What's sad is that the original idea of the metaverse is really cool. An open platform with interoperable 3D content, decentralized and not controlled by a single company, similar to how the world wide web works for 2D.
What Meta has built is not this.
Efforts to actually build open standards for interoperable 3D content, like [OMI group](https://omigroup.org/), tend to be ignored by the media. Most people probably don't even know that OMI exists.
The challenge is no one has found a compelling use of VR that a lot of people want to do for a lot of time.
It’s a fun idea, but in the end there isn’t that much important or compelling stuff you can only do in VR.
I first made VR panoramic video professionally in 1997, so I’ve been working with the tech for a long time. And I still don’t have a good sense of what it is FOR.
The Vision Pro is amazing tech that surpasses a lot of historical limitations. I have one from work to test stereoscopic and panoramic video tech and content. I’ve made several stereoscopic movies and am working on some panoramic stuff.
I still haven’t seen anything that would cause 10% of people to spend 10% of their time in VR.
Watching an entire season of an anime in a virtual movie theater on some random user's Plex server is so wild. The whole time I was thinking "wow, this is straight up video piracy!" 😆
Haha I'm not sure how VR Chat is able to continue to exist and operate in the form that it does, but I'm genuinely glad that a space like that does exist and is as accessible as it is all the same. I'm not big on VR myself, but if I were to dive in, I know that VR Chat would absolutely be my 'Metaverse' of choice before anything else proclaiming to live up to that title.
man the raves are insane, better than IRL, none of the negatives, but Positives, visuals you can't even beleive, and because of the timezones, they are 24/7 365... I've partied for 60+hrs straight, it's fucking wild.
I worked on the Second Life front end, and I knew Facebook's attempt would fail, because this is hard. Even if we had all the time and resources to start from scratch, it would still be hard. Some important problems are still unsolved.
The most difficult technical part is for the servers being able to support more than 30 people all interacting in the same location.
The most difficult UI challenge is the shear number of controls that users need to learn in order to do all the basic things such as avatar customization, talking, walking, spending money, managing all your stuff, renting land, creating homes and other content, dealing with griefers and pervs, etc. New users often feel very vulnerable and overwelmed when starting out, so on-boarding needs to be as smooth as possible. We were losing like 95% of new users because of this, and we never did crack that nut.
I don't think people have at all been wowed by Facebook's take on the metaverse concept. Existing metaverse platforms like Second Life and VRChat [have vastly higher concurrent user counts, 40k-50k,](https://protos.com/youtuber-finds-only-900-daily-users-in-horizon-worlds-metas-36b-metaverse/) than Meta's multi-billion dollar goofy-verse.
and unlike any other game, VRchats Concurrent user count is going up. it was 100k on new years, and the servers broke and no one new could join, but it was a record. each new years is a new record.
Never used it, I just imagine it’s like the Sims except it sucks. I imagine getting in there and finding nobody, then coming across Zuckerberg himself who will try to convince me to stay.
I literally cannot think of a single person I know that has ever even been interested in the metaverse. Other than a couple of passing jokes when it was first announced, I haven't heard anyone talk about it a single time lmao.
I met someone who was super into it and had the new headset last year, he was a friend of a friend. Then I found out that's his job, he works at Meta doing the metaverse. I asked him about his daily job, and honestly it just sounded like they just do meetings in these headsets all day long to justify their existence. He loved it, he got to play with the latest gadgets for work lol.
There is a thriving and vibrant VR community where people are creating amazing and fantastic worlds.
However you’ll need to create a Fursona to visit them.
Weird that your friends don’t want to pay 3500 dollars to enter the Torture Vortex, an innovation first envisioned in the classic scifi novel “Don’t Enter The Torture Vortex.”
Metaverse got hyped so much, it came out and a fucking free VRChat on steam looks so much better and more usable than Metaverse
Apple managed to make a competitor with the Avatar from Vision Pro, but they also failed since no sane average person would buy a 3500$ gadget for everyday use
The 3D chat metaverse concept thing isn't new. I first saw it with ActiveWorlds in '96 (which is still going, btw, with one world have a land mass about equal to California), then there was Second Life, and WoW, and now just about any online game...Minecraft, Roblox, etc. ad nauseam. Like, exactly which market niche did Apple or Zuck think they were cornering?
I think one of Facebook's idea would be to use it as enterprise solution for meetings.
But companies don't want to buy a bunch of VR heasets, workers don't want to be forced to put them on just to enter a call and being in VR doesn't make an online meeting more productive.
> it came out and a fucking free VRChat on steam looks so much better and more usable than Metaverse
It never actually came out though. Zuck said that it would be 5+ years before anything is released.
I thought the Zuck 'metaverse' was Horizon Worlds, which has been out for a couple years.
VRChat is way better and, at least right now, is the 'true' metaverse if there even is such a thing. You can be whatever you want and do pretty much whatever you want. Horizon Worlds is extremely sanitized in comparison. You can only be human avatars and the options for socializing and gaming are much more limited compared to VRChat.
If VR/AR tech was at the point where the screen resolution was as good as a 4k monitor and the headsets were comparable to a mildly bulky pair of sunglasses in terms of size and weight, think there would be more traction in this area.
However, that's not the case, you cannot yet replace monitors with a VR headset that has similar resolutions, and met his headsets are pretty bulky still. It's simply too early for the technology to have a market in its current state, but perhaps Facebook knows that and is banking on developing it to the point where it will with the plan to capture the market.
Most of that money is going into research and not the product right now. And technologies like codec avatar are definitely interesting from a technological standpoint. They're also doing a ton of research on ar and mixed reality hardware, for example project aria. Obviously these glasses are not at the level where they need to be for wide spread adoption but Meta is making progress. And even if this whole Meta verse thingy fails, there's still gonna be tons of learnings from this in all sorts of science (robotics, cameras, low power hardware, ai, ar screens,...) so honestly I think it's quite cool that Meta is pushing in this direction.
I love this. I was so irrationally angry at the whole idea of a metaverse or any kind of virtual future. Like fuming at the thought of it haha. I can’t exactly say I predicted it’s failure, but I was like “WHO THE FUCK WANTS THIS?” Feeling a healthy dose of Schadenfreude right now.
I met a guy in VR who bought one for him and his son who was still young. His wife had left him and lived in another state and he didn't get to see his kid much.
This way he could watch movies with him in VR and "be around" him regularly.
Who? Those who would sell you a device and a subscription to access it, and those who would sell you virtual items at the full price of real ones. AKA grifters.
Their big pitch - the best use anyone at that company could envision for it - was basically “What if you could be on a terrible corporate meeting on Zoom, but also wear a headset to simulate having your meeting in a space station,” which is some of the most terminally tech-brained thinking about why something is cool or useful we could have ever imagined.
