're saying it is unreasonable to compare the last two (4 months apart), and instead the valid comparison is between the first two (8 months apart). That doesn't seem fair.
  - yftsui 4y ago
    You pretty much described the game's timeline, in order for a phone available in September, you have to compete all resources as everybody is competing for the holiday shopping season, the EVT/DVT probably are done latest in May otherwise you will see a major news piece says Apple is having difficulties doing ABC. However, if you push the release date to a few months later into early next year, all the resources along is available idle for you and naturally more buffer everywhere. Samsung/Qualcomm used to do the "June release / Sep available" model about 10 - 12 years ago, they always lose to Apple from every aspect. So instead of directly compete with the "in cycle" release for the holiday season, they made the release looks earlier in the year, but then compete with a product released last year for the holiday season.
    - 4y ago

29athrowaway 4y ago

Or the Pocket PC, or the Zune, or Microsoft Bob, or Bing, or The Microsoft Network, or Clippy.

taeric 4y ago

I don't think you are wrong. I do think vr is Sony's to lose, though. The number of PlayStations they have in consumers houses is insane. And the new vr2 is quite impressive.

mynameisvlad 4y ago
It’s also $150 more than the Quest 2 which has also been out for 2.5 years, I don’t really think it’s going to put any sort of dent into the Quest 2s numbers. There’s about 7 million PS5s sold in the last quarter and about 1 million Quest 2s sold in Q2 last year. I somehow doubt that every one of, or even 1/7th of those PS5 owners will spend the cost of a console on PSVR so I would argue that it’s still very much Meta’s game to lose. Edit: clarified the sales numbers are for a single quarter. The point is that even if there’s a lot of potential buyers for the PSVR I don’t think there will be nearly enough conversions.
- brucethemoose2 4y ago
  PSVR and the Quest are kinda different markets.
  - mynameisvlad 4y ago
    How so? They really are not. The VR market is not really big enough to have devices specialized for one part of VR vs another. You put either of them on to play games. That’s it. Where’s the market differentiator? To a common person, they’re not going to see the differences that exist. They will say “oh Timmy wants to play VR” and get whatever option they can to allow Timmy to play VR. Both the Quest and PSVR2 are options for that. And the Quest has been out longer, has an existing user base 1/7th of a PS5 and doesn’t cost the same price as a new console. All of those very much work in it’s favor.
    - taeric 4y ago
      Probably more accurate to say they are different demographics. Is laughably odd if you consider facebook to be social. Either bragging about doing things with others or to others. Current VR is very much not social. Largely single player games where you are literally disconnected from the people in the same room as you.

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ehnto 4y ago

They don't have the enthusiasm I don't think, and I believe that is where it falls flat. The technology is not currently something that everyone wants and definitely not something everyone needs. VR is not good at general computing yet, and the form factor and way you engage with it means people won't be using it in the same way they use TVs, game consoles or smart phones. Mass adoption takes apealing to the lowest common denominator and VR doesn't do that, which is eventually going to be an issue of fashion as much as utility. No one wants to sit on a bus in a Quest headset, no one wants to sit alone when their friends are in the same room, no one wants to look like a dork at work. Mass adoption is no where near happening to the current state of the art, we have more technology leaps and form factor pivots before we arrive at something a mass adopted social network would work, let alone something aiming to replace segments of business and commerce use cases.

zmmmmm 4y ago
I think the tipping point is closer than you may realise. There has been material progress in form factors in the last year or so and we are not nearly done with the improvements that are on the radar. Once we hit a certain point with the form factor, quite a wide range of use cases will become a no-brainer (for example, sitting on the bus with it).
- nivenkos 4y ago
  > for example, sitting on the bus with it You'd use an $800 device (with limited awareness of your surroundings) on the bus?
  - dbspin 4y ago
    People use their 1200 dollar / euro phones on the bus and in the street at night all the time. Not sure what you're suggesting specifically about public transport - but I would never wear a visually occluding headset on a bus in Ireland. But I would wear it on a coach here, or on a bus in Germany, which has a much safer public culture. Providing it had a small form factor, was relatively discrete etc.

mach1ne 4y ago

I think they're also targeting the very wrong audience. Metaverse feels like a weird incarnation of Microsoft Teams - from corporate, to corporate. It's really not for young people. One has difficulty finding examples from history where something new was first adopted by older people and then by younger folk. Even Facebook started as a social network for university students and then spread across the population generation by generation. Meta has apparently forgotten the prime rule of trendsetting; it must always be done by cool people.

threatripper 4y ago

Is the Metaverse something that wants to be done and Meta is its birth helper OR is Meta inventing the Metaverse because it needs something immensely big for its business strategy? My feeling is that Meta is rather running away from a failing business and less running towards a new green meadow.

