I have enjoyed VR, but the “metaverse” angle was something largely no one asked for.
I’ll admit even at its best it is still niche, but I have enjoyed it, particularly for simulation genre.
Just like 3D film and television. The VR stuff surfaces periodically with another iteration of the tech.
Which is typical of tech that hasn’t yet hit the sweet spot for a tipping point.
Look at how many palm pilots or handheld note taking mobile devices existed (and how many cycles) before the iPhone.
Spatial compute seems cool still. VR raves are sick VR to let people with some disabilities experience more social scenes and some enhanced forms of remote work are very cool to me.
*IF* they had pulled it off well we wouldn’t all be here making fun of it. It would have been cool Well… by cool I mean let’s say for argumnets sake they absolutely nailed the virtual hangout, so you got something that felt holographic it was so real. It would be cool to hang out with your friends that way (if being together wasn’t an option) and it would be more bearable than zoom for a work meeting. At least it might have made non-verbal cues flow better and making virtual converstaion less of a ballache. If it had been flawless then it might have galvinised the movement to make working remotely the new default
Unforunately they didn’t pull it off. But it was worth trying is all i’m saying…
Cope. The idea always sucked and made no sense. Also I just hate Zuck and hope he gets Luigi’d 🙏
The only “metaverse” that gained any traction is VRChat and that’s mostly just a way for furries to show off their character designs.
All the ones that started as a way to leech money from home working have gone nowhere.
Fortnite kind of evolved into a metaverse
To a surprise of no one. The headsets are fucking uncomfortable. Which doesn’t bother me when the goal is a gaming session because I gain something that I like (playing immersive games) to offset it. But to see some fucking avatars of people for a meeting that most likely could have been an email or two? No thanks.
Yeah, I can wear mine for an hour or so. Any more and I’ll be picking my glasses out of my face.
I’m not sure who would want to wear it for 8 hours a day every day. It’s they think that people will embrace the corpo subservient life if only they can pretend they’re in Minority Report…
They’re pricey, but you can find prescription inserts for vr headsets.
I don’t wear glasses and I still find my quest 3s pretty uncomfortable. I can’t play for more than an hour at a time.
There was never non-manufactured hype for it. I saw people who were paid to be excited about it be excited about it, and literally nobody else cared. Nobody else even knew what the hype was event supposed to be for.
If Facebook wasn’t behind it trying to make it a thing then it might stand a chance to become a thing.
cries in PortalTV
There was hype?
My same reaction. I bet most people don’t even know the term.
Some people just love looking at themselves.
You’re joking, but there are lots of people in VRChat that love spending a lot of time looking at their own avatar in front of in-game mirrors.
Man, I hate looking at myself in mirrors or even hearing myself in recordings. I just don’t understand people who actually like it.
Well it’s not like they’re looking at their actual faces, they’re looking at an in-game avatar that’s often highly sexualized or otherwise very pretty
I was assuming they’re making the character look like themselves. It’s totally understandable if you’re RPing and seeing how your character looks in some getup.
I think it’s also to do with how photogenic someone is. I’m the same as you, my photos/videos/voice always feel weird and awkward to me. The other day I came across this relatable story:
My mother is gorgeous. Stunning, even. She was homecoming queen in high school and has the smile of a true crime cliché (that is to say, it lights up a room). Blonde, razor-cut bangs frame her big, brown eyes – rimmed in her signature liquid liner, always – which literally twinkle when she laughs.
There is no photographic evidence of this.
I cannot make sense of it, but something happens to this dear, beautiful woman whenever a camera comes near. Her face contorts at the click of a shutter. A combination of the following features appears in every picture she’s ever taken: squeezed-shut lids. Crossed eye. Eyebrow askance. Elvis lip. Cowlick. I sometimes insist a particular picture isn’t as bad as she thinks; I’m lying. Her driver’s license photo? Horrendous. Her Facebook profile picture? A close-up of the family dog.
I take comfort in this whenever I come across a less-than-flattering image of myself. Photos do not reflect reality, I think. Just look at all the terrible pictures of Mom!
