$100B well spent
May 9, 2023 6:59 AM Subscribe
Pour one out for the ol' Metaverse.
Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession, and then killed it the second that another idea started to interest Wall Street. There is no reason that a man who has overseen the layoffs of tens of thousands of people should run a major company. There is no future for Meta with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm: It will stagnate, and then it will die and follow the Metaverse into the proverbial grave.
Previously.
Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession, and then killed it the second that another idea started to interest Wall Street. There is no reason that a man who has overseen the layoffs of tens of thousands of people should run a major company. There is no future for Meta with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm: It will stagnate, and then it will die and follow the Metaverse into the proverbial grave.
Previously.
With 50.1% of the voting stock, it doesn't matter what the shareholders think of Mark Zuckerberg. They can't force him to do anything. All they have at their disposal is pressure via PR or pressure via stock value murder-suicide.
Unlike nearly every other public company, they're along for his ride, he's not along for theirs.
posted by tclark at 7:15 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
Unlike nearly every other public company, they're along for his ride, he's not along for theirs.
posted by tclark at 7:15 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
So, in the end, the Metaverse didn't have legs
posted by chavenet at 7:18 AM on May 9, 2023 [190 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 7:18 AM on May 9, 2023 [190 favorites]
I’m not sure why but this article makes me mad. It reads to me like the author is mad that the tech didn’t work. There was never any new tech there to begin with though. The metaverse was only ever marketing hype.
The death of the Metaverse should be remembered as arguably one of the most historic failures in tech history.
This feels so dumb. The metaverse continues to be a huge failure of journalism not tech. It was never going to be anything new. Second Life and Vrchat have existed for years and any article about the metaverse that didn’t mention that is a huge failure.
It is survived by newfangled ideas like the aforementioned generative AI and the self-driving car.
Fuck yeah we’ve learned nothing!
posted by Uncle at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2023 [58 favorites]
The death of the Metaverse should be remembered as arguably one of the most historic failures in tech history.
This feels so dumb. The metaverse continues to be a huge failure of journalism not tech. It was never going to be anything new. Second Life and Vrchat have existed for years and any article about the metaverse that didn’t mention that is a huge failure.
It is survived by newfangled ideas like the aforementioned generative AI and the self-driving car.
Fuck yeah we’ve learned nothing!
posted by Uncle at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2023 [58 favorites]
With 50.1% of the voting stock, it doesn't matter what the shareholders think of Mark Zuckerberg. They can't force him to do anything. All they have at their disposal is pressure via PR or pressure via stock value murder-suicide
Minority shareholders have rights.
This is a pretty classic case of it: full control by one person perusing a hobby instead of doing what is best for the shareholders. The board has a fiduciary duty to *all* shareholders, not just the majority.
It isn't common, but neither is burning 10s of billions of dollars on a vanity project.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Minority shareholders have rights.
This is a pretty classic case of it: full control by one person perusing a hobby instead of doing what is best for the shareholders. The board has a fiduciary duty to *all* shareholders, not just the majority.
It isn't common, but neither is burning 10s of billions of dollars on a vanity project.
posted by NotAYakk at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Hopefully this readjusts people to the idea that Billionaires are mostly idiots that got lucky and not people with any particular merit.
posted by Artw at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2023 [54 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:20 AM on May 9, 2023 [54 favorites]
"It should also be the cause for some serious reflection among the venture-capital community..."
Hahahahahahahahaha....ha.
posted by snwod at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [44 favorites]
Hahahahahahahahaha....ha.
posted by snwod at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [44 favorites]
Unlike nearly every other public company, they're along for his ride, he's not along for theirs.
Which is why dual-tier stock structures need to die. You want to open to public investment, you surrender control.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Which is why dual-tier stock structures need to die. You want to open to public investment, you surrender control.
posted by NoxAeternum at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I just never saw the appeal in anything Zuck was bringing to the table with his idea of what the Metaverse should be. Also, does he not realize that VRChat, Fortnite, & Roblox are already in existence and offer much more and much better versions of that kind of connectivity/social-space. And people are at least doing some interesting things in these spaces. They're not perfect by any means and they're trying to achieve different goals, but they are at least interesting and unique. Something Zuck's version of Meta did not offer in any way whatsoever.
posted by Fizz at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 7:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
It’s also kind of a bummer that the entire tech industry of the last idea has all been about burning money and the environment in pursuit of bad ideas. Like, pretty much all of it - crypto, NFT, this shit, AI chat, whatever the next horrible thing will be. Where there was vast potential we just have an endless series of scammy holes.
posted by Artw at 7:22 AM on May 9, 2023 [30 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:22 AM on May 9, 2023 [30 favorites]
I expected the linked article to be about Facebook Meta shutting something down, but this is not that.
posted by emelenjr at 7:23 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by emelenjr at 7:23 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
failure of journalism not tech
To be fair to the writer, they frame this as a failure of journalism and hype right up near the start: In spite of the Metaverse's arrested conceptual development, a pliant press published statements about the future of the technology that were somewhere between unrealistic and outright irresponsible.
Anyway, the techbros and the journalists can both be responsible for this... thing that's most interesting for how bad it is and how many people scammed how many others into dumping money into it.
Big ol' [nelson_laugh.gif] from me on this one.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:25 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
To be fair to the writer, they frame this as a failure of journalism and hype right up near the start: In spite of the Metaverse's arrested conceptual development, a pliant press published statements about the future of the technology that were somewhere between unrealistic and outright irresponsible.
Anyway, the techbros and the journalists can both be responsible for this... thing that's most interesting for how bad it is and how many people scammed how many others into dumping money into it.
Big ol' [nelson_laugh.gif] from me on this one.
posted by SaltySalticid at 7:25 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Minority shareholders have rights.
This is a pretty classic case of it: full control by one person perusing a hobby instead of doing what is best for the shareholders. The board has a fiduciary duty to *all* shareholders, not just the majority.
In practice that's not really the case. If you can't assemble a voting majority, you cannot directly force change.
posted by tclark at 7:26 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
This is a pretty classic case of it: full control by one person perusing a hobby instead of doing what is best for the shareholders. The board has a fiduciary duty to *all* shareholders, not just the majority.
In practice that's not really the case. If you can't assemble a voting majority, you cannot directly force change.
posted by tclark at 7:26 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Isn’t it kind of good that a bunch of dumb, rich jerks lost a lot of money on this stupid idea? The article focuses on people losing jobs, but weren’t those people hired over the last few years to work on this? So really people got jobs out of it, just not permanent ones.
posted by snofoam at 7:28 AM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 7:28 AM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
The big problem with the Metaverse, AFAICT, is that the limits of its appeal were already known and way too small to sustain any serious technological development behind it. Gaming telepresence is one thing, and the idea of using a headset and tactile controls for sports and sports-like interactions have pretty clear fans, but who's interested in "talking head" telepresence where all that you get to do is interact socially? A nonzero number of people — one might even generously say "a sizable minority" — and every single one of them was a big fan of Second Life. And Second Life was (and is!) an interesting experiment, because it sort of scoped out a lot of what people liked and didn't like about that environment, and what sort of personality it worked really well for and what personality it worked really badly for. And the big take-home was that for most people, it wasn't what they were looking for in real-time online environments. Not because it wasn't immersive enough but because immersivity was not, in fact, what a lot of people prioritized in their online interactions (for many, it may even have been a negative; immersion doesn't allow you to passively take part while doing something else).
The thing is, we knew all this over a decade ago. Second Life peaked in popularity before 2010. Facebook didn't have to spend billions of dollars to discover how limited the commercial viability of immersive online environments was. That work had already been done.
posted by jackbishop at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [37 favorites]
The thing is, we knew all this over a decade ago. Second Life peaked in popularity before 2010. Facebook didn't have to spend billions of dollars to discover how limited the commercial viability of immersive online environments was. That work had already been done.
posted by jackbishop at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [37 favorites]
something something, optimum allocation of resources
posted by mhoye at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by mhoye at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Yeah and I guess it’s less inherently destructive than crypto, AI or destroying journalism/democracy. It’s just so… fucking dumb. And fucking dumb from day one. People have been pointing and laughing from the get go and it just rolled on.
posted by Artw at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Isn’t it kind of good that a bunch of dumb, rich jerks lost a lot of money on this stupid idea?
Opportunity cost is real.
posted by mhoye at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Opportunity cost is real.
posted by mhoye at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
It took the author most of the article before getting to the bit of news that justifies writing about the Metaverse in the past tense
Meanwhile the new hype train is AI. Which is also a technology with a lot of promise. The hype part of it is tedious and obfuscatory but the innovation and engineering are real. Same with virtual reality user interfaces, there's something solid there.
What's going on with all the rumored augmented reality projects like Apple's? If someone makes that UI tech work as a regular consumer experience it's going to be fantastic. Sadly Google Glass kind of poisoned the well for that.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
But the Metaverse was officially pulled off life support when it became clear that Zuckerberg and the company that launched the craze had moved on to greener financial pastures. Zuckerberg declared in a March update that Meta's "single largest investment is advancing AI and building it into every one of our products." ...I'm hopeful that Facebook (er, Meta) and other companies are still investing in metaverse technologies for the long haul. There's something there and offshoots of it are regularly successful. Kids in Roblox or Minecraft are having more metaversey experiences than I could have ever imagined back in 1995.
Meanwhile the new hype train is AI. Which is also a technology with a lot of promise. The hype part of it is tedious and obfuscatory but the innovation and engineering are real. Same with virtual reality user interfaces, there's something solid there.
What's going on with all the rumored augmented reality projects like Apple's? If someone makes that UI tech work as a regular consumer experience it's going to be fantastic. Sadly Google Glass kind of poisoned the well for that.
posted by Nelson at 7:32 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I expected the linked article to be about Meta shutting something down, but this is not that.
I mean, it kind of is--it's about VR being wildly overhyped and overvalued, and big companies, including Meta, pivoting away from it toward AI. Meta hasn't shut the Metaverse down yet, but Meta's CTO is no longer working on it, and they're no longer pitching it to advertisers.
That looks more like the end of something than the beginning to me.
posted by box at 7:34 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, it kind of is--it's about VR being wildly overhyped and overvalued, and big companies, including Meta, pivoting away from it toward AI. Meta hasn't shut the Metaverse down yet, but Meta's CTO is no longer working on it, and they're no longer pitching it to advertisers.
That looks more like the end of something than the beginning to me.
posted by box at 7:34 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
>AI chat
hold up, my being. the 'chat' in ChatGPT means it's a stateful connection to an interactive LLM front-end, something Apple paid AI experts to dream up a concept demo of 4 decades ago.
I worked full-time for years in VR in the late 90s and knew this latest round of effort was going to end badly.
Crypto & especially NFTs have always repelled me.
ChatGPT is something else, compared to all that.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:35 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
hold up, my being. the 'chat' in ChatGPT means it's a stateful connection to an interactive LLM front-end, something Apple paid AI experts to dream up a concept demo of 4 decades ago.
I worked full-time for years in VR in the late 90s and knew this latest round of effort was going to end badly.
Crypto & especially NFTs have always repelled me.
ChatGPT is something else, compared to all that.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:35 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
In the early 2010s people were doing this routinely. In games like Minecraft. They still do it to this day. I'm convinced that Minecraft could have been the first virtual universe if Mojang and later Microsoft were to intelligently develop it so. Could still be really.
It's not Business, but many people do this for a living, on streaming services. Collabs (or co-working if you prefer) are done routinely, without a lot of procedural friction, often spontaneously.
Is it practical? Many of those same professional "Let's Players" do their organizing on Discord or Zoom or some other video collab service, so probably not really. No one really needs to see twitchy co-workers bouncing around the virtual room, which is what inevitably happens in Minecraft or other mmo type situations where "meetings" are happening.
I'm astonished at how many billions of dollars are spent ignoring such a huge, and well documented, corpus of human behaviour though.
posted by bonehead at 7:37 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
It's not Business, but many people do this for a living, on streaming services. Collabs (or co-working if you prefer) are done routinely, without a lot of procedural friction, often spontaneously.
Is it practical? Many of those same professional "Let's Players" do their organizing on Discord or Zoom or some other video collab service, so probably not really. No one really needs to see twitchy co-workers bouncing around the virtual room, which is what inevitably happens in Minecraft or other mmo type situations where "meetings" are happening.
I'm astonished at how many billions of dollars are spent ignoring such a huge, and well documented, corpus of human behaviour though.
posted by bonehead at 7:37 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
It must be nice to be able to blow one hundred thousand million dollars on an idea so stupid even someone as tech-illiterate as I am knew it was a bad one and still be considered a reliable authority on what investors should be pointing their money at next.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:38 AM on May 9, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:38 AM on May 9, 2023 [17 favorites]
The tragedy is that the real use-case was right there in front of them: Letting you shoot head-crabs off your coworkers during conference calls. It would have instantly replaced Microsoft Teams.
posted by mittens at 7:39 AM on May 9, 2023 [29 favorites]
posted by mittens at 7:39 AM on May 9, 2023 [29 favorites]
I imagine diamond branch mining would be prefect for day-long mandatory HR training too.
posted by bonehead at 7:41 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by bonehead at 7:41 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
This was a wonderful contemporary illustration of The Emperor's New Clothes. And yes, the media are the biggest buffoons here.
I'm no tech genius, but I've been online since 1995. I never saw a single frame example of this Metaverse that looked impressive, or interesting, or even simply good. I can remember video games from 20+ years ago that looked better in spirit, concept and execution than any of this Meta trash. Yet we peons were buried in articles and stories about how this was the New Frontier, a bold leap into the Future that we all will take.
Garbage everywhere.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:41 AM on May 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
I'm no tech genius, but I've been online since 1995. I never saw a single frame example of this Metaverse that looked impressive, or interesting, or even simply good. I can remember video games from 20+ years ago that looked better in spirit, concept and execution than any of this Meta trash. Yet we peons were buried in articles and stories about how this was the New Frontier, a bold leap into the Future that we all will take.
Garbage everywhere.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:41 AM on May 9, 2023 [10 favorites]
hold up, my being.
