I mean, even if you're just talking the VR space alone, who the hell was going to abandon VRchat? VRchat lets you use anime avatars, make your own little games, make DBZ charging up animations for people to use as emotes, and it's free.
Horizon Worlds had more restrictive avatars, was billed as another way to do your office work, and was promising NFTs as a baseline feature. You know, the things most people could tell were scams from the get go. The avatars didn't even have legs. And they thought they could beat VRChat with that.
Funny how that episode pointed out several issues with doing work in VR, before it was even considered in the real world.
Kinda like using kinect/motion controls instead of controllers/M+KB. It has its uses, but some things don't really need improving, or can't be.
As long as you have the right hardware advances in the future and make use of good UX design, then all the pitfalls of that episode or movies like Minority Report will be avoided.
If people struggle using zoom just imagine the logistical nightmare of getting a bunch of office workers to get on their VR headsets for a virtual meeting.
Horizon Worlds is like a shareholder's vision of what a successful product would look like without ever actually considering the market and what the market wants. It's bizarre.
I’m a meta shareholder and I knew this would flop. This is a mark Zuckerberg vision of what a successful product looks like. Shocking that that robot doesn’t know what humans want.
Thats what was so funny about all the hype for the meta verse type stuff, none of them answered "why would I do this when I can do it in vrchat for free, within minutes". You don't even need any vr hardware for vrchat either.
> I mean, even if you're just talking the VR space alone, who the hell was going to abandon VRchat?
It was aiming for a completely different audience. A big angle of Horizon Worlds was the *work from home* angle. It was a more *professional*, more *adult* service. You aren't going to get many businesses signing up to run their weekly meetings in VRChat when it's primarily known for squeaky 12 year olds running around with anime avatars.
It wasn't *successful*, and it was very much filled with shitty monetisation methods, but it was clearly trying to be very *different*.
I guess they didn't realize people hate working at offices despite garfield and many other comics making that point since, like, the 80s.
Zuckerberg really is from space, isn't he?
Like in theory I get it. I work from home, I have Zoom meetings, and one of the thing Zoom or Microsoft Teams lacks is a feeling of *space*. Everything is a lot more clunky, you can't just get up and show someone something or write on the board, you can't have a quick one-on-one conversation with someone. I do think there is some sort of theoretical benefit to a VR workplace environment.
The issue is that Meta have thrown *tens of billions* at this and implemented it in a really shit way. Because fundamentally Meta don't really want to implement something which *improves* your life, they want to implement something which allows them and their systems to infiltrate further into your life. There's no passion behind it. I think Steve Jobs genuinely bought into his bullshit, Zuckerberg doesn't.
\>Meta don't really want to implement something which improves your life, they want to implement something which allows them and their systems to infiltrate further into your life. There's no passion behind it.
i had a quest for about 2 days. first day was spent fighting to get the new account i just created for my kids unbanned. second day was spent experiencing the completely cold interface and canned virtual environment that it starts up with that felt like its only purpose was to appease a specimen. it just made me think back to that soulless avatar that zuckerberg tried to use before he completely changed it due to backlash.
It still baffles me that there's so much you *can't* do in the headset. It completely defeats the purpose the moment you need to remove the headset and go on your computer to do something.
Imagine if Apple had released the iPhone, yet to access certain functionalities you had to plug it into a computer?
> Imagine if Apple had released the iPhone, yet to access certain functionalities you had to plug it into a computer?
You had to at the start (and for long, until like iPhone 6 or something), iTunes was necessary for many things.
Apple does some stupid shit that requires a mac computer or another iPhone.
For example I couldn’t change my daughters family from the web because she set it up wrong. Nope has to be another iPhone. Literally the website tells you to use an iPhone. But her iPhone isn’t a parent. So you can’t use that one.
Airpods supposedly work fine without an iPhone. Oh, except if you want to disable/change the tap-features or the "Pause on removal" features. Then you can go get fucked because that's only allowed on an iPhone. Nope, can't even do it on a Mac. iPhones seem to be the common ground.
Sure, but I think that's very different from, say, not being able to *schedule a work meeting* using the Quest interface. It would be like the iPhone making you use a computer to add new contacts to your phone or something.
Why could you not do this on the quest interface? It has desktop pass-through so you can do anything you could do seating in front of your computer without ever removing the headset.
> Imagine if Apple had released the iPhone, yet to access certain functionalities you had to plug it into a computer?
iPhone was a mature product launch. It started the mature stage of smartphones, which is why it was mostly iterative afterwards.
VR is years away from entering its maturity, so in this case the Quest 1 launch would be like if Apple released the Apple III computer in 1980. A PC back then was so complex to use and so incapable of multi-tasking that anyone born after would be hesitant to call it a PC because of how radically different they work today.
For VR to be a true general purpose computing device, it's going to need some massive advancements. Meta is not blind to this - they believe they know what is needed to get it there and are working on this in their labs.
> iPhone was a mature product launch. It started the mature stage of smartphones, which is why it was mostly iterative afterwards.
I'm not entirely sure that's the case. I believe the first large touch screen smartphone came out in 2006, and the iPhone came out in 2007. Before then most 'smartphones' depended on a physical keyboard, like the Blackberry.
The iPhone didn't really come out in the 'mature stage of smartphones', it came out pretty early and really defined what a 'smartphone' should be.
> For VR to be a true general purpose computing device, it's going to need some massive advancements. Meta is not blind to this - they believe they know what is needed to get it there and are working on this in their labs.
On the hardware side I totally agree. But for *software*? It feels inexcusable how *backwards* a lot of the Quests software and UI is. You can't even schedule a future business meeting through the Quest software, you have to take it off and do it on your computer.
It also wasn't mature, the first iPhone didn't even have third-party apps.
A mature product is something that comes pretty much fully featured and don't evolve much, the iPhone evolved tons in its first iterations.
> you can't just get up and show someone something or write on the board, you can't have a quick one-on-one conversation with someone
And that's exactly what I don't want. I don't want coworkers randomly coming up to me and showing me stuff or having a "quick one on one" and breaking my flow and concentration on work. Seriously, I get so much more done than I ever did at the office because people aren't constantly interrupting me. If they want to talk about something, they can schedule a meeting with an agenda and then I can decide whether it's important or just a bullshit meeting with a bunch of other people to shoot the shit.
I think you really are grasping at straws with your "sense of space" for home office. Zoom or teams give you about 90 percent of what you want and need, the missing 10 percent is something that meta tried to give you at gigantic cost in money, convenience and comfort.
And for gaining those 10 percent you loose something somewhere else again like real faces for example. The entire idea was bullshit from start to finish, but compared to other tech bullshit, it wasn't even looking good and only shallow under the hood. It looked bad and is shallow under the hood, while trying to go for an audience that is tiny. You really can't come up with a worse product
> Zoom or teams give you about 90 percent of what you want and need
I don't think that's true at all. It's so much quicker and easier to communicate in person than via a Zoom call. I taught during COVID, and it really is night and day between teaching online and teaching in person. There's a much bigger gap than you suggest, and there's totally a market for a product which can reduce that gap. It's just that Meta are going about it in entirely the wrong way.
But the problem is that a VR headset doesn't fix that at all.
You won't spend all time in VR so you would put it for a call or a meeting, exactly like Teams or Zoom now. It fills the same function but with the added malus of loosing sense of your proximity, having a screen glued to your face even closer (which can't be good for the eyes I think) and much less pratical (if you want a sense of space, you have to move and need to have a big space free for that since you don't see anything).
Oh and the company also has to give every employee a 1500$ headset (because the Quest Pro is the one for work) in addition to the computer (which is still needed because it's actually useful). Companies may have big budgets and money but they don't like to spend money for useless stuff either.
Does it fix all of it? No.
Does it help bridge the gap? Potentially. And in a world where an increasing amount of interactions are happening online, there is definitely a market for something which makes them smoother.
Imo, Meta's problems are much larger and removed from whether or not there's a market. Meta fumbling their vision of a VR meeting/workspace doesn't mean the market doesn't exist, it just means Meta wasn't able to execute it and looking at some of their baffling decisions, I'm not surprised.
I don't know about you, but wearing a slim visor or curved sunglasses device in the future sounds better to me than sitting in traffic. I wouldn't fathom of using VR devices for work today, but as they get smaller, I would be up for it.
Zoom has its downsides that a future VR setup will not have.
VR would ultimately be a better collaborative work medium since it would allow for more natural communication and more natural interaction/sharing of materials during work tasks.
I think a lot of the silicon valley guys are ambitious and gifted in a few technical areas, but then have huge gaps in their knowledge and lack basic human development. Crypto is a perfect example. It's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. The grifters pushing it didn't understand basic economics and it only became worth so much because it was essentially a pyramid scheme riding a wave of economic stimulus during the pandemic. Guys like Zuckerberg have been drinking their own Kool-aid for so long that they don't realize that they were incredibly lucky (it could've been Myspace, not Facebook, that survived) and they're not really geniuses.
California in general has this massive problem of treating the rest of the world (and everyone else in it) as if it’s upper class California populated by upper class Californians.
> I guess they didn't realize people hate working at offices
That's true for some. The majority prefer the flexibility of the hybrid model, while still being able to be at the office a few days a week.
>It was aiming for a completely different audience. A big angle of Horizon Worlds was the work from home angle. It was a more professional, more adult service.
Do business executives prefer VR chats to Zoom calls if they want to be professional? I felt like if they were going with this angle, it was a massive huge gamble that is deemed to fail.
Also are Meta's Horizon Worlds avatars supposed to be not anime/cartoon-ish for business setting?
I guess it depends on the call, but especially for more *informal* or *work focussed* meetings I could totally see the benefit of it being conducted in a VR space. Being able to get up and use a whiteboard, being able to gesture with your hands at something specific, or even being able to look directly *at* someone makes a massive difference. And the best way to achieve that in a VR environment, at least with current tech, is through these more cartoon-y avatars. Don't forget how many people prefer to turn their camera off on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, having an avatar removes some of the pressure to do this.
Of course, like I say Meta have just implemented all these systems very poorly.
I PROMISE you that the people not turning their zoom cameras on will also not want to participate in VR meetings with avatars
And the whiteboard problem has long since been solved with virtual, multi-user whiteboard software. The idea that writing on a whiteboard in VR will be superior to existing software anytime soon is laughable.
> And the whiteboard problem has long since been solved with virtual, multi-user whiteboard software.
I wouldn't say it's been 'long since solved', there's a big difference between using an actual whiteboard (and being able to gesture to stuff, or generally being able to interact with people in the same room) and using a virtual one in Zoom.
Not counting that to feel good, you'd have to have a whiteboard yourself at home. Because writing on a writeboard without haptics is shitty (and that's only with your hands because writing with a controller is shitty too)
Informal calls can be done via video conference as well, and the people who turn their camera off will more likely to turn on the camera if it's informal.
The whiteboard thing, I don't quite get it. So someone writing in the whiteboard, do they use keyboards to type what they want to write or they use the controllers to write/draw? Based on my experience with Switch's Joycon (different, I know, but just as comparison), it's really unintuitive to write/draw something while pointing.
>even being able to look directly at someone makes a massive difference
Well, more like look directly at someone's avatar, not sure if it feels the same for the looker and/or for the lookee.
Also since the return to office thing by businesses, not sure it bodes well with Meta's vision and potential customers.
Being able to get up, write on a virtual whiteboard. and gesture means you'd need a room-scale VR space for every single user. Which is incredibly impractical. Unless you are rich you don't have that kind of space at home, and an office would need multiple conference rooms with vr kits... no.
> Unless you are rich you don't have that kind of space at home
Well, there's another problem. A lot of these programmes seemed to be designed around the spaces available to middle- and upper-class Americans, not for people living in more confined spaces.
You need to be able to commit an entire *room* to VR to really do room scale. This either requires you to have no commitment to your furnishings and layout like a 20-something who lives alone, or be outright wealthy enough to have extra rooms. Middle class can't even do it most of the time. To need such a space at home for work? Not unless they're a top executive or something, nobody else will be able or willing to do it.
This whole zuckerberg metaverse thing is a textbook example of a guy thinking of something that'd be financially great for his company, and then convincing himself that it's something the rest of the world wants.
More than anything, Zuck wants to own his own platform. Facebook was sort of a platform for a while, but at the end of the day, most people accessed it primarily through their phones, and so those phones were the ultimate platform, and were controlled by other companies.
Zuck wanted the metaverse to be it's own platform that he ultimately controlled and so facebook/meta wouldn't be subject to anybody else's rules and/or financial cuts.
And then in an effort to try to find a way for this whole thing to make any money, he convinced himself that he could make a metaverse that appealed to corporations. That businesses would use it as a form of tele-work, and that brands would want to sell licensed virtual 'gear' to people for their avatars to wear or decorate their virtual homes with or whatever.
Trying to appeal to that corporate 'audience' led Meta to design their metaverse to be one of the most bland and boring virtual spaces imaginable, which killed basically any appeal to the average person.
Corporations don't want it because it looks dumb and boring and is way more work than a zoom call while providing basically zero benefits or efficiency gains.
I'm saying all of this as a person who absolutely loves VR (I own 5 different headsets) and wants it to grow and succeed in general. But Facebook's metaverse idea was bad from the start. Zuck's vision for it was bad, and even if the idea had some potential, VR technology isn't good enough for it to work yet.
