I understand the scenarios where your friends are far, or you're tired, or you're introverted (like me!), or you want to do things you cannot do in reality like fly, but I don't see how it will be anything more than a niche.
I know people like to compare VR with the internet, using the internet as a counterexample, but the internet is different because the internet does not require you to isolate yourself physically the same way VR does.
I know the metaverse is not VR, but right now it seems AR is very much in its infancy.
edit: and to clarify, I think even 10 million yearly active users would be "niche" (fb is ~3 billion active users for comparison).
None of these things replaced IRL, all of these have waxed and waned, but all these have, taken together, eaten up a MUCH larger piece of our life that we'd like to generally admit. None of this is a real replacement, but the only parts that have gone away have been replaced with something stronger.
> I know the metaverse is not VR
Because as far as I can tell the metaverse is VRChat.
> If you have a rich social life with friends you can interact with in
> person frequently [...] why would you want to be in VR all day?
VRChat is great for the younger generation that has trouble socializing, and that's a larger demographic than you think. Anime fans, classical nerds, furries, LGBT in conservative towns, etc. This is their social life. Their vacation spot.
VRChat is the closest approximation of what the metaverse will be. Log on and see what it's like.
The most contrarian reason this doesn't map to Zuckerberg's vision is that you can import your own models and don't have to pay anyone. Just like you can set anything as your Twitter profile picture.
VRChat is the metaverse. It's free. It's such a tangle of rights issues for any would-be acquirer that Zuckerberg won't touch it. And it'll be much more fun than any corporate playpen they come up with.
https://steamcharts.com/app/438100
Even if we say it's off by 1000 that's 30 million. Not even 10% of Facebook.
I like VRChat, but it's pretty niche, still.
just because there’s only 30,000 people means it’s not meta?
I think this does not describe a large and growing segment of the population.
instagram, facebook, text messages, phone calls. you can do all of those things and share them with real people in real life. you cannot do so with VR. it's literally and inherently isolating.
just the other day I was at a restaurant and a group of people were typically all on their phones while waiting for their food. eventually one of them found something amusing and put their phone on the table propped up by a salt dispenser and they watched some video together.
that's the difference.
I think the benefit of VR is not just about social stuff, but our ability to augment/improve certain experiences.
For example, fb's worksrooms is a virtual office. There is no digital watercooler, but it offers a virtual desk and a virtual conference room. You have a private space that is distraction free to work in, and a great space for remote workers to simulate an IRL meeting. I've used it only for social calls, but we did plan a trip (so kinda like a business meeting) and the whiteboard/monitor is super useful especially when combined with the ability to point and see who is talking.
> he internet does not require you to isolate yourself physically the same way VR does.
VR today is terrible when you have to walk around because it breaks the "illusion", but for tasks that take place in one spot and are immersive/require focus (offices, etc) they can be great. If you live alone, and/or in a small house, why buy a big and expensive TV and not just a vr headset?
I agree its a bad comparison. VR is like a desktop computer IMO. Its not comparable to a phone, in use or convenience or power or whatever. If you want to sit and focus on a single thing as a "destination" activity, VR may be better. (example of destination activity: "go to my desk/office to work" "go to tv room to watch tv" "go to arcade to game", etc.
People want the metaverse to be like the internet. I think its circular and silly to discuss. Its like wanting the web to be the internet. The web is kinda the internet, but also kinda a subset. Most of the internet for most people was APIs or crud apps with a HTML gui. We did get smartphone app guis but they're not as well interlinked, and now we may get a VR/AR gui. Ideally, you'll be able to inter-link between experiences, but as mobile dev showed us, its unlikely to be as natural and rich in linking abilities as HTML based "www" is.
Visit space! Visit worlds that don't exist! Walk around ancient Rome or see the inside of pyramids.
>Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse.
I'm no expert and to be honest, a bit like I was with the internet back in the day, don't see the point but if those two rules aren't adhered to then the "metaverse" is dead on its feet.
I feel the internet had an advantage in that at the start there was no Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, either around or interested in it. If these companies get in at the start of this thing their wall gardens will kill the metaverse just like they're current effort to create wall gardens on the internet are chipping away at what made the internet what it is today.
In some ways this isn't a new problem, though. The challenge here is defining a collective good and valuing it over individual power, and that might not be a wholly solveable problem but it's certainly a negotiation that takes place as long as there is not only one power that exists.
