Ask HN: Anyone else not so excited about the metaverse?

Paging Jaron Lanier...

(oops, looks like even he is anti social-media these days. http://www.jaronlanier.com/tenarguments.html )

For me it is simple: Capitalism searching for the next virgin real estate to "capitalize" on.

First mover advantage appetite is pushing Facebook to double down on it despite the obvious fact that the tech is not ready yet.

IMO it is going the be the 10th next big thing, maybe in 30-40 years, when we will have optical computers able to process real-life-like virtual environment auto-generated by advanced AI models (and maybe fusion reactors to power them, one can dream)

What is the rush? I see Zero benefits for humanity. It is all just bling.

The appeal is that Facebook would control the hardware and software for a platform, so they couldn't get locked out of it or come to rely on functionality that the vendor removes (like Apple did with IDFA). It could also allow them to expand into the Enterprise space with Metaverse meeting rooms, conferences, etc. The justification for why Facebook is so interested in it is pretty clear, there isn't anywhere left to grow in their existing markets so they're attempting to create a new market.

Now why a normal person would ever use it? I have no idea. I've tried Horizon Worlds and found the process deeply unpleasant. Then again I was a huge Dreamcast fan back in the day, so my track record for picking winning technologies isn't blemish-free.

Nvidia's forays into metaverse technologies were the first that actually felt like they might have value to me.

- 3d real-time digital twins of things like factories, wind farms, or cities to be used for optimizing assembly lines, kwh, or self-driving software.

- Pipelines that connect 3d modeling tools together in real time, so you can update something in Maya, Blender, or Autodesk CAD and immediately see it updated in all the other places.

- Cloud technology for offloading expensive GPU rendering at scale

- etc

Nvidia seems not to be trying to recreate a video game version of Facebook, but rather a suite of industrial tools with real time 3d rendering at the core.

I'd prefer to actually hear from someone who IS excited, apart from Zuck and engineers who love to work on this kind of technical problems, regardless of the outcome.

I have never used it, and only spent five minutes at a time in virtual reality, so I’m truly on the fence here. But zoom calls have a huge advantage that you do not need to spend 15 to 60 minutes to see a person, and I could imagine virtual reality evolving to be more immersive than zoom.

Given how many friends I have who have moved outside of even driving range, anything virtual is much better than my current immersive options.

I don't think ANYONE is excited by this nonsense.

I think we are already in metaverse so not at all thrilled.

They should have never gone public with what they have currently. Metaverse might have had potential but none of that matters anymore as people associate with an ugly, buggy mess of a product that does nothing special. It's already a laughingstock in the eyes of their prospective clients and I have no idea what they'd have to do to clean up their public image. You can't really hype up legs - LEGS - as your killer feature and expect people to take you seriously.

I myself am more interested in the innerverse if that’s a word. I have been researching lucid dreaming for about 3 years and I think there’s a huge market there if you’re able to provide consistent reliable repeatable lucid dreams on a weekly basis and allow people to explore their subconscious. That’s a third of their time they can use to either have fun or train certain skills and then use their waking time for other things. Instead of being sucked into a VR headset for hours on end.

I’m not gonna plug my app but I’m open to talk to interested people!

I played with both VR (Vive) and AR (HoloLens) in 2016. At the time the AR experience was MUCH more interesting and I have since been more bullish on AR than VR.

FWIW, I don't believe I've ever heard anyone talking about it, positively or negatively, in real life.

I don't understand the appeal of the 'metaverse' either. From what I can tell it's basically just some sort of MMO environment where you can do real life things in VR?

That seems rather pointless to me, especially given that other companies and developers have done it much better. Like with Second Life or VRChat or various other such systems. Those don't like awful, let you be almost anything/anyone you want to be, and give you far more interesting environments to use/explore than anything Meta may have come up with for Horizon Worlds. Hell, even things like Roblox, Minecraft and Fortnite seem to be doing better as far as offering virtual environments people want to hang around in, and those are about a million times more popular than Meta's solution.

And when you add the general dislike/distrust of Meta, Facebook and Zuck... well I'm not sure who it's meant to appeal to. Older folks that like Facebook? Not sure they care much about this sort of virtual world stuff. People use VR? Not sure most of those want to use a system controlled by Meta.

Limmy had the best view(s) on Metaverse.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=limmy+metaverse

Same here. zero appeal to me. I'm very biased because I already hate social media (Discord is about as social as I go) but the idea of strapping something onto my head to do the equivalent of a video call sounds very unappealing.

I think one of the big drivers for the failure of the metaverse is Facebook itself.

Facebook (and other social media) kind of killed off IRC and other public chat rooms. Facebook users in general got used to the flow of Facebook, and forgot about chatrooms.

Now Facebook is trying to build public chatrooms But In VR™ and no one is interested. They trained their users to not engage with exactly what they're trying to sell them now.

The flip side of this is that people want to express themselves. Look at the absolute lawless insanity of VRChat, you can be a 2 pixel tall anime character or a fucked up Sonic OC (do not steal), or basically anything you want. There's tons and tons of creativity and expression.

Meanwhile on the metaverse, you can pick from a dozen or two outfits, and you can customize a small range of features of your avatar. It just reeks of corporate blandness designed by committee. Expression is severely restricted so as to not upset advertisers and shareholders. It also just isn't fun. Interactions are limited, the mini games are bleak, and it's ugly in a way that is just ugly instead of charming or endearing.

As a whole, the VR industry is mostly focused on standalone games and experiences. I make industrial training simulators, which is a fantastic use of the technology. There's people making movies exclusively for VR ("experiences") and there are so many excellent games already out there.

The core problem is that a majority of people don't want to just wander around in VR to meet random people and play lame, buggy carnival games in an ugly space designed to take your money.

People that do want to hang out in VR are generally Very Online people who are generally against Facebook. On top of that, there is already a very successful platform with wide adoption and vastly more and better features. Facebook just can't compete.

The metaverse is a 13 billion dollar monument to corporate hubris.

Legs.

Hey I am a engineer working in this space. To me I think there are a few factors -

1) I think the whole metaverse thing grew way beyond what Meta/Mark Zuck initially thought (said this in a recent verge interview). Also people seem to think that the intention is that ar/VR will replace real life, when that isn't the goal. The goal is to replace current time spent on Facebook/Snapchat/TikTok/etc

2) kids definitely love VR. I think us old farts don't seem to realize that.

3) the biggest point to me is this - do we really think that the current way we interact with computers is not going to change in the next 10-20 years? Using little glass rectangles? AR is the real prize - it will really add interesting new capabilities

What people don't seem to get is that everyone is still feeling out the tech. Mixed reality is only just getting started, AR is still very immature.

Until we port consciousness to the meta or allow us to meet our virtual soulmates, it will be kinda pointless.

If we want to make the equivalent of websites that happen to be VR-spaces, I'm alright with that.

Do I want a social media company to make a walled garden VR-game where you buy digital real estate etc, not so much.