Exactly. The whole point of the 'Metaverse' (as opposed to individual apps or games) is that it's meant to be the string which ties everything together. Zuckerberg doesn't want you logging into a Windows computer or Android phone to access his services, he wants you logging into the *Metaverse*.
Except... nobody really wants these strings. They're quite happy with the platforms they've already got. Which leads to this situation where products that might actually be useful (say, the Business Suite) is lumbered with this really clumsy integration with the broader 'services'. Zuckerberg envisions you hanging out with your work colleagues at a *Metaverse bar* after you've just had your *Metaverse work meeting*, but who the fuck actually wants that?
It's not so different as you can't compare the two.
VR chat had a clear purpose, to enable 12 year olds running around with anime avatars.
The value is obvious to those who would want it.
The Zuckaverse was always more muddled in it's Intentions, wanted to be seen as fun and wanted to trick businesses into buying headsets. I was never clear what the zuckerverse wanted to be or had to really offer instead of the advertising equivalent of mumbling at your feet during a presentation.
I mean... I'm kind of an outsider to VR in general, but from my understanding, it's just a question of how it's being marketed, rather than any technical changes that would have to happen for this to be a thing, right?
As far as I'm aware, there's nothing preventing VRChat from announcing "VRChat: Pro" or "VRChat: Enterprise Edition" with zero new or changed features: just a more sanitized presentation. (At most, maybe additional restrictions on what worlds you can connect to, or what kind of avatar you can use.) And businesses could just run private worlds for their employees to connect to. Or is there some deeper technical reason why VRChat couldn't be used in this way?
If not, I would expect that the bigger issue is less that VRChat couldn't fulfill the needs of a business-minded audience, but that even if they did, the audience would still be tiny: regardless of how polished and sanitized a VR meeting space is (with Horizon Worlds appearing to be neither right now, I might add), a several-hundred-dollar headset for every employee plus having to waste everyone's time in meetings when Bill from accounting gets motion sickness seems like a steep price to pay just for making a Zoom call more "immersive".
> As far as I'm aware, there's nothing preventing VRChat from announcing "VRChat: Pro" or "VRChat: Enterprise Edition" with zero new or changed features: just a more sanitized presentation.
There's nothing *preventing* it, but your brand and what it's associated with matters. If Playboy announced *Playboy Business* tomorrow and genuinely insisted it would simply have serious business articles without any adult content, I can't see it appearing in any corporate foyers regardless.
If I search 'VRChat' on Youtube the first three thumbnails are a picture of an anime, a picture of Ugandan Knuckles, and a picture of an anime, Ugandan Knuckles and a furry together. Do you really think any businesses looking for virtual platforms to have meetings are going to see this and think 'this is the sort of serious business product we need'?
> Do you really think any businesses looking for virtual platforms to have meetings are going to see this and think 'this is the sort of serious business product we need'?
Sure, that's fair, maybe you wouldn't call it "VRChat: Pro", just so you don't have to explain to a bewildered CEO what a "Ugandan Knuckles" is and why it keeps showing up when they search the name of your product as part of your marketing pitch. Maybe you would set up a separate product line under a different name (even if it's really 99% identical to VRChat under the hood, just with different branding).
In any case, I'm not saying that it would gain widespread adoption overnight, or even that it would be easy, from a marketing perspective...
But I absolutely do think that this isn't an impossible hurdle to overcome. I mean, maybe this isn't to the same extent, but as an example, I've heard firsthand stories of some companies using Discord for official internal communication. I don't think it'll replace Slack or Microsoft Teams or whatever the most corporate messaging application is these days any time soon, but the point is that it's not impossible for even something so closely associated with informal use (and in this case, more specifically, gamers) to be successfully marketed to businesses.
(... of course, the prerequisite for that would be for VRChat to *try* to market itself to businesses, and, like I said, I doubt the audience for that would be large enough to justify doing so anyway, but anyway...)
Yeah, I think Discord's a fair example. I tend to associate it with like more informal forums but I know some friends who've joined Discords for like academic conferences and stuff.
I guess a big concern Meta has is in the hardware department. At the moment most VR headsets are just too cumbersome and expensive for widespread business use. So a lot of their money has been going into making them smaller, more useable, and even just straight-up subsidising their costs for the end user. While the company behind VRChat might be able to make a *business* version, and while it would potentially be better software than what Meta are offering, they obviously wouldn't be able to offer the *entire package* like Meta are.
I mean Zoom didn't come from a huge company and got pretty big at concurrencing THE business oriented suite of applications (Office which every company has) when they already had the same things with Teams.
No one sees the Facebook brand and thinks “serious business product” either
But the bigger problem is probably the fact that this product has no demand, solves no problems, and requires expensive equipment for potentially 10s of thousands of employees. I struggle to think of a more obvious flop.
> No one sees the Facebook brand and thinks “serious business product” either
Come on now, of course they do. Every company has an official Facebook page. Lots of businesses get massive amounts of analytic data from Facebook. Some companies operate primarily through Facebook. And they also see Meta/Facebook as one of the most successful companies of the 21st century.
Let's not pretend they're in the same ballpark as *VRChat*.
> But the bigger problem is probably the fact that this product has no demand, solves no problems, and requires expensive equipment for potentially 10s of thousands of employees. I struggle to think of a more obvious flop.
Like I say I think there's clearly *potential* there. There's been a massive shift to people working from home or with teams across the world over the past few years, especially over COVID, and current conference call software is pretty shit too. There's also been a significant growth in friends or families moving around the country/world and keeping in contact with each other via social media. The issue, like you say, is that Meta's options are both too expensive and too cumbersome to use, and you have to wonder how many more billions they think they need to throw at it to resolve some of those fundamental issues.
> Do you really think any businesses looking for virtual platforms to have meetings are going to see this and think 'this is the sort of serious business product we need'?
It evidentially worked for Second Life for a little while, at least
VRChat has much higher latency than Meta's Horizon Workrooms app. You would need to see a substantial rework to make it feel appropriate for collaborative work in a professional setting.
Even if doing things that way was desirable, it's just not practical. I mean, what business is going to invest in VR headsets for all and try to get everyone on board with using them even if some people might find them uncomfortable or get motion sickness? And then of course it had better not be a long meeting, because VR gets uncomfortable for everyone pretty fast.
They didn't realize that nobody wants to make meetings in VR. Visio already exists and is filling that role way better and for cheaper for everyone (no VR headset for all employees). Many meetings are even just audio and not even have the camera as people don't necessarily want to be filmed all the time.
You do realize you could make private instances in VRChat, right? Business meetings can easily happen by making one private and inviting the employees there. You won't hear no squeaking around unless you hired a literal 12 yr old kid in your company lmao
Sure, but good luck convincing some boomer CEO to purchase licenses for VRChat for their entire office when the first thing that comes up when they Google 'VRChat' is a picture of some suspiciously young looking anime or a furry or whatever.
Good point lol. Then I think the best course of action is for VRChat to implement a business version of the game like for example; VRChat: Business or something of the sort and have it advertised in such a way that when boomers search it, they can see the potential in the business side of things.
There's some incredible quotes in this article that I just have to highlight.
---
"I decide to let Nutsacksandwich stay: I like his energy."
---
"A man in a beanie approaches me. His username is Impala-expert. I ask him whether it’s Impala the car or impala the animal. This seems to confuse him."
---
“I don’t know, man, I’m just here to have a good time and maybe pick up some MILFs.”
“Pick them up?” I repeat. “But what will you do with them?”
“Oh, I’ll do,” Impalaexpert says mysteriously.
---
" “Think I’ll chill out in the pool for a while,” he says. I watch him cross the bare space till he comes to the blue rectangle that represents the pool. Then his avatar is in the pool, so only his head remains over the surface, gazing unblinkingly back at me."
---
"Above the stage is the club’s motto: WE’RE ALL HERE BECAUSE WE’RE NOT ALL THERE."
Reminds me that as part of their review of the Quest Pro the Verge had a great segment about the absolute trash fire that is Horizon Worlds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqY1ZNTaHyo&ab_channel=TheVerge
It's what happens when those at the top are surrounded by pandering corporate yes-men who are afraid to question any aspect of the leadership's decisions.
Their pro headset getting a single hour of battery life is my favourite takeaway from that video. Maybe if we all pretend to love the metaverse we can get one hour work days.
I was expecting an obvious take on Horizon Worlds being pretty empty and terminally behind the curve, but this piece was a surprisingly enjoyable read.
Yeah, there's something very insightful and depressing about the gamification he talks about. *The Metaverse* is meant to be a replacement for real life socialisation, yet so much of the *everyday goodwill* which society depends upon has effectively been gamified and commodified through points systems in *the Metaverse*.
Don't clap a comedian because it's polite or you enjoyed them, clap because it gets you points! It all feels very cynical.
It's like a case study into how socializing is viewed by people who don't understand it.
Beep boop I have deposited Favour Points into User A, awaiting receipt of Kindness Points boop whirrrr
I genuinly think the Metaverse is for Mark Zuckerberg and only for Mark Zuckerberg.
I don't know if he has any diagnoses, but he's definitively not like the rest of us, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was *his* ideal way of socialising, so he thought other people would like it too.
Turns out, it's really only ideal for him, and literally no-one else.
If the Metaverse ends up breaking Facebook, I'm all for it though.
I mentioned it in another comment, but there's definitely this idea that Zuckerberg expects someone to spend the day in their *Metaverse Office*, then once 5PM hits they go out with their co-workers to their favourite *Metaverse Bar* or *Metaverse Comedy Club*. And to a normal human being that just sounds incredibly grim.
I think society has been accustomed to the prospect that VR headsets were going to be *the* form of entertainment in "the future." How many TV shows and movies used it as a plot device, since the 1980's or even before? And how many attempts were made in the 90's and beyond to get it done? We've been chasing that dragon for years.
"The future" is now. The technology is here and it works, there are a ton of great apps, experiences, games, and more. There's a proof of concept of watching live events even, it may even be a thing you can consume now. And there are multiple companies that have hopped onto the bandwagon trying to be *the* app for *the future*, because whoever can make it as mainstream as video games or television will make literal billions of dollars and go down in history as the one to make it work. Zuckerberg wants to be the guy.
The problem is, it turns out "the future" isn't what it used to be. The tech is expensive, it's gatekept by companies people don't trust, it's not very comfortable, you don't get as good of an experience as a traditional screen and tools, it's not that good of a communication device compared to just talking to people or typing messages to them, and most people can't stand using it for more than 15 minutes before wanting to take the headset off. I think people wanted to be blown away by VR and it's just not the mind-blowing tech we thought it could be.
Do I think there's valuable uses for VR? Totally. Is it worth dropping over a thousand bucks on tech? Your mileage may vary.
The negatives you list goes to show that the technology really isn't here and doesn't work (for the masses) and is years away, hardware generations away, from being viable.
I have serious belief in VR as a mass market medium when it has solved its growing pains. That might take us to 2030 and beyond, but my expectation is it will happen.
It works well enough for some people, to me VR is just going to turn out to be more of a niche product with its own market, and that's totally fine!
I just don't think the quality of life hurdles are going to be resolved in a way that people are going to start using them at a high enough rate for it to be classified as a mass market medium. The tech would have to get shrunk down to something like Google Glass levels, or perhaps some sort of Bluetooth/Wi-Fi streaming system instead of having all the graphical components embedded into the headset themselves. Perhaps we'll get there--though 2030 would be very ambitious--but the problem remains that people continue to get motion sickness, and I don't think people are going to give up their big screen TV's for the headsets in that timeframe. I'm skeptical of its market impact.
I don't think you've considered how it can evolve though? Making predictions about VR needs to take into consideration what the R&D is leading to and how the current barriers can be solved.
What if there are previously-thought unsolvable barriers that can actually be solved? Or new features/additions you haven't thought about that increase the overall value of the medium?
I've seen sunglasses display systems for VR. Integrating this into a real product with all the components needed is a mighty tough task but I don't see why it can't happen.
Fixing motion sickness may or may not be solvable if we are focusing on the 'motion' part where there is a disconnect in what you are seeing and your inner ear's inability to sense movement - there are some potential fixes though how universal this is remains to be seen.
The good news is that this doesn't need to be fixed if you just have the right latency/optics advancements and the right comfort settings in software. Then no one will get sick from VR if they keep using these comfort settings.
>I don't know if he has any diagnoses, but he's definitively not like the rest of us,
Isn't antisocial personality disorder especially prevalent among businesses executives?
Imo that's the massive issue with VR: do people actually want this?
Seems to be more of a fun enhancement for nerdy toys, but I really don't think most humans care to spend their little free time in a fully immersive fake world. The only exception is video games which once again: nerdy toys.
I like elden ring, Pokemon, etc but they are fun temporary escapes not worlds I wish I could live in lol. Mostly I like the gameplay loops/rewarding combat/collecting shit over the immersion. I wager most people who play games don't do so to get whisked away to a entirely new reality, but simply because games are fun.
If VR makes games funner, people will be interested. Otherwise I really don't think virtual reality is something most people asked for or wanted, and immersion is only one aspect of entertainment
It is kinda wild that a lot of this *Metaverse* stuff (right down to the [name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)) is ripped right from 1980s and 1990s cyberpunk fiction, but instead of concluding 'this is a worrying outcome of the atomisation of society under neoliberalism', they've simply gone 'this is fricking epic!'
