Metaverse

[wco81]

As we know FB is betting the company on it.

You get headlines like people are spending a ton of money to buy up prime virtual properties in a meta verse.

Don't know if it's the Meta meta verse or someone else's meta verse. Presumably different HMDs will access their own meta verse, not everyone else's?

But something about "oceanfront" properties being scarce so there's like a land rush, to buy those up. Kind of absurd, the notion of scarcity in a virtual world as opposed to the physical world, unless they want to artifiically limit some virtual objects or properties which is seen as desirable.

In any event, the only commercials that Meta seems to be running are those Oculus Quest 2 commercials where two guys are playing OQ2 games together but it turns out they're next door neighbors and they don't even know it.

So OQ2 is currently just for games right, not for accessing the meta verse yet?

Those are the only TV commercials I've seen running these days. Google is developing new Glass, they're not advertising it.

MS isn't advertising Hololens.

Who else?

If and when these other companies are shipping products, are they going to share a meta verse or they will each have their own and people can buy virtual properties in these other places if they've missed out on the first virtual properties which were sold.

How many years before people shrug and just play regular VR/AR games rather than trying to interact or "socialize" in some virtual space?

 

[orangpelupa]

So OQ2 is currently just for games right, not for accessing the meta verse yet?

it already able to access metaverse
- Rec Room
- Virtual Chat
- Tokyo Game Show Virtual (very lazily made via WebXR)
etc

If and when these other companies are shipping products, are they going to share a meta verse or they will each have their own and people can buy virtual properties in these other places if they've missed out on the first virtual properties which were sold.

no one has announced a plan for opening their metaverse. I suspect metaverse from big companies will be like the current "app store" wallet garden with no cross-licensing but (some) have cross-play.

How many years before people shrug and just play regular VR/AR games rather than trying to interact or "socialize" in some virtual space?

VR chat still popular it seems, despite it is pretty limited. So a truly open sandbox metaverse probably wont get people bored as there will be ridiculous amounts of free/paid user generated content

EDIT:
and there probably gonna be proper paid services that brings conventionally real-life only into metaverse, like:
- counseling
- sex stuff
- various training class (driving, flying, etc)

 

[Karamazov]

Once virtual life starts to become better than real life for some people, they'll spend most of their time in VR and not in real life.
Companies are surely betting on this, they know they can't offer a better life to their audience, but they can charge them to live a better virtual life and make a lot of money with it.

 

[milk]

I don't believe these metaverses will ever get the kind of popularity they are expecting to.
Microsoft and FB demoed corporate meetings in VR space, and the VR element added nothing over what you can already accomplish in a vanilla webcam zoom call. That is, nothing beside all the hassle, discomfort, and inherent sillines of pretending the Mii avatars you are talking to are your workmates.

An even worse example of things only made harder by VR is a tech demo of VR WallMart shopping that has made the rounds on YouTube recently. It was complete garbage.

There is a niche of people, (generally young, and generally with a lot of free time) that have fun with VR chat and all that. That niche indeed will grow as headsets become more accessible. But it will never encompass everybody. Many people enjoy real life, and don't wanna l"ive in the Matrix". In fact, they are creeped out with the mere suggestion of that, as can be seen from the overall reaction to FB's Metaverse announcement.

I think its a desperate move from some tech CEOs to come up with the next-big-thing and prove that they indeed are "visionaries" while others are playing catch-up out of FOMO. It will be as much of an embarrassment for them 10 years in the future as kinect is for MS today.

 

[swaaye]

Don't tell anybody that success depends on combining Matrox Headcasting with VR.

 

[wco81]

The Vergecast is talking about Meta's disastrous quarterly report. It wiped out $230 billion in market cap the day after the report.

The headlines are about loss of active users on FB.

But apparently Quest isn't making money yet. More importantly, Meta is spending a lot of money on VR. Last year they probably spent more on VR than the rest of the AR/VR industry combined.

So they're putting their money where their mouth is, though Zukerberg announced it pretty late in 2021?


We will see if or how much the needle moves whenever Apple shows off their HMD. Will they have better luck identifying killer applications?