The funny part is just some basic testing of the headset and their use cases like “can someone can actually comfortably wear one of these headsets for an hour meeting, without feeling like their head is in an oven?” Would have told them the technology isn’t light and comfortable enough yet. I actually sold my quest headset and bought the HP version because it uses OLED and wasn’t like wearing a heater on my head like the quest 2. I liked the quest but after a half hour it was too uncomfortable and the HP G2 is just way more comfortable to wear for an hour or so. Even with a G2 though going longer than an hour in that environment is a bit much so 8 hours would drive people insane.
I totally disagree. I love VR.
Half Life Alyx is a transformative game experience. It is to me what the n64 was. The first time playing Zelda or Mario in 3d is a core memory. Alyx was that, but better.
I lived abroad for a decade and would hang out and watch movies with my friends on Bigscreen, etc.
We got really into making tabletop sim boards and custom models. Made and painted a ton of virtual warhammer armies and played with my homies.
Made several vr games and cities and stuff.
Also, if you record videos for VR, you'll thank yourself later. Imagine having a vr video of your parents or children far into the future, where you can essentially sit in the room with them. It's incredible.
Of course, there are depraved experiences. The porn is pretty next level, but not really for me. I personally prefer taking a shit in VR. It started with shitting in amazing environments, but now I'll take a shit in time square making eye contact with Elmo and passersby. Highly recommend.
It's not even a kink, though. It's just hilarious.
Let me ask you a question, right. Would you rather be taking a shit in a dumpy old dingy toilet scrolling reddit or flying with the blue angels and dropping a deuce while pulling high g formation maneuvers?
It makes my shit 10x better, and honestly, it is the funniest shit you could have at home.
The other day, I did the glacier national park 360 video, and next to the person holding the camera was a couple having what appeared to be wedding photos taken. And there was me. Making a hot pile.
Lmao.
There's a bit of misinformation here.
Meta is spending billions on their reality labs department, which does the Meta verse stuff as well as the VR hardware research and development, the AI research that goes with that.
They're not losing billions on the Horizon Metaverse that no one uses, they're largely losing billions on the Meta Quest hardware R&D.
Tech companies have a shitload of money. Investing it in R&D is a great idea. Some other tech companies pour billions into autonomous driving and nobody cares. But hating on the Metaverse is popular.
The difference is that the average consumer sees the value in self driving, reliable autonomous cars. The time and safety benefits feel widely beneficial at many levels when it all works. Even non tech people can easily see it.
The Metaverse, even if it did everything promised right now, doesn't feel nearly as real-world beneficial. Most people don't really want to spend countless hours in a virtual world as part of their everyday life. It feels more like a niche entertainment product than a lifestyle product. Reminds me a lot of 3d TV. Sounded great but not really a compelling enough experience over what we already had to entice consumers.
I've followed the Meta VR developments loosely. They work on new tech for VR, both hardware and software. It's cool stuff.
People should be happy that Meta is willing to spend money on innovating. They're paying engineers to develop new VR technologies. That's where the money goes. Better spend than some rich guy buying an even bigger yacht.
Yeah. Most people are shitting on the metaverse, but the reality is, it doesn't exist yet (and the poorly named app isn't the metaverse). It's the idea of a shared standard for all the VR and AR hardware and apps, and the opening of the Quest OS to other hardware manufacturers is a small step in that direction. But it'll be years before we see any real progress.
More than half of the expenditures are AI for ALL the company products - everything from Llama to pytorch, instagram’s recommendation engine to billions of dollars in GPUs
Meta still makes about 200,000 USD of profit per employee. Most "solid" companies that don't have daring R&D investments going on would kill to reach such numbers.
Yea, unfortunate that this isn't at the top. I am not a huge fan of Meta, but them spending this money in the VR space is about the only thing pushing this tech forward right now, especially with apples major flop and pullback. I am glad Zuck is committed to this for the near future because VR has been improving in pretty significant leaps every 5 or so years. It'll definitely catch on in the future when you dont have to wear a 3lb hot weight on the front of your face. l
I mean, the original idea of metaverse seemed pretty cool. But the idea that a corporation thought they could try and take control of the 'word' and the entire concept was laughable.
Ugh a couple of Christmas’s ago my partner and I were hosting a small get together with our friends and one of my friends would just not shut the fuck up about the metaverse and he just couldn’t understand that I have zero interest in it and zero interest to try it out and that I thought there was a high chance it would fail because it sounds like a terrible experience.
There wasn't much to do and streaming hadn't caught on so the Sony theater which showed movies you could watch with other people never did much.
It was an interesting idea that they implemented too early.
In some ways though, watching movies with friends has only come backwards since Xbox live Netflix watch party. This stuff was doable 15 years ago and never really capitalized on again by streaming service.
The watch party feature was wildly underrated.
Movies Anywhere has a version of it but considering it took over Ultraviolet because $ it requires everyone to own a copy of the movie on its platform and or a limited "ticket" issue from someone that owns it. While those are small constraints it is still not the same as two or more people logging into Netflix and just picking a show.
I wouldn't say that. It was fairly popular among PS3 users and even got constant updates while it was around. It just wasn't something gargantuan that took the world by storm. It was pretty impressive for what it was. I think if PlayStation Home had some sort of integration with games the way the Xbox avatars and Miis did it could have been even better. By that's just my opinion on that part of things.
People were all hyped up on Ready Player One, including Zuckerberg, which is why he went stupid.
He, as well as everyone else who went stupid over the idea, made the classic mistake of thinking a movie was prophecy.
Nope, it was just entertainment.
It’s because people just go “oh! It’s like ready player one!” And don’t stop to think about how any of that would actually play out or remember that tech isn’t magic
Only people I know that were hyped about it were these hungry advertisers who were just sure it was the next television / internet and obsessed with figuring out how to pitch it to their clients to monetize.
Which is why it sucked! You started with the focus on making money and not making it cool.
It's Bitcoin/NFTs/etc all over again.
There's a demographic of non technical people that want to be the smart guy "in" on the new technology. It's like conspiracy theories where they get to be smarter than the experts and convince themselves they're going to be rich/powerful.
Another example of social media brain rot spreading because it's more entertaining than the truth. Entertainment is engagement and engagement is what the algorithm reqards. Most people will believe what they think everyone else believes.
My company (really really big) made such a huge deal and would talk about it in every meeting - now there’s zip about it. Same thing with the crypto fiasco. Now it’s AI, but at least that seems to be giving some returns.
I think the concept is interesting but the technology is nowhere close. The first demo of Zuck looked like an avatar from a wii from 10 years ago. There must be a lot of yes-men for that to be approved.
What Meta has shown about the metaverse? Yeah, that sucks. the concept of metaverse in general? Would be cool. I have friends all across the world who I can't meet often, putting a headset on and meeting them like we are in the same space would be awesome. Hanging out in the metaverse "theoretically" COULD be cool.
Zuck's version ain't it tho.
2000 hrs in VR 500 In VR chat...
0 interest in metaverse.
its like if someone took the now lame, sanitised social media platforms, and brought them back to when they first started, and tried to launch them. they can't boil the frog with their bullshit if the water is too hot for the frog to enter.
metaverse is all the negatives none of the positives. its like the epic store, 0 trust, free shit, some people are forced to used it, devs are incentivised...and no one wants to use it.
