Ask HN: What's Up with the Metaverse? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What's Up with the Metaverse?

20 pointscachehit28 comments

From the outside it looks like a joke -- nobody is using it as far as I can tell, it's costing Meta exorbitant amounts of money and not least: it looks like tech that would have been unimpressive 10 years ago.

I don't get it and I feel like there must be something I am missing. Mark Zuckerberg, in spite of what I might otherwise think of him, always appeared to be an extraordinary strategist. And if there is anything Meta does well, it's engineering! So are we just seeing the first clumsy iteration of something that will truly change the world? Or are they simply experiencing their Google Wave/Plus/... moment? I am genuinely curious!

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I have an Oculus and am fully aware of what it can do, so seeing the bland Metaverse graphics is jarring. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but a juicy one just popped in my head. What if the current Metaverse implementation is bad on purpose? A distraction, meant to diminish public excitement and therefore serious competition from the rest of the big tech, while Meta continues to improve on core VR capabilities and really cement their edge. Then one day - boom! an entirely different experience that takes full advantage of the platform.

Probably not though. The impact-driven incentive culture of Meta is unlikely to allow that sort of feint. The company is going all in on VR because they need to control the hardware layer, having missed the mobile phone boat. Being at the whim of Google and Apple has caused many issues for FB/Meta, so this is existential.

> they need to control the hardware layer, having missed the mobile phone boat

Thank you for this. I posited yesterday as to why they just don't a phone and got some good replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33343507

Now it makes sense. They need something they control to advertise on.

Not a direct answer to your question, because I honestly don’t know.

I am more surprised by the attention this gets in press and tech circles.

Meta is making a long term bet. It might just one of the biggest wastes in recent time, or it could turn out to be something that actually works. I don’t know if it will fail, but I’m certain they’ll learn a ton out of this. If VR is to ever become something, Meta will have a significant competitive advantage.

Meta could be doing this knowing full and well and expecting the first several iterations of this to fail. Now, if you work at meta or own meta stock, it’s entirely up to you whether you want to jump ship.

But why this bet is so controversial baffles me.

I don't personally find the bet to be controversial, I can see why you could envision VR as being the future.

What baffles me is the execution that appears to be handled incompetently.

History has countless examples of companies collapsing on their own size, even outside of tech. There is nothing special about Zuck or META that would prevent that from "just happening", unless they figure out the right structure to make it work.

If you haven't tried VR you should give it a shot. I find it pretty amazing.

Some percentage of the population is going to spend a lot of time in there in a few years. A small percentage already does today. (Sometimes I meet people in VR who tell me they keep the headset on while they sleep)

Meta is trying to capture as much of that market as they can.

Mark Zuckerberg would like the whole world to use their META verse and pivot Facebook into it. I think this will remain a niche and while a lot of useful things may come out of this the project itself may very well be a failure (financially).

When the headsets become a pair of sunglasses, I think is when the mainstream will understand.

I have Oculus glasses but I don't use them. I have a 43" 4K Smart TV I use as a monitor that I got for $300 and it is gorgeous to look at. The colors are vivid, the resolution is superfine. It's far nicer to look at than what I see in the glasses that have washed out colors and a screen door effect.

VR is great for working out (in doses of about 1 hour a day), but I can't see spending non-fitness time with my Quest. I wish Zuck would get more excited about things like BeatSaber, these are really the killer apps!

Some percentage of the population spend a lot of time in SecondLife, and have for the last 20 years. It's just not a very _big_ percentage. I don't see any particular reason it would be higher for SecondLife 2.0.

I think the primary thing keeping Metaverse from actually working is the device.

If you never used the Quest VR devices, they are both amazing and disappointing all at once. In terms of the actual performance, amazing. It is just much more immersive than I had initially thought it could be and you can forget your surroundings in the physical world quickly. With that being said, the weight of the device sets in after 30 minutes and after 1 hour of continuous use I hate the thing. My neck is tired, my eyes are dry, and I just want it off my face. On top of all that, you just feel like a dweeb with a 90s alarm clock strapped to your head haha.

I think the form factor is really the thing holding it back from mainstream adoption. As soon as its more akin to glasses, I could definitely see widespread adoption by the casual users. Until then, VR is just a niche.

I think Meta is really on to something by going full throttle into VR. One point I've heard Mark make in various interviews is the increasing immersion of social media and the internet in general. We started out with text, then we moved to images and gifs, then video and livestreaming started taking over. The trend is clear. If you've ever tried VR where other people are in the same world as you, it really does feel different in a hard to describe way than just a video call. It's more immersive.

VR won't be the end all be all (at least for the foreseeable future), there will still be people communicating with each other via text/images/videos. Part of the issue is that VR is still thought of as an "experience", rather than a boring tool/avenue to do other things with.