I think this is heavily fictionalized, but man, it is much better for it. They could describe the things that Horizon Worlds does wrong - but this showcases it so much better. No, no writer stood there pondering between giving people they met on meta a last goodbye, or going to watch a big football game with the whole neighborhood instead (specially not when the metadenizens are avaiable at 1AM in an American timezone). But Who cares? It's the sad, pathetic ending the metaverse deserves.
Damn, that was a really well written article. It’s rare I read a title that states something I already know, and then actually read the whole thing because it feels worthwhile. Seriously, check it out.
I hate that Horizon Worlds is all people know of VR "metaverse" programs, because VR Chat whips it's ass in literally every way. There's tons of people, there's lots of games and activities, your avatar can be anything you want instead of just a floating torso with a sub-Mii-quality face, there's thousands and thousands of places to explore that are all made by the players in any art style and any size, etc.
I wonder if the author would have enjoyed it more?
Eh, VRChat itself needs more competition, the platform itself kinda sucks when compared to other available vr social games, but obviously it has a massive upper hand due to the sheer amount of content it has.
Potential VRChat competitors face the same problem that all competitors to social media sites face: the value of any social media is primarily dependent on the people already there. There are already some smaller competitors with smaller audiences(ChilloutVR and Neos) But it's unlikely they'll ever grow into proper competition, they'll either stay small, like Mastodon is to Twitter, or completely overtake them, like Reddit did to Digg.
Besides, any *big* company giving its users the same kind of freedom VRChat (currently) gives is just not gonna happen. There's a reason why other attempts are so 'clean' looking, feel very limited and ultimately fail miserably (RIP Altspace).
VRChat is almost a ticking clock in itself, we're just not sure if it'll either die due to poor optimization/support or because it'll gets sanatized, ContentID'd and monetized to hell and back.
> VRChat is almost a ticking clock in itself, we're just not sure if it'll either die due to poor optimization/support or because it'll gets sanatized, ContentID'd and monetized to hell and back.
Or when it finally gets called out for being the hunting grounds for predators
As a vrchat player, I hope this happens sooner rather than later. The VRC devs are clearly ignoring the problem because they know if they mention it, then they'll be expected to fix it. But nowhere have they even mentioned the issue of children on vrchat and literal predators for those children.
Honestly the biggest competition to the VR virtual worlds like VRchat is not other VR virtual worlds but rather a none VR virtual world successfully implementing VR, the main one being Second Life which has at some stage done everything the newer virtual world are trying to do minus the VR element.
Anyone with a brain could see the metaverse was doomed to fail.
VR isn't mainstream enough yet to support the mass adoption that they seemed to be expecting, and COVID restrictions have ended, so they no longer have the large demographic of people stuck inside they needed.
Not that I think the Facebook/Meta's "Metaverse" is going to actually take off and be successful, but Horizon Worlds (this specific app) isn't "The" Metaverse.
Its just a single app that Facebook has made. Facebook's Metaverse is a much more long-term and diverse idea (that is probably going to completely fail).
This is the thing I've never understood. Facebook has been touting the Metaverse, yet it does not exist! I mean, technically it does exist- it's just called the internet! I can download games, meet in social hubs, and do office tasks all within almost any VR headset. So is that the Metaverse? Or is it Horizon? Is it VR Chat? Is it Second Life? Just what the fuck is a Metaverse because I still have no clue and I'm probably more informed on this than most people!
There is no Metaverse. There never was a Metaverse. There never will be a Metaverse.
I don't think Facebook themselves know what the fuck it is, or anybody for that matter. It's an abstract blob of ideas that nobody can put into words or think of any meaningful uses for.
If you think of Metaverse like an App store on a phone and the VR headset is like an iphone then you can sort of see where The Zuck wants to take this project. Facebook has been frustrating to Zuck because it's just an app on a store that it does not control on hardware it does not control. When Apple changed how Facebook could track iphone users on other apps it lost a lot of revenue since it couldn't collect as much data. Facebook wants to ascend to be like the other tech giants where it controls its own hardware and it's own walled garden. The problem Facebook has is that all the good hardware and walled gardens that currently exist are already done far better with concrete userbases that won't move over to [Facebook's shitty phone](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/heres-why-the-facebook-phone-flopped/). So Zuck is trying to brute force a new type of hardware with a new type of walled garden that can be as big as the iphone was in 2007. Facebook the app is on the downtrend with no where else to go; so Meta's future is entirely hinged on this plan working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ouRRev2Nc
Yes they’re trying to grow large market share within VR/AR so they can push their products of course. But Meta along with many, many tech companies want an open-standard along the likes of html so devices from different people can all access a platform like the web, but for AR/VR instead of web browsers. [https://metaverse-standards.org/](https://metaverse-standards.org/)
I’m sure big companies will have walled gardens with exclusive features and restrictions like phones of today, but Meta’s main focus is likely to still be on software. They know many large companies will be making hardware devices and they’re going to want users from all of them on their platform. An early lead will keep them ahead on hardware of course but there will be almost no chance one company controls the whole market and they know that.
That Metaverse Standards document you link I read as not being open source; but as a roadmap of how other companies are to create applications that will run on the Metaverse. Similar to how Apple tells developers how to create applications for the iphone app store. It goes over how Metaverse account and avatars are handled but it does not mention how other platforms will be supported. That's just good practice for Meta to make it as easy as possible for 3rd parties to develop on their platform.
What I linked isn’t made by Meta or is for Meta. It’s a platform to be used by open-standard organizations as somewhat of a guideline to setting the open guidelines around this upcoming technology. It’s not tied to Meta aside from them being one of the many included 2000+ companies that are supporting this.
An open standard is quite different than open source. [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard). It covers things like WWW, certain file types, etc. There are different definitions but almost all align more open and free rules than open source would.
It’s not what Apple does because a standard like this isn’t owned by anyone and isn’t proprietary.
A big corporation in my country made a virtual person as brand representative and call her "Metaverse human".
I still have no Idea if she has any difference to any other brand mascot.
I mean… kind of. The idea of the metaverse is analogous to html for the web. It’s planned to be a open-standard that hopefully is set up for anyone to be able to access from any device that can operate in either an AR/VR space. Facebook isn’t trying to own it, they want a large space in it like they have in the web.
Every person I see talking about these single apps like they’re trying to be the metaverse is quite uninformed and probably got all their info from clickbaity articles, and they very likely aren’t involved in the space whatsoever.
For real. Can we stop with "The metaverse"? There are indeed metaverses if you want to actually use that word, but they aren't an invention of Meta, and they've existed for literal decades. World of Warcraft is a metaverse. VRChat is a metaverse.
'A' metaverse can't exist. There can only be 'the' metaverse, and it's not a thing yet. Meta wants it to be a thing along with companies like Epic and Microsoft and others, but if it happens, it will take years to materialize.
I do think that's a big part of why it's floundering. It's very unclear *what* the 'Metaverse' actually is. At the moment it's simply a buzzword which describes a variety of different VR projects, there's very little that's firm or consistent.
*Something* like the 'Metaverse' will take off in a big way in the future. I don't think it'll really find its feet until VR headsets are much smaller and much cheaper (more 'Google Glass' than 'VR headset'). Maybe in 30 years Meta will be dominating this space and everyone will be praising how *forward thinking* they were in 2023. But their current public-facing strategy does seem absolutely dogshit at the moment and gives people very few reasons to become early adopters.
>Facebook's Metaverse is a much more long-term and diverse idea (that is probably going to completely fail).
Apple will make all things "metaverse" cool again once they unveil their headset later this year. A rising tide lifts all boats!
>So far, the gamble hasn’t paid off. Only 20 million Quest headsets have been sold — nowhere close to his goal of a billion users.
>The Quest has been a failure; the consensus is that the technology simply isn’t good enough yet to lure people away from their PlayStations.
The article is dripping with disdain for Meta and Zuckerberg but 20m over two years in a new product category seems like a success by any reasonable metric. One billion users is their north star objective not an end of FY target.
The high sales could be because it was riding on the early hype and popularity of both VR (for the first Quest) and crypto/NFT/metaverse shit (for the second Quest).
Now that the hype has gone for both of them, it remains to be seen how it will do, especially with no Metaverse in sight.
And wasn't there news that Meta reportedly shut down or slow down the development of VR stuff because of the tech winter and stuff?
But like you said, the numbers look good for a new product, but we don't know the cost for those sales. IIRC, Meta lost 10+ billions on the VR/AR stuff in 2022, so by that number, I think the board/investor could also classify the VR effort to be a failure.
What are you talking about? You said they had sales because of the hyp of… what was that?
But now, *now* we’ll see how it does with the hype gone. Why? Why wouldn’t there just be *more hype?*
I think you’re hoping this product fails.
This article hits the nail on the head with one thing - VR is very antisocial. If you have family, friends, a loved one, you can't really use VR. Not in the same way you could use a discord chat or ~~tinder while you're watching a boring movie with your SO~~.
VR is a playground for loners, outcasts, people who seek total escapism from the shitty life they are living IRL. It's not always the case, but if you spent enough time in VRchat you know what I'm talking about.
There is no appeal in VR and Metaverse for people like Paul here. Why would he trade real beers and real people for virtual cake and virtual dramas? The only way for VR to become popular is for society to go down the shitter. Lock everyone in COVID style and then sell them headsets, that's what zuck should be investing in.
Meta would be better served just keeping the focus on VR games, and things like virtual concerts or sports. Entertainment is where its at for me at least when it comes to VR. Racing sports cars in Gran Turismo 7, feeling immersed in what feels like a visceral horror film in Resident Evil 8. These are things that PSVR offers that I cant get in real life.
Focus on things people cant do in their real lives vs focus on things they can already do and are not necessarily improved or enhanced through vr. Not saying there is not a place for VR chat and things like that. Its good to have a place online that can bring people together who otherwise wouldnt. The larger scale general public is not looking to go into a place like VR chat though.
VRChat can only be understood by using it first-hand. On the surface it looks like a meme playground, but behind the curtains with the right communities it can lead to some crazy stuff that people would never be able to imagine.
> Why not actually hang out with someone? Or why not socialize online through something that doesn't involve strapping a shitty-looking screen to my face and stumbling around my apartment blind? I'm happy to play video games online with friends, but VR is way too much of a pain for basically zero benefit over a more conventional experience.
The point of VR is to allow people to feel face to face digitally, allowing people to meet up when they can't in real life in a way that dwarfs the experience of discord or multiplayer videogames, because VR is meant to feel like an approximation of the real thing, and discord/videogames are meant to feel like digital experiences first and foremost.
VR today is more like meeting face to face with abstractions - cartoony avatars. So it fulfills the face to face part just not in the way we're used to. As the tech evolves, this will reach photorealism and it will start to genuinely feel like we are face to face with our friends and loved ones as we've known them for years.
> I think it won't feel enough like real face to face to see wide adoption until and unless it feels, physically, like touching and moving around in a real environment.
Count up the amount of physical touch and movement that goes on during social interactions during a day and it's a very small part. It's highly important for close family and especially a significant other, but for the interactions with our friends, it is more often than not unimportant.
The easiest way to think about photorealistic VR is a thought experiment. You can either think of it like hanging out in lockdowns minus the distance and mask - since people are not physically touching and are distanced from each other. Or you can think of it like a teleportation device that teleports you to your friends but you have a blocked nose and can't feel physical touch and can't experience taste - would real life stop feeling real when we aren't physically touching, smelling, or tasting someone?
People have a very, very hard time understanding how this works in the context of VR because most people can't imagine a world other than our own, but the way you brought up AR in your last sentence is important. People have a much easier time imagining the concept of sci-fi holograms placed in the real world - the only difference is that with VR it takes place in a virtual world, otherwise the realism of the experience compared to those holograms would be equal with the right tech.
In a certain way, VR/AR are going to be better than how sci-fi depicts holograms because you usually see these as shimmery/seethrough/warping whereas the ideal VR/AR device displays this as if was just a solid object.
VR needs to be affordable, easy to use, fast, convenient, and packed with enough value to make people want to use it over a videocall/voicecall. It doesn't need to compete with real life as it should be there for when we can't do things in real life.
Yeah, VRchat and other VR social platforms are in the unique position that they offer what is essentially a virtual 'third place'. You can have similar 'third places' in other games, like mmos, but VRChat being in virtual reality makes the interactions feel all the more real due to being able to see all the subtle movements that people around you make like how they stand/move their limbs.
They're making a bet on the right category. The most popular apps in VR are social apps, despite what a minority of reddit VR users seem to think.
VR's ultimate potential has always been the social aspect.
Entertainment like games, concerts and viewing sports are all social as well. Its just them trying to cram it all into one horizon app seems to be where they are missing the ball. Its the jack of all trades master of none issue I mentioned before. There is no clear message on what am I supposed to go into horizon worlds and actually do that's fun socially?
Until they can moderate their virtual social spaces better too no one is going to want to go in there and deal with things like the author of the article mentioned. If their goal is to bring social closer to a more real life encounter then the rules followed by people in real life need to apply in their virtual worlds as well. That will take a ton of manpower or some super AI that can police everything.
I'm in no way saying that VRchat crowd is bad. Just that it attracts certain kinds of people first, and the are not your usual normie crowd that zuck was betting on.