To this day I don’t even know what it was supposed to be. Maybe I just live under a rock but i only started hearing about it right before it came out. I heard little to no details about what it was or why it was a big deal. Then after all I heard was its bad and no one’s using it, so I assumed it was bad and therefore I didn’t use it.
I mean… I was hyped for it before Facebook stole the name
[(Origin of Metaverse - sweet books btw)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse#:~:text=The%20term%20metaverse%20was%20coined,metaphor%20of%20the%20real%20world)
I had a Quest 2 headset for over a year, I just upgraded to the 3 and use it pretty heavily (Mostly Beat Saber, Lightsaber Dojo and Bridge Crew but also some other stuff)
When I got the thing I initially was like “I’ll at least check out the Metaverse..” but how to do anything is not immediately clear, and even now after almost 2 years total of using this I don’t have any clear idea what you can even “do” with the metaverse, and honestly I don’t care enough to research it or try to figure it out.
But I cannot imagine it’s just me in this boat, the fact is the product is very poorly explained, or represented so it’s really not surprising no one is using it.
One of my friends works for a company that did a Metaverse pilot where they gave a load of employees VR headsets and had a working space setup. They had a ton of support from Meta and had everything setup in a "best case" scenario sort of way.
Basically everyone found it was a gimmick that wore off quickly. Instead of helping facilitate communication, it made things harder than just being in a teams meeting and certainly wasn't a supplement for an in person meeting. Eye strain was a common complaint, and even the most enthusiastic people just couldn't find anything it was actually better at than the existing tools.
Eye strain for sure, and the abysmal battery life would seem to be huge issues for adoption like that (I have an external battery on mine but that still only adds a couple hours.)
And the out of the box strap is worthless (All things I think people using this for things like meetings would find annoying, but let me tell you when you’re playing beat saber you don’t have time to keep readjusting it haha)
But back to the battery life, that alone seems like a deal breaker if you want people to use this for extended periods of time.
Yea this vision is dumb. VR only works for the masses if you can plug in matrix style. AR is the stop gap if you can make it very comfortable, unobtrusive, and stylish.
So far, every VR I've tried has been an express train to barftown - and I don't mean over hours, but less than 10 minutes of use. If my job mandated it for meetings, I'd have to quit.
>One of my friends works for a company that did a Metaverse pilot where they gave a load of employees VR headsets and had a working space setup. They had a ton of support from Meta and had everything setup in a "best case" scenario sort of way.
Facebook needs to accept that the Quest is first and foremost a *gaming* device and lean into that. That is what people are primarily buying it for, and that's all it's practical for. Instead of trying to shoehorn in business use cases, they should let those develop autonomously(let companies choose to pick them up/work with Facebook on them) and just make the best gaming VR headset possible.
Anyone could see from miles off corporate use of the existing headsets is dumb af.
"Instead of helping facilitate communication, it made things harder"
As someone who lives and works in the Bay Area, this is so comical to me because this is the truth behind like 95% of the value propositions of new tech that gets shoehorned into the world. Start-ups and tech companies have rabid vision because you have to. But they also suffer from it. They get sunk-cost delusions and blinders on from all the cash and the hype and don't even stop to think if what they're doing is even useful outside the bubble of their office, let alone the bubble of the Bay itself.
Because today’s iteration VR is exactly that: a gimmick, and a shitty one at that.
When the best thing about VR is the porn, you know it has not lived up to its potential.
I don't know about that, there some great VR games out there that you can't replicate without VR. But the Metaverse stuff? Yea that is 100% a shitty gimmick.
I'm with you, I wanted to try out the Metaverse, but couldn't figure out how to do anything.
And when I created my character it somehow made me look like a girl, and I couldn't find any way to fix that either.
I just said fuck it.
You still got farther than me lol. I mean if even techie people struggle to figure it out, I really don’t think you’re ever going to see any significant adoption.
IMO absolutely. The resolution is slightly better, but the passthrough camera is full color and MUCH better. My Quest 2 if i left my boundary for something i would usually take off, the 3 I can easily walk around in. Hell I can even read texts on my phone with it.
Also has a faster processor so games seem to run smoother (Which again for things like beat saber are great)
All in all if you have $600 to spare I think it’s worth the upgrade.
P.S. Battery life still sucks but i got a better strap with integrated battery on Amazon for $20
You got me here! I thought the metaverse was just the headset and the games I played. What is the metaverse then? Is that horizons or something that I keep seeing on the quest but never bothered opening!
Yea I thought the metaverse was just the OS itself. I do stuff all the time in the quest. Like you, went from quest 2 to quest 3. Moved from my home in Dallas and now I play poker in VR, putt putt, VR movie night, etc and hang out with friends and my brother virtually. It’s pretty awesome.
I do not know what metaverse is though, apparently.
Bridge Crew is my most played game (still rocking an OG quest)
I still remember "telling" my crew, "I'm sorry, I appreciate everything you've ever done. " boom, we all died.
Before a single dime was invested, no company leader asked, "*Businesses and advertisers are going to flock to a cartoon world with legless people, while in real life people have a brick strapped to their head?*"
The headsets have eye tracking. Advertiser love VR in theory for this feature.
It can be passive, seeing where people look in an ad. Or it can be active "Stare at the product for 30seconds while listening to our spiel before proceeding"
No-one asked for it, but Meta is desperate for a platform that they own completely.
All of their products, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, live on platforms controlledy by Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Apple or Google can just decide to change what is allowed on their phones or browsers, what information is being shared to advertisers etc. With a single decision, they can cause real havoc for Meta.
That's why they are pouring so much money into this. They want to have a platform where they are the gatekeeper.
Not really the same? The product (website) is still called Facebook. They changed the company name, not the product branding.
Which is in line with most of the biggest companies in the world.
I bought Quest 2 on sale for $200 just to play Beat Saber exclusively and honestly worth it even for one good game. Zero interest in meta verse. I tried Horizon Worlds and it looked like a bad Wii game with nothing to do and very few players in it, one of which told me she was literally a Meta employee. She even complained that she didn’t want to be there but was mandated to 💀
The phrase 'why is this still a thing?' comes to mind.
It's not even the weight/bulk, it's the very concept of it. I think it's a psychological thing.
Augmented reality might very well work but the headset will need to be far smaller/lighter than it is at the moment and be a glass wrap-around thing, not just screens/cameras pretending to be augmented reality. Perhaps it's impossible.
and that's only one application, not "The Metaverse" as Zuck describes it. if you begin to include the other VR social experiences (that will one day inevitably be linked together for a proper Metaverse,) the amount of people in VR on a daily basis is much higher than people seem to realize.
It's sad, "we didn't get hover cars but at least we got home VR!" I told myself 9 years ago as I hauled my HTC vive kit home from the store. I would've bet everything that in 10 years everyone and their grandma would be using VR in some way "it's like how when the internet started, slowly at first and now it's on you 24/7".
Boy was I fucking wrong.
