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Comment by gitgud | Hacker News Reader

> "The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it's called the internet

> Being 'inside' a virtual world was never really the important part"

Well, the facebook keynote presents a compelling argument how social interaction with VR can be more meaningful than through a 2D screen in many situations.

However, what IS bullshit, is the display of obviously fake demonstrations with highly experimental and expensive technology.

The reality is, most of the tech, won't be accessible or even productised for a long time, as they didn't even announce any planned dates...

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Zuckerberg sees that anime fans and furries love spending time on VRchat and he wants to build it out for fans of football and the Kardashians.

People that buy Louis Vuitton are going to shell out for NFT metaverse skins and wear dorky headsets.

That totally tracks.

I have no idea what's going to happen, but computers used to be a thing for "nerds", now everybody uses them every day.

The nerd move on to nerd out the next big things. Nerds by definition find a niche to stand out and life goes on...

What is true is that the amount of time people spend finessing their fictional online persona vs their boring reality is dramatically shifting, particularly for younger generations.

It's now common for some to use stylized/beautified cartoon 'avatars' in a professional context. People communicate using contrived and performative message board speak with coworkers. Even the 'influencers' spend a large chunk of their life editing and constructing an unrecognisable version of themselves.

If you meet some of these people in real life it's obvious why they do so - reality is too dull, too expensive in time and effort to find a way of standing out from the crowd. Online you can pretend to be whatever you want to be. I see this trend continuing.

Well, normie kids did glom onto Fortnite en masse, and then started bullying each other over their Fortnite avatars' equipment...

Makes me wonder if that's the whole point. Kind of like a carrot on a stick. While Facebooks business practices continues as normal.

>Makes me wonder if that's the whole point.

A distraction from all the criticism they are currently receiving.

For me, this is the showstopper. If Facebook is involved, that pretty much poisons the well.

What percentage of total internet traffic runs though Facebook and how much "market share" will be enough?

What’re you talking about? You can make a low end VR headset out of a $100 smartphone and a $5 plastic box today

5-10 years after VR starts to really take off, you’ll be able to get a decent standalone VR headset for $200 or less. They’ll probably be cheaper to make than laptops or TVs in the long run because of the smaller displays.

How am I going to have a video chat while I wear VR goggles covering half my face?

Avatars…

Avatars and eye-tracking.

https://www.oculus.com/workrooms/

Maybe I'm old, but I don't see what advantage this has over video conferencing unless the focus of the discussion is on things - like documents, schematics, or 3d models - rather than people.

Avatars would feel like creepy cartoons because your brain knows the voice of the person but your eyes see a cartoon image.

In just a few minutes, most people start treating those cartoons as real people without even realizing it. Ask anyone who's tried these things (they are already available: https://www.vspatial.com/, https://www.oculus.com/blog/workrooms/)

I don't know if this is a truism in the VR community, but the brain really does want to make consistent sense of things.

Tried it. Hated it. "Most"? Get a bigger sample size, then we'll talk.

The benefit is that instead of being a cringe m*le I can be a cute little fox girl. Realistic avatars would be more creepy imo.

Avatars. Really. So what do I do to convey my facial expressions?

So, 5-10 years after some indeterminate future date?

Smaller displays doesn't necessarily mean cheaper, I would expect requirements are higher for screens kept a few inches from the eyes.

> "You can make a low end VR headset out of a $100 smartphone and a $5 plastic box"

Have you ever tried that? Smart phones as VR are extremely disorientating and the latency of the gyro makes it unusable.

I've got an Oculus Quest and it's amazing how well it works using the 4 camera vision-system instead of a gyro.

What they were demonstrating in the meta-verse was facial-tracking attached to VR headsets, which is super expensive experimental technology which is not going to be commercially available for quite some time.

I agree other than facial tracking being super expensive or not commercially available, because you can get it right now[1].

[1] https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/facial-tracker/ & https://www.hp.com/us-en/vr/reverb-g2-vr-headset-omnicept-ed...

Woah that's cool, I stand corrected. It's interesting they would demonstrate that as cutting edge research in the metaverse keynote then.

Not instead of a gyro, Quest still uses gyro and accelerometer compensated with camera SLAM.

True, yes I meant instead of purely gyro orientation.

> You can make a low end VR headset out of a $100 smartphone and a $5 plastic box today

That's not low end VR, it's pain and frustration from knowing you just wasted 105 bucks.

It sounds to me like you never tried a setup like this. Because in reality you mainly spend time adjusting the lenses because focus is so bad you can't even tell which setting is better. The pixel grid is so huge that reading any form of text (like menus) is near impossible. The latency is bad and your view constantly drifts over time because the phone sensors don't cut it, so you better sit on a rotating chair. Oh, and if you've all that covered somehow you'll realize mediocre VR video players and bad rollercoaster demos are pretty much the best phone VR can offer.

haha, easy there killer. I hate Google Cardboard for poisoning the well just as much as everyone in this subthread does

Someone was going on and on about how Facebook is showing off a (likely) $50,000 prototype and I was just explaining that 2021's $50,000 prototype is 2031's $100 at Wal-Mart

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