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I certainly don't disagree with your NFT rant :-) but do disagree with the characterization of the nominal "metaverse." Back in the late 90's early noughts it

I certainly don't disagree with your NFT rant :-) but do disagree with the characterization of the nominal "metaverse." Back in the late 90's early noughts it Dave Rosenthal did a research paper on what it would take to create a "stadium" with 50,000 people in it where a sporting event was held. And create the "environment" that one gets when you are actually at such a stadium. One of the challenges is that physics does a lot of work for you, so people across the field from you talking aren't just as loud as the people behind you talking. What's more, everyone in such an event would want "good seats" but at a real event there are people all over the stadium. You could select people in groups of 50 and put them into the same "box" of good seats, and if you built a spanning tree overlay different people "near" each other, but it is kind of like the 3 color map problem in that you're mapping 50,000 people (probably in two groups of 25,000 for "home" and "away" teams) where they can "hear" the people around them cheering/talking/Etc. Dave felt faces were impossible although these days you could train an AI model using a webcam and taking pictures of your upper body and face from different angles and have the model then generate your faces of the people "around" you. Annunciation and site lines are pretty straight forward renders, but the actual event (assuming it was really being played by real people) would require a combination of rendering and motion capture from the real event. The amount of network traffic going back and for in n^3 to the number of people "near" you as they form a neighbor volume. And that is just an event where you are a passive spectator. World of Warcraft instance servers would do dungeon raids of 40 players (in vanilla I don't know if they do that any more) and their challenge was data base updates for damage dealt, damage done, and environmental changes. Of course most of the play field is fixed for that very reason but a more realistic one that was deformable would require more physics again. We got that with the Phys-X engine and others in the early 2000's but they have yet to be able to spew what they are modelling to the other players so that everyone has the same view of what is going on around them.

mrguyorama 3y ago
All this misses the most important point; Nobody will pay $500 for a standalone high quality VR headset to experience a shitty VR "Stadium" ticket that should cost $30 if you go to a real damn stadium. Nobody fantasizes about living a virtual life that emulates real life. They want to live a fantasy life. Plenty of people managed that with just mid 2000s era WoW. Metaverse has nothing to offer
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  "Nobody" is carrying a lot of weight there :-). Do you have any reasoning here for your point of view? (not criticizing it, just wondering how you got there given what we know.) For example, a ticket for the 49ers on the 50 yard line is ~ $1200 - $1500 depending on how important it is as a game. Also, existing renderers for sports figures are quite good given the market for video games featuring them, so it isn't clear that the visual quality would not be "just as good." Finally, the ability to do SLAM for stadium events is so good they can paint graphics on a moving player in real time as it happens. So this is how my reasoning about it goes; Let's say it costs you $1000 for super hi-def VR goggles.[1] And the NFL decides to charge you $200 to sit on the 50 yard line "virtually" [2]. Your initial investment is $1200 ($200 less than the actual seat). Presumably you and your buddies would be allowed to be "next to each other." So there you sit, as a group, in great seats watching the game how you want to watch it, and all your friends are chatting with you. Every time you do this you save another $1200 off the cost of doing it "for reals." But how can we even know that something like this would even be fun? The answer lays in the enjoyability of watching a movie "together" in VR. I think this is something of a sleeper as it isn't "a thing" in many people's mind yet, but it is definitely better than "simulwatching" while you have discord running. I suspect "twitch watching parties" would also have a similar vibe. Other than the sex in Second Life, just hanging out is a very popular reason for participating in a MMO type universe. Having your "idealized" avatar with your face morphed on to it with all of its expressions retained intact and I think that would be pretty powerful. So that is why I think it could be a thing, but I'm interested in your take on it as well. [1] https://store.bigscreenvr.com/products/bigscreen-beyond https://store.bigscreenvr.com/products/bigscreen-beyond [2] https://theathletic.com/4522408/2023/05/16/nfl-average-ticket-prices-2023/ https://theathletic.com/4522408/2023/05/16/nfl-average-ticke...

mrguyorama 3y ago

All this misses the most important point; Nobody will pay $500 for a standalone high quality VR headset to experience a shitty VR "Stadium" ticket that should cost $30 if you go to a real damn stadium. Nobody fantasizes about living a virtual life that emulates real life. They want to live a fantasy life. Plenty of people managed that with just mid 2000s era WoW. Metaverse has nothing to offer

ChuckMcM 3y ago
"Nobody" is carrying a lot of weight there :-). Do you have any reasoning here for your point of view? (not criticizing it, just wondering how you got there given what we know.) For example, a ticket for the 49ers on the 50 yard line is ~ $1200 - $1500 depending on how important it is as a game. Also, existing renderers for sports figures are quite good given the market for video games featuring them, so it isn't clear that the visual quality would not be "just as good." Finally, the ability to do SLAM for stadium events is so good they can paint graphics on a moving player in real time as it happens. So this is how my reasoning about it goes; Let's say it costs you $1000 for super hi-def VR goggles.[1] And the NFL decides to charge you $200 to sit on the 50 yard line "virtually" [2]. Your initial investment is $1200 ($200 less than the actual seat). Presumably you and your buddies would be allowed to be "next to each other." So there you sit, as a group, in great seats watching the game how you want to watch it, and all your friends are chatting with you. Every time you do this you save another $1200 off the cost of doing it "for reals." But how can we even know that something like this would even be fun? The answer lays in the enjoyability of watching a movie "together" in VR. I think this is something of a sleeper as it isn't "a thing" in many people's mind yet, but it is definitely better than "simulwatching" while you have discord running. I suspect "twitch watching parties" would also have a similar vibe. Other than the sex in Second Life, just hanging out is a very popular reason for participating in a MMO type universe. Having your "idealized" avatar with your face morphed on to it with all of its expressions retained intact and I think that would be pretty powerful. So that is why I think it could be a thing, but I'm interested in your take on it as well. [1] https://store.bigscreenvr.com/products/bigscreen-beyond https://store.bigscreenvr.com/products/bigscreen-beyond [2] https://theathletic.com/4522408/2023/05/16/nfl-average-ticket-prices-2023/ https://theathletic.com/4522408/2023/05/16/nfl-average-ticke...