7 ms·

I'm sort of embarrassed to ask this, but what is the point of this (and I'm genuinely asking)? I get that it can scan a physical space and then I can see a dig

• plun9 1y ago
  I guess other people with a headset can view your spaces.
• wlesieutre 1y ago
  I would love to time travel back to some of my old apartments
• dottjt 1y ago
  The huge application for this I think is video games. Instead of having to create every small detail by hand, you can just create the space in real-life and then have that rendered.
  • jncfhnb 1y ago
    Can’t tell if that’s a joke
  • andybak 1y ago
    Ironically this is currently very ill suited to gaming. (However, I personally think there's plenty of use cases beyond gaming. Including "it's just intrinsically cool to be somewhere that no longer exists")
  • jayd16 1y ago
    Somewhat ironic but for a certain type of person its actually way easier to throw together a simple set than to build convincing 3D art. Once could imagine a point and click adventure built this way but I wouldn't expect that is really a major use-case. That said, the more general aspect of "accessible, user generatable content" is a better way to look at it.
• baby 1y ago
  Imagine if you could go back and visit all the apartments you've ever lived in. I would pay big for that. That's worth more than a lots of cameras and pictures taken
  • skeeter2020 1y ago
    Unless it adds a rose-colored tint I think you'd quicky realize that time & nostalgia filter out a lot of things and there's a reason you no longer live in that apartment.
    • baby 1y ago
      Na I doubt it. I lived on 10+ different places in my life because I had to move, I would kill to revisit any of these places
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
• qingcharles 1y ago
  Meta has been working on this for a while. I believe one of their primary use cases was for AI training. e.g., to train robots on real world locations before letting them loose.
• torben-friis 1y ago
  As someone who worked in VR a decade ago, I can tell you that the few use cases that were earning us actual money (as opposed to hype and continuous POCs) were niche apps and tools for specific industries. A common one is VR visits for real estate companies and travel agencies, for example. Also virtual previews for investors and C-suite execs in meetings where there was a ton of money involved - think someone trying to sell the creation of a whole neighbourhood and this is a fancy version of a powerpoint slide for their pitch. This tech could probably have saved us a good amount of work, though It's still a head scratcher why Zuck thinks this is the one thing in which to bet the company's future.
  • worldsayshi 1y ago
    > why Zuck thinks this is the one thing in which to bet the company's future Lack of imagination and willingness to rely on someone else's judgement - other than the cyberpunk authors he read as a teen?
    • Aeolun 1y ago
      I’g just going to say I’d much rather he be fascinated by that than basically anything else.
    • petesergeant 1y ago
      > > why Zuck thinks this is the one thing in which to bet the company's future > Lack of imagination and willingness to rely on someone else's judgement Perhaps, but given that his financial and investment judgement so far has netted him $250b, I think he gets the benefit of the doubt.
  • willis936 1y ago
    Earlier today I said a "leader" sometimes would rather an entire team quit than admit a mistake. Others would rather light a billion dollars on fire than admit a mistake.
  • Animats 1y ago
    > A common one is VR visits for real estate companies and travel agencies, for example. Yes. There's a mini-industry doing this for real estate.[1] Some systems let you place furniture in the 3D model. Versions of this idea go all the way back to Apple's "Quicktime VR", which was a chain of spherical images through which you could navigate. It's a long way from a fun metaverse. (Doing a big metaverse at all is difficult. Making it fun is even harder.) [1] https://go.matterport.com/RealEstate3DTours.html https://go.matterport.com/RealEstate3DTours.html
• skeeter2020 1y ago
  It seems to recreate the absolute low point for Wade in Ready Player One, when he's deeply unhappy and only has the sort of nostalgia you'll get from a photo-realistic but ultimately empty representation like this.
• bluerooibos 1y ago
  "Visit your local cafe, now in VR. Meet your friends in local spaces, without leaving your home!" Either way, I don't see this taking off. I'm surprised they're still pursuing VR.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y ago
    I'm afraid to ask for this but I wish I could use something like this for work. Why are we all commuting? I'd like to put on a company issued VR headset and be transported to an office. Just literally recreate the office experience.
    • bink 1y ago
      Except with the extra weight of a headset, eye strain, and the uncanny feeling of moving without moving.
    • _carbyau_ 1y ago
      Why recreate the office? I get that some people have a psychological mindset to "be in a place so as to do work" but offices are a compromise on so many things, most notably space. Now you have tech to create entire wondrously imaginative virtual worlds and you want to recreate a bland little open plan box to cram avatars into?
      • zmmmmm 1y ago
        I guess you could ask, why offices look like they do? they could already be imaginative spaces but companies mostly opt for "bland" spaces. Probably because if you're going to combine the preferences of 30 people in one space you have to settle for something pretty far down the common denominator tree, which is always going to be "bland".
        • _carbyau_ 1y ago
          True, but when each person is individually fed their vision and sound you don't necessarily have to compromise. Set some specifics, like open space, chair, table/desk. And you could have Hogwarts theme while I have a viking feasting hall.
• andybak 1y ago
  What's the point of a photograph?
• alanbernstein 1y ago
  There was a demo app showing artists' studios in very high detail. It was really neat. I imagine if you ever want to "hang out in VR", it would be nice to do it in your own virtual living room, instead of the imaginary virtual spaces. The technology is neat. I don't know that either of those justifies the R&D effort. So just try to enjoy that neat technology exists for its own sake.
  • morkalork 1y ago
    We know you love the office space so much, we built the technology to perfectly recreate it in VR so you can still come in, hang out and work there, remotely from home!
• cma 1y ago
  Can think of plenty: Online meetup for Disney fans: each week in a different scan of the park Online consultation with interior design or architect: takes place in you existing house and saves travel for someone billing $x hundred an hour. Online highschool reunion planning meeting with people spread over the world: takes place at the highschool or potential venues Deployed military personel meeting remotely on his anniversary with his wife: takes place where they had their first date I thought we would have already had this with photogrammetry back in 2016 when the Vive released with a camera, but that usually involved too much cleanup and optimizing geometry and couldn't be done automatically, along with the issues with reflections. I was also really surprised Google Earth VR didn't add in multiplayer soon after launch for similar use cases.
• jayd16 1y ago
  Likely, you'll want this sort of thing for easy VR video production. Once you have a backdrop scanned, you could more easily film the action with a directional camera. At that point you can have a very convincing VR performance with cheap hardware. That handles much much more viewer IPDs and head positions etc, than one of those expensive omni-directional camera rigs.
• felipeerias 1y ago
  Meta tried to make VR into a mass-market product but currently VR technologies are only successful in very specific niches and use cases. One of those use cases is training in industrial settings like factories, mines, or construction sites. It is a lot cheaper and safer to have workers take their first steps in a VR environment rather than on the actual location. At the moment, a lot of this training is implemented as custom 3D applications using e.g. Unity. I imagine that something like Hyperscape would make it much easier and faster to create and share VR environments for this purpose.
• ziofill 1y ago
  AR porn will rake back those billions, lol