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Comment by dvt | Hacker News Reader

Honest question: what is Facebook trying to accomplish? What exactly is the "Metaverse?" Their Superbowl ad was just straight-up weird & confusing. I'm honestly not sure what their product team's vision is.

Does anyone actually see the majority of the planet strapping Oculuses to their face and spending even a fraction of the amount of time there that people are currently spending on FB and IG?

I have an Oculus and other than Beatsaber and Alyx and a few other titles/apps, it's just not that exciting. The Nintendo Switch is at least an order of magnitude more fun.

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I think it really boils down to, they need a near future myth for investors to speculate their stock price up. That myth is, ubiquitous, always-on AR is just around the corner, and they're going to be the platform it runs on.

This seems like the most plausible explanation to me. But Zuckerberg does also seem weird and unsocialized enough to actually believe there's potential in the metaverse.

Yes, exactly. This is just like Uber and self-driving cars…only instead of “this will lower our costs and finally make us profitable!” it’s “this is another platform where we can have infinite growth!” It’s a tacit acknowledgement that the days of wild growth for their existing platform are over.

A future myth? They've been printing money for over a decade now. Their first positive net income was 2009. Apart from last quarter, they're still gaining users every year, sometime double digit percentages. They were able to squeeze multiple times the revenue out of their user base than other social networks.

If they execute on VR half as well as they did their core product than the hype is real

> A future myth?

Yes, a story about the future that he wants to generate a collective social belief in.

Reminiscent of the Uber play - once it was widely noticed they couldn't drive costs down enough to achieve profitability, there needed to be another narrative to maintain optimism in the company.

And so the narrative changed, from:

"through the magic of {pixie dust technology} we can make providing chauffeur services so cheap it would be hugely profitable"

"we will replace all the human drivers with robots, any day now"

Of course, that future was much, much further away than purported, but it certainly was useful for pumping up optimism in a company where the present-day situation isn't necessarily favorable.

FB's money-printing products seem to be facing major headwinds. They're scandal-wracked, user growth is plateauing heavily especially in the most profitable markets, and a fast-moving competitor is rapidly eating into their most coveted growth areas and they seem unable to convincingly fight the trend. A narrative shift is certainly needed for them.

which competitor are you thinking of?

Bytedance (TikTok) is the one most often discussed.

Problem is, if Uber recent news are anything to go by, in the current environment investors aren't interested in promises, they want to see results and they want to see them now.

Uber literally just forecasted positive cash flow by the end of this year, and the stock tanked. FB banking on a far future R&D move is not likely to fly well with investors. Most certainly not in the near future.

Oh I fully agree, investors won't be nearly as credulous with FB as they were with past companies with wildly optimistic visions (and not nearly such rosy results in reality) like WeWork or Uber.

I think it's both a function of investors having been burned in the recent past with unicorns failing to deliver on their lofty promises, but also the reality that FB has suffered significant (read: catastrophic) reputation damage from the endless stream of scandals. FB employees seem to have an inexhaustible belief that they can weather any storm without permanent harm, but I suspect that isn't actually true.

More than that, the narrative shift isn't convincing. At least with Uber they had fancy robot cars to show off, even if they didn't work. What does FB have to convince us of the metaverse future? A lot of expensive CGI-rendered "concept reels" and very little actual product that is actually here (or imminent). The recent Superbowl ad did not contain a single frame of actual product footage - nor did the "fake" product in any way resemble anything FB has announced!

And the little that does exist (Horizon Worlds) is... really... really... painfully bad. The fact that FB has even let the public at these experimental products (rather than iterate internally) is baffling.

As someone who's been in the consumer tech space for a really long time the strategy here is just mind-boggling. The company continues to pitch no actual product - it has remained frustratingly vague about what the metaverse even is - but also insist at the same time that the entire company is reorienting around it. What little is released is shockingly poor - to the point where one wonders if these half-baked products will poison the well against a better thought-out and genuinely useful product further down the line. It reeks not of visionary thought and more dragging whatever you can out of the experimental arm of the company to try to cement the narrative shift.

I would add this is as much about recruiting as the stock price. The scandals are crushing morale. Top engineers can go work at Apple and build the actual devices that enable FB, TikTok, etc. Or they can go work to transition the planet to sustainable energy at Tesla. Or go work on making life interplanetary at SpaceX. Or they can go build spyware, aimed at convincing people to buy shoes, at Facebook.

