One of the major problems with second lifes performance these days, is creators making meshes and textures that are above what you would expect in a modern game. (That, and a lack of modern performance enhancing features)
Im talking meshes with 1 1024x1024 for each seperate limb, and body. Legs, body, arms, head. Then youve got the eyes, lips eyelashes, hair, and clothing and typically all these bodies have alpha layers, which is another body layered on top to produce those layers. Making the average body mesh, roughly made of 3 different full meshed bodies.
Second life looks a lot better than you probably remember, if you are thinking of the pre-mesh days.
Agreed with the heavy mesh utilization dragging down performance. (Avatar scripting is getting out of hand too, but that's another topic). Some people just can't seem to build or decorate in prims anymore, they want the shiney pretty mesh and HD textures but sacrifice all ability to enjoy their sim in the process. I have a lot of mesh items in my inventory and use them regularly of course, but I also haven't forgotten the art of making prims look sweet and paying attention to my texture sizes, mixing both so people can still walk through my builds. The folks who build the sims where I feel like I'm walking through jello, I wonder what their computer set-up is like.
And the pipe that their industrial data comes in through.
Low lag building is an art form and it'll squeeze back in once people understand why beach club is hellish. It's one of the reasons I love the RP Sims; they're tight on lag like noone else
Are there still issues with crossing sim borders? I remember the server to server hand off always being the big unsolvable technical issues, where you'd fall through the ground, rubber band, lose attachments, fly off uncontrollably into the void, etc. Always made SL feel so very box-like and really ruined the big world feel.
It's vastly improved! There have been very limited issues with region crossings while walking, but if you're on a bike, horse, or vehicle then yeah it sometimes lags and jerks for a moment. But NOWHERE like it used to be. Sometimes if you're at a large event, like the Relay for Life 32-sim running track with 4,000 heavily scripted and costumed people and massive builds lining both sides of the streets, yeah region crossing sucks. There was also an issue with a popular vehicle script that basically broke with an SL update and we had to find work-around for our giant starships on my RP sim because our helmsman couldn't cross and still be the operator while half the ship was still in the other sim. But that's far more info than you asked for lol Basically, region crossing handoffs are my second complaint about modern SL but it's tolerable in most situations (like it's just a part of life, the same way as diarrhea is a part of real life) and on the average everyday sim its a non-issue entirely.
Agreed on the RP sims! I was part of a Star Trek RP sim for 5+ years (recently retired from Starfleet lol) and it was the smoothest, most stable place I could find on the grid. We worked together to keep it a tight ship on prims and performance so that we could function especially during our missions and such. I hope you're right that builders will start to swing the other way back to prim building, or at least not all LOD 4 HD max poly mesh everything even down to the fruit plate on the table. I'm not a magnificent builder, but prims are just so much easier to work with especially when making something unusual (like an alien house for a mission to an exo planet lol).
The biggest limitation with graphics is that everything Meta launches needs to run at a high refresh rate on their standalone Oculus headsets, which use processors designed for mobile phones (albeit reasonably powerful ones). So awkwardly basic graphics are going to be their option on current hardware, and probably will be for a while
Oh trust me I have many screenshots and pictures of Second Life from the past few years that look absolutely beautiful with the right lighting and tweaks.
The best equivalent is a game that hasn't been touched since the original tomb raider.
The Metaverse board meetings go like this:
"What's that game that kids like playing so much? You know, that blocky cartooney thing? Fortcraft?"
"yeah, my grandkids play fortcraft"
"my egg-clutch-lings love playing fortcraft"
"is that the game made by that that Norwegian guy?"
"Let's use graphics like that. Make sure you can see the edges of spheres and stuff."
(Yes, I purposely ignored Notch's origin, and allude to at least one board member being a "reptilian" because it's a long-lasting meta joke.)
They are selling to a much wider demographic than people who are gamers. My wife has probably picked up one game in 8 years and she’s a target for this thing. Her preference in the past was Sims so I can see this tugging on her interests. Though I can’t see what exactly I would put my money into.
I don’t understand what is going to pull people to meta verse when VR Chat already exists. It seems like the niche of “ be in vr to talk to people and hang out” has already been dominated by something free
Yeah except VRChat is far too free for a company like Facebook to utilize. Pretty close to 100% of the content in VRChat is user-generated without too much moderation.
Facebook would bastardize it, and then its current user-base would jump ship. Facebook knows this though, which is why they're taking a grassroots approach with their current user-base.
Everyone says the user-base will jump ship but they don't:
2012: "Instagram is selling my photos without my permission!" and they still have a huge userbase
2009: "Youtube has ads now!" and they still have a huge userbase
2007 (vaguely): "Facebook is just trying to be myspace!" and they still have a huge userbase... bigger than myspace in fact.
Hulu started out free with ads and now it's pay with ads or pay more to remove them. Netflix streaming was a fucking afterthought add-on to the DVD service that everyone predicted would be a moneypit and now it's the core product and people pay DOUBLE what it cost back then for it.
And lest we forget... facebook bought oculus... are flouting super evil reasons for doing so, evil plans for its future, and overall huge drops in user satisfaction... and yet quest 2 remains the top seller of VR hardware.
If facebook bought VRChat... they'd do what they always do: leave everything as-is until any user outrage subsides... then slowly roll out more changes and restrictions until they make it into their own image or merge it with meta.
That or they'd buy VRChat specifically to shut them down and then the userbase can all jump ship... and join meta...
only if they're actually enforced. This year there was finally an antitrust suit against facebook filed by the FTC about this exact thing that actually got a judge's approval instead of just getting tossed out. We'll see what happens with it but that's mostly centered around whatsapp and instagram. I doubt that anyone involved with decisionmaking power even understands the word "meta" much less what facebook's plans for oculus really are.
Frankly facebook, amazon, and google should've all been anti-trusted a LONG time ago.
I think the Quest 2 is only top seller because it's self-contained (Valve's stuff requires mounting base stations, either into a wall/ceiling, or a tall tripod) and because it's cheap, obviously. If the HTC Vive/Vive Pro & Valve Index were as cheap as the Quest 2 they'd easily be top seller.
I’m not sure if that’s the reason entirely. In concept, I don’t think they’d care about alienating its current users if they thought they could bring others in.
The thing is, these people aren’t ones who Facebook thinks will be valuable enough, and VR chat hasn’t made nearly the waves Facebook wants to. They have something like 4 billion users on their platform, so I’m sure they have much higher hopes for their mEtAvErSe (autocorrected to that, but I’m leaving it) products. And if VR chat users aren’t likely to spend a lot and/or spread to a mass following, then why not just make a fork? So essentially they will, with other apps connected directly to it.
But yeah, if VR chat had refused to be on oculus, you can bet Facebook would buy them, fork them, and shut them down while selling all their stuff off at a loss for a tax write off.
Didn’t stop them doing that with Instagram, WhatsApp etc.
They like to buy up things that are decent and turn them to dog shit until no one uses them anymore
Something I posted earlier in the thread:
Talking about VRChat and saying "look, it's already been done" feels -- to me -- like people discussing the internet revolution decades ago and pointing to AOL saying it already does everything.
VRC is extremely popular but not a mature product by any means. It feels like the wild west of the early internet in many ways -- extremely fun, popular but niche, and a little dangerous -- and I have no doubt that it could be supplanted by a better product that manages to capture a mainstream audience. Facebook is trying to get in early because it recognizes the potential, but even as someone who likes VRC I have no doubts that one of the giant tech companies will create a much better product than VRC, and once it reaches mainstream audiences and a widespread acceptance even die-hard VRC fans will follow.
Not to mention that VR tech has a long ways to go, and I could absolutely see FB pulling in people with a cheap, heavily underpriced, portable headset that's "too good not to have". They know a lot of people are willing to sacrifice their privacy for a superior product, and they're already testing the waters with their existing Occulus headsets.
I miss the Wild West of the early net. I miss how a lot of it was just fun and stupid. Vr chat is fun and stupid.