On the flip side, I used to know this man who had very flat features in person. I saw a recent picture of him at the time and it was like looking at someone else. His face had contours and depth and looked quite good. I don’t know if it was some sort of illusion created by my brain looking at a 2d picture but it was weird.
When you’re Nanachi, you enjoy looking in the mirror.
Theres no other feedback of your own avatar except for viewing it, if i am trying to immerse my self i wanna make sure i dont look jacked up.
Source: me, i play.
I mean, in VR you’re really just checking how well you did your avatar. There’s a sense of accomplishment in doing something that looks like you with a very limited set of tools. Haven’t tried it in VR, but I know the exact feeling from The Sims series.
I understand checking when first creating it, but I find it weird to check it after that. I don’t even make my avatar in games look anything like myself. It’s not that I’m bad looking or anything, I just don’t like looking at myself, and that includes pictures, videos, etc.
At least 1000 people
A good 200 of them are pissed right now.
Ew
Within the billionaire bubble there was a lot of hype. Outside of that, not so much.
A new platform to colonize, gathering info on what people were looking at in the virtual world and selling that to advertising made their wallets go very erect.
I think the biggest part was selling people fake clout for a nearly 100% profit margin. They were going to sell us virtual clothes and status
in massen masse for our very real money. Not that this doesn’t already happen in gaming but it would have been expanded greatly
Yeah man…for like 2 weeks, and then it released. Then again when they added legs. For like a day.
I bet Meta spent a lot of money to develop the Metaverse. Would they really just drop it.
Google would
They already did years before Facebook rename themselves.
It was called project loom
I always thought this metaverse crap was just an obvious money-making scheme that preyed on isolated people during COVID-19. They only started developing their metaverse platforms during the pandemic. Of course they all failed to capitalize because the world largely returned to normal while they were still flaunting NFTs and unfinished metaverse platforms that still can’t do better than a private Minecraft SMP with your friends.
I suspect that it’s one of those things that will happen at some point in the future, but we just don’t have the technology and equipment ready for it just yet. I figure it’s similar to AI research in like 2007 when they were able to put the computer on Jeopardy and have it compete against the contestants. It worked, but it wasn’t ready for mainstream usage at the time.
The second life/metaverse/virtual reality concept will never be widely accepted by the majority of the population because it just isn’t what the vast majority of people want. They want communication methods that compliment their real world lives.
Yes, it will probably be more popular at some point than it has been so far if they can pull off affordable ultra realism, but the escapism of virtual worlds appeals to a relatively small portion of the population. Not to mention that a lot of people have a limited amount of free time, and even if it was extremely popular at first, the novelty would wear off fairly quickly for most people.
Gaming is an absolutely massive economic sector, driven by the escapism of virtual worlds. The functional kernel of the metaverse is a universal game lobby, a place for people to congregate while they navigate between the games they play together.
I think you’re right about affordability.
There’s a subset of the population who will pursue VR for gaming et cetera, but it’s a limited subset. While the same hardware or tech might be able to be used for casual AR / VR helpful type things like meetings or informational things those applications just aren’t beneficial enough to make it worth the cost of the hardware.
If there was more content, more useful applications, and the cost was negligible, then sure it will take off.
In my 20s I would’ve been interested in VR for gaming and would’ve been excited about the potential applications of AR. Now in my 40s it’s clear that tech doesn’t bring me joy, and I’d like to diminish it’s role in my life. As in, I want tech to improve my well being and quality of life rather than consume my time and limit my experience of life.
20 years from now, I can imagine myself as a reluctant late-adopter of AR. I just absolutely will not tolerate ads in this regard. I’d rather forage for twigs and berries in the wilderness than allow adverts to be injected into my experience of realiity.
A big problem with virtual worlds is that it doesn’t really take that long to get to the “end.” The end of the landscape, the end of the mechanics, the end of the economy, whatever. Then you’re stuck waiting for DLC, and that runs out in short order, too.
In reality, even if you stay in one place your whole life, you know there’s more to see; or are the wealthiest person in the world, there’s still more.
I had assumed the metaverse was more about augmented reality than an alternate reality. I don’t really know anything about it though.
will never be widely accepted by the majority of the populatioj because it just isn’t what the vast majority of people want. They want communication methods that compliment their real world lives
I don’t think that’s strictly true, but I do think it would require their real world lives to get shockingly worse to increase the appeal of living in a “better” world.