They needed a more exciting vision to continue to attract top talent, which is generally a prerequisite for a high stock price anyway.

Playing devil's advocate, I think they're betting on the long game.

Eventually, when XR headsets become the size and have the practicality of sunglasses, they will become as ubiquitous as smartphones are today. It would be naive to think that the current smartphone design is the end-all-be-all of personal computing devices. We're already seeing small drops in smartphone sales worldwide, some of which are undoubtedly related to the global crisis, but let's be real: the design has hardly improved from the glass slab of the iPhone. We've lost bezels and the tech has seen iterative upgrades and small innovations, but in general it's a stagnated market with no clear path forward.

Current generations of XR headsets are still far away from mass adoption, but once the tech is drastically easier to adopt, possibly within the next decade, companies will flock to fulfill the demand, and Meta will already have an established platform.

That's their bet anyway, and while I dislike everything they stand for, I can't say they're wrong in this case. Facebook might be dying, but they're seeing the writing on the wall and trying to pivot to an—as of yet—nonexistent market.

So far every venture that's tried this has failed due to the lack of smarts. If their smart speakers are even remotely as smart as their XR, this is dead in the water.

You might be a little overoptimistic! Remember you've been promised flying cars, but cars today look almost identical to those from 130 years ago.

Cars can't get any smaller because they are constrained by a much more fundamental size limit than computers: the size to fit the driver and the passenger(s) and still have an engine. Formula 1 cars are as small as it gets.

They didn't get any faster than 1960s-1970s limits because of efficiency and safety considerations, as well as the fact that a faster car means absolutely nothing on a jammed road, and traffic jams happen for reasons entirely unrelated to the speed of the cars involved. They didn't fly because of a complex mix of challenging engineering, tricky economics and the naivety of cultural expectation.

Computers are different. They are mainly limited by the size of the UI and other IO, the actual "computer" is inconceivably, inhumanly, unimaginably small. Most of our devices is just places for your fingers to touch and your eyes to see. We can keep shrinking until we get to the point where computers are things we put inside our brains cells and inject in our bloodstream, and perhaps even more.

They can absolutely get faster and more efficient than they are today. The brain that made them makes do with 100W and makes a mockery of GPT3 and CNNs. Yes it's a specialized architecture, that's the whole point. The easy money of moore's law and Dennard scaling blinded us to a whole landscape of possible computer architecture and programming paradigms, we haven't made a dent in that mine yet.

> Formula 1 cars are as small as it gets.

No, Formula 1 cars are massive. They are light but very large to maximize downforce. There are a rules that define the maximum width and no current F1 car is smaller than that. I'm fact, this year's rules also define a maximum length and some manufacturers needed to shorten their cars.

> Formula 1 cars are as small as it gets.

What? A 2021 Formula 1 car is around 2 meters wide and between 5-6 meters long, those dimensions are larger than many cars, only being beaten by pickup trucks.

Well even that size is not enough for controlled passenger flight

Isn't this a straw man argument? Nobody in their right mind promised flying cars, it is just not feasible energy-wise.

On the other hand, VR headset is just a mobile phone strapped to user's face, with it's screen always on. So the tech is already here, and if you check out Quest and Quest 2 - it is basically just that, even powered by the same Android OS.

I feel like this is a strawman argument without the nuance of the specifics of each field, or how the ideas were portrayed.

Were you promised flying cars or was it concept art of a future without the limits of physics? That's very different than ideation from companies actively working on a product and having a deep understanding of the limitations involved.

Flying cars were delivered and one flew until 1977:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerocar

The FAA rejected the dream of normal drivers instead of trained pilots having flying cars, and IMO rightly so.

By the same logic they should bet the house on nuclear fusion. It’s a sure winner and I’m sure they can connect billing to your Facebook Pay account or something.

I think we can agree that VR headsets and nuclear fusion have slightly different timeframes for mass market adoption.

That's true. One day we might have everyone using nuclear fusion.

There is a pretty good and short walkthrough of the XR term on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-specific-difference-betwee...

I have a really hard time seeing everyone would want to walk around with even sunglasses to augment their reality, though it could make sense for specific situations such as travelling to foreign countries.

But its really hard to be optimistic about some Metaverse or Second Life clone by Facebook (sorry Meta), where the difference is the use of XR.

If you are thinking about the future, why not consider using controlled robots as the movie Surrogates centers around: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogates

For gaming, XR or even VR will benefit a lot from smaller devices, but as with flying cars its still a long way off a photo realistic experience.