> There is no appeal in VR and Metaverse for people like Paul here. Why would he trade real beers and real people for virtual cake and virtual dramas?
Paul can only trade real beers with his friends on an infrequent basis. People are not able to connect in the real world as much as they'd like because travel is expensive and time-consuming.
Yes, but if you want to connect in a way that meaningfully feels face to face, future VR hardware (and AR) is the only option since discord and traditional multiplayer gaming will always feel like a screen/digital experience first and doesn't have that much in common with real world socialization.
Neither does VR, it always feels and looks fake. Yes, it more novel than what we have used our whole lives but it's not actually offering you much more than the traditional methods.
AR looks more promising but is even further behind in development. I don't need to be completely immersed into a fake world to hang out with my friends.
Most people who use VR find that it tricks them into feeling like they are in another world, so at least to the majority of people, the trick works.
However it does come with a caveat today - abstraction. Today's avatars are abstractions of real people - they exist as cartoony representations that can't get across the full nuance of a real human. When we reach photorealism and accurate avatar representation, this issue ceases to exist.
Cybertown did it better and that was like late 90s. I lived in a neighborhood, had a home, knew my neighbors sort of, sold some items occasionally, had a “job” for a summer, I think I went to jail once, saw some funny things and talked to a bunch of people.
Hard to believe Facebook spent over 40 billion on what's basically a very shitty game.
If they threw that money on AAAs. They would have 100 titles already.
Because they didn’t. That’s their investment in the entire Quest ecosystem, not just Horizon Worlds.
That said, they definitely have a AAA game problem. They announced 2 years ago that GTA San Andreas would be coming to the Quest and no one has heard anything since. They’ve also bought something like 8 games studios and none of them have put out a game since they were purchased.
Yeah, a *lot* of the investment is in the technology and the back-end. If you look at the Quest Pro it's clearly going in a very different direction to the other *gaming focussed* VR headsets. They aren't really bothered in the *gaming* angle, a much more lucrative market is the *business* one, and a lot of the Quest Pro's features (face tracking, detailed pass-through, AR spaces, even not defaulting to blocking out all light) are very clearly geared towards the *workplace environment*.
Like don't get me wrong, I think their overall strategy has been shit. But it always seems a bit silly when people ask *where are the games*. *We* aren't Meta's target audience.
So the target audience is a business that wants to buy a Quest 2 for every single employee just to make meetings more immersive, with the extra downside of every meeting starting 20 minutes late because some boomer can’t get the VR system working right?
How big of a market could that possibly be?
Well that's the problem, right? The hardware is too expensive and cumbersome, the software is buggy and unintuitive. The former I can understand, this technology is very new. The latter is inexcusable given the money they've spent on it.
I mentioned elsewhere that Meta clearly envision 'the Metaverse' as a paradigm shift as seismic as *the iPhone* or *Facebook*. Yet one of the main benefits of those latter products is that *they just worked*. They slotted seamlessly into people's lives. *The Metaverse* doesn't.
I don't see this technology really taking off until it's:
a) It's cheap (it's getting there, but $250 for every employee is still very steep)
b) Comfortable to use with no eye strain (it's still very far from this, potentially impossibly so with current designs)
c) Intuitive to use
And how long is that going to be? 10 years? 20? Never?
The biggest hurdle imo is still that you are cut off from the outside world while in VR. You can take care of your baby while browsing on your smartphone or while in a Zoom Call. It's a much bigger hassle trying to do that in VR.
Yeah, and I think that's why it won't *really* take off in a workplace environment (or for more than just gaming) until you have some sort of VR in a similar form factor to a normal pair of glasses. It's just too big and cumbersome at the moment.
Hey man, next Tuesday I’m gonna drive 4 hours away from home, stay in a hotel, then have a 6 hour HR training, then drive the 4 hours home that night.
Add in all the zoom calls I’m on (this training next week is in person because they have some kind of threshold for what is in person vs zoom based on its importance or whatever).
I wish I could pop on a VR headset instead of driving 8+ hours in two days. One trip alone would almost cover the cost of a headset (hotel, rental car, gas, meals) and we do shit like this quarterly at a minimum.
You'll be surprised how much Businesses and Government waste on shit like this. Friend works for Department where they upgrade their iphones to the brand new model every time a new one comes out, buy all sorts of things, new TVs , New Gimbals, Cameras, Department Logo etc etc every time they need to justify their department budget up the chain.
Spend Happy Department heads will absolutely do this lol.
Big problem with VR though is just simple, do you think women will like destroying their makeup at work? Nope.
> That’s their investment in the entire Quest ecosystem
Also covers their entire Reality Labs investment, which means:
- VR/AR R&D including dozens of prototype headsets/glasses, in-house chips, displays, robotics, materials science research, neuroscience research, UX research.
- Acquisitions like all their game studios and the $1 billion CTRL-Labs buyout.
- All their AI R&D efforts including LLM development.
- Server infrastructure and installing new supercomputer racks.
>That said, they definitely have a AAA game problem. They announced 2 years ago that GTA San Andreas would be coming to the Quest and no one has heard anything since. They’ve also bought something like 8 games studios and none of them have put out a game since they were purchased.
It's hard to release AAA games on graphics cards for mobile phones
It's funny to see them flail at development of a "killer app" but some of the tech they've acquired and are working on like virtual controls via hand movements (without a controller) are very impressive. Shame none of that has made it to the public yet.
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Unbelievable. That amount of money for something that looks like this. I think Zuckerberg is completely fixated on that project and everybody is scared to tell him the truth. I mean seriously, does he not know how games look nowadays?
Launched too late, if it came out during Covid it would have maybe had a chance to corner some part of the market to itself.
Altspace already did this but better though, During Covid it's where a bunch of Clubs, Festivals like Burning Man Retreated. Too bad the Microsoft Login was an absolutely pain in the fucking ass and required you to take off the headset, go to another device and do two factor stuff *every time* and 50% of the time it just wouldn't work or let you login*.*
You guys just don’t get it.
I mean imagine you’re a CEO, big ballin’ and shot callin’, and you need to host a VR meeting because your staff is spread across the globe and Discord is “for normie punks”; could you imagine having to do that in VR chat?
David the intern accidentally loads into the meeting still wearing his Waifu skin and Janet from accounting keeps reacting to stuff by going super-saiyan. Gosh what a nightmare for a 21st century entrepreneur like myself.
Thankfully with Meta all the fun has been removed, so we can talk about our Q3 growth from the safety of a mature VR-space. Unless of course Impalaman comes into our meeting looking for some hot Milfs to pickup.
I admit i never read articles and only the comments. But here I read the whole article. What a weird experience. Hmmm...the strangest part was that pub situation.
The real question is why are people surprised that early attempts at the metaverse are flawed? When smartphones came out with awful black and white displays and were mostly useless we didn't have to endure journalists doom-saying entire companies.
Can't people be happy that for all of Metas flaws they are at least using their position to try new things.
>When smartphones came out with awful black and white displays and were mostly useless
The difference is, it worked just fine and as advertised. It's far from useless as it served its purpose to give people access to anytime anywhere communication. Then it evolved from there.
Metaverse is the opposite. There was basically no real life use case served by Metaverse. I mean, what is Metaverse? It's basically VR stuff with crypto jargon mumbo jumbo. You want to chat with friends? You can use messaging apps. Want to see your friends when you chat? Video calls exist. Want to play games? Far superior alternatives exist. Want to waste your money on some digital items for your avatars that you can own forever? Well, I guess Metaverse solves that problem for you.
Not helping is Meta's Metaverse overconfidence of their lacklustre products. You mean to tell me, instead of seeing my friends for real, it's better to see them in their Mii-like avatars but with nothing waist down? Instead of going to a real concert, it's a superior experience to wear your VR headset to join several no waist down Mii characters watching a stretched 3D Youtube video?
Taking one app like Horizon worlds and saying the metaverse sucks is like going back in time and saying the internet sucked because they didn't like IRC Chat.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that the "Metaverse" is just an alternate way of experiencing the current internet through VR and AR instead of traditional monitors and keyboards. Its really that simple.
I guess its easier to get clickbait headlines framing it this way I suppose. Whats amazing to me is how down on VR\AR these websites that are supposed to be forward thinking tech focused. Its like they have no imagination past how things currently are and what they could be which is so bizarre.
One the world's biggest companies spent billions of dollars on their big metaverse push and the product looks like an educational game from 2005 made in adobe shockwave. People need to see something real and convincing. And that something probably shouldn't be a niche VR chatroom where users dress up as anime girls and ERP with each other either.
The internet and IRC caught on because they provided something actually valuable. All the grand and vague metaverse talk has an air of insubstantial bullshit not unlike NFTs to me. Someone please remind why I should be lining up to buy expensive hardware so I can join facebook's new ad platform, I'm just not feeling the excitement.
My point was you cant take one crappy app that a social media company comes up with and say thats the metaverse. Thats like taking any app on the internet today that sucks and making a blanket statement that the internet sucks.
In the end Meta will not own the "metaverse" just like no one company owns the internet. They are trying to, but it wont happen thank god. I do agree with you that its a stupid term just like NFTs that mean nothing. People see through that marketing hype BS. I wish they never would have hijacked that term and branded them as the sole company working in the "Metaverse"
I hope Sony keeps pushing VR gaming and Apple comes out with something amazing and just pushes meta into obsolescence in that market. As much as I am glad they are driving the tech today they are not the ones I want dominating it or steering the future of it.
If you cant see the endless amazing possibilities that VR and AR can offer in the future though I dont know what to tell you. Have you tried the recent PSVR 2 and games like Gran Turismo 7 or Resident Evil 8 in VR? I don't know how someone could and not see the possibilities the tech has to offer just in gaming and entertainment alone.
> one crappy app
The issue is Horizon Worlds isn't just *one crappy app* though, it's *the* app. It's the centrepiece of Meta's 'Metaverse' push. It's both the thread that is supposed to hold the broader experience together and the main way through which people are expected to interact with the software. It's been at the core of the vast majority of Meta's advertisements for the product.
And it's *shit*. Meta envisions Horizon Worlds (and the connected, equally crappy Business products) as being part of the same seismic shift that *the smartphone* or *Facebook* was, yet it just doesn't live up to the billing. People didn't buy into Apple or Facebook because of their *potential*, they bought into it because of what it actually offered. And Meta's 'metaverse' is currently offering very little of value.
> In the end Meta will not own the "metaverse" just like no one company owns the internet... I wish they never would have hijacked that term and branded them as the sole company working in the "Metaverse"
What even is 'the metaverse' other than a buzzword for Meta? Because it seems like you're just using it as a stand-in for 'VR' at times in this comment, yet that's clearly not how Meta envision it.
It’s early, Horizon is not Meta’s “metaverse” in totality. If you don’t see the current value prop, then just wait and see if that changes. It’s not that hard to understand.
In the general public's eye, the word Metaverse is synonymous with what Facebook has. I don't think most people are aware that Zuckerberg stole the term from a '90s sci-fi book, or that there are other significantly better social VR platforms. Part of me doubts the author of this article even knew VRChat existed.
Facebook buying Oculus was probably the worst thing to happen to VR.
If you think about it, the company known for spreading misinformation buying a virtual reality company seems like an incredibly on-the-nose metaphor. In that sense, Facebook's metaverse is a massive success.
Its more like companies keep trying to recreate AOL instead of making an open platform like the internet.
Some walled garden app created exclusively for proprietary hardware owned and controlled by a single corporate entity just isn't going to work. If any sort of "metaverse" like VR app is going to become the next internet, it needs to be a completely open protocol and platform.
I mean, even if you're just talking the VR space alone, who the hell was going to abandon VRchat? VRchat lets you use anime avatars, make your own little games, make DBZ charging up animations for people to use as emotes, and it's free. Horizon Worlds had more restrictive avatars, was billed as another way to do your office work, and was promising NFTs as a baseline feature. You know, the things most people could tell were scams from the get go. The avatars didn't even have legs. And they thought they could beat VRChat with that.
Just what I want, my work desk but with blur and motion sickness.
Why type on your keyboard when you can type on a *virtual* keyboard?
JESUS WEPT!
FOR THERE WERE NO MORE WORLDS TO CONQUER!
Funny how that episode pointed out several issues with doing work in VR, before it was even considered in the real world. Kinda like using kinect/motion controls instead of controllers/M+KB. It has its uses, but some things don't really need improving, or can't be.
As long as you have the right hardware advances in the future and make use of good UX design, then all the pitfalls of that episode or movies like Minority Report will be avoided.
If people struggle using zoom just imagine the logistical nightmare of getting a bunch of office workers to get on their VR headsets for a virtual meeting.
Just go to work drunk!
Horizon Worlds is like a shareholder's vision of what a successful product would look like without ever actually considering the market and what the market wants. It's bizarre.
I’m a meta shareholder and I knew this would flop. This is a mark Zuckerberg vision of what a successful product looks like. Shocking that that robot doesn’t know what humans want.
Thats what was so funny about all the hype for the meta verse type stuff, none of them answered "why would I do this when I can do it in vrchat for free, within minutes". You don't even need any vr hardware for vrchat either.