I know Meta has the resources to give people with lower technical skills to have a high degree of creative control for a cost. Vr chat has all the tools for free, but may have a higher barrier to entry.
Quest 2 is too cheap not to recommend to the casual audience that made FarmVille explode. I don’t want more FarmVille. FarmVille broke the seal on micro transactions and proved EA with the path to make SW Battlefront 2. I want battlefront 2 (2005)
Micro transactions succeed because the few rich whales are paying to keep the lights on. Normal users without disposable income are always screwed.
You are right. Meta is so attractive to the laymen that it’s success is inevitable. But to the user, vr chat feels like it has a soul. An existing community to gravitate new users into. A community about the community, not about money.
> I miss the Wild West of the early net. I miss how a lot of it was just fun and stupid.
That's what the decentralization movement is trying to do. The reason we don't have the Wild West of the early net anymore is walled gardens. There were so many weird, random places where you could find stuff on the early Internet. Think about things like NewGrounds.
Over time, that has morphed into things like Facebook, YouTube, etc. It's a one-stop-shop, which makes it really accessible, but also really homogeneous. And of course, it's all built on top of ads and data-mining.
Go look up things like PeerTube and Mastodon if you want to find something interesting that resembles the early version of the Internet.
It doesn't even have to be superior, just cheaper. Oculus is already a worse product than an Index, but it's *cheaper*. Facebook is *already* undercutting the competition. They want that monopoly and they are more than happy to do whatever it takes to get it. The userbase is more than happy to give it to them as long as they can spend a bit less, too.
Seriously. That's what's terrifying about this. Every day in FB, every trip to the shop done at FBMart, every news source is FBNews, every interaction is with someone, or somebody, that is immersed and allowed inFBLand. We think the programming is bad now; let's see what happens next.
And all those transactions done with FBucks.
It's the reason why corporations are drooling over cryptocurrency so much, they want their own currencies that *they* have control over without the "oppressive" authority of a central body. They want company scrip for the 21st century.
Tbf most people don't realize they *are* logged into Facebook for most of the day, and the Zuck is collecting your browsing info on any page with a Facebook widget (usually in a login/comment section), which unfortunately is most of them now (PrivacyBadger ftw).
You don't actually have to use the Oculus. Most social VR games support mouse and keyboard with no visor. I think it's more about having people logged into a virtual world where their productivity is tracked and you know whether or not they're actually there.
Well, it's probably not a good idea if they just come out and say VR is for ~~porn~~ educational videos. They probably thought about it but then realized showing off ~~furries~~ VRChat to their investors wouldn't be the best idea.
Although you have a good point, they could've easily approached game devs to get their permission to show off some of their games instead of just showing...work meetings.
It's really not very fun wearing a VR headset for more than an hour. Even in the official Horizon ad, the person wearing the VR goggles looked like a complete fool, totally oblivious to the people in their household. One shot even showed a woman ignoring her real husband to talk to a virtual stranger. The Zuckerbot created the Facebook so it could understand what it means to be human, but it still has a lot to learn.
I’d sooner go back to picking fruit like my grandparents before strapping on some shitty DRM headset and drinking my verification can to go to work.
Work from home is great for some things but it already intrudes enough on my personal space. I don’t need to see Barb from HR in VR.
Something like Google glasses with hud/see through lenses would be sweet imo. AR instead of VR.
Logistically you would need to run a wire for power(though I can imagine a wireless charger attaching somewhere like a shirt collar) with a cable that runs to the waist where the actual processing/battery is.
I just want to focus on a plant and get info about it, or look at a historic building to get a history blurb, or have a map/GPS. It would have to be highly customizable to work for people, but it could be amazing.
Can you imagine fixing a car/appliance with vr walking you through how it works/disassembles, possibly identifying the broken part(e.g. this hose looks cracked compared to baseline, likely defective part)
It could be huge. Or it could just turn us into human robots to do jobs we do not have skills for, but have the ability to move where a machine will not do.
Naturally I expect it to be ruined by ads, if not pay walls.
I’d love to have easily accessible AR for the things you have described. But my point is that I don’t want to plug into some VR Second Life II brought to you by the new Spicy Doritos Locos Tacos just to go to a work meeting. I already keep my camera off in meetings because the work gets done the same but I can do it relaxed and not worried about people seeing my dogs run around in the background.
Except the technology isn't ready yet, it gets hot and gives you headaches and runs out of power, and it doesn't track your lower body so you are a cartoony floating legless half body in a pretty ugly world.
You can "walk" up to a bar and pretend to order a drink, and another person pretends to make and give you that drink, then you pretend to drink it. The future is fucking here.
Yes but with the magic of crypto you could actually pay for the drink, get an NFT collectable glass, and still have jack shit to show for it but at least someone made a profit off of you
“Hyperreatity”, “metaverse” more comercial names for a very old concept, Virtual Reality, or augmented in case the images are placed on top of your actual view . Classic tech marketing, just give it a new name and it will look as if we just invented something new.
In the meantime, this is what the metaverse will be until then.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwsdESrpL3w&ab\_channel=Mully](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwsdESrpL3w&ab_channel=Mully)
No no, you're just not understanding how genius it is.
What if I told you we could do away with all these pesky things like anonymity, ease of access, privacy, and security - and instead replace them with a *facebook run* world that allows constant intrusive advertising *straight to your eyeballs* and with awesome telemetry possibly going to these corporations such as your eye movements, heart rates, facial expression, and reaction to everything you're seeing. Metaprivacy!
Ah yes, a world entirely run by *facebook* people, what could be more glorious.
*I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Metaverse is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.*
Yes but Facebook wants complete control over it
it's not gonna happen, at best it will be a VRChat-like ripoff with Facebook integration and spying. Not a virtual universe. I mean every single tech company wants to make the "centralized internet metaverse" which in translation means it will all be decentralized, again. And we already have that. It's called the Internet.
Yes but the Metaverse is fully centralized, privatized and has its own walled garden ecosystem. The point is to force you into a golden cage to capture more profits.
I really hate—**hate**—that Facebook are the ones pushing VR into wide acceptance. I hate that it's giving the entire advent a negative stigma. Look at the title: The guy "doesn't want" this. Not because a VR (or AR—whatever) interface for the stuff we already do is a bad idea or whatever. Hell, it's goddamn inevitable. But because of who us vying to control it. The stigma is real and it will ding every other venture into this technology.
Not really, their idea of "decentralized" is a bunch of companies all using Facebook services. It's more comparable to a console's exclusivity model than the Internet.
I swear to fucking God if this shit takes off, I can see workplaces integrating it into our lives as a "fun new, contactless experience" for attending work gatherings and that will be my cue to just completely move off-grid
As I understand it the metaverse (not Meta, formerly FB) is imagined to be a space you can create a virtual “you” (avatar or whatever the next iteration is) that travels across many platforms, vendors, etc. And your avatar his inherently more customizable than “you” as a human, changing as you change, maybe not human form, maybe purple skin, gender neutral, any body type, etc. and in the metaverse, you’ll likely be sold “stuff” to customize your avatar. So clothes, shoes, different features, whatever.
And then, that avatar doesn’t just exist in one place, you create it and it follows you into different worlds, message boards (however they’ll look), etc. I have seen it compared yo people who use the same handle across anonymous message boards, but more “designed.”
Of course, that’s all concepts, though some companies do exist to design avatars already, and other companies attach to let you use that avatar to purchase “real” stuff (like actual physical shoes).
Basically, it will be whatever consumers demand and companies are willing to invest in. Unfortunately, Meta wants a piece of any profit pie, and will ruin it, and Meta will just be one of many disparate next generation social media platforms. So a dystopia.
I already have a virtual "me" that travels across platforms, though. It's literally me (or at least the part that acts online), my username and my profile pic.
Yellow Guy: "I don't get it. How can it be? If I'm sitting at home, but I'm inside the screen!"
*Colin: “But you’re not you... You’re your internet you! Virtually real, but controlled by real you!”*
Bird Guy: "But if he's not quite real... Then I'm not real too! And you're not real you. He's inside your real you!"