This is usually how you see these kind of things presented in fiction: everyone uses a “metaverse”, but it requires a full on completely society destroying dystopia to also exist to make it sufficiently appealing.
I’d put money on the next round of VR worlds getting a lot more buy-in since you’ve got a generation of kids growing up that are already living mostly online, and a species that seems hell-bent on diving in to a nice authoritarian dystopia, so uh, the next 20 years will probably be real interesting,
I think what we will get out of all this virtual reality research is good augmented reality devices because being able to look at something and pull up information on that thing or instructions on how to use it, etc. would be damn useful. I think I’ve heard of companies using AR and VR for training purposes, like how to work machines in a factory, etc. before you actually start using them.
I see people buying $300 AR glasses as a portable monitor to watch porn comfortably while in bed.
Remote medical procedures, remote military weapons, remote repair of datellites, etc. will all benefit as well.
I think all of those applications will, or already have, develop independently of something like Facebook metaverse. If anything meta is taking those useful applications and trying to turn it into a household product that nobody needs.
Do any of these applications really require AR / VR though?
Require? No.
Likely to be improved by more spacial awareness? Yes.
The second life/metaverse/ virtual reality concept will never be widely accepted by the majority of the populatioj because it just isn’t what the vast majority of people want. They want communication methods that compliment their real world lives.
It’s the same reason that urbanization collapses every time it gets out of hand, as it did in Babylon and Rome before us. The majority of the population doesn’t even WANT to live in an artificial environment, no matter how hard those who wield power attempt to push it on everyone.
The massive popularity of Ready Player One, which was a mostly bland and bad story besides having a Metaverse in it, might imply otherwise.
I don’t think people are yearning for a dystopian future.
The popularity in the fictional setting, based on speculation?
The popularity of the book/move, which is a short period of escapism not at all comparable to virtual reality?
The popularity of the book/movie incorporating a classic concept of cyberpunk, yes.
We’ve been dreaming of a Metaverse just about since we’ve had internet. Only, nobody’s made one that’s worth a damn in the real world yet.
Dude it’s a book.
“Gladiators would be popular because there’s this movie called Gladiator that everyone loves and that has heaps of Gladiators.”
Gladiator was a movie because historically we’ve had heaps of gladiators and they were popular public entertainment.
I think that’s just a coincidence because it was also just after buying Oculus and developing the Quest 2 which sold like hotcakes. I think things fizzled out because everyone I know, myself included, got tired of VR after a couple weeks because the software just isn’t there and it can be quite isolating to use.
SteamVR on PC is excellent FYI. Lots of great VR games on Steam
Alyx has ruined almost every other VR game for me purely from how polished of an experience it is. Every other game that isn’t an arcade, driving/racing sim or a fitness game just feels clunky to me.
Polished, right. Wouldn’t even run past the menu on my (overpowered) PC, as the only VR game out of those I’ve tried. Forums full of people with similar issues…
Yes, but it is also very different. I have a VR headset and use it every now and then. But compared to “normal” gaming it is quite different.
When playing a non-VR game you can just minimize the game and check stuff between rounds/matches/when you pause/etc. With VR I feel like you have to be there all the time, and the headsets are still heavy so you can’t play as long. Not to mention you are usually standing.
I like VR and think it will be good eventually, but it is not there yet. It is 100% playable as it is, but the overall tech is not quite there yet.
VR is totally “there” for those who want to use it, and it does take a little more effort than plopping into a chair and clicking a mouse. But that’s life - you get more out of things you put more effort into.
There were hype around this thing??
Zuckerberg was so hyped, he renamed his entire fucking company Meta.
But Zuckerberg was pretty much alone, I don’t recall anyone agreeing with his claims.
Ironically, Zuck is all about FAIR now. Shouldn’t it be MAIR now? :)
We already have wide screens. Just ask the users to place their hand dividing their face so that each eye sees an independent image. Then just play stereo images and watch the new eye disease craze grow!..“95% of Americans have one lazy eye or two!” “Scientists don’t known why, but you can fix it with this weird hydrogen peroxide hack!”