I said what I said. The current VC driven AI hype wave is as awful and stupid as all the other things and as intended to drive us into misery and despair as all the other things.
posted by Artw at 7:45 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
I said what I said. The current VC driven AI hype wave is as awful and stupid as all the other things and as intended to drive us into misery and despair as all the other things.
posted by Artw at 7:45 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
What's going on with all the rumored augmented reality projects like Apple's?
Magic Leap has basically failed and are attempting (poorly so far) to pivot to industrial applications like training/assembly line. Microsoft Hololens is kind of on life support but they're still pushing for use cases and have a few PR wins on things like navigating Mars rovers and the occasional Mixed-Reality augmentation for surgery.
People kinda like Beat Saber, though.
The problem remains that there's just not enough compute power to sense your environment, process inputs, and output high frame rate, high resolution imagery without ridiculous latency. For that kind of compute power able to operate that quickly, you still pretty much need racks and racks of near-research-level compute power. Even assuming that the rate of the last 30 years of computer improvement continue (available evidence indicates it's not going to match that), you won't see that kind of compute capability in something small enough for a comfortable headset or headset-paired-with pocket device for 15-20 years.
All the AR/VR companies have been aiming for "good enough to get by" and it turns out human sensory systems often respond poorly to anything less than "near perfect accuracy with millisecond latency." Even real reality makes a lot of people blow chunks when you show a perfect real life image to people's eyes but don't consult their semicircular canals.
posted by tclark at 7:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [16 favorites]
Magic Leap has basically failed and are attempting (poorly so far) to pivot to industrial applications like training/assembly line. Microsoft Hololens is kind of on life support but they're still pushing for use cases and have a few PR wins on things like navigating Mars rovers and the occasional Mixed-Reality augmentation for surgery.
People kinda like Beat Saber, though.
The problem remains that there's just not enough compute power to sense your environment, process inputs, and output high frame rate, high resolution imagery without ridiculous latency. For that kind of compute power able to operate that quickly, you still pretty much need racks and racks of near-research-level compute power. Even assuming that the rate of the last 30 years of computer improvement continue (available evidence indicates it's not going to match that), you won't see that kind of compute capability in something small enough for a comfortable headset or headset-paired-with pocket device for 15-20 years.
All the AR/VR companies have been aiming for "good enough to get by" and it turns out human sensory systems often respond poorly to anything less than "near perfect accuracy with millisecond latency." Even real reality makes a lot of people blow chunks when you show a perfect real life image to people's eyes but don't consult their semicircular canals.
posted by tclark at 7:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [16 favorites]
I wouldn't even call it a fad. 'Fad' implies mass popularity. Nobody gave a shite about the MetaVerse.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:47 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:47 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
I like how this article is a damning indictment of Mark Zuckerberg personally not like this whole idea of having individuals at the top of the hierarchical chain who are allowed to pursue whatever totally inane, childish dream of theirs that leads to hundreds of billions of dollars worth of human labor being poured into a failed venture instead of that same labor and incentive to train to be skilled in that labor going to, i dunno, social services or something
and by like I mean I really hate it and BI and capitalism in general also lol
posted by paimapi at 7:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
and by like I mean I really hate it and BI and capitalism in general also lol
posted by paimapi at 7:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
You can't beat reality. Reality is just too immersive and cool already.
The positive goals of having a metaverse include interacting over long distance in ways that eliminate the need for lots of planes, trains and automobiles. Lots of business and creative collaborations could be done online, decreasing the need for energy and climate disrupting infrastructure. Interestingly, the pandemic helped accelerate the thing that truly has a chance to help here: really good video conferencing tools.
I'll be open to revisiting the metaverse for business and academic conferences when the avatar is a realistic 3D model of the real me.
posted by TreeRooster at 7:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The positive goals of having a metaverse include interacting over long distance in ways that eliminate the need for lots of planes, trains and automobiles. Lots of business and creative collaborations could be done online, decreasing the need for energy and climate disrupting infrastructure. Interestingly, the pandemic helped accelerate the thing that truly has a chance to help here: really good video conferencing tools.
I'll be open to revisiting the metaverse for business and academic conferences when the avatar is a realistic 3D model of the real me.
posted by TreeRooster at 7:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
See you all back here circa 2026 for a similar postmortem on the current AI-not-actually-AI hype and bullshit feeding frenzy.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:50 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by GallonOfAlan at 7:50 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
We can all discuss what a "bad bet" the (non-existent) Meta "Metaverse" was, but the fact of the matter is that this was a billion-dollar strategy in 2021 for Facebook to deflect attention away from just how unbelievably awful Facebook had become in prior years. As many noted, experiments with VR worlds have been numerous and, amongst anyone with knowledge of technology, it's been fairly well known for years what works and what doesn't. There's very little question that this was a calculated failure.
posted by eschatfische at 7:51 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by eschatfische at 7:51 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
VR is like the McRib — it always stays away just long enough for people to forget they don’t want it.
posted by panama joe at 7:52 AM on May 9, 2023 [52 favorites]
posted by panama joe at 7:52 AM on May 9, 2023 [52 favorites]
Large neural networks are the first application level breakthrough we've had in a long, long while. The only comparable thing I can recall personally is, like, dBASE and Visicalc.
But even those tools were enablers, not replacers. In the past three years large nets have gone from a curiosity to forcing the re-evaluation of entire industries worth of workflows and threatening the livelihoods of dozens if not hundreds of millions of people.
I dunno what to say after that. Computing in 2030 is going to be much more different from 2020 than 2020 was from 2010. I'm excited to see it. Still think we need to oil up the guillotines tho.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:56 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
But even those tools were enablers, not replacers. In the past three years large nets have gone from a curiosity to forcing the re-evaluation of entire industries worth of workflows and threatening the livelihoods of dozens if not hundreds of millions of people.
I dunno what to say after that. Computing in 2030 is going to be much more different from 2020 than 2020 was from 2010. I'm excited to see it. Still think we need to oil up the guillotines tho.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:56 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
What eschatfischesaid above, but also this metaverse was supposed to be a hedge against FB/insta/whatsapp being tenants on a platform - by creating a platform (VR) they would not have to worry about getting kicked off, or having revenue removed like when apple increased privacy on their platform.
Apple’s VR thing looks increasingly like a bad move at the wrong time. The markets have spoken and AI is the new hotness; let’s see if the apple VR helmet ever gets released
posted by The River Ivel at 7:56 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Apple’s VR thing looks increasingly like a bad move at the wrong time. The markets have spoken and AI is the new hotness; let’s see if the apple VR helmet ever gets released
posted by The River Ivel at 7:56 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I was always baffled at how LIMITED the Metaverse was, both conceptually and technologically.
We live in an era of near photorealistic video games, yet Zuck wanted us to get enthused about what amounted to Mii type characters?
And he never even really used the existing VR tech well.
There is absolutely a future for VR, and not too long after that a future for AR. But 1990's level graphics with jerky animation and a shitty non-interactive environment isn't that future.
VR is held back by two big things right now, the first is the cost of a VR set, the second is the incredibly bad UI. Right now the best option is a pair of awkward bats (that is, flying mice) that are too heavy and cause serious gorilla arm problems.
That's actually fixable with off the shelf tech right now, but it's fairly expensive. Gloves with reflective dots on all the joints and a few cameras surrounding you to keep them and your also reflective dot marked VR rig in sight would allow for actual finger level tracking and an interface that isn't shitty. But it'd cost a lot, mostly in terms of processing power and specialized software becuase cameras are dirt cheap and gloves with reflective marks aren't what you'd call expensive.
AR is held back by the problem that no one wants to walk around with a giant ass VR rig all the time, it's tiring and it makes you look like a clown. Until the tech reaches the point where an AR rig is about the same size as a pair of glasses, it ain't going to be implemented by anyone but hardcore geeks.
The thing that's really frusturating is that we've proven that huge swathes of people WILL buy surprisingly expensive gadgets if said gadgets a) are useful, and b) come with fairly low monthly payments to cover the hardware costs. We see exactly that with phones.
But Zuck. WTF was the man thinking? Just the 1990's level graphics should have made him stop and realize that he wasn't going about the project right.
And there are ALREADY, available for purchase right this second and some even free, VR meeting and chat and environment programs.
And hell, some people started using video games as virtual meeting places during the lockdown. THere was a news story about a programming team that took to meeting in Red Dead Redemption 2 because they liked it better than meeting via teams or zoom.
The problem here is that Zuck sucks. That money COULD have been used for hardware development to reduce price and weight of VR goggles. It could have been used for design on a decent shared VR environment. Instead asshole had his brain stuck in his 1990's forged idea of what was cool and he just burned a fuckton of money.
VR is definitely the way things are going. Just not with Metaverse.
posted by sotonohito at 7:58 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
We live in an era of near photorealistic video games, yet Zuck wanted us to get enthused about what amounted to Mii type characters?
And he never even really used the existing VR tech well.
There is absolutely a future for VR, and not too long after that a future for AR. But 1990's level graphics with jerky animation and a shitty non-interactive environment isn't that future.
VR is held back by two big things right now, the first is the cost of a VR set, the second is the incredibly bad UI. Right now the best option is a pair of awkward bats (that is, flying mice) that are too heavy and cause serious gorilla arm problems.
That's actually fixable with off the shelf tech right now, but it's fairly expensive. Gloves with reflective dots on all the joints and a few cameras surrounding you to keep them and your also reflective dot marked VR rig in sight would allow for actual finger level tracking and an interface that isn't shitty. But it'd cost a lot, mostly in terms of processing power and specialized software becuase cameras are dirt cheap and gloves with reflective marks aren't what you'd call expensive.
AR is held back by the problem that no one wants to walk around with a giant ass VR rig all the time, it's tiring and it makes you look like a clown. Until the tech reaches the point where an AR rig is about the same size as a pair of glasses, it ain't going to be implemented by anyone but hardcore geeks.
The thing that's really frusturating is that we've proven that huge swathes of people WILL buy surprisingly expensive gadgets if said gadgets a) are useful, and b) come with fairly low monthly payments to cover the hardware costs. We see exactly that with phones.
But Zuck. WTF was the man thinking? Just the 1990's level graphics should have made him stop and realize that he wasn't going about the project right.
And there are ALREADY, available for purchase right this second and some even free, VR meeting and chat and environment programs.
And hell, some people started using video games as virtual meeting places during the lockdown. THere was a news story about a programming team that took to meeting in Red Dead Redemption 2 because they liked it better than meeting via teams or zoom.
The problem here is that Zuck sucks. That money COULD have been used for hardware development to reduce price and weight of VR goggles. It could have been used for design on a decent shared VR environment. Instead asshole had his brain stuck in his 1990's forged idea of what was cool and he just burned a fuckton of money.
VR is definitely the way things are going. Just not with Metaverse.
posted by sotonohito at 7:58 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
The head of marketing at our company sent an urgent message (red exclamation mark and everything) to the legal team in April of last year noting that we needed to "protect our brand assets for the inevitable shift into the Metaverse." I responded that I wasn't sure what a B2B food ingredients business would even do in the metaverse but promised to look into it. Glad I can cross this one off my to-do list.
Our family does have two Oculus Quests and there are a couple of multiplayer games on there there are terrific fun. For immersive online games - Golf+ is easy to pick up and feels real enough - it's really outstanding. We have a standing foursome that plays almost every weekend. I hope they don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
posted by AgentRocket at 7:58 AM on May 9, 2023 [19 favorites]
Our family does have two Oculus Quests and there are a couple of multiplayer games on there there are terrific fun. For immersive online games - Golf+ is easy to pick up and feels real enough - it's really outstanding. We have a standing foursome that plays almost every weekend. I hope they don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
posted by AgentRocket at 7:58 AM on May 9, 2023 [19 favorites]
Second Life peaked in popularity before 2010. Facebook didn't have to spend billions of dollars to discover how limited the commercial viability of immersive online environments was. That work had already been done.
I mean, you could have made the case that the technology has advanced since then in a way to make the experience more desirable, but you can’t really make that case anymore.
posted by rikschell at 8:02 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I mean, you could have made the case that the technology has advanced since then in a way to make the experience more desirable, but you can’t really make that case anymore.
posted by rikschell at 8:02 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
→
We remember how well Glass went ...
posted by scruss at 8:03 AM on May 9, 2023
Until the tech reaches the point where an AR rig is about the same size as a pair of glasses
We remember how well Glass went ...
posted by scruss at 8:03 AM on May 9, 2023
It feels as if somebody coined the word ‘Metaverse’ at random and then had to come up with some spontaneous bullshit about what it was supposed to be, which in turn became the project vision.
posted by Phanx at 8:04 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 8:04 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
The markets have spoken and AI is the new hotness; let’s see if the apple VR helmet ever gets released
If Apple is famous for anything, it's jumping head first into whatever fad the Reddit Classes are clamoring for rather than redefining the entire concept of whatever those same people say is old and busted.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
If Apple is famous for anything, it's jumping head first into whatever fad the Reddit Classes are clamoring for rather than redefining the entire concept of whatever those same people say is old and busted.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
They renamed the entire company after it , as well.
Kind of hoping they completely collapse and die so we get the generic term “meta” back tbh.
posted by Artw at 8:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
Kind of hoping they completely collapse and die so we get the generic term “meta” back tbh.
posted by Artw at 8:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
It feels as if somebody coined the word ‘Metaverse’ at random and then had to come up with some spontaneous bullshit about what it was supposed to be, which in turn became the project vision.
Zuckerberg's vision is just a multi-billion dollar attempt to almost exactly replicate the metaverse from Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash.
Neal Stephenson, for his part, was similarly delusional about the achievability of AR with current tech, and proceeded to waste a lot of time (but probably made a bunch of money) with Magic Leap.
posted by tclark at 8:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Zuckerberg's vision is just a multi-billion dollar attempt to almost exactly replicate the metaverse from Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash.