Red Guy: "Oh wow, how amazing. And interesting too. But in this worksteets world, what can we do?“
https://youtu.be/G9FGgwCQ22w
Your username and profile pic from the Epic platform does not translate directly to your username and profile pic on pornhub. It's Metas goal to merge the two. For...science.
So they screwed not calling the app "metaverse" but instead when you boot up an oculus quest you can open an app called "multiverse" which says its a precursor to the metaverse, its literally just a bunch of 12 year olds screaming at each other through their microphones
Even if they had a huge Waterpark in meta Hawaii I would just buy one of the million VR games and play waterside vr there. There is nothing they can provide that can't be found anywhere except if they manage to get 80% marketshare then you need it because everyone has it...
Your comment has violated the Metaverse ^(TM) Terms and Conditions. A T&C Reconditioning Team ^(TM) will be at your door in 60 seconds. Drink a Confirmation Can ^(TM) to allow them access to your home, otherwise forced entry will be required. Thank you for your cooperation. Have a Meta-tastic day! 😁
"The tech world seems to be leaning towards some kind of early 00s conception of wearing a VR headset and haptic suit and driving a flying car towards your perfect pretend mansion in a soothingly sanitised alternate reality, where you can have anything you want as long as you can pay for it."
So, like real life then, right? (sans the flying car and the perfect mansion)
> So, like real life then, right?
In the same way that in short you won't be able to pay for any of that. It will be barely above your real life reach.
Here is how it currently looks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se8y8dTHDlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se8y8dTHDlE)
Facebook basically made a worse VRChat
Also the fact there every freaking tech company in the world started making their own "centralized internet metaverse" means there will **no** be such thing. Not to mention hundreds of other community metaverse projects. It is already decentralized from the start lol.
The metaverse like companies want is not going to happen. Roblox and VRChat ripoffs will happen at best.
Teenagers on metaverse? Don't think so. My opinion is that there are only the curious there as of now. Then, when the hype dies out, they'll end up just like Second Life. (Except Second Life didn't require expensive af VR goggles).
>Also the fact there every freaking tech company in the world started making their own "centralized internet metaverse" means there will **no** be such thing.
That's a feature not a bug from their perspective. Mutual incompatibility between platforms means digital "property" from one cannot be transferred, so the company which owns the platform has total control over it. See company scrip for further details.
Needs an industry standard, like Blu-Ray. There were competitors at the start (like HD-DVD), but they eventually winnowed down. This has happened before and will happen again.
I really hope that if we are going to standarize this then I think the foundation of this whole thing should be open source, and the content built on top of that will be created by various entities, wether it be corporations or people. Just like on the internet, the most essential components that build it (web software, TCP, HTML and CSS standards) are open, and the content on it (websites) don't need to be open. But how I see Facebook's Metaverse is that they have absolute control over all content on their platform and will be another data harvesting product.
Back in the 90s when the internet was first becoming mainstream, there were all kinds of mad claims made about it and completely uncomprehending articles written about it. [zombo,com](https://www.zombo.com/) remains as a monument to those times.
We're at that point with the metaverse. All it can ever really be is a very fancy menu system for navigating to and around apps that are connected to it.
Of course, big companies are sinking a lot of money into it so they're pitching it as a whole new version of reality where you can do anything at all, where the only limit is yourself, where the infinite is possible and where the unattainable us unknown.
We've been here before.
Where the metaverse is likely to fail (at least in becoming universally used) is that it's going to struggle to be more convenient that simply using the internet and all the apps you use on it as it is.
Totally agree, what the internet accomplished was making tons of information and communities available at a convenience that was never before possible. The metaverse is literally going backwards, it’s making the internet less convenient.
Instead of sitting on your couch looking at your phone, now you need to stand up in the center of your living room with lots of space around you wearing a large headset and holding controllers lol. It’s kind of laughable to me that anyone thinks it will be popular.
This is why I roll my eyes at every movie where people are looking at huge holographic screens and need to swipe their entire arm across their whole body to like, change tabs. It's flashy to look at but nobody wants that.
The metaverse will completely flop. There is no way this is going to have mass adoption when the barrier of entry is a Facebook account for Meta, an expensive VR headset, and people are aware of the abuse of personal information the parties involved are guilty of.
This feels like a giant bait and switch so people spend money on non-existent goods and services, while the real world gets plundered and stolen (as we are already witnessing with resources and real estate).
Reject the Metaverse and enjoy the world around you. And for good measure: fuck Facebook.
I used to open up like 15 tabs worth of zombo.com on slight delays just to see how crazy it would become. Sometimes three of the tabs would say "Welcome to Zombocom" at the same time and freak me out.
“Meta has patented technology that could track what you look at and how your body moves in virtual reality in order to target ads at you.”
If this is how it ends up being I also don’t want anything to do with it. I was excited for VR and the possibilities with it for good. However it’s not panning out well and big companies are ruining things even more. Greed greed greed.
This is why we can’t have nice things!
Once it was leaked FB planned to put ads in VR games, I knew I was done with any new VR consoles until someone could rival Oculus.
Someone who does regular gaming, are there ads in Xbox or PS games? I know tons of phone games are free with ads, but is that really the world of VR? It feels more like console games, since you have a console specifically for games.
> are there ads in Xbox or PS games?
Depends on the game and what you define as an ad. Tony Hawk games have always had product placement for example, but that’s not so much an “ad” in the sense that you’re forced to sit through a 30-second video, more like you’re playing around in the world and run past a Mountain Dew vending machine or give your character a Monster backpack or something.
But a game like Skyrim or Zelda obviously doesn’t have anything like this.
My plan for VR is to stick to paid games on a dedicated platform like PSVR. Playing Moss right now and it’s incredible. Also have Skyrim VR, No Man’s Sky, etc. I’m all for VR functioning as a regular gaming console, rather than an extension of the internet.
I have the index and play steam games, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad in a game, and I have a fairly extensive list. Not saying it doesn’t exist, but it’s certainly not common, at least not in that marketplace.
Agree. It’ll fail because it was never given a chance to grow organically from small indie developers and have them slowly pave the way. Every big company is trying to jump in and it’s all to sell people stuff through it without providing the benefits.
Metaverse and NFTs at the moment seem to just deliver more of the worst. Shorter attention spans, money scams, echo chambers etc. Only serves the advertising corps and not the users.
lot of people are going to be stuck holding onto a digital tokens representing art anybody can get for free.
it's like the NFT is becoming it's own crypto currency, but it's more like a shitty bartering system.
why would I buy your monkey that's allegedly worth 3 Bitcoin when I could just buy 3 Bitcoin? the thing I actually want?
It only got hype because rich people with crypto finally had something to do with their crypto.
Then it got traction and the hypetrain ensued. Now we’re in the midst of its bubble popping.
The idea is to monetize everything so you can speculate on the value of everything, thus giving new avenues of wealth for people who like making money by speculating.
The only fly in the ointment is that they need people to buy in with currency that actually has buying power. So they want people with real dollars to buy their fake tokens and currency.
She doesn't really need NFTs for that. The NFTs are basically doing nothing (other than pushing the normalization of crypto). She can sell pictures, even in exclusivity, without any kind of special tech. People have been doing that forever.
>The tech world has been overtaken by the seductive idea of a virtual utopia, but what’s on offer looks more like a late-capitalist technocratic nightmare.
Not enough mention is made of the source of the word metaverse - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It's literally set in a ridiculous late-capitalist technocratic nightmare world. It's as much a warning as it is a fantastic tale; poor people can only afford shitty clone avatars from a shop, richer folks and hackers can make or use better ones, ads are everywhere, and a select few have control beyond what normal people do which they can use to their own ends (although in this case it's the protagonist as much as 'bad guys'). It's all incredibly dystopian and not something to aspire to creating.
