Can anyone suggest why it's going to be the next big thing, and why is Facebook doubling down on it?
- 3d real-time digital twins of things like factories, wind farms, or cities to be used for optimizing assembly lines, kwh, or self-driving software.
- Pipelines that connect 3d modeling tools together in real time, so you can update something in Maya, Blender, or Autodesk CAD and immediately see it updated in all the other places.
- Cloud technology for offloading expensive GPU rendering at scale
- etc
Nvidia seems not to be trying to recreate a video game version of Facebook, but rather a suite of industrial tools with real time 3d rendering at the core.
I know of people who enjoy their VR albeit the limitations. They watch movies in VR, play a few games, etc.
They are capturing early adopters and when COD123 is released in VR 4k, you have a userbase
Now why a normal person would ever use it? I have no idea. I've tried Horizon Worlds and found the process deeply unpleasant. Then again I was a huge Dreamcast fan back in the day, so my track record for picking winning technologies isn't blemish-free.
I’m not gonna plug my app but I’m open to talk to interested people!
I'm all for the “innerverse”. However, the danger of juxtaposing the “innerverse” with the metaverse (and naming it so) is that people will approach it the wrong way and expect that always "consistent reliable repeatable" experience.
The mindset is very different. It is more about a subtle/introspective/meditative/mindfull inner-discovery than an "automatic" (consistent reliable repeatable) entertainment.
I'm not saying you are doing it this way. I'm just wary of people eventually coming to it from the neuralink angle and trying to quantify and control it to death (quite literally, because dreams are fragile things)
I’m partnering with one of, if not the, most qualified young researchers in the space and trying to bring a truly scientific approach to the app.
It’s a long road still given I’m currently out only on Fitbit and can’t find a good iOS developer for Apple Watch, but that’s a different story
That seems rather pointless to me, especially given that other companies and developers have done it much better. Like with Second Life or VRChat or various other such systems. Those don't like awful, let you be almost anything/anyone you want to be, and give you far more interesting environments to use/explore than anything Meta may have come up with for Horizon Worlds. Hell, even things like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite seem to be doing better as far as offering virtual environments people want to hang around in, and those are about a million times more popular than Meta's solution.
And when you add the general dislike/distrust of Meta, Facebook and Zuck... well I'm not sure who it's meant to appeal to. Older folks that like Facebook? Not sure they care much about this sort of virtual world stuff. People use VR? Not sure most of those want to use a system controlled by Meta.
1) I think the whole metaverse thing grew way beyond what Meta/Mark Zuck initially thought (said this in a recent verge interview). Also people seem to think that the intention is that ar/VR will replace real life, when that isn't the goal. The goal is to replace current time spent on Facebook/Snapchat/TikTok/etc
2) kids definitely love VR. I think us old farts don't seem to realize that.
3) the biggest point to me is this - do we really think that the current way we interact with computers is not going to change in the next 10-20 years? Using little glass rectangles? AR is the real prize - it will really add interesting new capabilities
What people don't seem to get is that everyone is still feeling out the tech. Mixed reality is only just getting started, AR is still very immature.
Facebook (and other social media) kind of killed off IRC and other public chat rooms. Facebook users in general got used to the flow of Facebook, and forgot about chatrooms.
Now Facebook is trying to build public chatrooms But In VR™ and no one is interested. They trained their users to not engage with exactly what they're trying to sell them now.
The flip side of this is that people want to express themselves. Look at the absolute lawless insanity of VRChat, you can be a 2 pixel tall anime character or a fucked up Sonic OC (do not steal), or basically anything you want. There's tons and tons of creativity and expression.
Meanwhile on the metaverse, you can pick from a dozen or two outfits, and you can customize a small range of features of your avatar. It just reeks of corporate blandness designed by committee. Expression is severely restricted so as to not upset advertisers and shareholders. It also just isn't fun. Interactions are limited, the mini games are bleak, and it's ugly in a way that is just ugly instead of charming or endearing.
As a whole, the VR industry is mostly focused on standalone games and experiences. I make industrial training simulators, which is a fantastic use of the technology. There's people making movies exclusively for VR ("experiences") and there are so many excellent games already out there.
The core problem is that a majority of people don't want to just wander around in VR to meet random people and play lame, buggy carnival games in an ugly space designed to take your money.
People that do want to hang out in VR are generally Very Online people who are generally against Facebook. On top of that, there is already a very successful platform with wide adoption and vastly more and better features. Facebook just can't compete.
The metaverse is a 13 billion dollar monument to corporate hubris.
Legs.
What does "legs" mean?! Or is that how you sign off?
I think a big reason is because they haven't been able to figure out inverse kinematics. There's a surprising number of poses that completely break your character's arms because their IK system is so bad.
It makes no sense because limb kinematics is largely a solved problem. There's no excuse for it to be so bad. Not with the amount of money they've put into it, and not with everyone else doing it better.
Yes, for IK, they could probably even look at Blender's source code for a very good starting point...
First mover advantage appetite is pushing Facebook to double down on it despite the obvious fact that the tech is not ready yet.
IMO it is going the be the 10th next big thing, maybe in 30-40 years, when we will have optical computers able to process real-life-like virtual environment auto-generated by advanced AI models (and maybe fusion reactors to power them, one can dream)
What is the rush? I see Zero benefits for humanity. It is all just bling.
It's just that they've done it extremely poorly. There is absolutely no excuse for the buggy state of the entire Facebook VR ecosystem. It's bad and it isn't getting better, despite Facebook shoveling more money onto the dumpster fire.
Theres so many different things to list
Given how many friends I have who have moved outside of even driving range, anything virtual is much better than my current immersive options.
Do I want a social media company to make a walled garden VR-game where you buy digital real estate etc, not so much.
(oops, looks like even he is anti social-media these days. http://www.jaronlanier.com/tenarguments.html )
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=limmy+metaverse