Neal Stephenson, for his part, was similarly delusional about the achievability of AR with current tech, and proceeded to waste a lot of time (but probably made a bunch of money) with Magic Leap.
posted by tclark at 8:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
This is long but worth a watch: The Future is a Dead Mall: Decentraland and the Metaverse
Effectively it's all bad tech built up by venture capital speculation on an inherently broken idea about how and why humans interact.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:11 AM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Effectively it's all bad tech built up by venture capital speculation on an inherently broken idea about how and why humans interact.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:11 AM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
"Cyberspace is the `place` where a telephone conversation appears to occur. Not inside your actual phone, the plastic device on your desk. Not inside the other person's phone, in some other city. _The_place_between_ the phones. The indefinate place _out_there_, where the two of you, human beings, actually meet and communicate." - Bruce Sterling
“It’s a 3D model of a conference room” - these dweebs.
posted by Artw at 8:13 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
“It’s a 3D model of a conference room” - these dweebs.
posted by Artw at 8:13 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
We remember how well Glass went ...
Glass went from being a "Hey boss, come check out for the first time this cool shit we've been fucking around on in our 20% time..." concept to getting demoed (via sky dive team lol) at Google's big developer conference in like two months. Even the "oh fuck Sergey publicly announced this shit now we have to ship oh fuck oh fuck" effort to fling it out the door took like another year, and getting one as a non-handpicked regular developer took a year after that. It never shipped to the general public.
All that to say, Glass wouldn't have ever been announced at a reasonable company. If Apple ever announces one, you'll probably be able to pre-order it the following Friday.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Glass went from being a "Hey boss, come check out for the first time this cool shit we've been fucking around on in our 20% time..." concept to getting demoed (via sky dive team lol) at Google's big developer conference in like two months. Even the "oh fuck Sergey publicly announced this shit now we have to ship oh fuck oh fuck" effort to fling it out the door took like another year, and getting one as a non-handpicked regular developer took a year after that. It never shipped to the general public.
All that to say, Glass wouldn't have ever been announced at a reasonable company. If Apple ever announces one, you'll probably be able to pre-order it the following Friday.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 8:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
"So, in the end, the Metaverse didn't have legs"
posted by chavenet at 9:18 AM on May 9 [50 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
"Most expensive April Fool's Ever"
posted by symbioid at 8:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by chavenet at 9:18 AM on May 9 [50 favorites −] Favorite added! [!]
"Most expensive April Fool's Ever"
posted by symbioid at 8:21 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm very eager to see what Apple's headset looks like next month. Apple, historically, has been very good at figuring out what people like about various form factors—but it has also been historically bad at figuring out how to make engaging social software. (Case in point: the Apple Watch has become an incredibly successful piece of hardware, but virtually 2/3rds of its initial software functionality was stripped away within a couple of years of its launch. RIP, send-your-friend-your-heartbeat-in-real-time. 😢)
The thought that Facebook would launch a successful software platform on top of a successful hardware platform always felt ludicrous to me. Facebook sucks shit at both. The original Facebook-as-platform, in which Facebook served as an app store for... uh, Facebook... made Farmville famous but otherwise had to be stripped back drastically. The Facebook Phone was such a dud that some of y'all are reading about it here for the first time. Even Facebook's more ambitious and compelling attempts at immersive software experiences—god, I loved Facebook Paper for the two months it was available—haven't really gone anywhere.
The thing is, early Facebook was incredibly good. But it was incredibly good at creating a bevvy of engaging, engrossing social mechanics within the extremely un-rich space of social interactions on 2005-era Internet and 2007-era mobile phones. VR is the opposite of that in so many ways. And developing it requires mastery of a rich, robust set of interlocking variables: the physical hardware, the software paradigms, the experiences which those paradigms enable.
Apple is the only company that really has a grip on that breadth of development. (The only other company that comes to mind for me would be Valve, but Valve doesn't have nearly the hardware experience, and most of its software UI is passable at best.) And I'm not saying that to cheerlead on Apple here: I'm saying that even the company that feels like the only plausible contender for knowing how to work this out is still dealing with even odds at best. I'd love to see Reality XR succeed, but I wouldn't be shocked if it flopped hard.
I've messed around with VR for a solid decade, going way back to the original Oculus demokit. VR has got a lot of neatness going for it, but it still feels like that neatness consists of little gems here and there, none of which have resolved into anything earth-shattering. I don't see a lot in 2023 that feels any more compelling than what I got my hands on in 2014. And I'm still not convinced that immersive social VR worlds will offer something more meaningful than the social immersion that people get from flat-screened games—where "meaningful" implies something more than just a spec bump. Yes, the sensory experience is a lot more intense, but it comes at the cost of a lot more commitment—and part of what makes social experiences like Minecraft and Roblox compelling is that they're good hang-out spaces, where you can laze about. Something about VR has thus far felt incompatible with lazing.
And maybe all that would be well and good, if the experience was cheap. But the barrier to entry is so damn high. Prohibitively so, in many cases.
So I'll be curious what Apple releases next month. Probably the fact that they allegedly want to charge $3,000 for it is promising—it means they're not focused on Metcalfe's Law yet. In the meantime, it's just a lot of fun to dunk on Facebook for what a conspicuously bad idea this was from the start. And Ed Zitron, the author of this piece, is one of the best dunkers-on-tech that there is.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:25 AM on May 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
The thought that Facebook would launch a successful software platform on top of a successful hardware platform always felt ludicrous to me. Facebook sucks shit at both. The original Facebook-as-platform, in which Facebook served as an app store for... uh, Facebook... made Farmville famous but otherwise had to be stripped back drastically. The Facebook Phone was such a dud that some of y'all are reading about it here for the first time. Even Facebook's more ambitious and compelling attempts at immersive software experiences—god, I loved Facebook Paper for the two months it was available—haven't really gone anywhere.
The thing is, early Facebook was incredibly good. But it was incredibly good at creating a bevvy of engaging, engrossing social mechanics within the extremely un-rich space of social interactions on 2005-era Internet and 2007-era mobile phones. VR is the opposite of that in so many ways. And developing it requires mastery of a rich, robust set of interlocking variables: the physical hardware, the software paradigms, the experiences which those paradigms enable.
Apple is the only company that really has a grip on that breadth of development. (The only other company that comes to mind for me would be Valve, but Valve doesn't have nearly the hardware experience, and most of its software UI is passable at best.) And I'm not saying that to cheerlead on Apple here: I'm saying that even the company that feels like the only plausible contender for knowing how to work this out is still dealing with even odds at best. I'd love to see Reality XR succeed, but I wouldn't be shocked if it flopped hard.
I've messed around with VR for a solid decade, going way back to the original Oculus demokit. VR has got a lot of neatness going for it, but it still feels like that neatness consists of little gems here and there, none of which have resolved into anything earth-shattering. I don't see a lot in 2023 that feels any more compelling than what I got my hands on in 2014. And I'm still not convinced that immersive social VR worlds will offer something more meaningful than the social immersion that people get from flat-screened games—where "meaningful" implies something more than just a spec bump. Yes, the sensory experience is a lot more intense, but it comes at the cost of a lot more commitment—and part of what makes social experiences like Minecraft and Roblox compelling is that they're good hang-out spaces, where you can laze about. Something about VR has thus far felt incompatible with lazing.
And maybe all that would be well and good, if the experience was cheap. But the barrier to entry is so damn high. Prohibitively so, in many cases.
So I'll be curious what Apple releases next month. Probably the fact that they allegedly want to charge $3,000 for it is promising—it means they're not focused on Metcalfe's Law yet. In the meantime, it's just a lot of fun to dunk on Facebook for what a conspicuously bad idea this was from the start. And Ed Zitron, the author of this piece, is one of the best dunkers-on-tech that there is.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 8:25 AM on May 9, 2023 [13 favorites]
Whenever I hear people waffling on about about VR I always think of the Community episode "Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care"
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:28 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:28 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
* Walkabout Minigolf - cool for hanging out
* Flying game - kinda cool
* Climbing game - kinda scary
* RecRoom - unsupervised children
* VRChat - unsupervised children with anime avatars
* Multiverse - how do you start it again?
* WebXR - we could call this the multiverse, except my browser keeps crashing
posted by credulous at 8:35 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
* Flying game - kinda cool
* Climbing game - kinda scary
* RecRoom - unsupervised children
* VRChat - unsupervised children with anime avatars
* Multiverse - how do you start it again?
* WebXR - we could call this the multiverse, except my browser keeps crashing
posted by credulous at 8:35 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
It’s also kind of a bummer that the entire tech industry of the last idea has all been about burning money and the environment in pursuit of bad ideas. Like, pretty much all of it - crypto, NFT, this shit, AI chat, whatever the next horrible thing will be. Where there was vast potential we just have an endless series of scammy holes.
So a few economists, among them Bill Janeway, have developed a theory of productive bubbles. (vs unproductive ones). The key idea is that when the underlying asset or knowledge or training created has use value, the bubble leaves behind a lot of low cost infrastructure that can be the basis for real growth. Even if the shareholders lost money on the railway mania, we still use those rights of way today. Ditto all the fiber optics installed way ahead of need during the first tech boom. Or the electrification rush in the 1920s. Sure investors lost money connecting customers way ahead of them being able to pay... but once the bubble burst, those assets were available to snap up in bankruptcy.
Another example of this is a lot of the office and residential real estate built in Dubai. Investors got it in the neck when rents went through the floor (i.e. stabilised to a reasonable level!) in 2008 but all that infrastructure was still right there and so the slow real growth continued.
The 2001 tech bubble bursting didn't just leave behind fiber all over the place but also loads of data centres, servers, workstations, cheap office space and furniture, it really made it possible to turn a very small amount of money into a small startup. It also left behind tens of thousands of engineers who had been working on "X but online". Investors lost money but that bust also created the basis for our current internet for better or worse.
The problem with all these dumb ideas is that the crypto/NFT wave is not going to leave anything of value behind. It's not even like many of the people involved in it were designing cryptographic methods which might at least have netted us some cool new math. What have got out of Meta? No new optics or near realtime compute hardware (despite what one might hope), just hype.
I think putting loads of money into AI now will be more of the productive bubble than the alternative, or maybe what we're seeing now is already the echo wave from the self driving car mania of a few years ago? Even if that doesn't create "artificial intelligence" it's quite likely that LLMs will leave something behind for us.
posted by atrazine at 8:39 AM on May 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
So a few economists, among them Bill Janeway, have developed a theory of productive bubbles. (vs unproductive ones). The key idea is that when the underlying asset or knowledge or training created has use value, the bubble leaves behind a lot of low cost infrastructure that can be the basis for real growth. Even if the shareholders lost money on the railway mania, we still use those rights of way today. Ditto all the fiber optics installed way ahead of need during the first tech boom. Or the electrification rush in the 1920s. Sure investors lost money connecting customers way ahead of them being able to pay... but once the bubble burst, those assets were available to snap up in bankruptcy.
Another example of this is a lot of the office and residential real estate built in Dubai. Investors got it in the neck when rents went through the floor (i.e. stabilised to a reasonable level!) in 2008 but all that infrastructure was still right there and so the slow real growth continued.
The 2001 tech bubble bursting didn't just leave behind fiber all over the place but also loads of data centres, servers, workstations, cheap office space and furniture, it really made it possible to turn a very small amount of money into a small startup. It also left behind tens of thousands of engineers who had been working on "X but online". Investors lost money but that bust also created the basis for our current internet for better or worse.
The problem with all these dumb ideas is that the crypto/NFT wave is not going to leave anything of value behind. It's not even like many of the people involved in it were designing cryptographic methods which might at least have netted us some cool new math. What have got out of Meta? No new optics or near realtime compute hardware (despite what one might hope), just hype.
I think putting loads of money into AI now will be more of the productive bubble than the alternative, or maybe what we're seeing now is already the echo wave from the self driving car mania of a few years ago? Even if that doesn't create "artificial intelligence" it's quite likely that LLMs will leave something behind for us.
posted by atrazine at 8:39 AM on May 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
So I'll be curious what Apple releases next month. Probably the fact that they allegedly want to charge $3,000 for it is promising—it means they're not focused on Metcalfe's Law yet.
One of the big things Apple has been working on is having whatever this device is run already available and familiar apps within its AR/VR space. The thinking would be that you could lead life wearing the thing and it wouldn't be a "pick it up for a session, put it down again" kind of device.
posted by hippybear at 8:41 AM on May 9, 2023
One of the big things Apple has been working on is having whatever this device is run already available and familiar apps within its AR/VR space. The thinking would be that you could lead life wearing the thing and it wouldn't be a "pick it up for a session, put it down again" kind of device.
posted by hippybear at 8:41 AM on May 9, 2023
"Together Mode" in Microsoft Teams is the one that always makes me snort out loud.
Why would anyone ever say: That's it, that's exactly what I want!
posted by chavenet at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Why would anyone ever say: That's it, that's exactly what I want!
posted by chavenet at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
The Apple AR/VR glasses will live or die on how carefully curated both the look and the people it's initially revealed on look. I know they're usually really good at this but we've also had several "Wow, no one came in from outside the office to cringe at this, did they?" in recent years.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:50 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Slackermagee at 8:50 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I expected the linked article to be about Facebook Meta shutting something down, but this is not that.
Articles like these are performative obituaries: announcing that the thing is dead is what kills the thing off. Makes sense that the business press would adopt the genre at a time when investors have abandoned innovation for hype. I think traditionally the headline is supposed to be "What Was the X?" though (e.g.).
posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:51 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Articles like these are performative obituaries: announcing that the thing is dead is what kills the thing off. Makes sense that the business press would adopt the genre at a time when investors have abandoned innovation for hype. I think traditionally the headline is supposed to be "What Was the X?" though (e.g.).
posted by Gerald Bostock at 8:51 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
See you all back here circa 2026 for a similar postmortem on the current AI-not-actually-AI hype and bullshit feeding frenzy.
As an aside, hard disagree. I see it being used and adopted so quickly/eagerly that it’s here to stay. Metaverse was always crickets by real people.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 8:51 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
As an aside, hard disagree. I see it being used and adopted so quickly/eagerly that it’s here to stay. Metaverse was always crickets by real people.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 8:51 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
"Together Mode" in Microsoft Teams is the one that always makes me snort out loud.