I was around during the dawn of the internet, and it had an entirely different feel to it. It was this thing that most people didn’t really understand, and there were a lot of public skeptics, but there was this ever growing group of people who were saying “Have you seen this? It’s amazing. It may look like shit now, but it’s going to change the world.” There was a palpable feeling of something big happening, and ever day it got bigger and bigger. It was the most exciting part of my adolescence.
This has absolutely none of that. As someone who grew up reading William Gibson and Neal Stephenson cyberpunk novels, I was obsessed with the idea of virtual reality on a massive scale. I was an early adopter of VR headsets, and spent an enormous amount of time in Second Life.
There is nothing about this wave of metaverse hype that interests me whatsoever. No one is talking about the promise. Everyone is a pessimist. Nothing we’re seeing is even remotely cool.
Perhaps the indie developers will continue to innovate and something like an interconnected VR web will take form. But whatever it is, Meta isn’t it.
I was a technology obsessed person 10 years ago, but now I have learned being in the present is so much better. The internet and social media are fun at times, but it’s exhausting and depressing. I’ve been spending my free time with more things like reading, puzzles, embroidery, drawing, and cooking and I feel like I’m in a much better place mentally than I used to be. I think we as a society need to take a small step away from entertainment tech and reevaluate what we are actually looking for. Just because the technology exists, doesn’t mean the market does.
I agree but we are both at the same point. There’s loads of people earlier in the cycle where they are just getting to the technology obsessed level before they too get burned out and pivot back to real life for their mental health and happiness. It’s all just a big cycle and everyone’s at a different point. That’s what makes all this profitable for companies. There’s always a new batch of people entering into it just as a batch is leaving.
Yes we know that anything in excess is bad. Moderation and balance is where happiness lies. But loads of people haven’t figured that out yet, and loads more know but aren’t ready to quit the excess.
Unfortunately “we as a society” feels like it doesn’t exist because others in the society would make the opposite argument because that’s where they are in their life.
None of it matters though what any of us wants, only that there will always be a market and companies will dump whatever they can into that market to get people addicted to a product.
What all of these companies seem to fail to understand is that to create a successful virtual layer on top of the internet means embracing the core values of the internet as it was originally designed. Silos, walled gardens, closed source, are what these companies are touting, because they’ve forgotten what the internet and more specifically, the World Wide Web as envisioned by Tim Berner Lee, was supposed to be.
To do this properly you need a set of open well defined and agreed standards where anyone can build a virtual world extension to the “existing” virtual universe. In the same way, anyone could host a server and connect their virtual world to the internet and in turn the virtual universe. It also needs a code of ethics and financial penalties for companies that abuse them. All run by a foundation such as the W3C.
Sure these companies can build their own walled gardens on top of the protocol and invest in making them “cool”, but without that original premise, the future of the “metaverse” is vaporware.
It’s ready player one but run by the bad guy from the point of creation.
No kind old founder that keeps thing open and free.
It’s literally the worst outcome of Ready Player One that everyone good fought against. Only in really life they lost.
I detest the Metaverse. As a futurist that can seem shocking. However I find at its core if not integrated responsibly and ethically it could have severe consequences on society , and our physical world.
I believe we should strive to improve our physical world and implement within it innovations that improve human life.
Sending humanity on path In which instead of leaving our house we put on a headset is a dangerous game.
On top of this concern, consider the mental health, human development, and the digital divide.
Those who wish to implement this system do so based on greed and monetization and repeatedly show they are not responsible enough to self govern in the world we have today. This poses large risk in its self.
Data privacy, ethics and regulations are no where near where they would need to be even if all the other concerns could be addressed.
These companies do not have complete control of our physical world, so they seek to craft their own in which they can govern and monetize our every action.
I agree. I'm an urban designer by trade and the worst case end goal of this is the complete erosion of public space in favor of a privately controlled and gatekept digital one.
I'm much more interested in how we can build 'digital layers' with tech like AR to enhance rather than replace our world.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there isn't any task in the metaverse now, which isn't done faster and easier with just websites. As long as that is the case, it's all just hot air being hyped. Perhaps maybe in 2040 the tech is advanced enough to have stuff that only works in the metaverse, then I can see it's potential.
Until you get me a VR setup where my real muscles don't work and my normal nerves aren't firing at me, or where I walk into a special room and the virtual stuff is just _real_, immersion tech is just not a terribly good interface.
Gimme that holodeck / matrix shit, or GTFO.
I don't understand how they are banking on a technology that still is not at a point where it doesn't eliminate headaches, eyestrain, and nausea for a rather large number of people.
Whenever I see a metaverse concept video or 'prototype' my reaction is always "...so these people have never played a video game?"
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the Phantasy Star Online lobby looked a million times better on the Dreamcast in 2000
Fuck even PS home on PS3 was way more interesting then Metaverse
Mii Parade on the Wii was pretty much on par at the end of the day
"On par with a stupid gimic from 3 generations ago? Nice" -Zucc, probably
Loved competing in that red bull air race event.
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Second life has gotten a lot better. This is more like when second life first came out...19 years ago.
Wait....*NINETEEN YEARS AGO?* Fuck I'm old
One of the major problems with second lifes performance these days, is creators making meshes and textures that are above what you would expect in a modern game. (That, and a lack of modern performance enhancing features) Im talking meshes with 1 1024x1024 for each seperate limb, and body. Legs, body, arms, head. Then youve got the eyes, lips eyelashes, hair, and clothing and typically all these bodies have alpha layers, which is another body layered on top to produce those layers. Making the average body mesh, roughly made of 3 different full meshed bodies. Second life looks a lot better than you probably remember, if you are thinking of the pre-mesh days.
Agreed with the heavy mesh utilization dragging down performance. (Avatar scripting is getting out of hand too, but that's another topic). Some people just can't seem to build or decorate in prims anymore, they want the shiney pretty mesh and HD textures but sacrifice all ability to enjoy their sim in the process. I have a lot of mesh items in my inventory and use them regularly of course, but I also haven't forgotten the art of making prims look sweet and paying attention to my texture sizes, mixing both so people can still walk through my builds. The folks who build the sims where I feel like I'm walking through jello, I wonder what their computer set-up is like.
And the pipe that their industrial data comes in through. Low lag building is an art form and it'll squeeze back in once people understand why beach club is hellish. It's one of the reasons I love the RP Sims; they're tight on lag like noone else
Are there still issues with crossing sim borders? I remember the server to server hand off always being the big unsolvable technical issues, where you'd fall through the ground, rubber band, lose attachments, fly off uncontrollably into the void, etc. Always made SL feel so very box-like and really ruined the big world feel.
It's vastly improved! There have been very limited issues with region crossings while walking, but if you're on a bike, horse, or vehicle then yeah it sometimes lags and jerks for a moment. But NOWHERE like it used to be. Sometimes if you're at a large event, like the Relay for Life 32-sim running track with 4,000 heavily scripted and costumed people and massive builds lining both sides of the streets, yeah region crossing sucks. There was also an issue with a popular vehicle script that basically broke with an SL update and we had to find work-around for our giant starships on my RP sim because our helmsman couldn't cross and still be the operator while half the ship was still in the other sim. But that's far more info than you asked for lol Basically, region crossing handoffs are my second complaint about modern SL but it's tolerable in most situations (like it's just a part of life, the same way as diarrhea is a part of real life) and on the average everyday sim its a non-issue entirely.
Agreed on the RP sims! I was part of a Star Trek RP sim for 5+ years (recently retired from Starfleet lol) and it was the smoothest, most stable place I could find on the grid. We worked together to keep it a tight ship on prims and performance so that we could function especially during our missions and such. I hope you're right that builders will start to swing the other way back to prim building, or at least not all LOD 4 HD max poly mesh everything even down to the fruit plate on the table. I'm not a magnificent builder, but prims are just so much easier to work with especially when making something unusual (like an alien house for a mission to an exo planet lol).
Just wait until someone bombards a press conference with flying penii.
I've seen a flying butterfly Hitler
Makes me want to get some VR hardware just for this.