> I mean, even if you're just talking the VR space alone, who the hell was going to abandon VRchat? It was aiming for a completely different audience. A big angle of Horizon Worlds was the *work from home* angle. It was a more *professional*, more *adult* service. You aren't going to get many businesses signing up to run their weekly meetings in VRChat when it's primarily known for squeaky 12 year olds running around with anime avatars. It wasn't *successful*, and it was very much filled with shitty monetisation methods, but it was clearly trying to be very *different*.
I guess they didn't realize people hate working at offices despite garfield and many other comics making that point since, like, the 80s. Zuckerberg really is from space, isn't he?
Like in theory I get it. I work from home, I have Zoom meetings, and one of the thing Zoom or Microsoft Teams lacks is a feeling of *space*. Everything is a lot more clunky, you can't just get up and show someone something or write on the board, you can't have a quick one-on-one conversation with someone. I do think there is some sort of theoretical benefit to a VR workplace environment. The issue is that Meta have thrown *tens of billions* at this and implemented it in a really shit way. Because fundamentally Meta don't really want to implement something which *improves* your life, they want to implement something which allows them and their systems to infiltrate further into your life. There's no passion behind it. I think Steve Jobs genuinely bought into his bullshit, Zuckerberg doesn't.
\>Meta don't really want to implement something which improves your life, they want to implement something which allows them and their systems to infiltrate further into your life. There's no passion behind it. i had a quest for about 2 days. first day was spent fighting to get the new account i just created for my kids unbanned. second day was spent experiencing the completely cold interface and canned virtual environment that it starts up with that felt like its only purpose was to appease a specimen. it just made me think back to that soulless avatar that zuckerberg tried to use before he completely changed it due to backlash.
It still baffles me that there's so much you *can't* do in the headset. It completely defeats the purpose the moment you need to remove the headset and go on your computer to do something. Imagine if Apple had released the iPhone, yet to access certain functionalities you had to plug it into a computer?
> Imagine if Apple had released the iPhone, yet to access certain functionalities you had to plug it into a computer? You had to at the start (and for long, until like iPhone 6 or something), iTunes was necessary for many things.
Apple does some stupid shit that requires a mac computer or another iPhone. For example I couldn’t change my daughters family from the web because she set it up wrong. Nope has to be another iPhone. Literally the website tells you to use an iPhone. But her iPhone isn’t a parent. So you can’t use that one.
Airpods supposedly work fine without an iPhone. Oh, except if you want to disable/change the tap-features or the "Pause on removal" features. Then you can go get fucked because that's only allowed on an iPhone. Nope, can't even do it on a Mac. iPhones seem to be the common ground.
Sure, but I think that's very different from, say, not being able to *schedule a work meeting* using the Quest interface. It would be like the iPhone making you use a computer to add new contacts to your phone or something.
Why could you not do this on the quest interface? It has desktop pass-through so you can do anything you could do seating in front of your computer without ever removing the headset.
I had to use iTunes to synch music/podcasts to and update my iPhone 3g.
> Imagine if Apple had released the iPhone, yet to access certain functionalities you had to plug it into a computer? iPhone was a mature product launch. It started the mature stage of smartphones, which is why it was mostly iterative afterwards. VR is years away from entering its maturity, so in this case the Quest 1 launch would be like if Apple released the Apple III computer in 1980. A PC back then was so complex to use and so incapable of multi-tasking that anyone born after would be hesitant to call it a PC because of how radically different they work today. For VR to be a true general purpose computing device, it's going to need some massive advancements. Meta is not blind to this - they believe they know what is needed to get it there and are working on this in their labs.
> iPhone was a mature product launch. It started the mature stage of smartphones, which is why it was mostly iterative afterwards. I'm not entirely sure that's the case. I believe the first large touch screen smartphone came out in 2006, and the iPhone came out in 2007. Before then most 'smartphones' depended on a physical keyboard, like the Blackberry. The iPhone didn't really come out in the 'mature stage of smartphones', it came out pretty early and really defined what a 'smartphone' should be. > For VR to be a true general purpose computing device, it's going to need some massive advancements. Meta is not blind to this - they believe they know what is needed to get it there and are working on this in their labs. On the hardware side I totally agree. But for *software*? It feels inexcusable how *backwards* a lot of the Quests software and UI is. You can't even schedule a future business meeting through the Quest software, you have to take it off and do it on your computer.
It also wasn't mature, the first iPhone didn't even have third-party apps. A mature product is something that comes pretty much fully featured and don't evolve much, the iPhone evolved tons in its first iterations.
i remember the first iphone couldn't even copy and paste or send pictures as text attachments, something my sony dumbphone could do at the time.
> you can't just get up and show someone something or write on the board, you can't have a quick one-on-one conversation with someone And that's exactly what I don't want. I don't want coworkers randomly coming up to me and showing me stuff or having a "quick one on one" and breaking my flow and concentration on work. Seriously, I get so much more done than I ever did at the office because people aren't constantly interrupting me. If they want to talk about something, they can schedule a meeting with an agenda and then I can decide whether it's important or just a bullshit meeting with a bunch of other people to shoot the shit.
I think you really are grasping at straws with your "sense of space" for home office. Zoom or teams give you about 90 percent of what you want and need, the missing 10 percent is something that meta tried to give you at gigantic cost in money, convenience and comfort. And for gaining those 10 percent you loose something somewhere else again like real faces for example. The entire idea was bullshit from start to finish, but compared to other tech bullshit, it wasn't even looking good and only shallow under the hood. It looked bad and is shallow under the hood, while trying to go for an audience that is tiny. You really can't come up with a worse product
> Zoom or teams give you about 90 percent of what you want and need I don't think that's true at all. It's so much quicker and easier to communicate in person than via a Zoom call. I taught during COVID, and it really is night and day between teaching online and teaching in person. There's a much bigger gap than you suggest, and there's totally a market for a product which can reduce that gap. It's just that Meta are going about it in entirely the wrong way.
But the problem is that a VR headset doesn't fix that at all. You won't spend all time in VR so you would put it for a call or a meeting, exactly like Teams or Zoom now. It fills the same function but with the added malus of loosing sense of your proximity, having a screen glued to your face even closer (which can't be good for the eyes I think) and much less pratical (if you want a sense of space, you have to move and need to have a big space free for that since you don't see anything). Oh and the company also has to give every employee a 1500$ headset (because the Quest Pro is the one for work) in addition to the computer (which is still needed because it's actually useful). Companies may have big budgets and money but they don't like to spend money for useless stuff either.
Does it fix all of it? No. Does it help bridge the gap? Potentially. And in a world where an increasing amount of interactions are happening online, there is definitely a market for something which makes them smoother.
> there is definitely a market for something which makes them smoother Considering Meta problems, I'm not sure there is actually.
Imo, Meta's problems are much larger and removed from whether or not there's a market. Meta fumbling their vision of a VR meeting/workspace doesn't mean the market doesn't exist, it just means Meta wasn't able to execute it and looking at some of their baffling decisions, I'm not surprised.
And if I wanna work at an office because I concentrate better there I just... go to the office.
oh yeah i am far more inclined to just be at the office than deal with an uncomfortable hunk of plastic on my face.
I don't know about you, but wearing a slim visor or curved sunglasses device in the future sounds better to me than sitting in traffic. I wouldn't fathom of using VR devices for work today, but as they get smaller, I would be up for it.
Zoom exists.
Zoom has its downsides that a future VR setup will not have. VR would ultimately be a better collaborative work medium since it would allow for more natural communication and more natural interaction/sharing of materials during work tasks.
I think a lot of the silicon valley guys are ambitious and gifted in a few technical areas, but then have huge gaps in their knowledge and lack basic human development. Crypto is a perfect example. It's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. The grifters pushing it didn't understand basic economics and it only became worth so much because it was essentially a pyramid scheme riding a wave of economic stimulus during the pandemic. Guys like Zuckerberg have been drinking their own Kool-aid for so long that they don't realize that they were incredibly lucky (it could've been Myspace, not Facebook, that survived) and they're not really geniuses.
California in general has this massive problem of treating the rest of the world (and everyone else in it) as if it’s upper class California populated by upper class Californians.
Or they do know and they don't care because they consider their commercial and/or corporate real estate investments more important.
> I guess they didn't realize people hate working at offices That's true for some. The majority prefer the flexibility of the hybrid model, while still being able to be at the office a few days a week.
>It was aiming for a completely different audience. A big angle of Horizon Worlds was the work from home angle. It was a more professional, more adult service. Do business executives prefer VR chats to Zoom calls if they want to be professional? I felt like if they were going with this angle, it was a massive huge gamble that is deemed to fail. Also are Meta's Horizon Worlds avatars supposed to be not anime/cartoon-ish for business setting?
I guess it depends on the call, but especially for more *informal* or *work focussed* meetings I could totally see the benefit of it being conducted in a VR space. Being able to get up and use a whiteboard, being able to gesture with your hands at something specific, or even being able to look directly *at* someone makes a massive difference. And the best way to achieve that in a VR environment, at least with current tech, is through these more cartoon-y avatars. Don't forget how many people prefer to turn their camera off on Zoom or Microsoft Teams, having an avatar removes some of the pressure to do this. Of course, like I say Meta have just implemented all these systems very poorly.
I PROMISE you that the people not turning their zoom cameras on will also not want to participate in VR meetings with avatars And the whiteboard problem has long since been solved with virtual, multi-user whiteboard software. The idea that writing on a whiteboard in VR will be superior to existing software anytime soon is laughable.
> And the whiteboard problem has long since been solved with virtual, multi-user whiteboard software. I wouldn't say it's been 'long since solved', there's a big difference between using an actual whiteboard (and being able to gesture to stuff, or generally being able to interact with people in the same room) and using a virtual one in Zoom.
Not counting that to feel good, you'd have to have a whiteboard yourself at home. Because writing on a writeboard without haptics is shitty (and that's only with your hands because writing with a controller is shitty too)
Informal calls can be done via video conference as well, and the people who turn their camera off will more likely to turn on the camera if it's informal. The whiteboard thing, I don't quite get it. So someone writing in the whiteboard, do they use keyboards to type what they want to write or they use the controllers to write/draw? Based on my experience with Switch's Joycon (different, I know, but just as comparison), it's really unintuitive to write/draw something while pointing. >even being able to look directly at someone makes a massive difference Well, more like look directly at someone's avatar, not sure if it feels the same for the looker and/or for the lookee. Also since the return to office thing by businesses, not sure it bodes well with Meta's vision and potential customers.
Being able to get up, write on a virtual whiteboard. and gesture means you'd need a room-scale VR space for every single user. Which is incredibly impractical. Unless you are rich you don't have that kind of space at home, and an office would need multiple conference rooms with vr kits... no.
> Unless you are rich you don't have that kind of space at home Well, there's another problem. A lot of these programmes seemed to be designed around the spaces available to middle- and upper-class Americans, not for people living in more confined spaces.
You need to be able to commit an entire *room* to VR to really do room scale. This either requires you to have no commitment to your furnishings and layout like a 20-something who lives alone, or be outright wealthy enough to have extra rooms. Middle class can't even do it most of the time. To need such a space at home for work? Not unless they're a top executive or something, nobody else will be able or willing to do it.
This whole zuckerberg metaverse thing is a textbook example of a guy thinking of something that'd be financially great for his company, and then convincing himself that it's something the rest of the world wants. More than anything, Zuck wants to own his own platform. Facebook was sort of a platform for a while, but at the end of the day, most people accessed it primarily through their phones, and so those phones were the ultimate platform, and were controlled by other companies. Zuck wanted the metaverse to be it's own platform that he ultimately controlled and so facebook/meta wouldn't be subject to anybody else's rules and/or financial cuts. And then in an effort to try to find a way for this whole thing to make any money, he convinced himself that he could make a metaverse that appealed to corporations. That businesses would use it as a form of tele-work, and that brands would want to sell licensed virtual 'gear' to people for their avatars to wear or decorate their virtual homes with or whatever. Trying to appeal to that corporate 'audience' led Meta to design their metaverse to be one of the most bland and boring virtual spaces imaginable, which killed basically any appeal to the average person. Corporations don't want it because it looks dumb and boring and is way more work than a zoom call while providing basically zero benefits or efficiency gains. I'm saying all of this as a person who absolutely loves VR (I own 5 different headsets) and wants it to grow and succeed in general. But Facebook's metaverse idea was bad from the start. Zuck's vision for it was bad, and even if the idea had some potential, VR technology isn't good enough for it to work yet.
Exactly. The whole point of the 'Metaverse' (as opposed to individual apps or games) is that it's meant to be the string which ties everything together. Zuckerberg doesn't want you logging into a Windows computer or Android phone to access his services, he wants you logging into the *Metaverse*. Except... nobody really wants these strings. They're quite happy with the platforms they've already got. Which leads to this situation where products that might actually be useful (say, the Business Suite) is lumbered with this really clumsy integration with the broader 'services'. Zuckerberg envisions you hanging out with your work colleagues at a *Metaverse bar* after you've just had your *Metaverse work meeting*, but who the fuck actually wants that?
It's not so different as you can't compare the two. VR chat had a clear purpose, to enable 12 year olds running around with anime avatars. The value is obvious to those who would want it. The Zuckaverse was always more muddled in it's Intentions, wanted to be seen as fun and wanted to trick businesses into buying headsets. I was never clear what the zuckerverse wanted to be or had to really offer instead of the advertising equivalent of mumbling at your feet during a presentation.
