And, how Walmart envisions shopping in the metaverse. (Jan '22)
What on earth.
I started thinking, how could this ever make sense. I could see a setup where there are booths or something with VR headsets at the front of the store, and the rest of the building is a warehouse. This would eliminate the whole public store, except for the area with the headsets. Still not sure how much sense this makes. Or how much I'd want to put on a public use VR headset in a Wal-Mart. But it makes a little more sense then doing this at home.
*edit: I was really hoping they'd throw the milk across the store.
We already solved efficient online shopping, without needing to implement constraints like physics.
Amazon doesn't draw a 2D plan of a virtual shop and make you browse the shelves. Spotify doesn't pretend to be a tape deck. I'm not sure what a VR shop should look like, but it's almost certainly not a VR version of a real one, because a real shop is built around real world constraints and conveniences.
I think there are cases where VR shopping could make a lot of sense. Shopping for clothes, for instance. You can take your own measurements, put them into your profile, then test what it would look like. Shopping for furniture could also make sense if you could generate a quick map of your house. You can then see how the sofa will look like, and whether you'll get it through the door.
But a plain virtual Walmart, yeah, that's silly.
Another example like your clothes shopping: AR furniture shopping on the other hand, where you can visualize how a new couch would fit in your living room, is already quite useful.
Also I'm very uncomfortable with Walmart knowing what's in my fridge and recommending putting the gallon of milk back.
https://twitter.com/DavidMarakXR/status/1586997483049287680?...
This can only make me think of this nightmarish Hyper-Reality video from 2016.