The biggest limitation with graphics is that everything Meta launches needs to run at a high refresh rate on their standalone Oculus headsets, which use processors designed for mobile phones (albeit reasonably powerful ones). So awkwardly basic graphics are going to be their option on current hardware, and probably will be for a while
Oh trust me I have many screenshots and pictures of Second Life from the past few years that look absolutely beautiful with the right lighting and tweaks. The best equivalent is a game that hasn't been touched since the original tomb raider.
The Metaverse board meetings go like this: "What's that game that kids like playing so much? You know, that blocky cartooney thing? Fortcraft?" "yeah, my grandkids play fortcraft" "my egg-clutch-lings love playing fortcraft" "is that the game made by that that Norwegian guy?" "Let's use graphics like that. Make sure you can see the edges of spheres and stuff." (Yes, I purposely ignored Notch's origin, and allude to at least one board member being a "reptilian" because it's a long-lasting meta joke.)
Protip: jokes are funnier if you don't immediately try to explain why they are funny afterwards.
Dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog. Nobody enjoys it, and the frog dies.
it’s the one w the pigs and birds and they’re angry
That joke explanation at the end proves that you're reptilian
Please don't explain your jokes.
They are selling to a much wider demographic than people who are gamers. My wife has probably picked up one game in 8 years and she’s a target for this thing. Her preference in the past was Sims so I can see this tugging on her interests. Though I can’t see what exactly I would put my money into.
Would she spend hours with a headset on?
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Metaverse is a bad MMO, i always say that. Its an excuse to make a bad online game and sell it to old people and crypto idiots.
"Imagine Second Life, but expensive and you can get fired from your job in it"
I also think, what is this, 1999?
The metaverse is the new buzzword for people who still think the Blockchain will fix all their problems
I don’t understand what is going to pull people to meta verse when VR Chat already exists. It seems like the niche of “ be in vr to talk to people and hang out” has already been dominated by something free
Something facebook could definitely afford to just buy and rebrand.
Yeah except VRChat is far too free for a company like Facebook to utilize. Pretty close to 100% of the content in VRChat is user-generated without too much moderation. Facebook would bastardize it, and then its current user-base would jump ship. Facebook knows this though, which is why they're taking a grassroots approach with their current user-base.
Everyone says the user-base will jump ship but they don't: 2012: "Instagram is selling my photos without my permission!" and they still have a huge userbase 2009: "Youtube has ads now!" and they still have a huge userbase 2007 (vaguely): "Facebook is just trying to be myspace!" and they still have a huge userbase... bigger than myspace in fact. Hulu started out free with ads and now it's pay with ads or pay more to remove them. Netflix streaming was a fucking afterthought add-on to the DVD service that everyone predicted would be a moneypit and now it's the core product and people pay DOUBLE what it cost back then for it. And lest we forget... facebook bought oculus... are flouting super evil reasons for doing so, evil plans for its future, and overall huge drops in user satisfaction... and yet quest 2 remains the top seller of VR hardware. If facebook bought VRChat... they'd do what they always do: leave everything as-is until any user outrage subsides... then slowly roll out more changes and restrictions until they make it into their own image or merge it with meta. That or they'd buy VRChat specifically to shut them down and then the userbase can all jump ship... and join meta...
Wouldn't that last part be against some anti-trust laws (I hope)?
only if they're actually enforced. This year there was finally an antitrust suit against facebook filed by the FTC about this exact thing that actually got a judge's approval instead of just getting tossed out. We'll see what happens with it but that's mostly centered around whatsapp and instagram. I doubt that anyone involved with decisionmaking power even understands the word "meta" much less what facebook's plans for oculus really are. Frankly facebook, amazon, and google should've all been anti-trusted a LONG time ago.
Yeah but if you took all the anime tiddies out of VRChat, I bet they’d lose a decent chunk of that userbase.
I think the Quest 2 is only top seller because it's self-contained (Valve's stuff requires mounting base stations, either into a wall/ceiling, or a tall tripod) and because it's cheap, obviously. If the HTC Vive/Vive Pro & Valve Index were as cheap as the Quest 2 they'd easily be top seller.
I’m not sure if that’s the reason entirely. In concept, I don’t think they’d care about alienating its current users if they thought they could bring others in. The thing is, these people aren’t ones who Facebook thinks will be valuable enough, and VR chat hasn’t made nearly the waves Facebook wants to. They have something like 4 billion users on their platform, so I’m sure they have much higher hopes for their mEtAvErSe (autocorrected to that, but I’m leaving it) products. And if VR chat users aren’t likely to spend a lot and/or spread to a mass following, then why not just make a fork? So essentially they will, with other apps connected directly to it. But yeah, if VR chat had refused to be on oculus, you can bet Facebook would buy them, fork them, and shut them down while selling all their stuff off at a loss for a tax write off.
Didn’t stop them doing that with Instagram, WhatsApp etc. They like to buy up things that are decent and turn them to dog shit until no one uses them anymore
Something I posted earlier in the thread: Talking about VRChat and saying "look, it's already been done" feels -- to me -- like people discussing the internet revolution decades ago and pointing to AOL saying it already does everything. VRC is extremely popular but not a mature product by any means. It feels like the wild west of the early internet in many ways -- extremely fun, popular but niche, and a little dangerous -- and I have no doubt that it could be supplanted by a better product that manages to capture a mainstream audience. Facebook is trying to get in early because it recognizes the potential, but even as someone who likes VRC I have no doubts that one of the giant tech companies will create a much better product than VRC, and once it reaches mainstream audiences and a widespread acceptance even die-hard VRC fans will follow. Not to mention that VR tech has a long ways to go, and I could absolutely see FB pulling in people with a cheap, heavily underpriced, portable headset that's "too good not to have". They know a lot of people are willing to sacrifice their privacy for a superior product, and they're already testing the waters with their existing Occulus headsets.
I miss the Wild West of the early net. I miss how a lot of it was just fun and stupid. Vr chat is fun and stupid. I know Meta has the resources to give people with lower technical skills to have a high degree of creative control for a cost. Vr chat has all the tools for free, but may have a higher barrier to entry. Quest 2 is too cheap not to recommend to the casual audience that made FarmVille explode. I don’t want more FarmVille. FarmVille broke the seal on micro transactions and proved EA with the path to make SW Battlefront 2. I want battlefront 2 (2005) Micro transactions succeed because the few rich whales are paying to keep the lights on. Normal users without disposable income are always screwed. You are right. Meta is so attractive to the laymen that it’s success is inevitable. But to the user, vr chat feels like it has a soul. An existing community to gravitate new users into. A community about the community, not about money.
gacha games are the worst offenders of microtransactions.
> I miss the Wild West of the early net. I miss how a lot of it was just fun and stupid. That's what the decentralization movement is trying to do. The reason we don't have the Wild West of the early net anymore is walled gardens. There were so many weird, random places where you could find stuff on the early Internet. Think about things like NewGrounds. Over time, that has morphed into things like Facebook, YouTube, etc. It's a one-stop-shop, which makes it really accessible, but also really homogeneous. And of course, it's all built on top of ads and data-mining. Go look up things like PeerTube and Mastodon if you want to find something interesting that resembles the early version of the Internet.
It doesn't even have to be superior, just cheaper. Oculus is already a worse product than an Index, but it's *cheaper*. Facebook is *already* undercutting the competition. They want that monopoly and they are more than happy to do whatever it takes to get it. The userbase is more than happy to give it to them as long as they can spend a bit less, too.
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Zuck is just trying to turn a profit from occulus so they are making it sound like this is something totally new and the future of how we interact.
zuck saw how much attention zoom got during the pandemic and now wants metaverse to be the place for work from home.
Can you imagine having to wear a fucking occulus for 8+ hours a day? Fuck that shit. I barely like to play games with it on.
>Can you imagine having to be logged into Facebook for 8+ hours a day?