I agree. That's the inevitable convergence device, and it will rule the world, superseding the smartphone. I don't really see any other alternative.

But it might be five years away or thirty. I'm skeptical of Facebook's efforts in particular.

Also there are dozens of ginormous game companies producing what the FB metaverse needs in order to survive: CONTENT. FB won’t be able to create anything like the quantity or quality of content these game companies can. If they decide to play in a different arena than FB’s metaverse, it’ll meet the same fate as Stadia and for the same reasons.

> Does anyone actually see the majority of the planet strapping Oculuses to their face and spending even a fraction of the amount of time there that people are currently spending on FB and IG?

The straightforward answer is that FB leadership sincerely believes that yes, that will happen.

Conspiracy theories about alternative motivations may be fun, but this is precisely why they purchased Oculus in the first place and they’ve been pretty clear and consistent about this.

Seems more like a speculative investment to me. If it becomes big, they want to own it and be involved. If it isn't, ok. Some investments lose money.

I don’t think it’d be ok if not. They’ve spent many billions and their stock price is partially hinged on them owning “the next big thing.”

I think you're touching on why corporate America doesn't understand what r&d is supposed to be. Expecting certain returns in specific places is not the point. You fund a lot of stuff and you don't know which is going to pay off.

This isn’t R&D at this point. They’re pointing the entire direction of the company at it, publicly committing to it, renaming the company after it, and spending many billions.

Naming your company after something is generally a sign you believe in it and it's not just one of many bets you're making.

They probably changed the name to avoid their growing negative image.

It's just a name, like Pepsi. They can abandon the metaverse and still be ok.

The straightforward answer is that FB leadership sincerely believes that yes, that will happen.

Or pretends to, at any rate.

As per the incentive structures they may be presumed to enjoy at that payscale.

They'd like to own the dystopia's present in Ready Player One and Snowcrash. It's a cynical bet, at best.

Related: when was the last time Facebook had a non-acquired "good idea"?

The radioactive waste dump that was the exclusion zone is where SF is putting all its middle class housing.

Marketplace? In the ads space, I think you'd be hard pressed to find an innovation that didn't start at FB.

VR and AR solves every problem advertisers have with browsers. Browsers are: sandboxed away from the OS, are easy for users to manipulate with addons, lacking in new data streams to monetize.

Meanwhile in VR land: Root/super user/driver level access to the system (worst of drm and anticheat software), tons of new data streams (full camera, and microphone access to the room. Some day to have eye tracking, mouth tracking , and anything you fit on health tracking watches), and of course the user can only use the device through the advertisers own software (no skipping of engagement features, no more noscript, and a nice little walled garden App Store).

>Does anyone actually see the majority of the planet strapping Oculuses to their face and spending even a fraction of the amount of time there that people are currently spending on FB and IG?

I do, although it's very possible current attempts are too early for tech reasons and will remain relatively niche for years. Fundamentally the appeal of vr isn't games, it's to have communication and control ability on the level of a real life activity (or even better) but online. I'm not sure if that can be achieved without brain implants (not for vision - that's likely to remain external for a long time - but for everything else, especially motor control, sense of touch).

If brain implants are needed Facebook's attempts are at least a decade too early.

Regardless of Facebook's/Meta's current attempts, in the future majority of work and social activity will happen in vr, but the timeline is unclear. Well - at least in the timeline in which technical civilization doesn't collapse.

Pretending like they have something for the future, which they don't.

To be fair, most Big Tech companies stopped pretending a while ago.

> Pretending like they have something for the future, which they don't.

I've been following some of their research with their VR/AR hardware, and it appears to me they definitely have something for the future. They're investing massive amounts of money, and they seem to be miles ahead of everyone else (well, it doesn't seem like there is anyone else). To me, they clearly do have something for the future, with what seems like a very natural progression of technology and interacting with computers, with something like the Metaverse being an eventual end goal, maxing out that technology.

Maybe Metaverse isn't what people want, but there's so much between the computers we use now and the Metaverse that they can dip their toes in, along the way.

I'll say it with naive confidence: AR/VR is the future of display technology/use.

Something being the future isn’t very interesting if it’s always in the future. After playing the VR game Dactyl Nightmare in 1992 I figured VR was the future of video games. Thirty years later it’s still the future of gaming. By the numbers, a lot more people play VR games today, but by percentage of gamers, it’s still a rounding error.