I turn it on sometimes during long boring meetings just because it makes me laugh as it is so ridiculous.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:57 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I turn it on sometimes during long boring meetings just because it makes me laugh as it is so ridiculous.
posted by fimbulvetr at 8:57 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Personally I think they should bring back Microsoft Comic Chat.
This comment isn't even about the Metaverse, I just really think they should do that.
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:04 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
This comment isn't even about the Metaverse, I just really think they should do that.
posted by AndrewStephens at 9:04 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
Hmm. Isn't Second Life supposed to be undergoing a major revamp and launching an iPad client towards the end of this year?
Now that I'll happily get [back] into.
posted by cstross at 9:15 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Now that I'll happily get [back] into.
posted by cstross at 9:15 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh?
We’re on the verge of some real potential funniest timeline shit if that then proceeds to take off.
posted by Artw at 9:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
We’re on the verge of some real potential funniest timeline shit if that then proceeds to take off.
posted by Artw at 9:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm pouring one out for the U2 residency that will never happen in the Metaverse.
posted by riverlife at 9:19 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by riverlife at 9:19 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
>>See you all back here circa 2026 for a similar postmortem on the current AI-not-actually-AI hype and bullshit feeding frenzy.
>As an aside, hard disagree.
Seconded. I’m shaving 70% off the part of my job I hate (internal use documentation) on a regular basis. That plus Copilot (glorified autocomplete-on-steroids for programmers, but really, really fucking good at guessing what you want) are two of hundreds of real-world applications.
Sorry to rain on anyone’s hipster cynicism parade (or contest?) but no, not every major new tech / Valley obsession is inherently bullshit. The Metaverse, for example, was always pure bullshit Neal Stephenson wank fantasy and anyone who has worked in VR - early first gen or Oculus second gen - could have told you that VR is just irredeemably uncool and guaranteed death in the mass market (also, as a gamedev working with it breaks every assumption of both realtime rendering AND our toolchains and is the purest form of misery, but anyway).
Once in a very long while we get something that’s an actual sea change. Doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be positively riddled with scammers, idiots, and breathless marketing by people intentionally clouding the LLM / AGI distinction to defraud investors/customers, but the fact that shitty people will continue doing shitty things doesn’t actually alter whether a technology is useful.
There is so much in this world legitimately deserving your bitter snark and you only have so much life in which to dish out hot takes, so spend it wisely.
posted by Ryvar at 9:24 AM on May 9, 2023 [18 favorites]
>As an aside, hard disagree.
Seconded. I’m shaving 70% off the part of my job I hate (internal use documentation) on a regular basis. That plus Copilot (glorified autocomplete-on-steroids for programmers, but really, really fucking good at guessing what you want) are two of hundreds of real-world applications.
Sorry to rain on anyone’s hipster cynicism parade (or contest?) but no, not every major new tech / Valley obsession is inherently bullshit. The Metaverse, for example, was always pure bullshit Neal Stephenson wank fantasy and anyone who has worked in VR - early first gen or Oculus second gen - could have told you that VR is just irredeemably uncool and guaranteed death in the mass market (also, as a gamedev working with it breaks every assumption of both realtime rendering AND our toolchains and is the purest form of misery, but anyway).
Once in a very long while we get something that’s an actual sea change. Doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be positively riddled with scammers, idiots, and breathless marketing by people intentionally clouding the LLM / AGI distinction to defraud investors/customers, but the fact that shitty people will continue doing shitty things doesn’t actually alter whether a technology is useful.
There is so much in this world legitimately deserving your bitter snark and you only have so much life in which to dish out hot takes, so spend it wisely.
posted by Ryvar at 9:24 AM on May 9, 2023 [18 favorites]
I feel like the real story here should be what did they spend $100 billion on?
Even the most expensive AAA video game title doesn't break $1B in dev costs, and inexpert management and waste and inefficiency can account for a lot... >99% is ... alot alot. What does that even look like?
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:38 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
Even the most expensive AAA video game title doesn't break $1B in dev costs, and inexpert management and waste and inefficiency can account for a lot... >99% is ... alot alot. What does that even look like?
posted by Zalzidrax at 9:38 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
I contend that the Metaverse concept could have worked if only it allowed "premium" members to bring a BFG9000 to the conference call. (Or, for that matter, bring a Conference Call to the meeting.) "Smithers, obliterate that fellow." KPOW!
posted by SPrintF at 9:43 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by SPrintF at 9:43 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Maybe I'm unusually handicapped but I have no sense of balance with my eyes closed and I'll fall and break something within thirty seconds of putting on VR goggles. I tried the Google Cardboard thing on my phone some years ago and had to hold onto something with one hand to keep from pitching over.
posted by octothorpe at 9:44 AM on May 9, 2023
posted by octothorpe at 9:44 AM on May 9, 2023
The hype-journo-cycle was in a sense worse here in Chile, at one remove.
Most journalists here don't really understand tech or English, so they wrote half-understood, breathless stories that just parroted mist-translations of whatever BS Zuck was selling that week.
Based on this, my father-in-law, an advertiser, tried to convince me many times that "The Metaverse" was the next big thing, that we should get into it, that all the companies would be clamoring for agencies to help them with it, etc. I answered him in no uncertain terms that it was all just "selling smoke" and I had zero interest in it, and it got kind of ugly at times.
posted by signal at 9:45 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Most journalists here don't really understand tech or English, so they wrote half-understood, breathless stories that just parroted mist-translations of whatever BS Zuck was selling that week.
Based on this, my father-in-law, an advertiser, tried to convince me many times that "The Metaverse" was the next big thing, that we should get into it, that all the companies would be clamoring for agencies to help them with it, etc. I answered him in no uncertain terms that it was all just "selling smoke" and I had zero interest in it, and it got kind of ugly at times.
posted by signal at 9:45 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I feel like the real story here should be what did they spend $100 billion on?
I think that's maybe the most important question. That's an incredible amount of money spent, and unless you're making something like a new fighter jet or want to establish a long-term crewed facility on the moon, 100B is "what did they even BUY?" money.
posted by tclark at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
I think that's maybe the most important question. That's an incredible amount of money spent, and unless you're making something like a new fighter jet or want to establish a long-term crewed facility on the moon, 100B is "what did they even BUY?" money.
posted by tclark at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
Oh there’s a fair portion of the population that will vomit within minutes of putting one of these things on, that’s not unusual at all.
posted by Artw at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Artw at 9:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
what did they spend $100 billion on?
I’ve been wondering that as well. Typical costs for a AAA game are $100~150m for development, and anything from $50 to $400m for marketing. Even games that achieve success via everything-and-the-kitchen-sink design (GTA series) with a dozen studios contributing don’t run much over $400m on the development side…so how in the fuck do you spend 250 times that on R&D?
I'll fall and break something within thirty seconds of putting on VR goggles
Ironically I had the opposite problem: every descendant of my paternal grandmother inherited near-total immunity to motion sickness/seasickness. This meant I was trying to design VR locomotion on a game for the pre-release Vive and was completely unable to tell whether it would make only those prone to vertigo sick or cause literally everyone without my otherwise-useful mutation to immediately lose their lunch. Great times.
posted by Ryvar at 9:52 AM on May 9, 2023 [14 favorites]
I’ve been wondering that as well. Typical costs for a AAA game are $100~150m for development, and anything from $50 to $400m for marketing. Even games that achieve success via everything-and-the-kitchen-sink design (GTA series) with a dozen studios contributing don’t run much over $400m on the development side…so how in the fuck do you spend 250 times that on R&D?
I'll fall and break something within thirty seconds of putting on VR goggles
Ironically I had the opposite problem: every descendant of my paternal grandmother inherited near-total immunity to motion sickness/seasickness. This meant I was trying to design VR locomotion on a game for the pre-release Vive and was completely unable to tell whether it would make only those prone to vertigo sick or cause literally everyone without my otherwise-useful mutation to immediately lose their lunch. Great times.
posted by Ryvar at 9:52 AM on May 9, 2023 [14 favorites]
> so how in the fuck do you spend 250 times that on R&D?
A cynical guess: at least partly saturation hiring/shameless talent aquisition moves that are designed to deny competitors the ability to create the Great New Thing.
posted by jaduncan at 9:54 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
A cynical guess: at least partly saturation hiring/shameless talent aquisition moves that are designed to deny competitors the ability to create the Great New Thing.
posted by jaduncan at 9:54 AM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
They’ve bought a lot of real estate lately and a lot of it is standing empty so this might be a way to roll some of that in.
posted by Artw at 9:57 AM on May 9, 2023
posted by Artw at 9:57 AM on May 9, 2023
Relatedly, I wonder if we are about to see a really large amount of public advancement of the VR field as those ex-employees do all the interesting things they thought would be good but wouldn't fit with the multiverse as Facebook-owned shopping mall.
posted by jaduncan at 9:58 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jaduncan at 9:58 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
> so how in the fuck do you spend 250 times that on R&D?
...something..something...Taxes.
posted by bonehead at 9:59 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
...something..something...Taxes.
posted by bonehead at 9:59 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
...something..something...Taxes
Yeah I guess that’s a thing they aren’t paying ever again if they structure this right.
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yeah I guess that’s a thing they aren’t paying ever again if they structure this right.
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
what did they spend $100 billion on?
They've been doing a ton of hardware development as well (very little of which has yet to see the light of day).
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:03 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
They've been doing a ton of hardware development as well (very little of which has yet to see the light of day).
posted by wemayfreeze at 10:03 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
And hell, some people started using video games as virtual meeting places during the lockdown. THere was a news story about a programming team that took to meeting in Red Dead Redemption 2 because they liked it better than meeting via teams or zoom.
Who needs Zoom when you can have conference calls in Red Dead Redemption 2?
Who needs Zoom when you can have conference calls in Red Dead Redemption 2?
What sounds like the biggest issue, though, is the fact that the button prompt for making characters sit on the ground is the same one used to throw a nearby coworker into a choke hold. As anyone who’s ever sat through a long, difficult meeting knows, the workflow may occasionally be helped along by two colleagues strangling each other, but not always—and never by mistake.posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:08 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
a really large amount of public advancement of the VR field
Given the number of people (and the quality of a few I know) on this project I can’t dismiss the possibility that someone has a killer app they couldn’t release or thought of but sat on while there. That aside, most existing problems with VR that can’t be solved with $3k in hardware (Vive Pro 2 + RTX 4900) aren’t getting solved without direct neural induction - both optic and vestibular. We have no tools for direct manipulation of equilibrioperception, just a shit-ton of fuzzy “do not exceed” values for what 95% of the userbase can handle.
posted by Ryvar at 10:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Given the number of people (and the quality of a few I know) on this project I can’t dismiss the possibility that someone has a killer app they couldn’t release or thought of but sat on while there. That aside, most existing problems with VR that can’t be solved with $3k in hardware (Vive Pro 2 + RTX 4900) aren’t getting solved without direct neural induction - both optic and vestibular. We have no tools for direct manipulation of equilibrioperception, just a shit-ton of fuzzy “do not exceed” values for what 95% of the userbase can handle.
posted by Ryvar at 10:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I could have sworn that the media blitz for the name change and the VR stuff came right when news leaked that Facebook's own internal data showed that its social media properties were seriously damaging the mental and emotional health of teenage girls...and that they were doing nothing to address it, instead doubling down on all the things they had been doing.
But my search skills are failing me right now, as I can't find any substantive articles on it.
If that was the case though, then that was an incredibly expensive smoke bomb. But it appears to have worked?
posted by lord_wolf at 10:15 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
But my search skills are failing me right now, as I can't find any substantive articles on it.
If that was the case though, then that was an incredibly expensive smoke bomb. But it appears to have worked?
posted by lord_wolf at 10:15 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
There's no way the Quest2 cost $300 retail. I'm pretty convinced each headset was heavily subsidized by Facebook. My guess is $800-$1000 per unit sold. And they sold 20 million units.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
The problem with the ChatGPT phenomenon is that people do not understand what it is or what it does. Especially business folks. I got asked recently whether it could be used for search, which is a bit like asking if this hammer is good for fishing.
It's a bullshit artist! It has seen a metric shit-ton of human writing and it basically puts all that into a blender and tries very hard to make reasonable-looking facsimiles of that writing in response to prompts. It does not have sentience or reason. Therefore it sometimes (often) falls flat on its face and outputs nonsense, sometimes generates a good-looking (but wrong) passage as a response, and sometimes generates a good-looking (but basically right) passage. That's all it is. Because people are good at failing the mirror test, there is lots of hyped breathless reporting about how ChatGPT wants some journalist to leave his wife and run away with it or whatever. It doesn't love you, Bront, it just can mimic the shit humans say in those situations. I'm so fucking tired of the nonsense in the media about ChatGPT. For that matter nobody should listen to Sam Altman either.
posted by axiom at 10:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
It's a bullshit artist! It has seen a metric shit-ton of human writing and it basically puts all that into a blender and tries very hard to make reasonable-looking facsimiles of that writing in response to prompts. It does not have sentience or reason. Therefore it sometimes (often) falls flat on its face and outputs nonsense, sometimes generates a good-looking (but wrong) passage as a response, and sometimes generates a good-looking (but basically right) passage. That's all it is. Because people are good at failing the mirror test, there is lots of hyped breathless reporting about how ChatGPT wants some journalist to leave his wife and run away with it or whatever. It doesn't love you, Bront, it just can mimic the shit humans say in those situations. I'm so fucking tired of the nonsense in the media about ChatGPT. For that matter nobody should listen to Sam Altman either.
posted by axiom at 10:16 AM on May 9, 2023 [11 favorites]
As others have noted there were a lot of problems with Glass, but the biggest was that you couldn't buy it.
THen you had the problem that people in that era flipped their shit about the fact that Glass, like ANY AR/VR rig worth mentioning, had cameras and suddenly the same people who cheerfully turned all of their data over to Google/MS/Apple became rabid "privacy" advocates.
I think that second problem won't be a deal today. There's already ultra high quality cameras everywhere, no one has the slightest expectation that they aren't being recorded when they're out of their home, so someone wearing an AR rig won't get that bizarre (to me) burst of extreme hostility that popped up with Glass.