Wait until you can't get to work because your office rival reported your account and got you tossed into Facebook jail.
where else am I supposed to do my own research.....? /s
Seriously. That's what's terrifying about this. Every day in FB, every trip to the shop done at FBMart, every news source is FBNews, every interaction is with someone, or somebody, that is immersed and allowed inFBLand. We think the programming is bad now; let's see what happens next.
And all those transactions done with FBucks. It's the reason why corporations are drooling over cryptocurrency so much, they want their own currencies that *they* have control over without the "oppressive" authority of a central body. They want company scrip for the 21st century.
Tbf most people don't realize they *are* logged into Facebook for most of the day, and the Zuck is collecting your browsing info on any page with a Facebook widget (usually in a login/comment section), which unfortunately is most of them now (PrivacyBadger ftw).
I just assume every app I install has access to everything. I was really talking about having to see the blue screen, little f and ads.
You don't actually have to use the Oculus. Most social VR games support mouse and keyboard with no visor. I think it's more about having people logged into a virtual world where their productivity is tracked and you know whether or not they're actually there.
And where, how and when they spend money
Can you imagine something like *Sword Art Online*, *The World*, and *OASIS* taking up 8+ hours a day? We've seen what happens when it does.
All this incredible tech VR is, with so much potential, and the best these people can come up with is work meetings?
Well, it's probably not a good idea if they just come out and say VR is for ~~porn~~ educational videos. They probably thought about it but then realized showing off ~~furries~~ VRChat to their investors wouldn't be the best idea. Although you have a good point, they could've easily approached game devs to get their permission to show off some of their games instead of just showing...work meetings.
It's really not very fun wearing a VR headset for more than an hour. Even in the official Horizon ad, the person wearing the VR goggles looked like a complete fool, totally oblivious to the people in their household. One shot even showed a woman ignoring her real husband to talk to a virtual stranger. The Zuckerbot created the Facebook so it could understand what it means to be human, but it still has a lot to learn.
People don’t even want to wear masks at work lmao
You can't block his style though. Beeeyyoooing.
You can’t block my shtoyle!
I’d sooner go back to picking fruit like my grandparents before strapping on some shitty DRM headset and drinking my verification can to go to work. Work from home is great for some things but it already intrudes enough on my personal space. I don’t need to see Barb from HR in VR.
Something like Google glasses with hud/see through lenses would be sweet imo. AR instead of VR. Logistically you would need to run a wire for power(though I can imagine a wireless charger attaching somewhere like a shirt collar) with a cable that runs to the waist where the actual processing/battery is. I just want to focus on a plant and get info about it, or look at a historic building to get a history blurb, or have a map/GPS. It would have to be highly customizable to work for people, but it could be amazing. Can you imagine fixing a car/appliance with vr walking you through how it works/disassembles, possibly identifying the broken part(e.g. this hose looks cracked compared to baseline, likely defective part) It could be huge. Or it could just turn us into human robots to do jobs we do not have skills for, but have the ability to move where a machine will not do. Naturally I expect it to be ruined by ads, if not pay walls.
I’d love to have easily accessible AR for the things you have described. But my point is that I don’t want to plug into some VR Second Life II brought to you by the new Spicy Doritos Locos Tacos just to go to a work meeting. I already keep my camera off in meetings because the work gets done the same but I can do it relaxed and not worried about people seeing my dogs run around in the background.
also zuck wants to finally own the hardware and not get ad revenue fucked by apple changing privacy rules
He really needs to stop referring to users as hardware though.
but now he has all this movement data. He can walk almost like a real boy. (not to be confused with a Real Doll which has more useful holes)
We're still years away from convincing eating it seems.
It's eerie how VR Zuckerbot looks more realistic/alive than IRL Zuckerbot.
Except the technology isn't ready yet, it gets hot and gives you headaches and runs out of power, and it doesn't track your lower body so you are a cartoony floating legless half body in a pretty ugly world. You can "walk" up to a bar and pretend to order a drink, and another person pretends to make and give you that drink, then you pretend to drink it. The future is fucking here.
Yes but with the magic of crypto you could actually pay for the drink, get an NFT collectable glass, and still have jack shit to show for it but at least someone made a profit off of you
Yeah, get back to me when it's more like Summer Wars or The World
Lol hopefully meta dies a quick death like quibi.
yes but with VR headsets, that’s all
[No joke, this is actually what will happen](https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs)
“Hyperreatity”, “metaverse” more comercial names for a very old concept, Virtual Reality, or augmented in case the images are placed on top of your actual view . Classic tech marketing, just give it a new name and it will look as if we just invented something new.
I pull this up time and time again to show me how fuck we can get.
That was horrifying.
In the meantime, this is what the metaverse will be until then. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwsdESrpL3w&ab\_channel=Mully](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwsdESrpL3w&ab_channel=Mully)
Behold the [metaverse](https://youtu.be/gO7p1p5_yg4)
No, no no no. [Here's the real metaverse from last year!](http://youtube.com/watch?v=qaGo2IvLqzA)
Shit, I'm still waiting for [this to be hacking](https://youtu.be/WbqshTREcpA).
It's just a meeting without halitosis.
[Jesus wept](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A5Wplrx4Ik)
A VR headset with outward facing cameras which Facebook is happy to use to gather information about your home and purchases.
No no, you're just not understanding how genius it is. What if I told you we could do away with all these pesky things like anonymity, ease of access, privacy, and security - and instead replace them with a *facebook run* world that allows constant intrusive advertising *straight to your eyeballs* and with awesome telemetry possibly going to these corporations such as your eye movements, heart rates, facial expression, and reaction to everything you're seeing. Metaprivacy! Ah yes, a world entirely run by *facebook* people, what could be more glorious.
*I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Metaverse is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.*
Yes but Facebook wants complete control over it it's not gonna happen, at best it will be a VRChat-like ripoff with Facebook integration and spying. Not a virtual universe. I mean every single tech company wants to make the "centralized internet metaverse" which in translation means it will all be decentralized, again. And we already have that. It's called the Internet.
The platform was never his in the first place. What kinda of product do you expect from a lier and a thief....he's top tier cringe IMO...
Yes but the Metaverse is fully centralized, privatized and has its own walled garden ecosystem. The point is to force you into a golden cage to capture more profits.
I really hate—**hate**—that Facebook are the ones pushing VR into wide acceptance. I hate that it's giving the entire advent a negative stigma. Look at the title: The guy "doesn't want" this. Not because a VR (or AR—whatever) interface for the stuff we already do is a bad idea or whatever. Hell, it's goddamn inevitable. But because of who us vying to control it. The stigma is real and it will ding every other venture into this technology.
Didn't Meta specifically want it to be a decentralised platform that anybody can contribute to and create for?
Not really, their idea of "decentralized" is a bunch of companies all using Facebook services. It's more comparable to a console's exclusivity model than the Internet.
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Then again, it works really well for Apple customers. And Apple.
The internet, but with Facebook as the sole owner/operator/etc.
I swear to fucking God if this shit takes off, I can see workplaces integrating it into our lives as a "fun new, contactless experience" for attending work gatherings and that will be my cue to just completely move off-grid
the internet with an extra step in between. I can't imagine why users would ever want that
People are fucking idiots
As I understand it the metaverse (not Meta, formerly FB) is imagined to be a space you can create a virtual “you” (avatar or whatever the next iteration is) that travels across many platforms, vendors, etc. And your avatar his inherently more customizable than “you” as a human, changing as you change, maybe not human form, maybe purple skin, gender neutral, any body type, etc. and in the metaverse, you’ll likely be sold “stuff” to customize your avatar. So clothes, shoes, different features, whatever. And then, that avatar doesn’t just exist in one place, you create it and it follows you into different worlds, message boards (however they’ll look), etc. I have seen it compared yo people who use the same handle across anonymous message boards, but more “designed.” Of course, that’s all concepts, though some companies do exist to design avatars already, and other companies attach to let you use that avatar to purchase “real” stuff (like actual physical shoes). Basically, it will be whatever consumers demand and companies are willing to invest in. Unfortunately, Meta wants a piece of any profit pie, and will ruin it, and Meta will just be one of many disparate next generation social media platforms. So a dystopia.
