RIP Metaverse, We Hardly Knew Ye | Hacker News Reader

RIP Metaverse, We Hardly Knew Ye

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20 pointsbelkinpower11 comments

I bought a Quest three years ago. It turned out to be not what I wanted so it sat unused. What I want: Super hires display over each eye that wraps to my peripheral vision and enough computer power to provide smooth hires graphics. Without those, the experience is sucky.

I realize the processing power I want can't be fit into a headset, so I'd be happy to be tethered to a high end desktop computer so I could explore virtual worlds. I get my exercise outdoors in nature. I don't want to be untethered playing beat saber like a teenager who drinks too many energy drinks.

> I'd be happy to be tethered to a high end desktop computer so I could explore virtual worlds.

> I don't want to be untethered playing beat saber like a teenager

Uh...

Well, I hope you don't find Virtual Desktop, ALVR, Oculus Link or any of the other plethora of wireless tethering softwares. After all, you don't want to look like a silly teenager or anything.

Yes I was aware of those, but they still lack hires, wrap around visual field and hires, non-janky graphics. But if you're satisfied, have at it.

It just seems like a silly thing to steelman. Tethering is almost certainly going to be an optional feature as headset power catches up. FOV and hires screens will continue to be developed regardless of whether or not the headset is tethered, and as-is I think my Quest is perfectly usable for both cases. It doesn't have 120 degrees of FOV, but I guess it doesn't irk me that much.

Put another way, in 10 years I think most consumers will wonder why we even bothered with tethering in the first place. Watching movies and playing games wirelessly is well worth the marginal drop in bitrate, in my experience.

I only mentioned tethering because the processing power in the headsets is limited. They use cell phone microprocessors. I want an advanced high speed chip to run the graphics with more resolution and field of vision with less jankiness. That's going to take an off-board processor for the foreseeable future until they can put an M1 chip or similar into the headsets. A second issue is that I'm not satisfied with the resolution of the current screens. I am bullish on VR, but it's going to take more advances to get what I want. The good news is that it's coming, maybe soon. I am not knocking the current tech, just that I don't find it pleasant to use. That's on me.

I am very interested to see what Apple does in this space during WWDC. It might a flop or maybe it will be another iPhone moment (though I doubt AR/VR will have the same rise as the iPhone even though I'm bullish on the tech long-term).

Apple has a history of taking something tired a number of times before (sometimes even by themselves, hello Newton) and succeeding at bringing it to the masses but time will tell.

Patiently waiting to see what WWDC brings.

I’m as of yet unconvinced that gaming isn’t the killer app VR has. The “work and communicate in your VR headset” vision from Meta I’m suspicious of, but Apple could do cheap casual gaming (beat saber et al.), fitness (beat saber with a fitness skin), and media consumption (big screen) really well, and they have all the services to funnel people towards for those use cases.

Gaming and media consomption are just so fun in VR where literally everything else is either annoying at best or painful at worst in my experience. Apple could just play in those very obvious bounds and make something worth while.

that’s not what apple does but what steve jobs did. so don’t count on it

Is MetaVerse actually dead, or is it still lurking in the corner? If I'm not mistaken, the military still wants gamification of war, and MetaVerse provides just that (in addition to sometimes severe motion sickness).

As much as “metaverse” is a uselessly nebulous term, I don’t think “weapons with VR” is very “metaverse-y”.

My current understanding is “The Metaverse” is a skeuomorphic 3D abstraction of group chat apps viewable in VR.

From what I can tell, AR/VR offers sophisticated coordination. It's also good for all sorts of training purposes.

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