Meta and other companies are betting on this virtual sandbox as the killer app.

 

[wco81]

Meta has really stepped up TV advertising to tout the benefits of VR.

In one I think a young athlete is practicing his baseball swings in VR. Another sequence shows a training surgeon practicing surgical techniques on a virtual heart while wearing presumably Occulus Quest HMD of some type.

Computer simulation isn't a new thing. We've had it to train pilots for decades, long before VR or AR devices were even conceived of.

What more does a VR surgery simulation offer over a standard computer simulator? In fact, I don't know that surgeons are trained at all using computer simulators. There was talk about surgeons possibly performing surgeries remotely, controlling computer arms from a distance.

But far more likely when it comes to technology in surgery would be AI-controlled robot arms, not humans using robot arms instead of their own arms and hands.

As one might imagine, doctors are highly skeptical of Meta's advertising.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1537814350798286849

Oh and I'm pretty sure to become a better baseball hitter, you'd be better off to hit the batting cages and play a lot of actual baseball, not put on VR.

 

[swaaye]

Yeah none of this is anything new for VR. It's just that the resolution and wireless tech is great now compared to say the '90s gear trying to enter these areas.

It is exactly what Virtuality wanted to do back then too.

It's still very uncomfortable, still causes extreme motion sickness, and you are waving weightless imaginary objects around so yeah lol at most of this.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

It's still very uncomfortable, still causes extreme motion sickness, and you are waving weightless imaginary objects around so yeah lol at most of this.

These are still the major things that are problematic for me WRT any sort of immersion in VR. Roomscale can mostly get around the motion sickness as long as ALL movement is mapped 1:1 to my movement and framerate is high enough.

However, weightless controls and feedback is problematic even when the control scheme is purely based around my own hands (IE - I'm not required to wave around a weapon) if I'm required to manipulate or interact with anything in VR.

I think that's why Beat Saber mostly works and is massively better than almost any other VR game. The weight of the controller can plausibly reflect the weight of a "light saber" and there's no real world object that I'd have to interact with that would result in a jarring (to me) interaction due to the lack of physical feedback.

I kind of got around that with VR pinball by making a physical pinball facade with physical control points, but it's not perfect and the illusion still breaks (the facade doesn't always map 1:1 with the VR representation of a pinball table).

So, even if the motion sickness problem is resolved for me, I still can't get into VR games due to the lack of physical feedback WRT either the objects I'm using or the objects I'm interacting with. It's so disjointing that I much prefer non-VR gaming WRT immersion as there's no situation ever where I'm shocked that I don't feel any physical feedback due to the fact that there is Zero expectation that I should feel any physical weight or resistance because it's not mimicking other parts of my body's way of interacting with the real world. IE - with a non-VR game, my brain isn't being provided a reasonable visual interaction but not a reasonable physical interaction.

Regards,
SB

 

[digitalwanderer]

I still haven't tried VR, I'm thinking it's gonna end up like 3D tv as AR does a better job.

 

[swaaye]

I still haven't tried VR, I'm thinking it's gonna end up like 3D tv as AR does a better job.

It's definitely nothing like 3D TV on the worthless scale. I find VR to be incredibly immersive. It's a completely new experience compared to regular gaming and there are exciting, unique things to try. But to say one can learn how to be awesome at playing real-world baseball with some VR sim is just stupid. The physicality for that sort of thing is just not there and it would be like playing baseball with a scuba mask on lol.

You ought to get yourself some kind of headset and give it a go. Buy something second hand.

 

[orangpelupa]

It's definitely nothing like 3D TV on the worthless scale. I find VR to be incredibly immersive. It's a completely new experience compared to regular gaming and there are exciting, unique things to try. But to say one can learn how to be awesome at playing real-world baseball with some VR sim is just stupid. The physicality for that sort of thing is just not there and it would be like playing baseball with a scuba mask on lol.

You ought to get yourself some kind of headset and give it a go. Buy something second hand.

But for some things (job simulator!) it's more fun doing it in VR than real life ROFL.


Btw the ease of use and comfort of vr headsets are still far from good enough for mass market IMO.

Too much fiddling with IPD, headset fit and positions, etc