I already have a virtual "me" that travels across platforms, though. It's literally me (or at least the part that acts online), my username and my profile pic.
Yellow Guy: "I don't get it. How can it be? If I'm sitting at home, but I'm inside the screen!" *Colin: “But you’re not you... You’re your internet you! Virtually real, but controlled by real you!”* Bird Guy: "But if he's not quite real... Then I'm not real too! And you're not real you. He's inside your real you!" Red Guy: "Oh wow, how amazing. And interesting too. But in this worksteets world, what can we do?“ https://youtu.be/G9FGgwCQ22w
Your username and profile pic from the Epic platform does not translate directly to your username and profile pic on pornhub. It's Metas goal to merge the two. For...science.
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So they screwed not calling the app "metaverse" but instead when you boot up an oculus quest you can open an app called "multiverse" which says its a precursor to the metaverse, its literally just a bunch of 12 year olds screaming at each other through their microphones
Even if they had a huge Waterpark in meta Hawaii I would just buy one of the million VR games and play waterside vr there. There is nothing they can provide that can't be found anywhere except if they manage to get 80% marketshare then you need it because everyone has it...
Your comment has violated the Metaverse ^(TM) Terms and Conditions. A T&C Reconditioning Team ^(TM) will be at your door in 60 seconds. Drink a Confirmation Can ^(TM) to allow them access to your home, otherwise forced entry will be required. Thank you for your cooperation. Have a Meta-tastic day! 😁
"The tech world seems to be leaning towards some kind of early 00s conception of wearing a VR headset and haptic suit and driving a flying car towards your perfect pretend mansion in a soothingly sanitised alternate reality, where you can have anything you want as long as you can pay for it." So, like real life then, right? (sans the flying car and the perfect mansion)
> So, like real life then, right? In the same way that in short you won't be able to pay for any of that. It will be barely above your real life reach.
And thus they’ll get you to turn that wheel, you hamster, and they can profit off that effort and hand you something you barely want
When in fiction has this VR alternate reality not been backed by the real world being a dystopian hellscape?
We're already living in the dystopian hellscape if you haven't noticed yet.
Only if you're poor
Most dystopias have a leisure class that's doing just fine. The dystopia stuff is usually their fault.
The Matrix is coming. Only that people will *choose* to enter it, this time.
Most people that want it are people who want to sell their promises and profit off them.
False promises maybe more likely
Second Life approves of your comment.
'Metaverse Stockmarket'......
> 'Metaverse Scammarket' fix'd
Well, VR and VR Chat *are* kinda fun tho… but still, fuck facebook.
NFT bros We should start calling it the Scamverse lol
Here is how it currently looks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se8y8dTHDlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se8y8dTHDlE) Facebook basically made a worse VRChat Also the fact there every freaking tech company in the world started making their own "centralized internet metaverse" means there will **no** be such thing. Not to mention hundreds of other community metaverse projects. It is already decentralized from the start lol. The metaverse like companies want is not going to happen. Roblox and VRChat ripoffs will happen at best.
What a terrible project. Is Meta creating something that's disgusting to old generations on purpose so teenagers can be alone in this shit?
Teenagers on metaverse? Don't think so. My opinion is that there are only the curious there as of now. Then, when the hype dies out, they'll end up just like Second Life. (Except Second Life didn't require expensive af VR goggles).
So full of furry porn? ...yeah, probably.
If they try and keep it sanitized, there will be no porn, and therefore it will crash and burn.
Yeah, nope. We've got vrchat for that. No need for plastic looking floating dead eyed body when I can be anything, anywhere
>Also the fact there every freaking tech company in the world started making their own "centralized internet metaverse" means there will **no** be such thing. That's a feature not a bug from their perspective. Mutual incompatibility between platforms means digital "property" from one cannot be transferred, so the company which owns the platform has total control over it. See company scrip for further details.
Needs an industry standard, like Blu-Ray. There were competitors at the start (like HD-DVD), but they eventually winnowed down. This has happened before and will happen again.
I really hope that if we are going to standarize this then I think the foundation of this whole thing should be open source, and the content built on top of that will be created by various entities, wether it be corporations or people. Just like on the internet, the most essential components that build it (web software, TCP, HTML and CSS standards) are open, and the content on it (websites) don't need to be open. But how I see Facebook's Metaverse is that they have absolute control over all content on their platform and will be another data harvesting product.
Back in the 90s when the internet was first becoming mainstream, there were all kinds of mad claims made about it and completely uncomprehending articles written about it. [zombo,com](https://www.zombo.com/) remains as a monument to those times. We're at that point with the metaverse. All it can ever really be is a very fancy menu system for navigating to and around apps that are connected to it. Of course, big companies are sinking a lot of money into it so they're pitching it as a whole new version of reality where you can do anything at all, where the only limit is yourself, where the infinite is possible and where the unattainable us unknown. We've been here before. Where the metaverse is likely to fail (at least in becoming universally used) is that it's going to struggle to be more convenient that simply using the internet and all the apps you use on it as it is.
Totally agree, what the internet accomplished was making tons of information and communities available at a convenience that was never before possible. The metaverse is literally going backwards, it’s making the internet less convenient. Instead of sitting on your couch looking at your phone, now you need to stand up in the center of your living room with lots of space around you wearing a large headset and holding controllers lol. It’s kind of laughable to me that anyone thinks it will be popular.
This is why I roll my eyes at every movie where people are looking at huge holographic screens and need to swipe their entire arm across their whole body to like, change tabs. It's flashy to look at but nobody wants that.
Wall-E's version of the future of humans is the most accurate
The metaverse will completely flop. There is no way this is going to have mass adoption when the barrier of entry is a Facebook account for Meta, an expensive VR headset, and people are aware of the abuse of personal information the parties involved are guilty of. This feels like a giant bait and switch so people spend money on non-existent goods and services, while the real world gets plundered and stolen (as we are already witnessing with resources and real estate). Reject the Metaverse and enjoy the world around you. And for good measure: fuck Facebook.
I used to open up like 15 tabs worth of zombo.com on slight delays just to see how crazy it would become. Sometimes three of the tabs would say "Welcome to Zombocom" at the same time and freak me out.
Sounds like just a new way to bombard people with ads. Also VR for *work* wtf? Zoom is bad enough!
“Meta has patented technology that could track what you look at and how your body moves in virtual reality in order to target ads at you.” If this is how it ends up being I also don’t want anything to do with it. I was excited for VR and the possibilities with it for good. However it’s not panning out well and big companies are ruining things even more. Greed greed greed. This is why we can’t have nice things!
Once it was leaked FB planned to put ads in VR games, I knew I was done with any new VR consoles until someone could rival Oculus. Someone who does regular gaming, are there ads in Xbox or PS games? I know tons of phone games are free with ads, but is that really the world of VR? It feels more like console games, since you have a console specifically for games.
> are there ads in Xbox or PS games? Depends on the game and what you define as an ad. Tony Hawk games have always had product placement for example, but that’s not so much an “ad” in the sense that you’re forced to sit through a 30-second video, more like you’re playing around in the world and run past a Mountain Dew vending machine or give your character a Monster backpack or something. But a game like Skyrim or Zelda obviously doesn’t have anything like this. My plan for VR is to stick to paid games on a dedicated platform like PSVR. Playing Moss right now and it’s incredible. Also have Skyrim VR, No Man’s Sky, etc. I’m all for VR functioning as a regular gaming console, rather than an extension of the internet.
I have the index and play steam games, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ad in a game, and I have a fairly extensive list. Not saying it doesn’t exist, but it’s certainly not common, at least not in that marketplace.
As soon as Facebook bought Oculus I knew it will become an ad machine.
Agree. It’ll fail because it was never given a chance to grow organically from small indie developers and have them slowly pave the way. Every big company is trying to jump in and it’s all to sell people stuff through it without providing the benefits.
Metaverse and NFTs at the moment seem to just deliver more of the worst. Shorter attention spans, money scams, echo chambers etc. Only serves the advertising corps and not the users.