Also, despite marketing claims to the contrary, Glass wasn't AR. It was just a HUD. Which could be really damn handy and I'd like to have one, but it ain't AR.
You want to see something that does real AR, check out Microsoft's HoloLens. Available for "only" $3500.... It really is pretty damn good at doing AR. It's not anywhere near as fully developed and integrated as it'll get later, but it's a damn fine effort given today's tech.
Problem is it's not only $3,500 it's also a giant honking headset that makes you look like a clown. Outside of a very tiny number of specialized needs and a handful of dedicated nerds no one will be using it in the current form factor.
posted by sotonohito at 10:17 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
THen you had the problem that people in that era flipped their shit about the fact that Glass, like ANY AR/VR rig worth mentioning, had cameras and suddenly the same people who cheerfully turned all of their data over to Google/MS/Apple became rabid "privacy" advocates.
I think that second problem won't be a deal today. There's already ultra high quality cameras everywhere, no one has the slightest expectation that they aren't being recorded when they're out of their home, so someone wearing an AR rig won't get that bizarre (to me) burst of extreme hostility that popped up with Glass.
Also, despite marketing claims to the contrary, Glass wasn't AR. It was just a HUD. Which could be really damn handy and I'd like to have one, but it ain't AR.
You want to see something that does real AR, check out Microsoft's HoloLens. Available for "only" $3500.... It really is pretty damn good at doing AR. It's not anywhere near as fully developed and integrated as it'll get later, but it's a damn fine effort given today's tech.
Problem is it's not only $3,500 it's also a giant honking headset that makes you look like a clown. Outside of a very tiny number of specialized needs and a handful of dedicated nerds no one will be using it in the current form factor.
posted by sotonohito at 10:17 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
axiom I agree with everything you said, and still maintain that it's a damn handy tool for what it acutally does.
Sure, it's been misinterperted and overhyped as some amazing revolution and a step towards AGI, but it would be wrong to dismiss the whole thing as nothing but bullshit and marketing.
I used to write a few scripts a week to automate away the boring parts of my job. I haven't written a single script since I got access to chatGPT. It does the job quicker than I can and that allows me to focus on other things. I check its work of course, because of the problems you mentioned, but since programming is a lot more rules constricted than actual writing, I haven't seen any mistakes so far. Maybe I've just gotten lucky, but the other IT types I've spoken to who have been using GPT to do boring tasks have had the same results I have. It works.
Hell, the damn thing can even produce a regular expression in just a few seconds while I take minutes of checking the docs for even a simple one. Just the part where I can type in a description of what I want and get a usable regular expression back would make GPT valuable.
And, on the creative side, while its actual writing output kind of sucks and is boring and obvious, it's not at all bad as a tool for generating ideas and getting some inspiration. I used to use everything from a Tarot deck to the Fate Deck from the game Everway, to those storytelling dice, and I still do. But asking GPT to throw out a few ideas often gives me some inspiration for what I'm writing.
posted by sotonohito at 10:25 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
Sure, it's been misinterperted and overhyped as some amazing revolution and a step towards AGI, but it would be wrong to dismiss the whole thing as nothing but bullshit and marketing.
I used to write a few scripts a week to automate away the boring parts of my job. I haven't written a single script since I got access to chatGPT. It does the job quicker than I can and that allows me to focus on other things. I check its work of course, because of the problems you mentioned, but since programming is a lot more rules constricted than actual writing, I haven't seen any mistakes so far. Maybe I've just gotten lucky, but the other IT types I've spoken to who have been using GPT to do boring tasks have had the same results I have. It works.
Hell, the damn thing can even produce a regular expression in just a few seconds while I take minutes of checking the docs for even a simple one. Just the part where I can type in a description of what I want and get a usable regular expression back would make GPT valuable.
And, on the creative side, while its actual writing output kind of sucks and is boring and obvious, it's not at all bad as a tool for generating ideas and getting some inspiration. I used to use everything from a Tarot deck to the Fate Deck from the game Everway, to those storytelling dice, and I still do. But asking GPT to throw out a few ideas often gives me some inspiration for what I'm writing.
posted by sotonohito at 10:25 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
Zuckerberg's vision is just a multi-billion dollar attempt to almost exactly replicate the metaverse from Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash.
As a book person I seethe when writers avoid mentioning a literary component to their story.
I mean, good for mentioning Tron and I'm glad someone else remembers Second Life, but c'mon, this is obvious. It's the name, ffs.
posted by doctornemo at 10:40 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
As a book person I seethe when writers avoid mentioning a literary component to their story.
I mean, good for mentioning Tron and I'm glad someone else remembers Second Life, but c'mon, this is obvious. It's the name, ffs.
posted by doctornemo at 10:40 AM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
The problem with the ChatGPT phenomenon is that people do not understand what it is or what it does. Especially business folks. I got asked recently whether it could be used for search
That's not their fault -- you've got Google and Microsoft positioning it as a search tool!
posted by trig at 10:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
That's not their fault -- you've got Google and Microsoft positioning it as a search tool!
posted by trig at 10:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Looking forward to the press conference where Zuckerberg announces Meta to be renamed "AI"
posted by caution live frogs at 10:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by caution live frogs at 10:46 AM on May 9, 2023 [8 favorites]
The time from Tron (1982) to Snow Crash (1992) is shorter than the time from Snow Crash to today
posted by rebent at 10:47 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by rebent at 10:47 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm also curious about whatever the heck Apple releases.
Many of my AR/VR/XR contacts think a lot of enterprises and projects are going quiet now, because they don't want to get blindsided by Apple.
posted by doctornemo at 10:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Many of my AR/VR/XR contacts think a lot of enterprises and projects are going quiet now, because they don't want to get blindsided by Apple.
posted by doctornemo at 10:48 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Well, Tom's Guide has a summary of what they know and think they know about the new Apple thingy, last updated 6 days ago.
I hadn't realized they have a hard announcement date for WWDC this year. That's interesting.
posted by hippybear at 10:53 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I hadn't realized they have a hard announcement date for WWDC this year. That's interesting.
posted by hippybear at 10:53 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
They don't. Until the words about it come out of Tim's mouth, 100% of everything about anything AV/VR related is just rumor site speculation. WWDC is a big event were new stuff occasionally gets announced, but who knows?
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:11 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 11:11 AM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
This was a wonderful contemporary illustration of The Emperor's New Clothes.
...the emperor's new legs, I think...
posted by kaibutsu at 11:28 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
...the emperor's new legs, I think...
posted by kaibutsu at 11:28 AM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I'm hopeful that Facebook (er, Meta) and other companies are still investing in metaverse technologies for the long haul. There's something there and offshoots of it are regularly successful. Kids in Roblox or Minecraft are having more metaversey experiences than I could have ever imagined back in 1995.
That’s kind of the thing, though, the stuff that is metaversey that people actually like was already there - it’s fucking multiplayer video games! The FB Meta push felt like they thought they could overlay the known popularity of that stuff with their investments in VR and the pandemic era Zoom boom and somehow automatically have a product without really having to figure out a product.
posted by atoxyl at 11:34 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
That’s kind of the thing, though, the stuff that is metaversey that people actually like was already there - it’s fucking multiplayer video games! The FB Meta push felt like they thought they could overlay the known popularity of that stuff with their investments in VR and the pandemic era Zoom boom and somehow automatically have a product without really having to figure out a product.
posted by atoxyl at 11:34 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Zuckerberg waxed poetic about the Metaverse as "a vision that spans many companies" and "the successor to the mobile internet," but he failed to articulate the basic business problems that the Metaverse would address.
From the start, this has always been a drive by Zuckerberg to make something happen. It has always been about Mark Zuckerberg and his money, and nothing more. It always has, and it's always been fucking obvious! When you have a pile of cash, people around you rearrange themselves in orientation to it, like moons orbiting a planet. You see that all the time now, Zuckerberg is just both the author and victim of the biggest grift.
I think the true direction of the next internet is the old internet. RSS, weblogs, Geocities, Yahoo Directory, fan shrines, Usenet, fanfic, forums, MOOs and MUCKs, all of it. Everything that was abandoned in the rush to social media. Everything free of corporate control and marketing pressure. We can't go back in time no, but we can pretend to. It wasn't perfect, there were a whole bunch of unexamined assumptions regarding privilege and it perpetuated a ton of old attitudes. But at least it's time for the periodic wave of nostalgia to bring it back, it's kind of inevitable in that way.
I'm sure, when it happens, that it'll be swept away again eventually too, but maybe by that time we'll have a better idea of how to make it more inclusive, more truly welcoming.
posted by JHarris at 11:39 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
From the start, this has always been a drive by Zuckerberg to make something happen. It has always been about Mark Zuckerberg and his money, and nothing more. It always has, and it's always been fucking obvious! When you have a pile of cash, people around you rearrange themselves in orientation to it, like moons orbiting a planet. You see that all the time now, Zuckerberg is just both the author and victim of the biggest grift.
I think the true direction of the next internet is the old internet. RSS, weblogs, Geocities, Yahoo Directory, fan shrines, Usenet, fanfic, forums, MOOs and MUCKs, all of it. Everything that was abandoned in the rush to social media. Everything free of corporate control and marketing pressure. We can't go back in time no, but we can pretend to. It wasn't perfect, there were a whole bunch of unexamined assumptions regarding privilege and it perpetuated a ton of old attitudes. But at least it's time for the periodic wave of nostalgia to bring it back, it's kind of inevitable in that way.
I'm sure, when it happens, that it'll be swept away again eventually too, but maybe by that time we'll have a better idea of how to make it more inclusive, more truly welcoming.
posted by JHarris at 11:39 AM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
I feel like the real story here should be what did they spend $100 billion on?
One word: scale.
Apparently Meta had three billion people log in last month. Two billion use Facebook daily.
Zuck's not interested in small; he can't afford to be. "Small" doesn't get you positive vibes with the investors.
Let me use Apple as an example (I know more about Apple than Facebook, and they're one of very few consumer-facing companies to operate on a similar scale).
Apple Watch was widely panned by Wall Street as a commercial failure despite first year sales taking over the #1 luxury watch brand from Rolex. This is because every product Apple launches is a multi-billion dollar product.
Airpods: each minor annual revision sells 10-30 million, at $150 a pair. iPhone launches distort the price structure of the global airfreight market in the run-up to launch day because they're filling 747s with iPhones. Think about that then work out the value of the cargo on just one of those planes: it's terrifying.
... And so on.
SCALE.
Meta has to operate on the same scale as Apple to keep the investors happy. So Zuckerberg was thinking in terms of a "small" launch as something that starts with a hundred million users ideally each paying $500-1000 for a headset and another $120 a year for the back-end software. At least.
Imagine an MMO like Warcraft, only with much higher bandwidth requirements, and 100 million to a billion users. That's going to take at least a handful of server farms to run, isn't it. Realistically think in terms of one server blade per 10-100 users: we're looking at a million servers, plus routers and fibre and operations centres around the world.
Once you start thinking in terms of millions of servers consuming gigawatts of electricity and factories churning out more millions of headsets, the billions start to add up real fast.
Only, reality check: it turns out that VR for business isn't really a thing. Businesses already have Zoom, and Teams, and Slack, and so on. Face-to-face conferencing is here right now, minus the very expensive headset that gives 20% of users violent nausea within ten minutes and is completely unusable by a different 20% subset (people like me with visual impairments such as peripheral retinopathy).
The only real surprise is how far down the tracks the bandwagon had rolled before anyone yanked the brake handle.
posted by cstross at 11:40 AM on May 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
One word: scale.
Apparently Meta had three billion people log in last month. Two billion use Facebook daily.
Zuck's not interested in small; he can't afford to be. "Small" doesn't get you positive vibes with the investors.
Let me use Apple as an example (I know more about Apple than Facebook, and they're one of very few consumer-facing companies to operate on a similar scale).
Apple Watch was widely panned by Wall Street as a commercial failure despite first year sales taking over the #1 luxury watch brand from Rolex. This is because every product Apple launches is a multi-billion dollar product.
Airpods: each minor annual revision sells 10-30 million, at $150 a pair. iPhone launches distort the price structure of the global airfreight market in the run-up to launch day because they're filling 747s with iPhones. Think about that then work out the value of the cargo on just one of those planes: it's terrifying.
... And so on.
SCALE.
Meta has to operate on the same scale as Apple to keep the investors happy. So Zuckerberg was thinking in terms of a "small" launch as something that starts with a hundred million users ideally each paying $500-1000 for a headset and another $120 a year for the back-end software. At least.
Imagine an MMO like Warcraft, only with much higher bandwidth requirements, and 100 million to a billion users. That's going to take at least a handful of server farms to run, isn't it. Realistically think in terms of one server blade per 10-100 users: we're looking at a million servers, plus routers and fibre and operations centres around the world.
Once you start thinking in terms of millions of servers consuming gigawatts of electricity and factories churning out more millions of headsets, the billions start to add up real fast.
Only, reality check: it turns out that VR for business isn't really a thing. Businesses already have Zoom, and Teams, and Slack, and so on. Face-to-face conferencing is here right now, minus the very expensive headset that gives 20% of users violent nausea within ten minutes and is completely unusable by a different 20% subset (people like me with visual impairments such as peripheral retinopathy).
The only real surprise is how far down the tracks the bandwagon had rolled before anyone yanked the brake handle.
posted by cstross at 11:40 AM on May 9, 2023 [22 favorites]
That's not their fault -- you've got Google and Microsoft positioning it as a search tool!
I’m pretty sure that every Google Search query has been using a transformer model for NLP for several years now. Which actually we might be able to blame for Google Search not really working in the paradigm that those of us who grew up with search engines expect from a search engine anymore. But that is the reality - it’s not search, but it’s a powerful technology for working with language and concepts that will probably be built into pipelines with other things.
posted by atoxyl at 11:42 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m pretty sure that every Google Search query has been using a transformer model for NLP for several years now. Which actually we might be able to blame for Google Search not really working in the paradigm that those of us who grew up with search engines expect from a search engine anymore. But that is the reality - it’s not search, but it’s a powerful technology for working with language and concepts that will probably be built into pipelines with other things.
posted by atoxyl at 11:42 AM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Supernatural workouts on the Oculus are a pretty good meta verse experience these days.
posted by interogative mood at 11:44 AM on May 9, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 11:44 AM on May 9, 2023
Sure, it's been misinterperted and overhyped as some amazing revolution and a step towards AGI, but it would be wrong to dismiss the whole thing as nothing but bullshit and marketing.