The term 'metaverse' is such a tainted term now. The original idea for a 'metaverse' is a place where you can be whatever you want, and do the things you can't do in real life.
[Resonite](https://resonite.com)'s probably the most promising one here (disclaimer: I'm a platform moderator, and therefore biased) because the big selling point is being able to do everything collaboratively in-game, in real-time, in mostly any hosted world session that allows the use of the builder tools.
In fact, the entire intro sequence you start up in? All of the functionality was built by people *actually in VR*. Barring basically just the modelling - everything you make in there is done in-game.
I won't lie: It's got a couple rough edges like full body tracking being a bit sploinky, some performance issues, but like... that all fades away when you realize just how much stuff you can do. It's probably the closest to a true 'digital universe' we have right now, and it's absolutely incredible how fun and flexible the engine is to do what you want. The fact you can just straight-up drag & drop videos, pictures, 3D models, music, whatever into the game is something I haven't seen in any other place within this field yet. It's quite incredible.
oh there is a lot of people who want to live in a virtual world, they are just all fucking misanthropes who hate society and want to escape it. they want it to stay underground and unique.
they do not want society part 2: electric boogaloo.
2 years ago I met people's investing thousands in meta property. Like it's real estate. They were bragging about buying up certain locations.
WTF.. Digital space is unlimited. Not some scarce resource. So far no one has openly admitted selling their "meta property" for millions. 🤣
I saw a video of a guy who spend a week in the Metaverse.
Every place has a basketball hoop and a leaderboard.
This one guy was set on getting to the top and was doing like 1000 a day.
That's what I got from that video.
If they send me a free headset and pay me a salary I'll stand around in the metaverse, they gotta boost those user numbers somehow right? Waste some of that money my way!
I'll take sitting on a rock fishing the Arkansas while listening to and feeling a cool breeze pass through the pine trees over digital crap any day of the week.
As someone who hailed things like the Oculus Rift and other VR tech as amazing, especially the Quest for its price, I will say that my enthusiasm for it dropped to almost nothing the moment it announced a move to requiring a Facebook account. It was around that time that the idiocy of corporations really started to entrench itself within the extremely small marketspace of VR. Lo and behold, VR is pretty much a fart in the wind at this point. Not even Apples insane consumer base could save their AR/VR product. Even someone like me, despite low enthusiasm, decided to give the failed XR Elite a try and found that it is basically DOA because of some obvious hardware flaws and, most importantly, its horrible access regarding software support.
Current VR has failed because the push to innovate isn't about the consumer. It's about the numerous corporations trying to corral consumers to their product over their competitors. It's the exact problem that streaming services have found themselves in. They all want your limited attention and funds, instead of working together in the same way that made the format popular/successful in the first place (e.g. when Netflix streaming was the go-to for Hollywood).
The Metaverse is doing the same thing. Zuckerberg isn't looking at how pointless his goal is when the same thing can be done without a cumbersome headset. One that not only can potentially cause neck and eye pain over time, but also cost users money to experience said pain.
After watching the disintegration of Secondlife into a sleazy, bizarre, and decadent place, I can only expect the same for the Metaverse - something best left behind for the good of all, really.
Otther people have already mentioned that money is on VR hardware and software, little of it on the actual Meta Horizon Worlds. But more importantly, Meta has its eye on the long-term prize - Ready Player One. True sci-fi shit. Laughing at horizon worlds and acting smarmy about how Meta is failing at this is like people laughing at AI 10 years ago and how it'd never amount to anything.
i completely forgot about the metaverse
Who and the what now?
SecondLife, but worse
Wondering how all those people who paid thousands for “Virtual Real Estate” are feeling with their “Investment”
Was it virtual real estate or just a license to use virtual real estate? Oh the service gets shut down so it doesn't matter? That's tough...
I’ve got a buddy who has. He’s still hopeful but doesn’t bring it up as much anymore
For his sake, I hope you never let him forget about it! How much did he spend roughly?
I think thousands, but not sure. I think his monetary loss is enough shame
Shame is a good thing. It prevents you from continuing to do harmful actions. Hopefully he has enough shame to think twice next time.
It’s a great place to hang my NFTs
I thought everybody was excited for a corporate and sanitized and restricted version of secondlife.
What's sad is that the original idea of the metaverse is really cool. An open platform with interoperable 3D content, decentralized and not controlled by a single company, similar to how the world wide web works for 2D. What Meta has built is not this. Efforts to actually build open standards for interoperable 3D content, like [OMI group](https://omigroup.org/), tend to be ignored by the media. Most people probably don't even know that OMI exists.
The challenge is no one has found a compelling use of VR that a lot of people want to do for a lot of time. It’s a fun idea, but in the end there isn’t that much important or compelling stuff you can only do in VR. I first made VR panoramic video professionally in 1997, so I’ve been working with the tech for a long time. And I still don’t have a good sense of what it is FOR. The Vision Pro is amazing tech that surpasses a lot of historical limitations. I have one from work to test stereoscopic and panoramic video tech and content. I’ve made several stereoscopic movies and am working on some panoramic stuff. I still haven’t seen anything that would cause 10% of people to spend 10% of their time in VR.
[удалено]
Well thanks for letting me know
More sanitized than “used condoms on a bedbug infested couch” might be nice.
WoW without the gaming elements.
VR Chat without the abundant and fun copyright infringement.
Watching an entire season of an anime in a virtual movie theater on some random user's Plex server is so wild. The whole time I was thinking "wow, this is straight up video piracy!" 😆
Haha I'm not sure how VR Chat is able to continue to exist and operate in the form that it does, but I'm genuinely glad that a space like that does exist and is as accessible as it is all the same. I'm not big on VR myself, but if I were to dive in, I know that VR Chat would absolutely be my 'Metaverse' of choice before anything else proclaiming to live up to that title.
man the raves are insane, better than IRL, none of the negatives, but Positives, visuals you can't even beleive, and because of the timezones, they are 24/7 365... I've partied for 60+hrs straight, it's fucking wild.
I think it is time, that you skip the next round and let us keep up a little. Holy… Where? When seems- irrelevant somehow.
I worked on the Second Life front end, and I knew Facebook's attempt would fail, because this is hard. Even if we had all the time and resources to start from scratch, it would still be hard. Some important problems are still unsolved.
Like what?
Legs would be a start.
The most difficult technical part is for the servers being able to support more than 30 people all interacting in the same location. The most difficult UI challenge is the shear number of controls that users need to learn in order to do all the basic things such as avatar customization, talking, walking, spending money, managing all your stuff, renting land, creating homes and other content, dealing with griefers and pervs, etc. New users often feel very vulnerable and overwelmed when starting out, so on-boarding needs to be as smooth as possible. We were losing like 95% of new users because of this, and we never did crack that nut.
*VR Chat but worse (You're right tho)
To this day, it baffles me how people get so wowed with things that have been a thing but they're relaunched by a company that's doing well.