In that way, these rules (fantasies as they are) become valid. They're not laws as in 'gravity', they're laws as in 'enforceable and societally agreed upon'. I'm a bit puzzled how you enforce 'nobody controls the Metaverse' but it is quite a stake in the ground: you can sure tell when it's NOT being honored.
The fundamental laws that determine whether decentralization or centralization dominates is the rate of accessible content creation.
If a centralized organization (AOL & Yahoo, early and late 90s respectively) can create more content than the Internet (decentralized, early/mid 90s), then the former dominates.
If the greater number of content developers afforded by a decentralized system can create more content (Internet, late 90s - 10s), then it dominates.
Attempting to co-opt both strengths via platforms (Google & Facebook, 10s - now) is a newer phenomenon, but fundamentally still has the same tension.
If anyone wants decentralized metaverse to prevail, work on open dev tooling, content creation tools, and client standards. Not because they'll shift the balance, but because with them creators will shift the balance.
Let's say we lived in a time where the internet didn't exist but we somehow knew its potential could lead to what it has today. You better believe that someone commercially minded (think AT&T) would be sitting on DARPA's shoulders to make sure they captured all of the value.
Peter Thiel's obsession with naturalistic monopolies is no coincidence.
But it won't.
Internet was already too much of a proof that we are not ready for it as a species. I am not just talking about powers-that-be getting riled up over how it took some of the power away. I am talking about how it laid bare how downright awful average human can be.
But I hear metaverse and I chuckle, because the best comparison for it for me is Fed-issued crypto coin. Completely misses the point, but it runs on blockchain. Yay.
Never will buy any of facebook's shit but I damn well did invest in their stock cuz it's evident that no one sees the problem with selling their souls away be it in the browser or in virtual reality (where there's even more opportunity to influence you).
Let's stop fantasising about a Ready Player One world and be realistic about what we can achieve with what we have.
We have fullscreen mode. That gives complete rendering control to the content. Mouse can also be captured.
The "security" concerns are a solved problem.
There was a working WebVR spec in 2015 shipped in two browsers. Big companies including Google jumped in and delayed the spec on the order of 4+ years in favor of "WebXR" with many "it'll be ready in just a few more months". When it was released, it was neutered with no tracked controller support, no haptics, no link traversal, and forced every site to migrate
At one point, we lobbied for link traversal, but despite having existing solutions it was pushed further and further back for improbable and benign security issues
More things kept getting added to the spec based on incorrect assumptions. 6DOF (Quest, Rift, Index) was clearly the future, but a lot of the focus was spent on Cardboard and 3DOF (Daydream)
Framework maintainers, VR developers, and users didn't have much control. As common with many other Web specs, things are done from an ivory tower, detached from developers, and just bogged down with a lot of bikeshedding and backpatting
That's just my take since I think it's relevant for HN and with the announcement of Meta. It's hard for Web to compete when someone at Meta can just snap their fingers and things will get done. Ironically, Meta has done the best job carrying WebVR with Oculus Browser.
https://voicesofvr.com/parisis-metaverse-manifesto-unpacking...
We need metaverse standards in at least three areas:
- Portals. You should be able to move your avatar through a portal from system A to system B, and it should Just Work, assuming B will let you in. That's what the author is talking about here. Systems not resident inside a web browser need to do more work to do this, but it should be made to work. This is what makes multiple virtual worlds a metaverse.
- Assets. You should be able to take your purchased asset, if you really own it, from system A to system B, assuming B will let it in. The NFT crowd does not have this. Try to export an NFT from Decentraland.
- Money. When in system A, you should be able to buy from anyone who wants to sell to you, and not be required to use system A's currency or payment system. This is what Apple and Epic are currently litigating.
For standards purposes, it's time to talk about the mechanics of this. If it works and some systems offer those features, users will clamor for interconnection. (And third parties will somehow bolt it on whether the systems like it or not.)
This is something the folks at Oculus Browser/Meta are considering though! Ideally it needs to be a standard, just like HTTP and TCP/IP. I'm incredibly bullish that the metaverse needs to be built on top of our current World Wide Web, so the ecosystem itself isn't owned by any one corporation. The destinations themselves, sure, they can be properties of a startup or larger co like Meta or Microsoft.
the metaverse hasn't even been invented yet and they are already trending false.