So I'm a bit ashamed to admit I have been playing waaaay too much DayZ lately and this line rings so very true

>If you've ever tried VR where other people are in the same world as you, it really does feel different in a hard to describe way than just a video call. It's more immersive.

One day, 5 of my completely separate friends got onto DayZ and ended up meeting with each other (friend A knew Friend D, friend B knew friend E, friend A knew friend E, kind of thing) and my entire schedule for that day went on the backburner. Instead we stood around on the top of a castle talking about random things, drove around, went hunting, raided some bases, and looted some towns for gear. It really really really felt like going hiking and running into random people you know. Plus you can drink in real life so then you have the same social experience as if you're sitting around a campfire. It is extremely hard for me to explain the experience except comparing it to meeting up with friends and doing random things for a few hours. Kind of like MUDs and MOOs from the 80s and 90s.

My wife was extremely angry with me because this happened on the one day she worked from home and assumed this was what I did all day. I felt guilty for about 5 minutes before I realized I rarely socialize and this was a true social experience! So all that to say I look forward to what Mark can do with VR, as DayZ is based on a 10 year old 3d engine that is showing it's obvious age on next gen consoles.

That's a really neat experience. Thanks for sharing :)

Meta has claimed Enterprise/Businesses is a market they are going for so I think a fundamental question is: does that immersive feeling of being in VR world in a business/professional setting for knowledge workers have measurable better outcomes than existing ways to meet/collaborate? A better outcome is where it financially offsets the cost of hardware, software, support and training. That is the question an Enterprise would want an answer to before investing in $1500 headsets for people. Anecdotes online are that even the tech-savvy Meta employees aren't using VR for their collaborations internally and have to be forced. That's not a good sign.

I don't know that the tech, etc. is far enough along to know the answer to that fundamental "is it worth it?" question. Maybe as costs drop it becomes an easier decision. How long will that be though?

The factor outside of Meta's control is impatience with investors looking at quarterly results. Is developing and honing this VR collaboration Enterprise tool going to take 4 more losing quarters or is it 20? or 40? (i.e. 5 or 10 years)

I assumed that Zuckerberg was looking at the future of Facebook, which would be slow or stagnant growth, and revenue that was worryingly reliant on rival company's platforms. He saw a risk. He said something like "My company will become irrelevant unless we do something really big. What moonshot, no matter how crazy sounding today, might possibly become as big in the 2020s as social media was in the 2000s?" and the thing that seemed possible at the time was VR. Probably a lot of people told him to pump the breaks, but it's his company, so he bet on his belief in himself as a visionary. I guess we'll see.

https://justforfunnoreally.dev/

The reason you're so confused is because despite the development costs there really is that little substance to what they created. They rebranded Oculus and made a half-baked sterile meeting app for it that nobody uses. There is a lot of high level postulating about new standards of linking worlds together or something something decentralized blockchain something but none of that is a concrete reality. In the end, the actual "Metaverse" app represents a virtual world that is fundamentally worse at its job of being a explorable, collaborative, or social than a vr-enabled instance of Minecraft.

Maybe it's a stepping stone into robotics for people wanting to live amongst their robot friends and helpers in AR? A future Boston Dynamics + Meta collaboration?

Also, to control robot avatars in the real-world from your bedroom! How else are you going to buy your milk?! And those robots will be used to map out a true virtual-reality that reflects the real world (RW.) Another way to do that is installing cameras everywhere at participating towns or stores.

So the key is in bridging the gap between VR and RW.

Checkout any walking tour on YT... I'm thinking interactive and live (or near-live) versions of those.

Thing is, even if he pulls it off, he'll still compete for the same e-commerce and ad revenue pie, except he'd have burn 10s of billions in the meantime.

I've got several hypothesis but have no idea on the actual probability. Mark could have lost his mind, or be considering FB now META his playground and wants to do whatever he wants. Or he actually believes it's a good business prospect and is willing to do whatever it takes to make it work.

VR and AR will be huge and I do think it was a smart move to shift the company in that direction, especially as legacy social media (like Facebook) is starting to get tired.

However, I really don’t understand their aesthetic choices. The avatars just look odd and childish, not something cutting edge. I also think they would have benefited from focusing on AR first, rather than VR.

"Metaverse" isn't a thing, it's a concept, powered by specialized hardware. Checkout their headset sales to answer if anyone is using it.

reminds me of this: https://twitter.com/ShaanVP/status/1454151237650112512

We are already living in the metaverse.

They are probably trying to create a solid foundation on which to build on. The visuals can always be improved later on.

"What's up with the Internet?" - OP 30 years ago, probably.

"VRML is going to take over the web!" - Lots of people 25 years ago.

This is kind of recycling the cryptocurrency argument.

Lots of heavily-hyped things, in fact _most_ heavily-hyped things, fail (for instance, how many 3d TVs do you see in shops these days?). The internet is the exception, not the rule.

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