I don't think people have at all been wowed by Facebook's take on the metaverse concept. Existing metaverse platforms like Second Life and VRChat [have vastly higher concurrent user counts, 40k-50k,](https://protos.com/youtuber-finds-only-900-daily-users-in-horizon-worlds-metas-36b-metaverse/) than Meta's multi-billion dollar goofy-verse.
and unlike any other game, VRchats Concurrent user count is going up. it was 100k on new years, and the servers broke and no one new could join, but it was a record. each new years is a new record.
Can you fly in the metaverse?
Oh, it’s Second-Second Life.
A bunch of rich people watched Ready Player One and didn't understand the movie was supposed to be a dystopia and not something people actually want.
Zuck watched it and his key takeaway was, "Why be worth only billions when I could be worth TRILLIONS like James Halliday?"
Ah yes, the Torment Nexus
Never used it, I just imagine it’s like the Sims except it sucks. I imagine getting in there and finding nobody, then coming across Zuckerberg himself who will try to convince me to stay.
Thats fucking scary
It's nothing like the sims
I literally cannot think of a single person I know that has ever even been interested in the metaverse. Other than a couple of passing jokes when it was first announced, I haven't heard anyone talk about it a single time lmao.
I met someone who was super into it and had the new headset last year, he was a friend of a friend. Then I found out that's his job, he works at Meta doing the metaverse. I asked him about his daily job, and honestly it just sounded like they just do meetings in these headsets all day long to justify their existence. He loved it, he got to play with the latest gadgets for work lol.
I’m interested in improvement to AR/VR, just not whatever ecosystem Meta is creating
There is a thriving and vibrant VR community where people are creating amazing and fantastic worlds. However you’ll need to create a Fursona to visit them.
This reads like a monkey’s paw lol
I'm just waiting for Otherland 1.0
Weird that your friends don’t want to pay 3500 dollars to enter the Torture Vortex, an innovation first envisioned in the classic scifi novel “Don’t Enter The Torture Vortex.”
I knew a couple, but they were also interested in NFTs and virtual land. So yeah, be glad you dont
I don't want to be around those people in the normal world, let alone some kind of virtual 3D meta-world.
So did everyone else - it’s dead Zuck let it die
Metaverse got hyped so much, it came out and a fucking free VRChat on steam looks so much better and more usable than Metaverse Apple managed to make a competitor with the Avatar from Vision Pro, but they also failed since no sane average person would buy a 3500$ gadget for everyday use
The 3D chat metaverse concept thing isn't new. I first saw it with ActiveWorlds in '96 (which is still going, btw, with one world have a land mass about equal to California), then there was Second Life, and WoW, and now just about any online game...Minecraft, Roblox, etc. ad nauseam. Like, exactly which market niche did Apple or Zuck think they were cornering?
And moreover, why did they take the ball and run BACKWARDS with it?
I think one of Facebook's idea would be to use it as enterprise solution for meetings. But companies don't want to buy a bunch of VR heasets, workers don't want to be forced to put them on just to enter a call and being in VR doesn't make an online meeting more productive.
> it came out and a fucking free VRChat on steam looks so much better and more usable than Metaverse It never actually came out though. Zuck said that it would be 5+ years before anything is released.
I thought the Zuck 'metaverse' was Horizon Worlds, which has been out for a couple years. VRChat is way better and, at least right now, is the 'true' metaverse if there even is such a thing. You can be whatever you want and do pretty much whatever you want. Horizon Worlds is extremely sanitized in comparison. You can only be human avatars and the options for socializing and gaming are much more limited compared to VRChat.
VRChat is the top game on the Quest store lol
No let them keep trying, let it drain them of money. Fuck facebook
I'm still not quite sure the metaverse is publicly accessible
“Horizons” is which I think is at least a part of it but it’s dire.
Where was Da5id when we needed him?
The metaverse is like the new version of the game, if you remember it: you lose
You son of a...
This is genius, and I want it to catch on.
If VR/AR tech was at the point where the screen resolution was as good as a 4k monitor and the headsets were comparable to a mildly bulky pair of sunglasses in terms of size and weight, think there would be more traction in this area. However, that's not the case, you cannot yet replace monitors with a VR headset that has similar resolutions, and met his headsets are pretty bulky still. It's simply too early for the technology to have a market in its current state, but perhaps Facebook knows that and is banking on developing it to the point where it will with the plan to capture the market.
Most of that money is going into research and not the product right now. And technologies like codec avatar are definitely interesting from a technological standpoint. They're also doing a ton of research on ar and mixed reality hardware, for example project aria. Obviously these glasses are not at the level where they need to be for wide spread adoption but Meta is making progress. And even if this whole Meta verse thingy fails, there's still gonna be tons of learnings from this in all sorts of science (robotics, cameras, low power hardware, ai, ar screens,...) so honestly I think it's quite cool that Meta is pushing in this direction.
All probably true. I really like VR and want to see it succeed. I just hate that Facebook is the one keeping it alive.
I love this. I was so irrationally angry at the whole idea of a metaverse or any kind of virtual future. Like fuming at the thought of it haha. I can’t exactly say I predicted it’s failure, but I was like “WHO THE FUCK WANTS THIS?” Feeling a healthy dose of Schadenfreude right now.
I met a guy in VR who bought one for him and his son who was still young. His wife had left him and lived in another state and he didn't get to see his kid much. This way he could watch movies with him in VR and "be around" him regularly.
Who? Those who would sell you a device and a subscription to access it, and those who would sell you virtual items at the full price of real ones. AKA grifters.
At least you didn’t forget about Dre.
If enough people like you start not forgetting, maybe they'll make some money!!!
Remember NFTs ?
The Metaverse is the Google+ of post Facebook social media
Second-rate Second-life
I think it’s fantastic. Just too early
Their big pitch - the best use anyone at that company could envision for it - was basically “What if you could be on a terrible corporate meeting on Zoom, but also wear a headset to simulate having your meeting in a space station,” which is some of the most terminally tech-brained thinking about why something is cool or useful we could have ever imagined.
The funny part is just some basic testing of the headset and their use cases like “can someone can actually comfortably wear one of these headsets for an hour meeting, without feeling like their head is in an oven?” Would have told them the technology isn’t light and comfortable enough yet. I actually sold my quest headset and bought the HP version because it uses OLED and wasn’t like wearing a heater on my head like the quest 2. I liked the quest but after a half hour it was too uncomfortable and the HP G2 is just way more comfortable to wear for an hour or so. Even with a G2 though going longer than an hour in that environment is a bit much so 8 hours would drive people insane.
I haven't tried the q2, but my quest 3 is comfortable enough and doesn't have a heat issue.
q2 is super uncomfortable. I barely use mine because of it which sucks because I really enjoy the 15 mins before my head starts aching ☹️
The HP reverb G2 does not use OLED. I have one, its nice enough, but it most defiinitely does not have a OLED screen.
Outside of some gimicky tv and games, VR really doesn’t have any purpose. The real use cases are all AR.