>By the numbers, a lot more people play VR games today, but by percentage of gamers, it’s still a rounding error.

I think the big thing VR has going against it is just how antisocial it is. It's hard to have shared experiences around the technology unless enough people are already bought in.

I would say it's also hard to get buy in because you can't really describe/comprehend "presence" without experiencing it, and 2d videos or VR play don't do any favors at all.

The amount of times I've heard "I can't imagine the eyestrain from having a street that close to your face" convinced me that many people are very confused about all of this.

Hah! I had that game in my college town computer store. With my head full of Mondo2000 and Gibson, I was sure that VR was just around the corner. Little did I know it was our flying car.

>They're investing massive amounts of money, and they seem to be miles ahead of everyone else (well, it doesn't seem like there is anyone else).

Who are they ahead of? They have a standalone headset which has fairly limited performance, and FB Horizons which looks like something you could make in Unity in a few days. With things like VRChat, Neos, Cluster, and others available, they definitely aren't ahead and are lagging very far behind in my opinion. Their increasingly poor reputation will even limit what they can do in a VR/AR space.

Hybrid standalone/PCVR, wireless and beaconless, with superior resolution and enough performance, for only $300. That does put them ahead of everyone else.

> They have a standalone headset which has fairly limited performance, and FB Horizons which looks like something you could make in Unity in a few days.

I think judging their long term plan by looking at the limitations with the current hardware (and therefore software), is extremely (and literally) short sighted. Horizons has been "out" for three whole months, and needs to run on that limited hardware. I'm assuming there's real value /learnings for getting the architecture figured out, regardless of the clients GFLOPS.

For some positives, besides having the only viable standalone headset right now, their camera based tracking (position, hands, controller) is far better than anyone else's. There's nothing remotely comparable for their hand tracking. I think it would be hard to argue that camera/lidar based inside out tracking is not necessarily the future for small form factor devices.

Metaverse means they can bring real world limitations to a virtual world that has no need for them, so they can profit of these limitations.

It doesn't need to be anything. It's the FB equivalent of ActiveX or self-driving cars or "the network is the computer". A thing that spinmeisters can use to generate spin.

FB already has an equivalent to those things: Libra, the DoA cryptocurrency

Playing with VRchat, or some multiplayer video game on a VR headset (I'd recommend you try Population One), social interaction with other humans feels really natural, I've met countless strangers around the world, and started talking about random stuff as we've tried to hunt down enemy players. VR just breaks down some barrier that makes social interaction feel lot more natural than a text-based interface ever could.

When people get paid to do it. Younger me would rather be trading my data for training their ai, doing whatever quests they set up, hanging out in that environment if it can pay close to a minimum wage job. (Note this is easier to do in poor parts of the world, and they are just as human, with similar ai teaching potentials to those in the wealthiest nations.)

Then when all my friends are there, "working" I'll have plenty social incentive to get me to strap on the Oculus and be part of the group even if I wasn't getting paid/or didn't live the game. I remember wasting soooo many hours of my young life watching my friends play boring games of fifa, just because I wanted to part of the group.

I really don't love meta, they are insidious. but I'd rather my kid work the metaverse for extra cash than work as a "essential" worker.

I was under the impression (from other HN threads) that the simplest explanation for their erratic seeming rebranding / behavior was related to some kind of red herring optics narrative manipulation for stockholders or something. Like I know what that even means.

He is trying to accomplish Ready Player One, it really is that simple.

I just find it funny how this whole metaverse thing has been around since worlds.com and Second Life. Now FB took that and slapped VR on top of it.

I think that sex workers will rejoice about this, nobody else will really care, and "metamate" will mean something completely different in future.

There's only so much to do when all your products are feature-complete but you're too scared to acknowledge this fact.

No, but, I see great trends in threat reduction in using stuff like Oculus in military and space applications -- let's build some crazy robots, get some low-latency links between the front line and an operating base, and let the COD trained kids go ape-shit on whatever enemy might be out there. They use Oculus' (or similar VR technology) to stay on base where they can be well protected, vs the (hardened) robots that are on the front line.

I've completely written off FB and IG -- deleted my FB account about 7 years ago, I still have a 'legacy' IG account that I might log into once a year with a name that nobody would be interested in...and that's my extent of the Meta I have in my life. I have zero desire to get into VR (until they come out with something that will work for the guys like me that have poor vision), but, who knows what the world might bring in the next 40 years.

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