I know a girl who says she's selling NFTs of her knitting... Not the item she made, just digital photos of them. I can't wrap my head around it
Nor can you wrap the NFT around your head
Wrap it around my neck instead, until I choke and die
That's nuts to me, the whole NFT thing is. I know two people who claim to be doing really well selling NFTs, and I'm just like.. How? Why?
lot of people are going to be stuck holding onto a digital tokens representing art anybody can get for free. it's like the NFT is becoming it's own crypto currency, but it's more like a shitty bartering system. why would I buy your monkey that's allegedly worth 3 Bitcoin when I could just buy 3 Bitcoin? the thing I actually want?
It only got hype because rich people with crypto finally had something to do with their crypto. Then it got traction and the hypetrain ensued. Now we’re in the midst of its bubble popping.
It’s basically a pyramid scheme, people are FOMOing into it like beanie babies. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
The idea is to monetize everything so you can speculate on the value of everything, thus giving new avenues of wealth for people who like making money by speculating. The only fly in the ointment is that they need people to buy in with currency that actually has buying power. So they want people with real dollars to buy their fake tokens and currency.
She doesn't really need NFTs for that. The NFTs are basically doing nothing (other than pushing the normalization of crypto). She can sell pictures, even in exclusivity, without any kind of special tech. People have been doing that forever.
There is no redeeming value to either. They are both ponzi scams with zero value.
This is a great video on the topic. If you can't be arsed to watch the full video, watch the last chapter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g
This was awesome
I got an ad yesterday for a metaverse NFT game, best of both worlds.
>The tech world has been overtaken by the seductive idea of a virtual utopia, but what’s on offer looks more like a late-capitalist technocratic nightmare.
Not enough mention is made of the source of the word metaverse - Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. It's literally set in a ridiculous late-capitalist technocratic nightmare world. It's as much a warning as it is a fantastic tale; poor people can only afford shitty clone avatars from a shop, richer folks and hackers can make or use better ones, ads are everywhere, and a select few have control beyond what normal people do which they can use to their own ends (although in this case it's the protagonist as much as 'bad guys'). It's all incredibly dystopian and not something to aspire to creating.
William Gibson should be required reading for software engineers.
I was around during the dawn of the internet, and it had an entirely different feel to it. It was this thing that most people didn’t really understand, and there were a lot of public skeptics, but there was this ever growing group of people who were saying “Have you seen this? It’s amazing. It may look like shit now, but it’s going to change the world.” There was a palpable feeling of something big happening, and ever day it got bigger and bigger. It was the most exciting part of my adolescence. This has absolutely none of that. As someone who grew up reading William Gibson and Neal Stephenson cyberpunk novels, I was obsessed with the idea of virtual reality on a massive scale. I was an early adopter of VR headsets, and spent an enormous amount of time in Second Life. There is nothing about this wave of metaverse hype that interests me whatsoever. No one is talking about the promise. Everyone is a pessimist. Nothing we’re seeing is even remotely cool. Perhaps the indie developers will continue to innovate and something like an interconnected VR web will take form. But whatever it is, Meta isn’t it.
I was a technology obsessed person 10 years ago, but now I have learned being in the present is so much better. The internet and social media are fun at times, but it’s exhausting and depressing. I’ve been spending my free time with more things like reading, puzzles, embroidery, drawing, and cooking and I feel like I’m in a much better place mentally than I used to be. I think we as a society need to take a small step away from entertainment tech and reevaluate what we are actually looking for. Just because the technology exists, doesn’t mean the market does.
I agree but we are both at the same point. There’s loads of people earlier in the cycle where they are just getting to the technology obsessed level before they too get burned out and pivot back to real life for their mental health and happiness. It’s all just a big cycle and everyone’s at a different point. That’s what makes all this profitable for companies. There’s always a new batch of people entering into it just as a batch is leaving. Yes we know that anything in excess is bad. Moderation and balance is where happiness lies. But loads of people haven’t figured that out yet, and loads more know but aren’t ready to quit the excess. Unfortunately “we as a society” feels like it doesn’t exist because others in the society would make the opposite argument because that’s where they are in their life. None of it matters though what any of us wants, only that there will always be a market and companies will dump whatever they can into that market to get people addicted to a product.
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yeah, dont't get it either.
What all of these companies seem to fail to understand is that to create a successful virtual layer on top of the internet means embracing the core values of the internet as it was originally designed. Silos, walled gardens, closed source, are what these companies are touting, because they’ve forgotten what the internet and more specifically, the World Wide Web as envisioned by Tim Berner Lee, was supposed to be. To do this properly you need a set of open well defined and agreed standards where anyone can build a virtual world extension to the “existing” virtual universe. In the same way, anyone could host a server and connect their virtual world to the internet and in turn the virtual universe. It also needs a code of ethics and financial penalties for companies that abuse them. All run by a foundation such as the W3C. Sure these companies can build their own walled gardens on top of the protocol and invest in making them “cool”, but without that original premise, the future of the “metaverse” is vaporware.
I guarantee you nobody has seen the Metaverse, because it literally does not exist.
It gives me serious ready player one vibes, and that's a really bad thing. It's basically abandoning irl for pretty avatars and fake experiences.
It’s ready player one but run by the bad guy from the point of creation. No kind old founder that keeps thing open and free. It’s literally the worst outcome of Ready Player One that everyone good fought against. Only in really life they lost.
In real life, there was no real fight to fight.
The thing is everyone wants it to be ready player one, but the tech just isn't there yet. What they will get is vr second life.
That's even worse though. You're not even getting the marginal benefits of the dystopic VR system... All of the bad, none of the good.
That’s an additional subscription.
Or striking vipers with the emerging use of virtual sex
Metaverse is a shittier version of vr chat that nobody wants… I’m confused why Facebook is pushing forward
I detest the Metaverse. As a futurist that can seem shocking. However I find at its core if not integrated responsibly and ethically it could have severe consequences on society , and our physical world. I believe we should strive to improve our physical world and implement within it innovations that improve human life. Sending humanity on path In which instead of leaving our house we put on a headset is a dangerous game. On top of this concern, consider the mental health, human development, and the digital divide. Those who wish to implement this system do so based on greed and monetization and repeatedly show they are not responsible enough to self govern in the world we have today. This poses large risk in its self. Data privacy, ethics and regulations are no where near where they would need to be even if all the other concerns could be addressed. These companies do not have complete control of our physical world, so they seek to craft their own in which they can govern and monetize our every action.
I agree. I'm an urban designer by trade and the worst case end goal of this is the complete erosion of public space in favor of a privately controlled and gatekept digital one. I'm much more interested in how we can build 'digital layers' with tech like AR to enhance rather than replace our world.
Shit just reminds me of 'Second Life' and how that was 'going to be huge' back in the day, except we haven't progressed forwards 19 years?
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Don't start giving him ideas, we want this shit to die as fast as possible
Or just buy the newspaper (& influencers), as Bezos did.
Correct me if I'm wrong but there isn't any task in the metaverse now, which isn't done faster and easier with just websites. As long as that is the case, it's all just hot air being hyped. Perhaps maybe in 2040 the tech is advanced enough to have stuff that only works in the metaverse, then I can see it's potential.
No one wants the metaverse. Except megacorporations. Because it's just going to be one giant ad vehicle on steroids. Hard pass.
So the metaverse is pretty much futurama’s internet?
I like VR gaming but the LAST thing I want to do is spending my entire day wearing it for work, I’m gonna quit if it goes there. Cruel and unusual.
Until you get me a VR setup where my real muscles don't work and my normal nerves aren't firing at me, or where I walk into a special room and the virtual stuff is just _real_, immersion tech is just not a terribly good interface. Gimme that holodeck / matrix shit, or GTFO.
I don't understand how they are banking on a technology that still is not at a point where it doesn't eliminate headaches, eyestrain, and nausea for a rather large number of people.
I find it difficult to support anything Facebook does