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Comment by meemoo | Hacker News Reader

The Metaverse should be built like the web: distributed, and every server / space / community can be built with different physics / rules / aesthetics. Iribe's lowest-common-denominator vision is uninspiring. A centralized, controlled, monetized space sounds like the mall.

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I agree that a distributed Web-like Metaverse is more likely to be interesting and more likely to succeed. The problem of a concept like the Metaverse is that certain elements of it work great as part of a science fiction story -- like the presence of "physical constraints" where property exists in some absolute place on a virtual grid, and users have to actually move their avatars along that terrain to get from point A to point B. This is fun for a story where the hero must quickly get to some point but time is of the essence, but as a real-world concept it's absurd. I think part of what makes the Web so successful is the concept of the hyperlink and the URL, being able to jump so quickly from place to place.

I consider imposed physical limitations on a meta-VR space to be like DRM. It's an attempt to slap existing limitations of reality (scarcity, in the case of DRM) onto a medium that no longer needs it. Why should I have to take a virtual train to get from one VR space to another? Why should there be "lots" where people have to pay to get the best "locations" to put their VR space? It reminds me of the old GeoCities sites and the short-lived concept of neighborhoods, which failed to realize that people don't browse the Web by metaphorically walking linearly along a sidewalk, staring at each storefront in turn. We jump, we "teleport," and that's the strength of the Web.

You might be interested in the Janus VR (formerly known as Firebox) project: http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~mccrae/projects/firebox/ It's an attempt at a sort of VRML-like markup for defining webpages with VR content. I've played around with it a bit in my Rift, and it's neat to have the discoverability of virtual browsing but without the constraints of physicality: links are just doors you can open into virtual spaces, and you can always pop open an address bar to go somewhere new.

In short: VR lets us transcend limitations in where we can go, but the Web let us transcend limitations in how we interact with the world. Individual VR experiences can be whatever people want, but a meta-VR system must take into account the simple fact that humans can now "teleport."

Here's a nice video that shows what Janus VR is like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jva-855nLvM

There was an open source 2D avatar chat system called OpenVerse, IIRC (Metaverse was trademarked) that behaved this way; each room was a different server.

OpenSim is like Second Life, but different servers can communicate and you can just "walk" from one server to another. http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

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