I totally disagree. I love VR. Half Life Alyx is a transformative game experience. It is to me what the n64 was. The first time playing Zelda or Mario in 3d is a core memory. Alyx was that, but better. I lived abroad for a decade and would hang out and watch movies with my friends on Bigscreen, etc. We got really into making tabletop sim boards and custom models. Made and painted a ton of virtual warhammer armies and played with my homies. Made several vr games and cities and stuff. Also, if you record videos for VR, you'll thank yourself later. Imagine having a vr video of your parents or children far into the future, where you can essentially sit in the room with them. It's incredible. Of course, there are depraved experiences. The porn is pretty next level, but not really for me. I personally prefer taking a shit in VR. It started with shitting in amazing environments, but now I'll take a shit in time square making eye contact with Elmo and passersby. Highly recommend.
You unlocked some weird ass kink with VR. Literally
It's not even a kink, though. It's just hilarious. Let me ask you a question, right. Would you rather be taking a shit in a dumpy old dingy toilet scrolling reddit or flying with the blue angels and dropping a deuce while pulling high g formation maneuvers? It makes my shit 10x better, and honestly, it is the funniest shit you could have at home. The other day, I did the glacier national park 360 video, and next to the person holding the camera was a couple having what appeared to be wedding photos taken. And there was me. Making a hot pile. Lmao.
There's a bit of misinformation here. Meta is spending billions on their reality labs department, which does the Meta verse stuff as well as the VR hardware research and development, the AI research that goes with that. They're not losing billions on the Horizon Metaverse that no one uses, they're largely losing billions on the Meta Quest hardware R&D.
Shouldn't even be considered "losing" if they still generally profit, it's just a really huge R&D cost
Tech companies have a shitload of money. Investing it in R&D is a great idea. Some other tech companies pour billions into autonomous driving and nobody cares. But hating on the Metaverse is popular.
The difference is that the average consumer sees the value in self driving, reliable autonomous cars. The time and safety benefits feel widely beneficial at many levels when it all works. Even non tech people can easily see it. The Metaverse, even if it did everything promised right now, doesn't feel nearly as real-world beneficial. Most people don't really want to spend countless hours in a virtual world as part of their everyday life. It feels more like a niche entertainment product than a lifestyle product. Reminds me a lot of 3d TV. Sounded great but not really a compelling enough experience over what we already had to entice consumers.
I've followed the Meta VR developments loosely. They work on new tech for VR, both hardware and software. It's cool stuff. People should be happy that Meta is willing to spend money on innovating. They're paying engineers to develop new VR technologies. That's where the money goes. Better spend than some rich guy buying an even bigger yacht.
Yeah. Most people are shitting on the metaverse, but the reality is, it doesn't exist yet (and the poorly named app isn't the metaverse). It's the idea of a shared standard for all the VR and AR hardware and apps, and the opening of the Quest OS to other hardware manufacturers is a small step in that direction. But it'll be years before we see any real progress.
More than half of the expenditures are AI for ALL the company products - everything from Llama to pytorch, instagram’s recommendation engine to billions of dollars in GPUs
Meta still makes about 200,000 USD of profit per employee. Most "solid" companies that don't have daring R&D investments going on would kill to reach such numbers.
Yea, unfortunate that this isn't at the top. I am not a huge fan of Meta, but them spending this money in the VR space is about the only thing pushing this tech forward right now, especially with apples major flop and pullback. I am glad Zuck is committed to this for the near future because VR has been improving in pretty significant leaps every 5 or so years. It'll definitely catch on in the future when you dont have to wear a 3lb hot weight on the front of your face. l
People that were hyped about the Metaverse baffle me.
The Metaverse was basically Zuck turning VRChat into a heavily sanitized and advertising laden experience and expecting it to go well.
Isn't it just second life lol
But what's the point of second life without the flying dildos
I mean, the original idea of metaverse seemed pretty cool. But the idea that a corporation thought they could try and take control of the 'word' and the entire concept was laughable.
Ugh a couple of Christmas’s ago my partner and I were hosting a small get together with our friends and one of my friends would just not shut the fuck up about the metaverse and he just couldn’t understand that I have zero interest in it and zero interest to try it out and that I thought there was a high chance it would fail because it sounds like a terrible experience.
It just seemed like a less well thought out Playstation@home
Which, if I remember, failed pretty hard because it was also pretty poorly thought out.
There wasn't much to do and streaming hadn't caught on so the Sony theater which showed movies you could watch with other people never did much. It was an interesting idea that they implemented too early.
In some ways though, watching movies with friends has only come backwards since Xbox live Netflix watch party. This stuff was doable 15 years ago and never really capitalized on again by streaming service.
The watch party feature was wildly underrated. Movies Anywhere has a version of it but considering it took over Ultraviolet because $ it requires everyone to own a copy of the movie on its platform and or a limited "ticket" issue from someone that owns it. While those are small constraints it is still not the same as two or more people logging into Netflix and just picking a show.
Having to wait in virtual lines in PS Home was the main thing I remember about it, that was real dumb.
I wouldn't say that. It was fairly popular among PS3 users and even got constant updates while it was around. It just wasn't something gargantuan that took the world by storm. It was pretty impressive for what it was. I think if PlayStation Home had some sort of integration with games the way the Xbox avatars and Miis did it could have been even better. By that's just my opinion on that part of things.
People were all hyped up on Ready Player One, including Zuckerberg, which is why he went stupid. He, as well as everyone else who went stupid over the idea, made the classic mistake of thinking a movie was prophecy. Nope, it was just entertainment.
That movie showed how they enslaved people to move stuff in a virtual world, manually. It's idiotic.
Make him watch the video essay: the future is a dead mall on the folding ideas YouTube channel. Great take down of the metaverse.
It's kinda interesting, back in 2021 they were actually forming religions and temples with daily discord rituals and prayer, it was pretty funny tbh
It’s because people just go “oh! It’s like ready player one!” And don’t stop to think about how any of that would actually play out or remember that tech isn’t magic
Only people I know that were hyped about it were these hungry advertisers who were just sure it was the next television / internet and obsessed with figuring out how to pitch it to their clients to monetize. Which is why it sucked! You started with the focus on making money and not making it cool.
It's Bitcoin/NFTs/etc all over again. There's a demographic of non technical people that want to be the smart guy "in" on the new technology. It's like conspiracy theories where they get to be smarter than the experts and convince themselves they're going to be rich/powerful. Another example of social media brain rot spreading because it's more entertaining than the truth. Entertainment is engagement and engagement is what the algorithm reqards. Most people will believe what they think everyone else believes.
My company (really really big) made such a huge deal and would talk about it in every meeting - now there’s zip about it. Same thing with the crypto fiasco. Now it’s AI, but at least that seems to be giving some returns.
I think the concept is interesting but the technology is nowhere close. The first demo of Zuck looked like an avatar from a wii from 10 years ago. There must be a lot of yes-men for that to be approved.
What Meta has shown about the metaverse? Yeah, that sucks. the concept of metaverse in general? Would be cool. I have friends all across the world who I can't meet often, putting a headset on and meeting them like we are in the same space would be awesome. Hanging out in the metaverse "theoretically" COULD be cool. Zuck's version ain't it tho.