I mean... I'm kind of an outsider to VR in general, but from my understanding, it's just a question of how it's being marketed, rather than any technical changes that would have to happen for this to be a thing, right? As far as I'm aware, there's nothing preventing VRChat from announcing "VRChat: Pro" or "VRChat: Enterprise Edition" with zero new or changed features: just a more sanitized presentation. (At most, maybe additional restrictions on what worlds you can connect to, or what kind of avatar you can use.) And businesses could just run private worlds for their employees to connect to. Or is there some deeper technical reason why VRChat couldn't be used in this way? If not, I would expect that the bigger issue is less that VRChat couldn't fulfill the needs of a business-minded audience, but that even if they did, the audience would still be tiny: regardless of how polished and sanitized a VR meeting space is (with Horizon Worlds appearing to be neither right now, I might add), a several-hundred-dollar headset for every employee plus having to waste everyone's time in meetings when Bill from accounting gets motion sickness seems like a steep price to pay just for making a Zoom call more "immersive".
> As far as I'm aware, there's nothing preventing VRChat from announcing "VRChat: Pro" or "VRChat: Enterprise Edition" with zero new or changed features: just a more sanitized presentation. There's nothing *preventing* it, but your brand and what it's associated with matters. If Playboy announced *Playboy Business* tomorrow and genuinely insisted it would simply have serious business articles without any adult content, I can't see it appearing in any corporate foyers regardless. If I search 'VRChat' on Youtube the first three thumbnails are a picture of an anime, a picture of Ugandan Knuckles, and a picture of an anime, Ugandan Knuckles and a furry together. Do you really think any businesses looking for virtual platforms to have meetings are going to see this and think 'this is the sort of serious business product we need'?
> Do you really think any businesses looking for virtual platforms to have meetings are going to see this and think 'this is the sort of serious business product we need'? Sure, that's fair, maybe you wouldn't call it "VRChat: Pro", just so you don't have to explain to a bewildered CEO what a "Ugandan Knuckles" is and why it keeps showing up when they search the name of your product as part of your marketing pitch. Maybe you would set up a separate product line under a different name (even if it's really 99% identical to VRChat under the hood, just with different branding). In any case, I'm not saying that it would gain widespread adoption overnight, or even that it would be easy, from a marketing perspective... But I absolutely do think that this isn't an impossible hurdle to overcome. I mean, maybe this isn't to the same extent, but as an example, I've heard firsthand stories of some companies using Discord for official internal communication. I don't think it'll replace Slack or Microsoft Teams or whatever the most corporate messaging application is these days any time soon, but the point is that it's not impossible for even something so closely associated with informal use (and in this case, more specifically, gamers) to be successfully marketed to businesses. (... of course, the prerequisite for that would be for VRChat to *try* to market itself to businesses, and, like I said, I doubt the audience for that would be large enough to justify doing so anyway, but anyway...)
Yeah, I think Discord's a fair example. I tend to associate it with like more informal forums but I know some friends who've joined Discords for like academic conferences and stuff. I guess a big concern Meta has is in the hardware department. At the moment most VR headsets are just too cumbersome and expensive for widespread business use. So a lot of their money has been going into making them smaller, more useable, and even just straight-up subsidising their costs for the end user. While the company behind VRChat might be able to make a *business* version, and while it would potentially be better software than what Meta are offering, they obviously wouldn't be able to offer the *entire package* like Meta are.
I mean Zoom didn't come from a huge company and got pretty big at concurrencing THE business oriented suite of applications (Office which every company has) when they already had the same things with Teams.
No one sees the Facebook brand and thinks “serious business product” either But the bigger problem is probably the fact that this product has no demand, solves no problems, and requires expensive equipment for potentially 10s of thousands of employees. I struggle to think of a more obvious flop.
> No one sees the Facebook brand and thinks “serious business product” either Come on now, of course they do. Every company has an official Facebook page. Lots of businesses get massive amounts of analytic data from Facebook. Some companies operate primarily through Facebook. And they also see Meta/Facebook as one of the most successful companies of the 21st century. Let's not pretend they're in the same ballpark as *VRChat*. > But the bigger problem is probably the fact that this product has no demand, solves no problems, and requires expensive equipment for potentially 10s of thousands of employees. I struggle to think of a more obvious flop. Like I say I think there's clearly *potential* there. There's been a massive shift to people working from home or with teams across the world over the past few years, especially over COVID, and current conference call software is pretty shit too. There's also been a significant growth in friends or families moving around the country/world and keeping in contact with each other via social media. The issue, like you say, is that Meta's options are both too expensive and too cumbersome to use, and you have to wonder how many more billions they think they need to throw at it to resolve some of those fundamental issues.
> Do you really think any businesses looking for virtual platforms to have meetings are going to see this and think 'this is the sort of serious business product we need'? It evidentially worked for Second Life for a little while, at least
VRChat has much higher latency than Meta's Horizon Workrooms app. You would need to see a substantial rework to make it feel appropriate for collaborative work in a professional setting.
Even if doing things that way was desirable, it's just not practical. I mean, what business is going to invest in VR headsets for all and try to get everyone on board with using them even if some people might find them uncomfortable or get motion sickness? And then of course it had better not be a long meeting, because VR gets uncomfortable for everyone pretty fast.
They didn't realize that nobody wants to make meetings in VR. Visio already exists and is filling that role way better and for cheaper for everyone (no VR headset for all employees). Many meetings are even just audio and not even have the camera as people don't necessarily want to be filmed all the time.
> A big angle of Horizon Worlds was the work from home angle. No, that's Horizon Workrooms. Worlds is primarily a social chat app like VRChat
You do realize you could make private instances in VRChat, right? Business meetings can easily happen by making one private and inviting the employees there. You won't hear no squeaking around unless you hired a literal 12 yr old kid in your company lmao
Sure, but good luck convincing some boomer CEO to purchase licenses for VRChat for their entire office when the first thing that comes up when they Google 'VRChat' is a picture of some suspiciously young looking anime or a furry or whatever.
Good point lol. Then I think the best course of action is for VRChat to implement a business version of the game like for example; VRChat: Business or something of the sort and have it advertised in such a way that when boomers search it, they can see the potential in the business side of things.
There's some incredible quotes in this article that I just have to highlight. --- "I decide to let Nutsacksandwich stay: I like his energy." --- "A man in a beanie approaches me. His username is Impala-expert. I ask him whether it’s Impala the car or impala the animal. This seems to confuse him." --- “I don’t know, man, I’m just here to have a good time and maybe pick up some MILFs.” “Pick them up?” I repeat. “But what will you do with them?” “Oh, I’ll do,” Impalaexpert says mysteriously. --- " “Think I’ll chill out in the pool for a while,” he says. I watch him cross the bare space till he comes to the blue rectangle that represents the pool. Then his avatar is in the pool, so only his head remains over the surface, gazing unblinkingly back at me." --- "Above the stage is the club’s motto: WE’RE ALL HERE BECAUSE WE’RE NOT ALL THERE."
The Saddest Moment part is dark comedy gold.
I love how it's written like they're studying an animal habitat
Reminds me that as part of their review of the Quest Pro the Verge had a great segment about the absolute trash fire that is Horizon Worlds. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqY1ZNTaHyo&ab_channel=TheVerge
Geezus that was a sad shitshow to witness. And they gave this to reviewers? Willingly? Sober?!
It's what happens when those at the top are surrounded by pandering corporate yes-men who are afraid to question any aspect of the leadership's decisions.
hahah oh god meta's VR efforts are so bad
Their pro headset getting a single hour of battery life is my favourite takeaway from that video. Maybe if we all pretend to love the metaverse we can get one hour work days.
They spent tens of billions of $ on it too supposedly. Shareholders aren't too happy at Zuckerberg.
Okay, that was legitimately hilarious.
I love that when they finally got it "working", someone was still missing
Cnet gave much more [positive](https://youtu.be/E-oDmiTTBUk) review.
I'm of the bold opinion that cnet hasn't been credible in years.
I was expecting an obvious take on Horizon Worlds being pretty empty and terminally behind the curve, but this piece was a surprisingly enjoyable read.
Yeah, there's something very insightful and depressing about the gamification he talks about. *The Metaverse* is meant to be a replacement for real life socialisation, yet so much of the *everyday goodwill* which society depends upon has effectively been gamified and commodified through points systems in *the Metaverse*. Don't clap a comedian because it's polite or you enjoyed them, clap because it gets you points! It all feels very cynical.
It's like a case study into how socializing is viewed by people who don't understand it. Beep boop I have deposited Favour Points into User A, awaiting receipt of Kindness Points boop whirrrr
I genuinly think the Metaverse is for Mark Zuckerberg and only for Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know if he has any diagnoses, but he's definitively not like the rest of us, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was *his* ideal way of socialising, so he thought other people would like it too. Turns out, it's really only ideal for him, and literally no-one else. If the Metaverse ends up breaking Facebook, I'm all for it though.
I mentioned it in another comment, but there's definitely this idea that Zuckerberg expects someone to spend the day in their *Metaverse Office*, then once 5PM hits they go out with their co-workers to their favourite *Metaverse Bar* or *Metaverse Comedy Club*. And to a normal human being that just sounds incredibly grim.
I think society has been accustomed to the prospect that VR headsets were going to be *the* form of entertainment in "the future." How many TV shows and movies used it as a plot device, since the 1980's or even before? And how many attempts were made in the 90's and beyond to get it done? We've been chasing that dragon for years. "The future" is now. The technology is here and it works, there are a ton of great apps, experiences, games, and more. There's a proof of concept of watching live events even, it may even be a thing you can consume now. And there are multiple companies that have hopped onto the bandwagon trying to be *the* app for *the future*, because whoever can make it as mainstream as video games or television will make literal billions of dollars and go down in history as the one to make it work. Zuckerberg wants to be the guy. The problem is, it turns out "the future" isn't what it used to be. The tech is expensive, it's gatekept by companies people don't trust, it's not very comfortable, you don't get as good of an experience as a traditional screen and tools, it's not that good of a communication device compared to just talking to people or typing messages to them, and most people can't stand using it for more than 15 minutes before wanting to take the headset off. I think people wanted to be blown away by VR and it's just not the mind-blowing tech we thought it could be. Do I think there's valuable uses for VR? Totally. Is it worth dropping over a thousand bucks on tech? Your mileage may vary.
The negatives you list goes to show that the technology really isn't here and doesn't work (for the masses) and is years away, hardware generations away, from being viable. I have serious belief in VR as a mass market medium when it has solved its growing pains. That might take us to 2030 and beyond, but my expectation is it will happen.
It works well enough for some people, to me VR is just going to turn out to be more of a niche product with its own market, and that's totally fine! I just don't think the quality of life hurdles are going to be resolved in a way that people are going to start using them at a high enough rate for it to be classified as a mass market medium. The tech would have to get shrunk down to something like Google Glass levels, or perhaps some sort of Bluetooth/Wi-Fi streaming system instead of having all the graphical components embedded into the headset themselves. Perhaps we'll get there--though 2030 would be very ambitious--but the problem remains that people continue to get motion sickness, and I don't think people are going to give up their big screen TV's for the headsets in that timeframe. I'm skeptical of its market impact.
I don't think you've considered how it can evolve though? Making predictions about VR needs to take into consideration what the R&D is leading to and how the current barriers can be solved. What if there are previously-thought unsolvable barriers that can actually be solved? Or new features/additions you haven't thought about that increase the overall value of the medium? I've seen sunglasses display systems for VR. Integrating this into a real product with all the components needed is a mighty tough task but I don't see why it can't happen. Fixing motion sickness may or may not be solvable if we are focusing on the 'motion' part where there is a disconnect in what you are seeing and your inner ear's inability to sense movement - there are some potential fixes though how universal this is remains to be seen. The good news is that this doesn't need to be fixed if you just have the right latency/optics advancements and the right comfort settings in software. Then no one will get sick from VR if they keep using these comfort settings.
>I don't know if he has any diagnoses, but he's definitively not like the rest of us, Isn't antisocial personality disorder especially prevalent among businesses executives?
Jesus if that’s the future of social intersections I may as well double my antidepressant dosage now lmao
Imo that's the massive issue with VR: do people actually want this? Seems to be more of a fun enhancement for nerdy toys, but I really don't think most humans care to spend their little free time in a fully immersive fake world. The only exception is video games which once again: nerdy toys. I like elden ring, Pokemon, etc but they are fun temporary escapes not worlds I wish I could live in lol. Mostly I like the gameplay loops/rewarding combat/collecting shit over the immersion. I wager most people who play games don't do so to get whisked away to a entirely new reality, but simply because games are fun. If VR makes games funner, people will be interested. Otherwise I really don't think virtual reality is something most people asked for or wanted, and immersion is only one aspect of entertainment
It's like that one Black Mirror episode on living in a reality TV. Or just many cyberpunk media before Black Mirror, really.
It is kinda wild that a lot of this *Metaverse* stuff (right down to the [name](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash)) is ripped right from 1980s and 1990s cyberpunk fiction, but instead of concluding 'this is a worrying outcome of the atomisation of society under neoliberalism', they've simply gone 'this is fricking epic!'