I’ve seen even major AI boosters rue the moment that the crypto people got on board (specifically pinpointing the arrival of the AutoGPT stuff, people putting GPT in the middle of a decision loop and giving it a task and talking about how revolutionary this is even though there are zero examples of it actually completing any project of significance this way).
posted by atoxyl at 11:49 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I’ve seen even major AI boosters rue the moment that the crypto people got on board (specifically pinpointing the arrival of the AutoGPT stuff, people putting GPT in the middle of a decision loop and giving it a task and talking about how revolutionary this is even though there are zero examples of it actually completing any project of significance this way).
posted by atoxyl at 11:49 AM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Am I the only one to remember PlayStation: Play?
Not VR but more like a cross between an MMO and the mall. You could go to a virtual theater, shop in virtual stores, hang out with friends at your virtual apartment. Nothing that wasn’t a superior experience in real life and probably why it didn’t last. Still, some of the environments were oddly satisfying like the personal yacht with dolphins swimming alongside or the space station with the huge porthole overlooking planet Earth. I kind of wish something had a similar experience.
posted by Eikonaut at 12:11 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Not VR but more like a cross between an MMO and the mall. You could go to a virtual theater, shop in virtual stores, hang out with friends at your virtual apartment. Nothing that wasn’t a superior experience in real life and probably why it didn’t last. Still, some of the environments were oddly satisfying like the personal yacht with dolphins swimming alongside or the space station with the huge porthole overlooking planet Earth. I kind of wish something had a similar experience.
posted by Eikonaut at 12:11 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
VR is like the McRib — it always stays away just long enough for people to forget they don’t want it.
I remember seeing pictures of people wearing VR helmets about 30 years ago. It seems that the idea has never disappeared completely, but it certainly has not taken the world by storm either.
posted by WalkingAround at 12:12 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I remember seeing pictures of people wearing VR helmets about 30 years ago. It seems that the idea has never disappeared completely, but it certainly has not taken the world by storm either.
posted by WalkingAround at 12:12 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've experienced some cool VR art projects and media installations and some data/visualization stuff and there are uses for VR for entertainment or industry.
VR and related 3D visualization has been in use this whole time since it was invented and it's popular in architecture and engineering for being able to do virtual walk-throughs of, say, a building or ship to pre-flight and pre-check assembly processes to see if you can actually get a human and tools into a confined space for the build, or how it feels to be in a virtual building that doesn't yet exist.
On the arts and entertainment side of it it was really fun to basically be walking around in what was basically visualizations of math and geometry that was interactive and had a cool abstract soundscape going on.
The main or first problem with their version of the Metaverse is that Zuckerberg is an unimaginative idiot who things that the peak use of VR is a 3D version of Facebook's walledgarden junkyard fire and platform, and thinking people want to have VR meetings for work in an age where people already really don't like video chat meetings.
And Second Life is alive and mostly well and experienced a resurgence during the pandemic. I still visit there fairly often and I know some other MeFi people do, too. There's some cool art stuff, live concerts and DJs and more. I have a few friends I still regularly visit. The tools and options for avatar appearance these days are catching up to photorealistic-ish gaming. In addition to a wide range of human avatars you can be almost anything from a small mouse to a giant dragon or robot.
Though SL has a very steep learning curve for all that and takes some skill, but there's a lot of helpful people that can help you figure that out.
Getting in to building stuff in SL is also a lot of fun because its a really big sand box and there's been some absolutely gorgeous SL art projects and installations. Shoot, there's even regular Burning Man related art events and parties and stuff. I've been to some cool historical, science or art related talks and presentations and that sort of thing, too that have been rewarding and educational and generally fun.
Unfortunately the tech behind SL is ancient by today's standards and still isn't ready for true VR, but people do mess around with VR stuff in SL.
And, yep, there's tons of adult content on SL but this is a feature. I'm not sure if I can even think of any technology in the last 50+ years that wasn't openly or secretly driven by adult/erotic content whether it was home movie projectors or VCRs or the web itself causing rapid adoption and use by end users.
Almost anything goes in SL. So of course it's popular with furries and kinksters and it can be a relatively safe way for someone to explore their own sexuality or identity. And there's tons of LGBTQ, trans or enby people that basically came out and found themselves through Second Life.
There's also still a relatively thriving economy in SL for creators with fairly strong DRM controls backed by the SL ToS, while also having the options for free/open creations that can be freely shared and copied. While it's totally possible to copy/steal protected items the SL admins do have the power to ban accounts and remove/delete stolen content, especially if you try selling stolen/copied things openly on their marketplace.
There have been actual businesses in SL for most of its life where it's someone's full time job paying their bills to run stores, make clothes or items for sale and even running clubs or other environments. It's all actively supported by SL that if you buy/rent land you can do whatever you want with it including charging admission fees to join groups or participate and SL doesn't take a cut of any of that outside of server costs or remarkably small fees for cashing out virtual currency into real money.
And it's not like Roblox or even EVE Online or something where it's difficult to actually extract that value, they actually make it really easy and have an exchange system where you can "sell" basically any amount of virtual currency at going market rates.
And some of the items and content can be pricey. Last time I checked it's entirely possible that someone's avatar may have cost them between $25-100 USD between avatar shapes, clothes, accessories and more. Which sounds like a lot but people spend that kind of money on video games all the time. That's on the more extreme end of things and you can play SL entirely for free and there's a lot of free stuff, but generally people spend some actual money in the game to get nicer things.
I'm honestly surprised that Meta/Zuck didn't try to buy SL but that would have killed it even if SL didn't have a known rep for being the land of weird virtual adult content, and they probably know that.
posted by loquacious at 12:13 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
VR and related 3D visualization has been in use this whole time since it was invented and it's popular in architecture and engineering for being able to do virtual walk-throughs of, say, a building or ship to pre-flight and pre-check assembly processes to see if you can actually get a human and tools into a confined space for the build, or how it feels to be in a virtual building that doesn't yet exist.
On the arts and entertainment side of it it was really fun to basically be walking around in what was basically visualizations of math and geometry that was interactive and had a cool abstract soundscape going on.
The main or first problem with their version of the Metaverse is that Zuckerberg is an unimaginative idiot who things that the peak use of VR is a 3D version of Facebook's walled
And Second Life is alive and mostly well and experienced a resurgence during the pandemic. I still visit there fairly often and I know some other MeFi people do, too. There's some cool art stuff, live concerts and DJs and more. I have a few friends I still regularly visit. The tools and options for avatar appearance these days are catching up to photorealistic-ish gaming. In addition to a wide range of human avatars you can be almost anything from a small mouse to a giant dragon or robot.
Though SL has a very steep learning curve for all that and takes some skill, but there's a lot of helpful people that can help you figure that out.
Getting in to building stuff in SL is also a lot of fun because its a really big sand box and there's been some absolutely gorgeous SL art projects and installations. Shoot, there's even regular Burning Man related art events and parties and stuff. I've been to some cool historical, science or art related talks and presentations and that sort of thing, too that have been rewarding and educational and generally fun.
Unfortunately the tech behind SL is ancient by today's standards and still isn't ready for true VR, but people do mess around with VR stuff in SL.
And, yep, there's tons of adult content on SL but this is a feature. I'm not sure if I can even think of any technology in the last 50+ years that wasn't openly or secretly driven by adult/erotic content whether it was home movie projectors or VCRs or the web itself causing rapid adoption and use by end users.
Almost anything goes in SL. So of course it's popular with furries and kinksters and it can be a relatively safe way for someone to explore their own sexuality or identity. And there's tons of LGBTQ, trans or enby people that basically came out and found themselves through Second Life.
There's also still a relatively thriving economy in SL for creators with fairly strong DRM controls backed by the SL ToS, while also having the options for free/open creations that can be freely shared and copied. While it's totally possible to copy/steal protected items the SL admins do have the power to ban accounts and remove/delete stolen content, especially if you try selling stolen/copied things openly on their marketplace.
There have been actual businesses in SL for most of its life where it's someone's full time job paying their bills to run stores, make clothes or items for sale and even running clubs or other environments. It's all actively supported by SL that if you buy/rent land you can do whatever you want with it including charging admission fees to join groups or participate and SL doesn't take a cut of any of that outside of server costs or remarkably small fees for cashing out virtual currency into real money.
And it's not like Roblox or even EVE Online or something where it's difficult to actually extract that value, they actually make it really easy and have an exchange system where you can "sell" basically any amount of virtual currency at going market rates.
And some of the items and content can be pricey. Last time I checked it's entirely possible that someone's avatar may have cost them between $25-100 USD between avatar shapes, clothes, accessories and more. Which sounds like a lot but people spend that kind of money on video games all the time. That's on the more extreme end of things and you can play SL entirely for free and there's a lot of free stuff, but generally people spend some actual money in the game to get nicer things.
I'm honestly surprised that Meta/Zuck didn't try to buy SL but that would have killed it even if SL didn't have a known rep for being the land of weird virtual adult content, and they probably know that.
posted by loquacious at 12:13 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
A couple of my friends have Oculus headsets and they're always eager to show off how neat they are when I visit but I'm pretty sure they're just sitting somewhere gathering dust until the next guest comes over. Kind of like how I have one of the Nintendo Labo kits for the Switch and it was fun to build and play with for a bit but now it only sees use if someone comes over.
I believe that there are lots of specific use cases for VR but I don't think there's something that hundreds of millions to billions of people would want to do every day.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:51 PM on May 9, 2023
I believe that there are lots of specific use cases for VR but I don't think there's something that hundreds of millions to billions of people would want to do every day.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:51 PM on May 9, 2023
The challenges of mainstreaming VR strike me as similar to the challenges of mainstreaming fur suits. As it stands, VR is a niche activity with huge front loaded costs to participate in. Despite that, there is a vibrant community that exists and some people are even making a living catering to that community.
However, to truly mainstream VR, you have to make a business case that entices VCs and bosses and advertisers and to do that you have to disassociate VR from the perverts and weirdos who make up the existing culture of enthusiasts who should be your greatest advocates.
So you've got to alienate the community that exists to capture the money havers who don't even want it for reasons beyond fomo and, in the end, you end up with a novelty that nobody will care about.
posted by Reyturner at 1:10 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
However, to truly mainstream VR, you have to make a business case that entices VCs and bosses and advertisers and to do that you have to disassociate VR from the perverts and weirdos who make up the existing culture of enthusiasts who should be your greatest advocates.
So you've got to alienate the community that exists to capture the money havers who don't even want it for reasons beyond fomo and, in the end, you end up with a novelty that nobody will care about.
posted by Reyturner at 1:10 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Well, also similar to fursuits, VR is a thing you WEAR that greatly limits and changes your interactions with the rest of the world. The reason most online things catch on is because people can incorporate them into their regular life in a way that allows them to continue with the other facets of that life. Even videogaming can be a social activity because others can watch and interact with the player even if they aren't playing themselves. But VR... that locks you outside the world around you. Sure, others could watch on a side screen what you're seeing, but that's not the same as watching the same screen together.
I'm not expressing this well, but I think the concept of the opaque, reality-blocking VR headset is what keeps the masses from wanting to use it as more than an oddity. That level of "being cut off" is not something most people want, even if they want their attention to be fully engaged in something.
posted by hippybear at 1:17 PM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
I'm not expressing this well, but I think the concept of the opaque, reality-blocking VR headset is what keeps the masses from wanting to use it as more than an oddity. That level of "being cut off" is not something most people want, even if they want their attention to be fully engaged in something.
posted by hippybear at 1:17 PM on May 9, 2023 [12 favorites]
Artw: Hopefully this readjusts people to the idea that Billionaires are mostly idiots that got lucky and not people with any particular merit.
But you know this time for sure I'd be different.
---
atrazine: So a few economists, among them Bill Janeway, have developed a theory of productive bubbles. (vs unproductive ones). The key idea is that when the underlying asset or knowledge or training created has use value, the bubble leaves behind a lot of low cost infrastructure that can be the basis for real growth.
So it's like Keynesian state-created infrastructure, lowering the barrier to entry for the whole population? Why don't we try state-created infrastructure that shares the costs and gains with everyone? Capital, ambition, "it's always been that way," snobbery that lesser people wouldn't make "worthy" use of these assets, racism: just what other excuses do we use?
posted by k3ninho at 1:18 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
But you know this time for sure I'd be different.
---
atrazine: So a few economists, among them Bill Janeway, have developed a theory of productive bubbles. (vs unproductive ones). The key idea is that when the underlying asset or knowledge or training created has use value, the bubble leaves behind a lot of low cost infrastructure that can be the basis for real growth.
So it's like Keynesian state-created infrastructure, lowering the barrier to entry for the whole population? Why don't we try state-created infrastructure that shares the costs and gains with everyone? Capital, ambition, "it's always been that way," snobbery that lesser people wouldn't make "worthy" use of these assets, racism: just what other excuses do we use?
posted by k3ninho at 1:18 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I know a guy who helped to build a VR training kit for airliner engine mechanics. They took the cad designs of the engines, put it into a virtual hangar, and created some chrome so people could "explode" an engine into its parts and learn how they go together, which parts are located where, etc.
It costs an airline about a million bucks a day to have an airplane sitting in a hangar, so they never want that to happen just to train the guys to fix the broken ones. This was expensive to build (like $100k) but it's obviously worth the money to the airline that asked for it. So this makes sense for VR. But even if every airline has that, we're talking, what, under 10k users worldwide?