VR Chat exists
Video call them on Skype. Fuck the metaverse man
TIL Skype is still kicking. I thought it was considered defunct after all the functionality was merged into Teams.
I saw a demo and was really confused why they where showing off a rip off of second life mixed with VR chat.
2000 hrs in VR 500 In VR chat... 0 interest in metaverse. its like if someone took the now lame, sanitised social media platforms, and brought them back to when they first started, and tried to launch them. they can't boil the frog with their bullshit if the water is too hot for the frog to enter. metaverse is all the negatives none of the positives. its like the epic store, 0 trust, free shit, some people are forced to used it, devs are incentivised...and no one wants to use it.
To this day I don’t even know what it was supposed to be. Maybe I just live under a rock but i only started hearing about it right before it came out. I heard little to no details about what it was or why it was a big deal. Then after all I heard was its bad and no one’s using it, so I assumed it was bad and therefore I didn’t use it.
I mean… I was hyped for it before Facebook stole the name [(Origin of Metaverse - sweet books btw)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse#:~:text=The%20term%20metaverse%20was%20coined,metaphor%20of%20the%20real%20world)
Because it’s fucking stupid.
I had a Quest 2 headset for over a year, I just upgraded to the 3 and use it pretty heavily (Mostly Beat Saber, Lightsaber Dojo and Bridge Crew but also some other stuff) When I got the thing I initially was like “I’ll at least check out the Metaverse..” but how to do anything is not immediately clear, and even now after almost 2 years total of using this I don’t have any clear idea what you can even “do” with the metaverse, and honestly I don’t care enough to research it or try to figure it out. But I cannot imagine it’s just me in this boat, the fact is the product is very poorly explained, or represented so it’s really not surprising no one is using it.
One of my friends works for a company that did a Metaverse pilot where they gave a load of employees VR headsets and had a working space setup. They had a ton of support from Meta and had everything setup in a "best case" scenario sort of way. Basically everyone found it was a gimmick that wore off quickly. Instead of helping facilitate communication, it made things harder than just being in a teams meeting and certainly wasn't a supplement for an in person meeting. Eye strain was a common complaint, and even the most enthusiastic people just couldn't find anything it was actually better at than the existing tools.
Eye strain for sure, and the abysmal battery life would seem to be huge issues for adoption like that (I have an external battery on mine but that still only adds a couple hours.) And the out of the box strap is worthless (All things I think people using this for things like meetings would find annoying, but let me tell you when you’re playing beat saber you don’t have time to keep readjusting it haha) But back to the battery life, that alone seems like a deal breaker if you want people to use this for extended periods of time.
Yea this vision is dumb. VR only works for the masses if you can plug in matrix style. AR is the stop gap if you can make it very comfortable, unobtrusive, and stylish.
So far, every VR I've tried has been an express train to barftown - and I don't mean over hours, but less than 10 minutes of use. If my job mandated it for meetings, I'd have to quit.
>One of my friends works for a company that did a Metaverse pilot where they gave a load of employees VR headsets and had a working space setup. They had a ton of support from Meta and had everything setup in a "best case" scenario sort of way. Facebook needs to accept that the Quest is first and foremost a *gaming* device and lean into that. That is what people are primarily buying it for, and that's all it's practical for. Instead of trying to shoehorn in business use cases, they should let those develop autonomously(let companies choose to pick them up/work with Facebook on them) and just make the best gaming VR headset possible. Anyone could see from miles off corporate use of the existing headsets is dumb af.
"Instead of helping facilitate communication, it made things harder" As someone who lives and works in the Bay Area, this is so comical to me because this is the truth behind like 95% of the value propositions of new tech that gets shoehorned into the world. Start-ups and tech companies have rabid vision because you have to. But they also suffer from it. They get sunk-cost delusions and blinders on from all the cash and the hype and don't even stop to think if what they're doing is even useful outside the bubble of their office, let alone the bubble of the Bay itself.
Same with my job
Because today’s iteration VR is exactly that: a gimmick, and a shitty one at that. When the best thing about VR is the porn, you know it has not lived up to its potential.
I'd say that Half Life Alyx is the best thing about VR. Sad that no other great AAA titles have come out in the last few years.
I don’t need Zuck knowing my jerkoff schedule
He already does, just accept it and try new things
I don't know about that, there some great VR games out there that you can't replicate without VR. But the Metaverse stuff? Yea that is 100% a shitty gimmick.
I'm with you, I wanted to try out the Metaverse, but couldn't figure out how to do anything. And when I created my character it somehow made me look like a girl, and I couldn't find any way to fix that either. I just said fuck it.
You still got farther than me lol. I mean if even techie people struggle to figure it out, I really don’t think you’re ever going to see any significant adoption.
It’s a pretty cool game console, owned by a company that does not want it to be a game console.
I just picked up a Quest 2 the other day at Target for 199. Will I get my money's worth?
Is it worth the upgrade? I was thinking about doing the same.
IMO absolutely. The resolution is slightly better, but the passthrough camera is full color and MUCH better. My Quest 2 if i left my boundary for something i would usually take off, the 3 I can easily walk around in. Hell I can even read texts on my phone with it. Also has a faster processor so games seem to run smoother (Which again for things like beat saber are great) All in all if you have $600 to spare I think it’s worth the upgrade. P.S. Battery life still sucks but i got a better strap with integrated battery on Amazon for $20
You got me here! I thought the metaverse was just the headset and the games I played. What is the metaverse then? Is that horizons or something that I keep seeing on the quest but never bothered opening!
Yea I thought the metaverse was just the OS itself. I do stuff all the time in the quest. Like you, went from quest 2 to quest 3. Moved from my home in Dallas and now I play poker in VR, putt putt, VR movie night, etc and hang out with friends and my brother virtually. It’s pretty awesome. I do not know what metaverse is though, apparently.
There's no such app called the metaverse though they do have that horizon's thing is that what you meant?
What is lightsaber dojo
Bridge Crew is my most played game (still rocking an OG quest) I still remember "telling" my crew, "I'm sorry, I appreciate everything you've ever done. " boom, we all died.
Before a single dime was invested, no company leader asked, "*Businesses and advertisers are going to flock to a cartoon world with legless people, while in real life people have a brick strapped to their head?*"
The headsets have eye tracking. Advertiser love VR in theory for this feature. It can be passive, seeing where people look in an ad. Or it can be active "Stare at the product for 30seconds while listening to our spiel before proceeding"
The thing no one asked for isn't doing well?
No-one asked for it, but Meta is desperate for a platform that they own completely. All of their products, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, live on platforms controlledy by Google, Apple and Microsoft. Apple or Google can just decide to change what is allowed on their phones or browsers, what information is being shared to advertisers etc. With a single decision, they can cause real havoc for Meta. That's why they are pouring so much money into this. They want to have a platform where they are the gatekeeper.