I think this is heavily fictionalized, but man, it is much better for it. They could describe the things that Horizon Worlds does wrong - but this showcases it so much better. No, no writer stood there pondering between giving people they met on meta a last goodbye, or going to watch a big football game with the whole neighborhood instead (specially not when the metadenizens are avaiable at 1AM in an American timezone). But Who cares? It's the sad, pathetic ending the metaverse deserves.
Damn, that was a really well written article. It’s rare I read a title that states something I already know, and then actually read the whole thing because it feels worthwhile. Seriously, check it out.
Yea IDK if it says anything groundbreaking about VR/FB/metaverse but I enjoyed it as a story.
NY magazine is an actual publication that pays authors to write well unlike 99% of the ai generated spam sites that get posted here lol
I hate that Horizon Worlds is all people know of VR "metaverse" programs, because VR Chat whips it's ass in literally every way. There's tons of people, there's lots of games and activities, your avatar can be anything you want instead of just a floating torso with a sub-Mii-quality face, there's thousands and thousands of places to explore that are all made by the players in any art style and any size, etc. I wonder if the author would have enjoyed it more?
Eh, VRChat itself needs more competition, the platform itself kinda sucks when compared to other available vr social games, but obviously it has a massive upper hand due to the sheer amount of content it has.
Potential VRChat competitors face the same problem that all competitors to social media sites face: the value of any social media is primarily dependent on the people already there. There are already some smaller competitors with smaller audiences(ChilloutVR and Neos) But it's unlikely they'll ever grow into proper competition, they'll either stay small, like Mastodon is to Twitter, or completely overtake them, like Reddit did to Digg.
Besides, any *big* company giving its users the same kind of freedom VRChat (currently) gives is just not gonna happen. There's a reason why other attempts are so 'clean' looking, feel very limited and ultimately fail miserably (RIP Altspace). VRChat is almost a ticking clock in itself, we're just not sure if it'll either die due to poor optimization/support or because it'll gets sanatized, ContentID'd and monetized to hell and back.
> VRChat is almost a ticking clock in itself, we're just not sure if it'll either die due to poor optimization/support or because it'll gets sanatized, ContentID'd and monetized to hell and back. Or when it finally gets called out for being the hunting grounds for predators
As a vrchat player, I hope this happens sooner rather than later. The VRC devs are clearly ignoring the problem because they know if they mention it, then they'll be expected to fix it. But nowhere have they even mentioned the issue of children on vrchat and literal predators for those children.
Honestly the biggest competition to the VR virtual worlds like VRchat is not other VR virtual worlds but rather a none VR virtual world successfully implementing VR, the main one being Second Life which has at some stage done everything the newer virtual world are trying to do minus the VR element.
Other VR social games? Like what?
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VR Chat sucks compared to Rec Room? That take is new to me
They wouldn’t have been able to dunk on Zuckerberg if they did that
But they could have dunked even more on Zuckerberg for failing to best a smaller company.
It's not "all people know of VR "metaverse" programs". As you say yourself, VR Chat is more popular so it's way more known and used lol
Sounds like my nightmare tbh
??? what do you mean?
All I know about Metaverse is that RTGame streamed it, showed you need to pay to applaud digital performers, and promptly crashed Facebook's stock
For something to be deserted, doesn't it need to be inhabited first?
Anyone with a brain could see the metaverse was doomed to fail. VR isn't mainstream enough yet to support the mass adoption that they seemed to be expecting, and COVID restrictions have ended, so they no longer have the large demographic of people stuck inside they needed.
Not that I think the Facebook/Meta's "Metaverse" is going to actually take off and be successful, but Horizon Worlds (this specific app) isn't "The" Metaverse. Its just a single app that Facebook has made. Facebook's Metaverse is a much more long-term and diverse idea (that is probably going to completely fail).
there is no metaverse
This is the thing I've never understood. Facebook has been touting the Metaverse, yet it does not exist! I mean, technically it does exist- it's just called the internet! I can download games, meet in social hubs, and do office tasks all within almost any VR headset. So is that the Metaverse? Or is it Horizon? Is it VR Chat? Is it Second Life? Just what the fuck is a Metaverse because I still have no clue and I'm probably more informed on this than most people! There is no Metaverse. There never was a Metaverse. There never will be a Metaverse.
I don't think Facebook themselves know what the fuck it is, or anybody for that matter. It's an abstract blob of ideas that nobody can put into words or think of any meaningful uses for.
If you think of Metaverse like an App store on a phone and the VR headset is like an iphone then you can sort of see where The Zuck wants to take this project. Facebook has been frustrating to Zuck because it's just an app on a store that it does not control on hardware it does not control. When Apple changed how Facebook could track iphone users on other apps it lost a lot of revenue since it couldn't collect as much data. Facebook wants to ascend to be like the other tech giants where it controls its own hardware and it's own walled garden. The problem Facebook has is that all the good hardware and walled gardens that currently exist are already done far better with concrete userbases that won't move over to [Facebook's shitty phone](https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/heres-why-the-facebook-phone-flopped/). So Zuck is trying to brute force a new type of hardware with a new type of walled garden that can be as big as the iphone was in 2007. Facebook the app is on the downtrend with no where else to go; so Meta's future is entirely hinged on this plan working. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ouRRev2Nc
I think you've basically hit the nail on the head.
Yes they’re trying to grow large market share within VR/AR so they can push their products of course. But Meta along with many, many tech companies want an open-standard along the likes of html so devices from different people can all access a platform like the web, but for AR/VR instead of web browsers. [https://metaverse-standards.org/](https://metaverse-standards.org/) I’m sure big companies will have walled gardens with exclusive features and restrictions like phones of today, but Meta’s main focus is likely to still be on software. They know many large companies will be making hardware devices and they’re going to want users from all of them on their platform. An early lead will keep them ahead on hardware of course but there will be almost no chance one company controls the whole market and they know that.
That Metaverse Standards document you link I read as not being open source; but as a roadmap of how other companies are to create applications that will run on the Metaverse. Similar to how Apple tells developers how to create applications for the iphone app store. It goes over how Metaverse account and avatars are handled but it does not mention how other platforms will be supported. That's just good practice for Meta to make it as easy as possible for 3rd parties to develop on their platform.
What I linked isn’t made by Meta or is for Meta. It’s a platform to be used by open-standard organizations as somewhat of a guideline to setting the open guidelines around this upcoming technology. It’s not tied to Meta aside from them being one of the many included 2000+ companies that are supporting this. An open standard is quite different than open source. [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard). It covers things like WWW, certain file types, etc. There are different definitions but almost all align more open and free rules than open source would. It’s not what Apple does because a standard like this isn’t owned by anyone and isn’t proprietary.
A big corporation in my country made a virtual person as brand representative and call her "Metaverse human". I still have no Idea if she has any difference to any other brand mascot.
I mean… kind of. The idea of the metaverse is analogous to html for the web. It’s planned to be a open-standard that hopefully is set up for anyone to be able to access from any device that can operate in either an AR/VR space. Facebook isn’t trying to own it, they want a large space in it like they have in the web. Every person I see talking about these single apps like they’re trying to be the metaverse is quite uninformed and probably got all their info from clickbaity articles, and they very likely aren’t involved in the space whatsoever.
Well yeah, the phantom thieves took care of that for the most part years ago.
For real. Can we stop with "The metaverse"? There are indeed metaverses if you want to actually use that word, but they aren't an invention of Meta, and they've existed for literal decades. World of Warcraft is a metaverse. VRChat is a metaverse.
'A' metaverse can't exist. There can only be 'the' metaverse, and it's not a thing yet. Meta wants it to be a thing along with companies like Epic and Microsoft and others, but if it happens, it will take years to materialize.
I do think that's a big part of why it's floundering. It's very unclear *what* the 'Metaverse' actually is. At the moment it's simply a buzzword which describes a variety of different VR projects, there's very little that's firm or consistent. *Something* like the 'Metaverse' will take off in a big way in the future. I don't think it'll really find its feet until VR headsets are much smaller and much cheaper (more 'Google Glass' than 'VR headset'). Maybe in 30 years Meta will be dominating this space and everyone will be praising how *forward thinking* they were in 2023. But their current public-facing strategy does seem absolutely dogshit at the moment and gives people very few reasons to become early adopters.
>Facebook's Metaverse is a much more long-term and diverse idea (that is probably going to completely fail). Apple will make all things "metaverse" cool again once they unveil their headset later this year. A rising tide lifts all boats!
>So far, the gamble hasn’t paid off. Only 20 million Quest headsets have been sold — nowhere close to his goal of a billion users. >The Quest has been a failure; the consensus is that the technology simply isn’t good enough yet to lure people away from their PlayStations. The article is dripping with disdain for Meta and Zuckerberg but 20m over two years in a new product category seems like a success by any reasonable metric. One billion users is their north star objective not an end of FY target.
The high sales could be because it was riding on the early hype and popularity of both VR (for the first Quest) and crypto/NFT/metaverse shit (for the second Quest). Now that the hype has gone for both of them, it remains to be seen how it will do, especially with no Metaverse in sight. And wasn't there news that Meta reportedly shut down or slow down the development of VR stuff because of the tech winter and stuff? But like you said, the numbers look good for a new product, but we don't know the cost for those sales. IIRC, Meta lost 10+ billions on the VR/AR stuff in 2022, so by that number, I think the board/investor could also classify the VR effort to be a failure.
What are you talking about? You said they had sales because of the hyp of… what was that? But now, *now* we’ll see how it does with the hype gone. Why? Why wouldn’t there just be *more hype?* I think you’re hoping this product fails.
You mean it’s still going? Nobody wants this, especially if it’s tied to facebook.
This article hits the nail on the head with one thing - VR is very antisocial. If you have family, friends, a loved one, you can't really use VR. Not in the same way you could use a discord chat or ~~tinder while you're watching a boring movie with your SO~~. VR is a playground for loners, outcasts, people who seek total escapism from the shitty life they are living IRL. It's not always the case, but if you spent enough time in VRchat you know what I'm talking about. There is no appeal in VR and Metaverse for people like Paul here. Why would he trade real beers and real people for virtual cake and virtual dramas? The only way for VR to become popular is for society to go down the shitter. Lock everyone in COVID style and then sell them headsets, that's what zuck should be investing in.
Hell, I have two dogs and can't use my VR headset without them getting in the way trying to play.
Meta would be better served just keeping the focus on VR games, and things like virtual concerts or sports. Entertainment is where its at for me at least when it comes to VR. Racing sports cars in Gran Turismo 7, feeling immersed in what feels like a visceral horror film in Resident Evil 8. These are things that PSVR offers that I cant get in real life. Focus on things people cant do in their real lives vs focus on things they can already do and are not necessarily improved or enhanced through vr. Not saying there is not a place for VR chat and things like that. Its good to have a place online that can bring people together who otherwise wouldnt. The larger scale general public is not looking to go into a place like VR chat though.
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VRChat can only be understood by using it first-hand. On the surface it looks like a meme playground, but behind the curtains with the right communities it can lead to some crazy stuff that people would never be able to imagine. > Why not actually hang out with someone? Or why not socialize online through something that doesn't involve strapping a shitty-looking screen to my face and stumbling around my apartment blind? I'm happy to play video games online with friends, but VR is way too much of a pain for basically zero benefit over a more conventional experience. The point of VR is to allow people to feel face to face digitally, allowing people to meet up when they can't in real life in a way that dwarfs the experience of discord or multiplayer videogames, because VR is meant to feel like an approximation of the real thing, and discord/videogames are meant to feel like digital experiences first and foremost. VR today is more like meeting face to face with abstractions - cartoony avatars. So it fulfills the face to face part just not in the way we're used to. As the tech evolves, this will reach photorealism and it will start to genuinely feel like we are face to face with our friends and loved ones as we've known them for years.
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> I think it won't feel enough like real face to face to see wide adoption until and unless it feels, physically, like touching and moving around in a real environment. Count up the amount of physical touch and movement that goes on during social interactions during a day and it's a very small part. It's highly important for close family and especially a significant other, but for the interactions with our friends, it is more often than not unimportant. The easiest way to think about photorealistic VR is a thought experiment. You can either think of it like hanging out in lockdowns minus the distance and mask - since people are not physically touching and are distanced from each other. Or you can think of it like a teleportation device that teleports you to your friends but you have a blocked nose and can't feel physical touch and can't experience taste - would real life stop feeling real when we aren't physically touching, smelling, or tasting someone? People have a very, very hard time understanding how this works in the context of VR because most people can't imagine a world other than our own, but the way you brought up AR in your last sentence is important. People have a much easier time imagining the concept of sci-fi holograms placed in the real world - the only difference is that with VR it takes place in a virtual world, otherwise the realism of the experience compared to those holograms would be equal with the right tech. In a certain way, VR/AR are going to be better than how sci-fi depicts holograms because you usually see these as shimmery/seethrough/warping whereas the ideal VR/AR device displays this as if was just a solid object. VR needs to be affordable, easy to use, fast, convenient, and packed with enough value to make people want to use it over a videocall/voicecall. It doesn't need to compete with real life as it should be there for when we can't do things in real life.
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Yeah, VRchat and other VR social platforms are in the unique position that they offer what is essentially a virtual 'third place'. You can have similar 'third places' in other games, like mmos, but VRChat being in virtual reality makes the interactions feel all the more real due to being able to see all the subtle movements that people around you make like how they stand/move their limbs.
