Perhaps the best review of the Metaverse yet

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Worth watching on youtube if you're curious about the metaverse - [youtube.com...]

He does a better job explaining what the metaverse is than Metas own presentations according to the millions who've watched the review.

At the end, after discussing the possibilities, he also describes what he thinks the problem with Meta is likely to be. I have to agree. Eye tracking making ads unavoidable is a creepy thought too.

[tangor]

Heh! Always follow the money!

[ronin]

A really good video piece.

Marques Brownlee did an excellent job at nailing the main questions about the Metaverse and giving some smart insight / analysis.

The very last point he raised about open vs. proprietary - I'm glad he got on to that. That would be my chief concern, too.

Imagine if a single company in 1990 owned email.

Imagine if a single company in 2000 owned HTML, CSS, JS and SVG.

[edited by: ronin at 11:24 am (utc) on Nov 3, 2022]

[ronin]

I'm still not sold at this point that Full VR represents genuine utility rather than a momentary novel diversion.

In certain, limited-use, contexts (games, lessons), yes, there is utility.

In that respect, Full VR, represents another media channel. Currently we consume content as text (articles), as video, as audio (podcasts). VR will be a fourth channel, which doesn't replace any of these three, but complements them.

But for general use (ie. the headwear form-factor actually replacing the screen or handheld)... it strikes me that, compared to sitting down with a laptop or pulling a touchphone out of your pocket, there's a lot more... friction with putting a headset on which then obscures your real-world vision.

So, to achieve ascendancy in general use, the utility has to be so good and all the time that it outweighs that inconvenience.

I do think - and Brownlee's piece above is only the second time I've even heard this mentioned - that the first killer app of Full VR (at least for some people) will end up being something as simple as having several super-large screens to work on - which in real-life would be colossally expensive and impractical in your home office (or any office).

That's probably not something which will capture the imagination of many consumers who use laptops and tablets as media devices, but for those - like writers, developers, graphic artists, video editors - who produce on their laptop (or tablet), rather than consume, that strikes me as being pretty useful.

Unfortunately for Meta, that use of Full VR is a bit like Notepad for Windows.

But promisingly for the rest of us, it means that one of the first major uses (possibly) of Full VR will be entirely open and competitive.

[engine]

Good points raised.
I'm not sure it's a mainstream application. I can imagine, for business, collaborative use in virtual meetings, or real estate agents and virtual tours, or medical applications, etc., and for consumers, I think the best use will be gaming.

The fact that Meta wants to try an "own it" in a similar way to Google owning search advertising with Android devices, should be a concern.
There's also going to be a big challenge on the privacy side of things which I don;t think has been discussed to any great extent.

I haven't tried the latest devices, but the earlier ones made me feel queasy, and, until I get a proper demo, I won't be investing in the hardware.

[tangor]

Not sure having a device strapped around your head will actually increase productivity... Seems like missing the rest of the office environment will impact worker incentive/moral, but that's a social aspect, not a technological aspect.

On a personal note, as one with aging eyes and severe astigmatism, the few times I tried the devices, which require me to remove my glasses, the experience has been pi$$ poor.

Also, in real world, where folks walk around with eyes glued to cell phones into water fountains or roaring traffic, or doing work on a bus or train, how safe can this headset be? Instead of being a portable device one can use all day (like cell phones), this could be a return to using computers in fixed locations like office or home, kind of like traditional desktop computers.

That said, there is a place for this technology, just not sure FB is making the best use of a few billion dollars developing something that is so closely guarded there are no entry paths for others to get involved.

YMMV

[engine]

Not sure having a device strapped around your head will actually increase productivity... Seems like missing the rest of the office environment will impact worker incentive/moral, but that's a social aspect, not a technological aspect.

I'm sure it's for remote use, such as a company with offices and colleagues around the world and not for someone on the desk opposite. I agree it would have a negative aspect in an office where it would negate face to face interaction.

I'd like to see more real world demonstrations of its use.

[ronin]

not sure FB is making the best use of a few billion dollars developing something that is so closely guarded there are no entry paths for others to get involved.

I agree, although, to be fair to Zuckerberg, I'm sure I saw him say - this was about a year ago - something along the lines of: one company alone could not build the Metaverse.

The issue for Meta is that unless they properly open source / open access the technologies they develop, following models similar to W3C, WHAT-WG, ECMA etc. (which entails giving up a whole lot of control of their metaverse), other potential metaverse-competitors like Apple and Epic Games have a choice:

1) collaborate with Facebook, helping FB build its mfaceverse, where FB still has ultimate control over key aspects
2) build a mappleverse or a mepicverse of their own, with their own technologies

Then we have... what? The equivalent of several incompatible information superhighways, some more capable, some more limited:

1) Gopher
2) the Web
3) Minitel
4) Teletext

but none of them talking to each other or inter-operable in any meaningful way ?

This must be a present conundrum at Meta at present - how can they substantially go all-in on building a true Metaverse and not end up spending a very large amount of money on building what turns out to be a Faceverse.a bit like Windows Phone 8 - perfectly capable but not meaningfully integrated with the rest of the market - the Android or iOS ecosystems - and, consequently, increasingly left out of the conversation...

[ronin]

I read this with interest:

[edition.cnn.com...]

But also with a strong sense of deja vu.

Back in 2007, I developed a great enthusiasm for Second Life (remember when Sweden set up an embassy there? Remember when universities were holding live lectures there?) and started to think quite seriously about renting an island there.

My plan was to build assets on that island which complemented my website - such that there would be a cross-pollenation between the visitor community to my website (160k unique visitors a month at that point, which I wasn't unhappy with) and those residents of Second Life who discovered my island and wanted to hang out there.

In the end I didn't start renting an island - it wasn't cheap and, given what happened to the global economy in 2007-09, thank goodness I made the decision not to.

But all this developing real estate in a 3D virtual world... I don't know about anyone else but it feels to me a lot like something from 16 years ago...

[not2easy]

Yes, earlier efforts may have been (logistically) impractical. I looked - or tried to look - back then. But it needed more bandwidth and RAM than I could scrape together then.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

- 25 years ago you could own a digital castle (available on eBay then) in Ultima Online. They are still bought for cash, just not on eBay.
- 20 years ago you could own a stone Villa in Dark Ages of Camelot. They are no longer bought and sold for cash, but the game currency to buy them is.
- Eve Online.... Second Life.... etc.

Zuckmeta is not breaking any new ground with "digital real estate". [darkageofcamelot.com...]

I doubt it matters, this is a no-starter bound to run into the same issues if it gets off the ground as is. Go over to Roblox and try out HyPixel, the model being duplicated. Avg player age, 12. Communication, mostly turned off to protect kids from predators. That's the demographic who most enjoys 'housing'.

In those older games, setting up a persistent vendor for game items, getting guild mates together at the start and end of an event like a dungeon run or raid or PvP tourney... and tinkering around with in your downtime between game events is what housing provided gamers. It was an extra feature, not the main feature Zuck envisions.

What helped make individual houses more valuable(or less) was their location in game, but Meta's are instanced(infinite, detached from a persistent map of any kind) and there is no main game, yet.

Honestly, if Meta investors knew housing was on the development list before the rest of the game flourished, and they understood what that meant, they'd have stopped him from spending there first.

The Metaverse is becoming a Frankenstein.