So outside of gaming, I think of VR more like those large industrial robots that build cars: I love robots, but why the heck would I ever get one?
posted by nushustu at 1:24 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
It costs an airline about a million bucks a day to have an airplane sitting in a hangar, so they never want that to happen just to train the guys to fix the broken ones. This was expensive to build (like $100k) but it's obviously worth the money to the airline that asked for it. So this makes sense for VR. But even if every airline has that, we're talking, what, under 10k users worldwide?
So outside of gaming, I think of VR more like those large industrial robots that build cars: I love robots, but why the heck would I ever get one?
posted by nushustu at 1:24 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
That said, I DO think there is a use for HUDs in glasses. If someone could build a pair of glasses that look like regular glasses, but have cameras and headphones built in (not unlike these, actually) but also had google glass's HUD capabilities, so that I could see pertinent info about people hovering over them (name, birthday, how many kids they have, favorite books or movies or foods or whatever), I could see that being super-useful. Ditto info about buildings that I can see. But again, the only way I'm ever going to consider that is if it works really well and they look like regular glasses. When apple announces those, that'll be the biggest game-changer since the iphone. Until then, it's all just niche tools and toys.
posted by nushustu at 1:28 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by nushustu at 1:28 PM on May 9, 2023
I remember seeing pictures of people wearing VR helmets about 30 years ago
I got to see one of those in action during a behind-the-scenes tour at Johnson Space Center several years ago. The unit they took up to the ISS was quite literally an upside-down laptop (a Thinkpad, looking at my photos) affixed to some lenses and a headset.
The main problems haven’t changed: a high-end wired setup is still heavy, and hot (in a distinctly sweaty “my eyeballs are trapped in a very small and poorly-ventilated volume with an extremely hot display” way), and holding the lenses *firmly* in place so things don’t shift around when you turn your head means tightening the straps such that you have painful point of contact grooves all over your face when you’re finished.
Don’t get me wrong, when it really, truly works it’s amazing - 95% of game time in Elite Dangerous is from the perspective of someone sitting in a cockpit so it’s a naturally perfect fit for VR and having a sense of depth can give you a huge advantage during a dogfight or canyon run. Flipping high conflict zone instances for four hours straight in a snarling clusterfuck of perpetual dogfighting with a Vive Pro 2 remains a personal gaming highpoint … and after I finished I went back to playing on my normal screen, because my face fucking hurt after that long.
Mobile-based setups can alleviate the weight and heat issues somewhat, but due to lack of GPU power the latency is even worse - unplayable even if you’re not susceptible to the increased motion sickness.
That level of "being cut off" is not something most people want, even if they want their attention to be fully engaged in something
This is what I was getting at when I declared VR “irredeemably uncool” above. It is a fundamentally isolating technology and everyone just looks like a complete dorkus using it. Technology doesn’t necessarily need to get you laid for mass market adoption, but it does need to not actively block you, and VR fails that test in ways I don’t see changing soon.
posted by Ryvar at 1:41 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
I got to see one of those in action during a behind-the-scenes tour at Johnson Space Center several years ago. The unit they took up to the ISS was quite literally an upside-down laptop (a Thinkpad, looking at my photos) affixed to some lenses and a headset.
The main problems haven’t changed: a high-end wired setup is still heavy, and hot (in a distinctly sweaty “my eyeballs are trapped in a very small and poorly-ventilated volume with an extremely hot display” way), and holding the lenses *firmly* in place so things don’t shift around when you turn your head means tightening the straps such that you have painful point of contact grooves all over your face when you’re finished.
Don’t get me wrong, when it really, truly works it’s amazing - 95% of game time in Elite Dangerous is from the perspective of someone sitting in a cockpit so it’s a naturally perfect fit for VR and having a sense of depth can give you a huge advantage during a dogfight or canyon run. Flipping high conflict zone instances for four hours straight in a snarling clusterfuck of perpetual dogfighting with a Vive Pro 2 remains a personal gaming highpoint … and after I finished I went back to playing on my normal screen, because my face fucking hurt after that long.
Mobile-based setups can alleviate the weight and heat issues somewhat, but due to lack of GPU power the latency is even worse - unplayable even if you’re not susceptible to the increased motion sickness.
That level of "being cut off" is not something most people want, even if they want their attention to be fully engaged in something
This is what I was getting at when I declared VR “irredeemably uncool” above. It is a fundamentally isolating technology and everyone just looks like a complete dorkus using it. Technology doesn’t necessarily need to get you laid for mass market adoption, but it does need to not actively block you, and VR fails that test in ways I don’t see changing soon.
posted by Ryvar at 1:41 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
All the VR furries I know are using VRChat and Neos, with headset/tracker/computer setups that would currently range from $1000-3000 to set up from scratch, depending on how much you're willing to play with community-maintained drivers/plugins and source used gear from someone with a high-paying IT job who's about to upgrade to the cutting edge.
Zuck's been trying to bring VR to the masses with a standalone headset that's like $300.
Which I think is about the right price point for this - the PS5's $400-500 depending on the model you buy, now that the supply chain's finally moving well enough to stop the scalpers grabbing them all, the Switch is $200-350 depending on which one you get, the Steam Deck's $400 - but the technology is just not there yet to cram full-body tracking and rendering two dense, high-res 3D views at a decent framerate into any combination of boxes that come in at $500 or less, let alone cram it entirely into a box or two you can wear.
I feel like that might be coming in three or four years, I don't think there would be really solid rumors of an Apple headset for $3-5k if they didn't think they could bring the price down a *lot* once they'd had a couple generations of refinement.
posted by egypturnash at 1:53 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Zuck's been trying to bring VR to the masses with a standalone headset that's like $300.
Which I think is about the right price point for this - the PS5's $400-500 depending on the model you buy, now that the supply chain's finally moving well enough to stop the scalpers grabbing them all, the Switch is $200-350 depending on which one you get, the Steam Deck's $400 - but the technology is just not there yet to cram full-body tracking and rendering two dense, high-res 3D views at a decent framerate into any combination of boxes that come in at $500 or less, let alone cram it entirely into a box or two you can wear.
I feel like that might be coming in three or four years, I don't think there would be really solid rumors of an Apple headset for $3-5k if they didn't think they could bring the price down a *lot* once they'd had a couple generations of refinement.
posted by egypturnash at 1:53 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
(also apparently it's pretty easy to get okay upper-body tracking from stuff you can fit in a standalone headset, which I guess is half the "no legs" decision; the other half is either "we couldn't come up with a way to merge legs made up by the computer with upper-body tracking in a way that fit the available CPU time left over after everything else involved in VR and looked okay" or "Zuck says it's real leg tracking or nothing".)
posted by egypturnash at 2:11 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by egypturnash at 2:11 PM on May 9, 2023
Didn’t they find a way to add legs in a demo and it managed to make it look worse?
posted by Artw at 2:17 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by Artw at 2:17 PM on May 9, 2023
They might have! I have really not been keeping track.
posted by egypturnash at 2:25 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by egypturnash at 2:25 PM on May 9, 2023
VR is a thing you WEAR that greatly limits and changes your interactions with the rest of the world.
Right, and this is actually one of the features of more traditional 3D games, worlds or platforms like Second Life is that it is, in fact, mediated and you're not expected to actually move, behave or interact bodily with the virtual environment like a live human.
This is also true of lots of modern video games, even first person shooters or similar forced first person perspective games. The part that makes these games fun is this mediation that you're not actually running around in Quake or Fortnight or whatever, you're just controlling an avatar with buttons, keyboard keys, mouse and/or joysticks. You don't actually have to be an actual ninja to do ninja wall jumps in Super Mario 64 or whatever.
In open virtual worlds or sandboxes like SL it's more like playing with puppets or even dolls (not unlike The Sims) and that's a feature because you can have complex interactions and conversations with little more than a mouse, keyboard and screen.
I've met a number of people in SL and just online in gaming space in general who were paraplegic, quadriplegic or otherwise facing major mobility or health challenges who are using assistive technologies to socialize online, and VR as sold by Zuckerberg and others doesn't really work for them.
This idea of full body interaction and movement with the concept of VR has major issues compared to, say, the GUI desktop interface model we use with computers today.
The whole reason why a GUI works isn't because it's an exact replica of the experience of interacting with a desktop, bookshelf or filing cabinet or whatever. It's actually useful and successful because it offers that level of useful muscle memory with much less effort and real world movement or handling of objects.
Your mouse cursor (and keyboard) is effectively a VR avatar in a 2D and quasi or conceptual 3D space with the concept of file trees and folders and more. You have the real world benefit of barely moving a mouse to flip through an entire warehouse full of filing cabinets with assistive tools like search functions and indexing.
The cyberpunk fiction concept of a 3D space or VR metaverse as the next step after desktop GUI interfaces for everything from shopping to coding to hacking or visualizing huge amounts of corporate ops or data was always flawed as a concept because it demands that the end users be virtual ninjas or athletes, whether mentally or physically or both.
And using a mouse, trackpad or keyboard already kind of pushes the limits of this issue with real world and very human limitations of physical dexterity and how to use a human-machine interface device as simple as a mouse, joystick or other devices.
And I can't help but note that cyberpunk fiction with VR never really addresses this issue about mental or physical agility or movement tracking. Gibson doesn't in the Sprawl books, and neither does Stephenson in Snow Crash. It's kind of hand-waved away by Gibson as brain interfaces and neural jacks and "SQUID" brain state scanners and stuff. And while Hiro Protaganist practices RL sword fighting and training for his activities in the Snow Crash Metaverse it never really addresses how that translates to strapping on some stereo vision goggles and typing on a computer or keyboard and moving without actually moving.
And you don't need fast code or vehicles or public transit in a virtual world like Second Life. You just teleport your cursor/avatar/puppet to a grid location or move from one space to another. Though there are lots of vehicles in SL Trains, cars, motorcycles, horses, zeppelins, airplanes, battleships - you name it. There's even a group that roleplays and makes a very serious game out handling freight and shipping.
Second Life even does this sort of 3D/virtual GUI idea with in-world virtual stores and events and it's honestly a huge pain in the ass to navigate compared to their plain old browser/web based marketplace. But one of the benefits and tricks of SL's model of avatar as puppet is that it's not virtual and you don't actually have to move or virtually interact with an in-world store because you can just move your camera view around independent of your avatar instead of a limited, forced first person perspective where you have to virtually walk or move from display to display.
All that being said? Yeah, there's a future for VR both for entertainment, arts, sciences and industry.
One random thought about a killer business app for VR that doesn't involve physical simulation of something "real" like architecture might be complex data visualization, like inspecting and programming all of the links and maps of a very complex relational database that isn't always very easy to understand when mapped to just two dimensions as a spread/cell sheet or DB.
I would also totally mess around with some AR glasses that had apps like plant and wildlife identification, or starwatching or other cool educational and science applications not unlike Stellarium.
Imagine putting on a pair of glasses and it highlights everything that's edible or useful all around you or you can just blink at a tree or plant and it tells you all about it.
You could conceivably automate machine vision combined with AR for something like mushroom foraging where your AR glasses "see" rare morel mushrooms that you never would have spotted and found on your own. And I kind of both hate and love this. I hate it because it would do horrible things to mushroom picking and foraging but I'd love it because I like foraging.
posted by loquacious at 2:58 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Right, and this is actually one of the features of more traditional 3D games, worlds or platforms like Second Life is that it is, in fact, mediated and you're not expected to actually move, behave or interact bodily with the virtual environment like a live human.
This is also true of lots of modern video games, even first person shooters or similar forced first person perspective games. The part that makes these games fun is this mediation that you're not actually running around in Quake or Fortnight or whatever, you're just controlling an avatar with buttons, keyboard keys, mouse and/or joysticks. You don't actually have to be an actual ninja to do ninja wall jumps in Super Mario 64 or whatever.
In open virtual worlds or sandboxes like SL it's more like playing with puppets or even dolls (not unlike The Sims) and that's a feature because you can have complex interactions and conversations with little more than a mouse, keyboard and screen.
I've met a number of people in SL and just online in gaming space in general who were paraplegic, quadriplegic or otherwise facing major mobility or health challenges who are using assistive technologies to socialize online, and VR as sold by Zuckerberg and others doesn't really work for them.
This idea of full body interaction and movement with the concept of VR has major issues compared to, say, the GUI desktop interface model we use with computers today.
The whole reason why a GUI works isn't because it's an exact replica of the experience of interacting with a desktop, bookshelf or filing cabinet or whatever. It's actually useful and successful because it offers that level of useful muscle memory with much less effort and real world movement or handling of objects.
Your mouse cursor (and keyboard) is effectively a VR avatar in a 2D and quasi or conceptual 3D space with the concept of file trees and folders and more. You have the real world benefit of barely moving a mouse to flip through an entire warehouse full of filing cabinets with assistive tools like search functions and indexing.
The cyberpunk fiction concept of a 3D space or VR metaverse as the next step after desktop GUI interfaces for everything from shopping to coding to hacking or visualizing huge amounts of corporate ops or data was always flawed as a concept because it demands that the end users be virtual ninjas or athletes, whether mentally or physically or both.
And using a mouse, trackpad or keyboard already kind of pushes the limits of this issue with real world and very human limitations of physical dexterity and how to use a human-machine interface device as simple as a mouse, joystick or other devices.
And I can't help but note that cyberpunk fiction with VR never really addresses this issue about mental or physical agility or movement tracking. Gibson doesn't in the Sprawl books, and neither does Stephenson in Snow Crash. It's kind of hand-waved away by Gibson as brain interfaces and neural jacks and "SQUID" brain state scanners and stuff. And while Hiro Protaganist practices RL sword fighting and training for his activities in the Snow Crash Metaverse it never really addresses how that translates to strapping on some stereo vision goggles and typing on a computer or keyboard and moving without actually moving.
And you don't need fast code or vehicles or public transit in a virtual world like Second Life. You just teleport your cursor/avatar/puppet to a grid location or move from one space to another. Though there are lots of vehicles in SL Trains, cars, motorcycles, horses, zeppelins, airplanes, battleships - you name it. There's even a group that roleplays and makes a very serious game out handling freight and shipping.