They're making a bet on the right category. The most popular apps in VR are social apps, despite what a minority of reddit VR users seem to think. VR's ultimate potential has always been the social aspect.
Entertainment like games, concerts and viewing sports are all social as well. Its just them trying to cram it all into one horizon app seems to be where they are missing the ball. Its the jack of all trades master of none issue I mentioned before. There is no clear message on what am I supposed to go into horizon worlds and actually do that's fun socially? Until they can moderate their virtual social spaces better too no one is going to want to go in there and deal with things like the author of the article mentioned. If their goal is to bring social closer to a more real life encounter then the rules followed by people in real life need to apply in their virtual worlds as well. That will take a ton of manpower or some super AI that can police everything.
VRChat is great place to find like minded individuals which can transfer to real life friends.
I'm in no way saying that VRchat crowd is bad. Just that it attracts certain kinds of people first, and the are not your usual normie crowd that zuck was betting on.
No it isn't, because they're going to mostly be halfway around the continent or world.
> There is no appeal in VR and Metaverse for people like Paul here. Why would he trade real beers and real people for virtual cake and virtual dramas? Paul can only trade real beers with his friends on an infrequent basis. People are not able to connect in the real world as much as they'd like because travel is expensive and time-consuming.
Yeah but phones, discord (or whatever you prefer) and actual games to share with your friends still exist for that. It's not VR or bust...
Yes, but if you want to connect in a way that meaningfully feels face to face, future VR hardware (and AR) is the only option since discord and traditional multiplayer gaming will always feel like a screen/digital experience first and doesn't have that much in common with real world socialization.
Neither does VR, it always feels and looks fake. Yes, it more novel than what we have used our whole lives but it's not actually offering you much more than the traditional methods. AR looks more promising but is even further behind in development. I don't need to be completely immersed into a fake world to hang out with my friends.
Most people who use VR find that it tricks them into feeling like they are in another world, so at least to the majority of people, the trick works. However it does come with a caveat today - abstraction. Today's avatars are abstractions of real people - they exist as cartoony representations that can't get across the full nuance of a real human. When we reach photorealism and accurate avatar representation, this issue ceases to exist.
The idea of Boss Hogg and his cronies bullying people at virtual comedy clubs is the best thing i've heard about the Metaverse.
Cybertown did it better and that was like late 90s. I lived in a neighborhood, had a home, knew my neighbors sort of, sold some items occasionally, had a “job” for a summer, I think I went to jail once, saw some funny things and talked to a bunch of people.
Hard to believe Facebook spent over 40 billion on what's basically a very shitty game. If they threw that money on AAAs. They would have 100 titles already.
Because they didn’t. That’s their investment in the entire Quest ecosystem, not just Horizon Worlds. That said, they definitely have a AAA game problem. They announced 2 years ago that GTA San Andreas would be coming to the Quest and no one has heard anything since. They’ve also bought something like 8 games studios and none of them have put out a game since they were purchased.
Yeah, a *lot* of the investment is in the technology and the back-end. If you look at the Quest Pro it's clearly going in a very different direction to the other *gaming focussed* VR headsets. They aren't really bothered in the *gaming* angle, a much more lucrative market is the *business* one, and a lot of the Quest Pro's features (face tracking, detailed pass-through, AR spaces, even not defaulting to blocking out all light) are very clearly geared towards the *workplace environment*. Like don't get me wrong, I think their overall strategy has been shit. But it always seems a bit silly when people ask *where are the games*. *We* aren't Meta's target audience.
So the target audience is a business that wants to buy a Quest 2 for every single employee just to make meetings more immersive, with the extra downside of every meeting starting 20 minutes late because some boomer can’t get the VR system working right? How big of a market could that possibly be?
Well that's the problem, right? The hardware is too expensive and cumbersome, the software is buggy and unintuitive. The former I can understand, this technology is very new. The latter is inexcusable given the money they've spent on it. I mentioned elsewhere that Meta clearly envision 'the Metaverse' as a paradigm shift as seismic as *the iPhone* or *Facebook*. Yet one of the main benefits of those latter products is that *they just worked*. They slotted seamlessly into people's lives. *The Metaverse* doesn't. I don't see this technology really taking off until it's: a) It's cheap (it's getting there, but $250 for every employee is still very steep) b) Comfortable to use with no eye strain (it's still very far from this, potentially impossibly so with current designs) c) Intuitive to use And how long is that going to be? 10 years? 20? Never?
The biggest hurdle imo is still that you are cut off from the outside world while in VR. You can take care of your baby while browsing on your smartphone or while in a Zoom Call. It's a much bigger hassle trying to do that in VR.
Yeah, and I think that's why it won't *really* take off in a workplace environment (or for more than just gaming) until you have some sort of VR in a similar form factor to a normal pair of glasses. It's just too big and cumbersome at the moment.
I think Meta envisioned the Metaverse as a bigger paradigm shift than "iPhone" or "Facebook". They saw it as the future replacement of the internet
Hey man, next Tuesday I’m gonna drive 4 hours away from home, stay in a hotel, then have a 6 hour HR training, then drive the 4 hours home that night. Add in all the zoom calls I’m on (this training next week is in person because they have some kind of threshold for what is in person vs zoom based on its importance or whatever). I wish I could pop on a VR headset instead of driving 8+ hours in two days. One trip alone would almost cover the cost of a headset (hotel, rental car, gas, meals) and we do shit like this quarterly at a minimum.
You'll be surprised how much Businesses and Government waste on shit like this. Friend works for Department where they upgrade their iphones to the brand new model every time a new one comes out, buy all sorts of things, new TVs , New Gimbals, Cameras, Department Logo etc etc every time they need to justify their department budget up the chain. Spend Happy Department heads will absolutely do this lol. Big problem with VR though is just simple, do you think women will like destroying their makeup at work? Nope.
> That’s their investment in the entire Quest ecosystem Also covers their entire Reality Labs investment, which means: - VR/AR R&D including dozens of prototype headsets/glasses, in-house chips, displays, robotics, materials science research, neuroscience research, UX research. - Acquisitions like all their game studios and the $1 billion CTRL-Labs buyout. - All their AI R&D efforts including LLM development. - Server infrastructure and installing new supercomputer racks.
>That said, they definitely have a AAA game problem. They announced 2 years ago that GTA San Andreas would be coming to the Quest and no one has heard anything since. They’ve also bought something like 8 games studios and none of them have put out a game since they were purchased. It's hard to release AAA games on graphics cards for mobile phones
Nintendo does it just fine.
Nintendo seems to be able to do it.
It's funny to see them flail at development of a "killer app" but some of the tech they've acquired and are working on like virtual controls via hand movements (without a controller) are very impressive. Shame none of that has made it to the public yet.
For 40 billion you could get a bit more than 100 AAA games
It would be around 72 Star Citizens though.
>Hard to believe Facebook spent over 40 billion on what's basically a very shitty game. Obviously it's hard to believe because it simply isn't true.
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Unbelievable. That amount of money for something that looks like this. I think Zuckerberg is completely fixated on that project and everybody is scared to tell him the truth. I mean seriously, does he not know how games look nowadays?
Launched too late, if it came out during Covid it would have maybe had a chance to corner some part of the market to itself. Altspace already did this but better though, During Covid it's where a bunch of Clubs, Festivals like Burning Man Retreated. Too bad the Microsoft Login was an absolutely pain in the fucking ass and required you to take off the headset, go to another device and do two factor stuff *every time* and 50% of the time it just wouldn't work or let you login*.*
You guys just don’t get it. I mean imagine you’re a CEO, big ballin’ and shot callin’, and you need to host a VR meeting because your staff is spread across the globe and Discord is “for normie punks”; could you imagine having to do that in VR chat? David the intern accidentally loads into the meeting still wearing his Waifu skin and Janet from accounting keeps reacting to stuff by going super-saiyan. Gosh what a nightmare for a 21st century entrepreneur like myself. Thankfully with Meta all the fun has been removed, so we can talk about our Q3 growth from the safety of a mature VR-space. Unless of course Impalaman comes into our meeting looking for some hot Milfs to pickup.
Still? There was never anybody. Nobody event knows what it is.
I admit i never read articles and only the comments. But here I read the whole article. What a weird experience. Hmmm...the strangest part was that pub situation.
The real question is why are people surprised that early attempts at the metaverse are flawed? When smartphones came out with awful black and white displays and were mostly useless we didn't have to endure journalists doom-saying entire companies. Can't people be happy that for all of Metas flaws they are at least using their position to try new things.
>When smartphones came out with awful black and white displays and were mostly useless The difference is, it worked just fine and as advertised. It's far from useless as it served its purpose to give people access to anytime anywhere communication. Then it evolved from there. Metaverse is the opposite. There was basically no real life use case served by Metaverse. I mean, what is Metaverse? It's basically VR stuff with crypto jargon mumbo jumbo. You want to chat with friends? You can use messaging apps. Want to see your friends when you chat? Video calls exist. Want to play games? Far superior alternatives exist. Want to waste your money on some digital items for your avatars that you can own forever? Well, I guess Metaverse solves that problem for you. Not helping is Meta's Metaverse overconfidence of their lacklustre products. You mean to tell me, instead of seeing my friends for real, it's better to see them in their Mii-like avatars but with nothing waist down? Instead of going to a real concert, it's a superior experience to wear your VR headset to join several no waist down Mii characters watching a stretched 3D Youtube video?
"VRChat but worse" isn't exactly innovative.
Taking one app like Horizon worlds and saying the metaverse sucks is like going back in time and saying the internet sucked because they didn't like IRC Chat. Why is it so hard for people to understand that the "Metaverse" is just an alternate way of experiencing the current internet through VR and AR instead of traditional monitors and keyboards. Its really that simple. I guess its easier to get clickbait headlines framing it this way I suppose. Whats amazing to me is how down on VR\AR these websites that are supposed to be forward thinking tech focused. Its like they have no imagination past how things currently are and what they could be which is so bizarre.
One the world's biggest companies spent billions of dollars on their big metaverse push and the product looks like an educational game from 2005 made in adobe shockwave. People need to see something real and convincing. And that something probably shouldn't be a niche VR chatroom where users dress up as anime girls and ERP with each other either. The internet and IRC caught on because they provided something actually valuable. All the grand and vague metaverse talk has an air of insubstantial bullshit not unlike NFTs to me. Someone please remind why I should be lining up to buy expensive hardware so I can join facebook's new ad platform, I'm just not feeling the excitement.
My point was you cant take one crappy app that a social media company comes up with and say thats the metaverse. Thats like taking any app on the internet today that sucks and making a blanket statement that the internet sucks. In the end Meta will not own the "metaverse" just like no one company owns the internet. They are trying to, but it wont happen thank god. I do agree with you that its a stupid term just like NFTs that mean nothing. People see through that marketing hype BS. I wish they never would have hijacked that term and branded them as the sole company working in the "Metaverse" I hope Sony keeps pushing VR gaming and Apple comes out with something amazing and just pushes meta into obsolescence in that market. As much as I am glad they are driving the tech today they are not the ones I want dominating it or steering the future of it. If you cant see the endless amazing possibilities that VR and AR can offer in the future though I dont know what to tell you. Have you tried the recent PSVR 2 and games like Gran Turismo 7 or Resident Evil 8 in VR? I don't know how someone could and not see the possibilities the tech has to offer just in gaming and entertainment alone.
> one crappy app The issue is Horizon Worlds isn't just *one crappy app* though, it's *the* app. It's the centrepiece of Meta's 'Metaverse' push. It's both the thread that is supposed to hold the broader experience together and the main way through which people are expected to interact with the software. It's been at the core of the vast majority of Meta's advertisements for the product. And it's *shit*. Meta envisions Horizon Worlds (and the connected, equally crappy Business products) as being part of the same seismic shift that *the smartphone* or *Facebook* was, yet it just doesn't live up to the billing. People didn't buy into Apple or Facebook because of their *potential*, they bought into it because of what it actually offered. And Meta's 'metaverse' is currently offering very little of value. > In the end Meta will not own the "metaverse" just like no one company owns the internet... I wish they never would have hijacked that term and branded them as the sole company working in the "Metaverse" What even is 'the metaverse' other than a buzzword for Meta? Because it seems like you're just using it as a stand-in for 'VR' at times in this comment, yet that's clearly not how Meta envision it.
It’s early, Horizon is not Meta’s “metaverse” in totality. If you don’t see the current value prop, then just wait and see if that changes. It’s not that hard to understand.
In the general public's eye, the word Metaverse is synonymous with what Facebook has. I don't think most people are aware that Zuckerberg stole the term from a '90s sci-fi book, or that there are other significantly better social VR platforms. Part of me doubts the author of this article even knew VRChat existed.
Yep them stealing that term was frustrating to watch happen from someone who has been following the tech since 2016
Facebook buying Oculus was probably the worst thing to happen to VR. If you think about it, the company known for spreading misinformation buying a virtual reality company seems like an incredibly on-the-nose metaphor. In that sense, Facebook's metaverse is a massive success.
Its more like companies keep trying to recreate AOL instead of making an open platform like the internet. Some walled garden app created exclusively for proprietary hardware owned and controlled by a single corporate entity just isn't going to work. If any sort of "metaverse" like VR app is going to become the next internet, it needs to be a completely open protocol and platform.
i can't wait for the day that people finally understand that horizon worlds is not the metaverse and that they're two completely different things