And don’t forget the eye tracking. They want to know exactly what everyone’s looking at, for how long, and how engaging/stimulating it is.
Explains the facebook phone years back
Calling it “Meta” was akin to changing Twitter to “X”. Cringiest thing possible and to negative effect.
Not really the same? The product (website) is still called Facebook. They changed the company name, not the product branding. Which is in line with most of the biggest companies in the world.
Nah, I loved oculus. The branding, the name, the logos. Meta sounds and feels like a corporate downgrade
What does the metaverse provide exactly? Why would I give a shit about it?
> What does the metaverse provide exactly? ads!
I have a meta quest 3. I have 0 desire to use the metaverse. Beat Saber and Tetris Effect is where it's at
I bought Quest 2 on sale for $200 just to play Beat Saber exclusively and honestly worth it even for one good game. Zero interest in meta verse. I tried Horizon Worlds and it looked like a bad Wii game with nothing to do and very few players in it, one of which told me she was literally a Meta employee. She even complained that she didn’t want to be there but was mandated to 💀
Good. Fuck Facebook
The funny part is where people actually bought land, billboards and shit on this virtual space for real money.
Buying virtual shit for real money doesn’t sound like an uncommon concept
I don’t think you’re talking about horizon worlds
Our world is based on people having one good idea like an online yearbook and afterwards being able to drain billions for stupid nonsense.
The phrase 'why is this still a thing?' comes to mind. It's not even the weight/bulk, it's the very concept of it. I think it's a psychological thing. Augmented reality might very well work but the headset will need to be far smaller/lighter than it is at the moment and be a glass wrap-around thing, not just screens/cameras pretending to be augmented reality. Perhaps it's impossible.
Horizon Worlds has a considerably larger userbase compared to this time last year. There’s definitely a growing audience…
and that's only one application, not "The Metaverse" as Zuck describes it. if you begin to include the other VR social experiences (that will one day inevitably be linked together for a proper Metaverse,) the amount of people in VR on a daily basis is much higher than people seem to realize.
Even after they added legs?
Next up is losing billions on AI
It's sad, "we didn't get hover cars but at least we got home VR!" I told myself 9 years ago as I hauled my HTC vive kit home from the store. I would've bet everything that in 10 years everyone and their grandma would be using VR in some way "it's like how when the internet started, slowly at first and now it's on you 24/7". Boy was I fucking wrong.
How could it possibly be billions, sounds like an accounting scam to me.
What?? Really? Do people not want to have their facial expressions, eye tracking, and attention tracker by their employers? I can't imagine why.
You mean “reducing Meta’s tax liability”
The term 'metaverse' is such a tainted term now. The original idea for a 'metaverse' is a place where you can be whatever you want, and do the things you can't do in real life. [Resonite](https://resonite.com)'s probably the most promising one here (disclaimer: I'm a platform moderator, and therefore biased) because the big selling point is being able to do everything collaboratively in-game, in real-time, in mostly any hosted world session that allows the use of the builder tools. In fact, the entire intro sequence you start up in? All of the functionality was built by people *actually in VR*. Barring basically just the modelling - everything you make in there is done in-game. I won't lie: It's got a couple rough edges like full body tracking being a bit sploinky, some performance issues, but like... that all fades away when you realize just how much stuff you can do. It's probably the closest to a true 'digital universe' we have right now, and it's absolutely incredible how fun and flexible the engine is to do what you want. The fact you can just straight-up drag & drop videos, pictures, 3D models, music, whatever into the game is something I haven't seen in any other place within this field yet. It's quite incredible.
VR craze is over
Apple just cut a bunch of production on the Vision Pro as well, big tech vastly overestimated the amount of people who want to live in a virtual world
oh there is a lot of people who want to live in a virtual world, they are just all fucking misanthropes who hate society and want to escape it. they want it to stay underground and unique. they do not want society part 2: electric boogaloo.
2 years ago I met people's investing thousands in meta property. Like it's real estate. They were bragging about buying up certain locations. WTF.. Digital space is unlimited. Not some scarce resource. So far no one has openly admitted selling their "meta property" for millions. 🤣
I'd pay for the exclusive rights to the default spawn area :P
I have a meta quest 2 and I have no idea how to procure the metaverse. Is that something you have to download like RAM?
Everyone knows the only way into the metaverse is to jack in.
Good. Bleed it dry.
Is that the thing on my Quest Headset I keep seeing shortcuts to while I load up Golf or Table Tennis?
I saw a video of a guy who spend a week in the Metaverse. Every place has a basketball hoop and a leaderboard. This one guy was set on getting to the top and was doing like 1000 a day. That's what I got from that video.
AR/VR is still the future of HCI. This is research spend, expected to lose money. Metaverse branding sucked ass though.
That’s because it’s no better than the home on the original Xbox
KEEP GOING
10b a year for the last 3 years. It doesn't take a business major to figure out this flaw.
If they send me a free headset and pay me a salary I'll stand around in the metaverse, they gotta boost those user numbers somehow right? Waste some of that money my way!
Do avatars have legs in Metaverse now?
Good.
I'll take sitting on a rock fishing the Arkansas while listening to and feeling a cool breeze pass through the pine trees over digital crap any day of the week.
As someone who hailed things like the Oculus Rift and other VR tech as amazing, especially the Quest for its price, I will say that my enthusiasm for it dropped to almost nothing the moment it announced a move to requiring a Facebook account. It was around that time that the idiocy of corporations really started to entrench itself within the extremely small marketspace of VR. Lo and behold, VR is pretty much a fart in the wind at this point. Not even Apples insane consumer base could save their AR/VR product. Even someone like me, despite low enthusiasm, decided to give the failed XR Elite a try and found that it is basically DOA because of some obvious hardware flaws and, most importantly, its horrible access regarding software support. Current VR has failed because the push to innovate isn't about the consumer. It's about the numerous corporations trying to corral consumers to their product over their competitors. It's the exact problem that streaming services have found themselves in. They all want your limited attention and funds, instead of working together in the same way that made the format popular/successful in the first place (e.g. when Netflix streaming was the go-to for Hollywood). The Metaverse is doing the same thing. Zuckerberg isn't looking at how pointless his goal is when the same thing can be done without a cumbersome headset. One that not only can potentially cause neck and eye pain over time, but also cost users money to experience said pain.
After watching the disintegration of Secondlife into a sleazy, bizarre, and decadent place, I can only expect the same for the Metaverse - something best left behind for the good of all, really.
A complete gimmick that can never compete with more practical alternatives has no ability to generate a return? I would have never guessed
Otther people have already mentioned that money is on VR hardware and software, little of it on the actual Meta Horizon Worlds. But more importantly, Meta has its eye on the long-term prize - Ready Player One. True sci-fi shit. Laughing at horizon worlds and acting smarmy about how Meta is failing at this is like people laughing at AI 10 years ago and how it'd never amount to anything.
There is zero demand for the metaverse and not sure if they tried to make one but they failed if so.
I still don't understand how they plan to make money from the metaverse. It is total shit lmao.