bsaul 4y ago
i really feel like metaverse is only a dream to people with extreme social anxiety. Which may represent a large share of software developers, but only a minority of the general population.
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  I think it may be popular among kids too - look at Roblox, Fortnite etc. But for adults.. well after staring at a screen all day the last thing I want to do is stare at another screen, I'd rather lift weights or play guitar or whatever.
  - reidjs 4y ago
    Why do you have to stare at a screen all day as an adult?
    - cassianoleal 4y ago
      As with everything else, it doesn't apply to every adult all the time. That said, most adults need to work in order to survive. Couple that with the fact that most jobs these days are done either directly in front of a computer or using some screen-enabled device, and it's not hard to see that most adults will have been staring at a screen all day most days.
- blensor 4y ago
  I don't believe this describes only software developers. Disclaimer: we are the devs behind VRWorkout In the fitness space there is a huge group of people who would like to go to the gym but don't because of social anxiety. And VR fitness is already one of the major pillars for the headset manufacturers ( Meta, Pico and HTC ). So the social anxiety issue may very well be a driving factor overall

tjpnz 4y ago

Could you imagine your Facebook using parents and grandparents donning a VR headset and regularly interacting with the metaverse? I couldn't, not unless the technology improved dramatically to the point where the headset more closely resembled glasses than yuppie techno goggles. I can't see that happening anytime soon, which is a problem if they're trying to build something with mainstream appeal.

hellweaver666 4y ago
I'm 41 and grew up with access to technology every day of my life. I won't use VR for more than a few rounds of beatsaber. The only way I would use VR for more than shits and giggles is if it was integrated into my standard glasses with very little additional extra bulk/weight. I don't see that happening any time soon. I see AR having a much more useful and tangible impact on our lives. VR is a toy.
saalweachter 4y ago
It's not the output, it's the input. To reach the scifi potential of VR, you need to be able to put on your VR headset, recline in a comfy chair, and then run and jump around a virtual world without moving your body. As long as you need a controller or to physically walk around your living room, it's a neat trick, but a limited one.

bmitc 4y ago

Microsoft's failure in mobile was more of a business decision failure than a technology failure, to my understanding. Despite having products ready to launch, both Gates and Ballmer doubled down on the traditional Windows model. For example: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-inside-story-of-how-microsoft-killed-its-courier-tablet/ https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/the-inside-story-of-... There are some other good articles I remember reading about Pioneer Studios that I am unable to find right now. I think Microsoft could have absolutely dominated the mobile space, but they really sat on their laurels for far too long. I think they had the talent and ability to handle the technology development. They just didn't want to because of Gates and Ballmer.

gumby 4y ago

While I agree Meta probably won't make it on the metaverse side, I disagree with your reasoning. Famously, Facebook "missed mobile" (were focused on the web) and had to scramble to recover, which they did very well. I see the metaverse efforts as a way to avoid that happening to them again. Which is smart. The point is not to make any money on the hardware; the point is to understand the metaverse so well that when it eventually emerges they will know it better than anyone else and can dominate rather than be squeezed out. In other words, under this model, Apple's release of some excellent headset would help meta, not threaten it. All that being said I don't think Meta will succeed. The biggest problem is bootstrap: headsets are clunky and nobody wants to wear them for long, if at all. Because it's early days everybody needs to provide transitional interfaces, but by doing so you are working against learning / predicting what will really happen (remember all those virtual worlds in the early days of the web where you would supposedly move around in a virtual mall? Nobody wants that; they want to jump straight from gap.com to Merrils.com (or in HN case from VScode to Stack Overflow and back), or visit them side-by-side. But the company's efforts are still "me too" like demos from others years ago. They haven't managed to move the state of the art; and if they had would people have booed it too? Probably. Also, decent, non-enthusiast hardware is so far away that it will be difficult for Meta to maintain focus. It should have been a skunkworks project, or at least a side effort, not something as prominent as it has been.

brucethemoose2 4y ago
> The point is not to make any money on the hardware; the point is to understand the metaverse so well that when it eventually emerges they will know it better than anyone else and can dominate rather than be squeezed out. Except they dont understand it... We already have pseudo-metaverses in Minecraft, Fortnite, and such, and Meta (so far) is entirely missing the point in their own VR game. Its like they are an AI that has literally forgotten what it is like to be a regular human.

nix23 4y ago

>It feels like Windows Mobile. Wow, that's actually a really good comparison!

coldtea 4y ago

>Meta has the early start, money, captive audience and enthusiasm, but they don't have the hardware/software edge (that Apple coincidentally also has this time around) to really make the idea work I don't think they have any concrete "idea" either, except "let's make some metaverse".

mattbrewsbytes 4y ago

The progress of AI/ML/ChatGPT will squash any notion of VR for Enterprise. If I was running a 500 person call center for a health insurance company, I'd be looking more into research around AI/ML/ChatGPT to reduce costs vs. VR/AR. Getting a private hosted ChatGPT instance/network, train it on medical claims/insurance use cases and facts, feed it statistics about cases and see if it can handle use cases for processing simpler claims. Give it the same oversight you would a call center employee where people are inspecting the results. That has a ROI of possibly increasing claim processing/reducing claim processors by letting humans handle more complex cases that require actual intelligence. The same process could be applied to any industry that has a lot of text data and doesn't change very quickly. VR in the Enterprise just isn't good business sense. The ROI isn't going to be there for an enterprise use case with typical office workers/professionals. As ruthless as it sounds, eliminating the need for people with AI handling easier/simpler tasks is a much better investment that scales than purchasing, supporting and training people on VR hardware for some "productivity" benefit that really can't be defined right now.

brucethemoose2 4y ago
Thats an interesting point. I was gonna argue that AI doesn't exclude VR, but you are right. Employees have only so much energy to expend investigating experimental tech.
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
> train it on medical claims/insurance use cases and facts, feed it statistics about cases and see if it can handle use cases for processing simpler claims Isn’t this how insurance companies have operated since the mainframe computer age? Why would an adjuster need to talk to this with chatgpt?