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Comment by benreesman | Hacker News Reader

I've long been a huge skeptic of the whole Metaverse project/undertaking, I think I've called it a smoking crater where ten billion dollars used to be.

But this is really interesting: it sounds like the display works, and it sounds like the puck is workable, and it sounds like both can squeak above the line in terms of battery life. If those things are true I may turn out to have been completely wrong.

I don't know the first thing about silicon carbide display substrate thingy yields, so I can't remark on whether or not that's a "scale will make cost acceptable", but I bet some mega geniuses at Meta think so or they probably wouldn't be showing this much.

If it turns out that I was dead wrong on this I'll be glad I was, it would be really cool if it works.

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> I think I've called it a smoking crater where ten billion dollars used to be.

It’s less of a waste of money if it paints Facebook as a technology leader and distracts lawmakers, and helps give the company mind space among the tech press.

In fact the metaverse may have started out as DC strategy [1].

Facebook Inc. is old and boring, catering to a predominantly older cohort and becoming “Big Social” by buying up anything promising (Instagram, WhatsApp). But Meta Inc. is a scrappy pioneer at the forefront of American tech that’s creating the future™. Be harsh with them at your peril, is the implicit message to lawmakers.

If you look at it as a PR / Corporate defense strategy, a billion is actually cheap.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/24/faceboo...

They just launched the next twitter (Threads)

i have a long post why this is the future on my google wave

It’s been a minute since I actually laughed out loud via reading an HN comment.

In fairness, I think the GP was also being sarcastic.

Are you being sarcastic?

https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-threads-hits-over-1....

> Meta's Threads hits 175 million users ahead of one-year anniversary

it's not because you don't use it that a lots of others aren't, it's pretty lively there whereas google wave never really saw any traction

DC?

Probably Washington DC, i.e. influencing politicians and narrative around the company

District of Columbia, milud.

The Verge's article[1] mentions that the consumer version planned to be a few years out won't have silicon carbine lenses, and that those lenses are responsible for the majority of the cost of the Orion device due to extremely poor yields. Sounds like they're pretty great otherwise so maybe they're return to it at some point in the mid-future.

I agree regarding the undertaking - enormously costly, but if they can make it "just glasses" it might actually end up as the "next computing format" Zuckerberg was looking for. (Even in that case though, whether it was worth the investment/Meta can stay on top I don't know.)

[1] - https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo... (ctrl+F for "silicon carbide", it's the last mention)

I think it's fair to assume this is where the VAST majority of the Reality Labs spend was going ... cutting edge R&D on getting this kind of form factor, whilst some others (who perhaps lack object permanence) thought it was all going on Horizon.

Aswath Damodaran did an analysis on Meta valuation. He found out that even if all the 10s of billions being invested give 0 in terms of revenue it doesn't have much impact on its stock value and in turn companies value. So, I think it would be stupid for Zuckerberg to not invest in Metaverse unless he is missing some better opportunity.

Facebook lost this wave of mobile smart devices (anyone remember the Facebook phone?)

This $10B bet is that they're the leader of the next wave where smart glasses replace smartphones.

$10B? Closer to $50B now. They're spending about $3-4B per quarter at the moment, and their guidance last earnings call was spending in RL would only tick up in the coming quarters.

Given that this is AR, not VR, and that AR has never even been as popular as VR outside a few industrial niches, I don't think this should change anything in your estimate of the value. Despite all the hype, the only thing that XR has ever been mildly popular for has been VR gaming. AR glasses can't do that well, since everything is transparent, instead of making you feel like part of the game world, so I would personally bet these will be as DoA as a consumer mass market product as the Holo Lens was.

AR was never popular because there never has been a consumer device for it. When Google glass was first revealed there was a huge buzz for it.

Holo Lens hat the problem that it was both too expensive and too bulky.

If meta can make this sleek and affordable I can really see this picking up, I can think of many use cases where this would be better than both a smartphone and a VR headset:

- Navigation - Cooking - Interior design (like the IKEA app) - reading (holding a real book and 'click' on words to get definitions and translations like on an ereader) - music playing and instrument learning

I don't see it being the thing that makes it popular, but navigation is an easy thing for me to see improved by AR. Some people are comically bad at reading maps and admittedly, sometimes it's hard to orient yourself when your phone is not properly oriented and there aren't obvious markers to orient yourself with.

A bright blue line right on the ground highlighting your path would be an easy QoL win. Albeit small hence it not being the thing that I think makes it the popularizer.

-- As you say with the ikea app, I think my point is just one example of a wide variety of situations where people have a hard time visualizing that is made literal by AR.

This is a silly take. AR games are perfectly possible. Games don't need to look photo real to be immersive and a holographic animal with enough grounding in physical space still feels real, anyhow.

Additive displays do make it hard to port existing games but that was true for mobiles and touchscreen. If the platform is popular, it will have games.

> I've long been a huge skeptic of the whole Metaverse project/undertaking, I think I've called it a smoking crater where ten billion dollars used to be.

Following your train of thought, we can assume that even with skepticism, if the price is right, people will buy it, just as we purchase many other gadgets. While the market size may be smaller than that of mobile phones, it could still become appealing once people start seeing their neighbors and friends using it.

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