Second Life even does this sort of 3D/virtual GUI idea with in-world virtual stores and events and it's honestly a huge pain in the ass to navigate compared to their plain old browser/web based marketplace. But one of the benefits and tricks of SL's model of avatar as puppet is that it's not virtual and you don't actually have to move or virtually interact with an in-world store because you can just move your camera view around independent of your avatar instead of a limited, forced first person perspective where you have to virtually walk or move from display to display.
All that being said? Yeah, there's a future for VR both for entertainment, arts, sciences and industry.
One random thought about a killer business app for VR that doesn't involve physical simulation of something "real" like architecture might be complex data visualization, like inspecting and programming all of the links and maps of a very complex relational database that isn't always very easy to understand when mapped to just two dimensions as a spread/cell sheet or DB.
I would also totally mess around with some AR glasses that had apps like plant and wildlife identification, or starwatching or other cool educational and science applications not unlike Stellarium.
Imagine putting on a pair of glasses and it highlights everything that's edible or useful all around you or you can just blink at a tree or plant and it tells you all about it.
You could conceivably automate machine vision combined with AR for something like mushroom foraging where your AR glasses "see" rare morel mushrooms that you never would have spotted and found on your own. And I kind of both hate and love this. I hate it because it would do horrible things to mushroom picking and foraging but I'd love it because I like foraging.
posted by loquacious at 2:58 PM on May 9, 2023 [6 favorites]
Turns out the best neural interface we’ve developed so far is just kinda looking at what’s on the screen and imagining yourself there.
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:23 PM on May 9, 2023 [9 favorites]
I know a guy who helped to build a VR training kit for airliner engine mechanics.
I wish I could have practiced driving in VR before doing it on real streets and highways.
In general I think there's a lot of potential for educational experiences. And there are contexts, like education, where not being able to split your attention can a plus. A savvy marketer would get the wellness movement into it: 'A VR session a day keeps the ADHD/dementia/burnout at bay!' Or the education industry: 'Give your kids a leg up in life with our VR-based courses!' Getting Macs in schools was a major part of Apple's business strategy back in the day; if VR ever becomes a thing, someone's going to try to capture that market.
For a moment, writing that, I found myself imagining all sorts of cool possibilities for VR with '90s style optimism and excitement. All the things I'd love to be able to do with it. But this is 2023 so I know all the big players are going to use it as a platform for ads and gathering personal information, and VR hate content will prove to as immersive and addictive as every other kind of hate content and no one will want to pay for moderation, and I'm okay with it taking another decade or two or more to be a thing.
posted by trig at 3:25 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I wish I could have practiced driving in VR before doing it on real streets and highways.
In general I think there's a lot of potential for educational experiences. And there are contexts, like education, where not being able to split your attention can a plus. A savvy marketer would get the wellness movement into it: 'A VR session a day keeps the ADHD/dementia/burnout at bay!' Or the education industry: 'Give your kids a leg up in life with our VR-based courses!' Getting Macs in schools was a major part of Apple's business strategy back in the day; if VR ever becomes a thing, someone's going to try to capture that market.
For a moment, writing that, I found myself imagining all sorts of cool possibilities for VR with '90s style optimism and excitement. All the things I'd love to be able to do with it. But this is 2023 so I know all the big players are going to use it as a platform for ads and gathering personal information, and VR hate content will prove to as immersive and addictive as every other kind of hate content and no one will want to pay for moderation, and I'm okay with it taking another decade or two or more to be a thing.
posted by trig at 3:25 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
I do a lot of repeatative measuring at work. It would be great if AR could overlay a ruler on objects. Or heck, for example, just recognize a HV Teck cable and overlay a line at the right distances for cutting outer jacket, armour, inner jacket, semicon, copper foil and insulation. The information is already documented. Or overlay a grid on a box to show where to punch a series of holes evenly. Show exactly where to crimp lugs. Heck I've spent a lot of time using Eddy Current rebar detection equipment. It would be cool to have the results projected on the floor afterwards.
posted by Mitheral at 3:33 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Mitheral at 3:33 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Turns out the best neural interface we’ve developed so far is just kinda looking at what’s on the screen and imagining yourself there.
BRB going to go write a book that's like Snow Crash but where the people susceptible to it are adepts at Dwarf Fortress and Nethack
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:38 PM on May 9, 2023 [15 favorites]
BRB going to go write a book that's like Snow Crash but where the people susceptible to it are adepts at Dwarf Fortress and Nethack
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 3:38 PM on May 9, 2023 [15 favorites]
I do think the potential for AR is much much bigger than VR.
I've mentioned the smartphone app Seek a few times lately in various places. It's an app where you point the camera at a plant, animal, insect, etc and it tells you what it is.
Having that available as an AR app would be amazing.
I think the "look at a person and see their history, family, etc" thing is creepy if you don't already know them* (and if you do, it should be on you to remember these details), but the nature identification thing is pretty amazing and would be great as something to call on if we had AR glasses.
*I think a good use for this could be at professional conferences and having a LinkedIn profile available while doing networking. This kind of thing could be accomplished at conference with geofencing and some kind of conference-centric server you log into or whatever.
posted by hippybear at 3:39 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I've mentioned the smartphone app Seek a few times lately in various places. It's an app where you point the camera at a plant, animal, insect, etc and it tells you what it is.
Having that available as an AR app would be amazing.
I think the "look at a person and see their history, family, etc" thing is creepy if you don't already know them* (and if you do, it should be on you to remember these details), but the nature identification thing is pretty amazing and would be great as something to call on if we had AR glasses.
*I think a good use for this could be at professional conferences and having a LinkedIn profile available while doing networking. This kind of thing could be accomplished at conference with geofencing and some kind of conference-centric server you log into or whatever.
posted by hippybear at 3:39 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Supernatural work outs with the Oculus are terrific. The game Gorn where you smash your opponents with cartoonish weapons is also great: As are some dance related apps like beat saber. VR Chat and most attempts to adapt 3D first person shooters have been exhausting to use. Too much effort for not enough benefit over a console form factor.
posted by interogative mood at 4:02 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by interogative mood at 4:02 PM on May 9, 2023
For just 1/5 of that $100 billion, he could have ended homelessness in the U.S.
But who am I to judge?
posted by hydra77 at 4:59 PM on May 9, 2023 [15 favorites]
But who am I to judge?
posted by hydra77 at 4:59 PM on May 9, 2023 [15 favorites]
Pour one out for the ol' Metaverse.
Wow, man -- that is one big fuckin' 40.
posted by y2karl at 5:03 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Wow, man -- that is one big fuckin' 40.
posted by y2karl at 5:03 PM on May 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
For just 1/5 of that $100 billion, he could have ended homelessness in the U.S.
But who am I to judge?
The United States Department of Defense's official direct spending on Iraq totaled at least $757.8 billion as per the DoD. Other estimates have it at 3tn+ in total.
Figures like 20bn often make me think of this.
posted by jaduncan at 5:12 PM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
But who am I to judge?
The United States Department of Defense's official direct spending on Iraq totaled at least $757.8 billion as per the DoD. Other estimates have it at 3tn+ in total.
Figures like 20bn often make me think of this.
posted by jaduncan at 5:12 PM on May 9, 2023 [5 favorites]
I said what I said. The current VC driven AI hype wave is as awful and stupid as all the other things and as intended to drive us into misery and despair as all the other things.
The current text and image AI stuff is generative pollution.
posted by srboisvert at 5:27 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
The current text and image AI stuff is generative pollution.
posted by srboisvert at 5:27 PM on May 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kudos to the marketing team associate that decided to throw 'ai-chatgpt' into the permalink for the OP for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
'https://www.businessinsider.com/metaverse-dead-obituary-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-tech-fad-ai-chatgpt-2023-5'
posted by daHIFI at 6:01 PM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
'https://www.businessinsider.com/metaverse-dead-obituary-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-tech-fad-ai-chatgpt-2023-5'
posted by daHIFI at 6:01 PM on May 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Wow, man -- that is one big fuckin' 40.
*swirls glass of Olde English and holds it up to the light for examination*
"Nope. Still no legs."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:54 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
*swirls glass of Olde English and holds it up to the light for examination*
"Nope. Still no legs."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:54 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Wow, quick search and very little mention of France Haugen’s brave whistleblower testimony and Cambridge Analytica scandal? That was the REAL reason for the ridiculous pivot and name change - to quickly change the narrative of the company away from really damning controversy that should have torpedoed Facebook for good. I think Zuck bet that the manufactured lunacy would distract the media and masses away from the real dangers of the company, costs be damned, and it worked. Facebook stock price has completely rebounded to 2020 level and they regained $600B market cap.
It’s akin to how Tony Hsieh hyped up the holacracy nonsense after the Amazon - Zappos acquisition to protect his long-cultivated Zappos company culture from getting immediately crushed. It made no sense whatsoever and yet he pulled the wool over Amazon leaders, laughing his way to the bank.
posted by hampanda at 9:46 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
It’s akin to how Tony Hsieh hyped up the holacracy nonsense after the Amazon - Zappos acquisition to protect his long-cultivated Zappos company culture from getting immediately crushed. It made no sense whatsoever and yet he pulled the wool over Amazon leaders, laughing his way to the bank.
posted by hampanda at 9:46 PM on May 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Comparing Zuckerberg's Metaverse to Hsieh's holocracy is mind-blowingly explanative of ... maybe too much!
posted by riverlife at 10:50 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by riverlife at 10:50 PM on May 9, 2023
The $20 billion dollars to end homelessness claim is often cited but is not true. If we spent $20 billion a year on housing vouchers we would help a lot of homeless people, but not end homelessness.
posted by interogative mood at 11:05 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by interogative mood at 11:05 PM on May 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
it never had a strong enough community (at least that had legs)
posted by iboxifoo at 11:16 PM on May 9, 2023
posted by iboxifoo at 11:16 PM on May 9, 2023
The parallel technology to multiuser VR worlds (or whatever you want to call it) is non-VR multiuser worlds. But the user experience for those - and the backing technology stacks - are something built out over decades. With each successive iteration, lessons are learned and the user community has grown. And now I use them at work, daily. Their time has come. When I was a kid, though, they were fringe entertainment with a hard-to-master user interface and vanishingly small user communities.
But public companies in a capitalist society don't think decades in advance. They think they are going to build a headset and bootstrap a VR product to a million users off of name recognition alone, when the products are very much "fringe entertainment with a hard-to-master user interface and vanishingly small user communities".
I suppose what would really be valuable to VR right now is a repository for VR product reviews that discuss what worked and what didn't. It could save successive generations of VR products from pitfalls that someone else has already found. Has anyone built that yet?
posted by quillbreaker at 12:03 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
But public companies in a capitalist society don't think decades in advance. They think they are going to build a headset and bootstrap a VR product to a million users off of name recognition alone, when the products are very much "fringe entertainment with a hard-to-master user interface and vanishingly small user communities".
I suppose what would really be valuable to VR right now is a repository for VR product reviews that discuss what worked and what didn't. It could save successive generations of VR products from pitfalls that someone else has already found. Has anyone built that yet?
posted by quillbreaker at 12:03 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think the "look at a person and see their history, family, etc" thing is creepy if you don't already know them* (and if you do, it should be on you to remember these details), but the nature identification thing is pretty amazing and would be great as something to call on if we had AR glasses.
*I think a good use for this could be at professional conferences and having a LinkedIn profile available while doing networking. This kind of thing could be accomplished at conference with geofencing and some kind of conference-centric server you log into or whatever.
The real killer app will be the same thing, but for letting secret furries find each other at business conferences. Bring the hanky code into the twenty-first century, dammit!
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:04 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
*I think a good use for this could be at professional conferences and having a LinkedIn profile available while doing networking. This kind of thing could be accomplished at conference with geofencing and some kind of conference-centric server you log into or whatever.
The real killer app will be the same thing, but for letting secret furries find each other at business conferences. Bring the hanky code into the twenty-first century, dammit!
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 5:04 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I wish I could have practiced driving in VR before doing it on real streets and highways.
Wide tangent here, but I took driver's ed in 1996. My school had a room full of driving simulator machines in it. Sounds futuristic! You sat at a console with a steering wheel and pedals and a column-mounted shifter and practiced driving with an instructional film.
Except this whole setup was from the 1970s. Everyone in the films seemed to be competing for the widest bell-bottoms, the largest afros, and the tallest platform shoes, and the interactivity was limited to whatever sensors still worked in the pods, which fed to a refrigerator-sized computer at the back of the room that occasionally -- and only occasionally -- would print out some kind of cryptic results on continuous-feed paper that the instructor absolutely didn't understand.
That said, at least they somehow kept that rig running for 20ish+ years. Any current VR-adjacent technology would probably be obsolete and non-functional in half that time, at absolute best.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Wide tangent here, but I took driver's ed in 1996. My school had a room full of driving simulator machines in it. Sounds futuristic! You sat at a console with a steering wheel and pedals and a column-mounted shifter and practiced driving with an instructional film.
Except this whole setup was from the 1970s. Everyone in the films seemed to be competing for the widest bell-bottoms, the largest afros, and the tallest platform shoes, and the interactivity was limited to whatever sensors still worked in the pods, which fed to a refrigerator-sized computer at the back of the room that occasionally -- and only occasionally -- would print out some kind of cryptic results on continuous-feed paper that the instructor absolutely didn't understand.
That said, at least they somehow kept that rig running for 20ish+ years. Any current VR-adjacent technology would probably be obsolete and non-functional in half that time, at absolute best.
posted by uncleozzy at 5:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
On the AI search thing, it already *is* a search tool and has been for a while. I use Neeva as my search engine and a natural language chat result has been at the top of the results page since January. It's helpful a lot of the time and includes data source citations pegged to different sections of the output. I'm sure it's coming from Google etc. but it's radically better for me so far.
posted by caviar2d2 at 5:48 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by caviar2d2 at 5:48 AM on May 10, 2023
and the interactivity was limited to whatever sensors still worked in the pods, which fed to a refrigerator-sized computer at the back of the room that occasionally -- and only occasionally -- would print out some kind of cryptic results on continuous-feed paper that the instructor absolutely didn't understand.
That sounds amazing and I'm jealous.
posted by trig at 6:19 AM on May 10, 2023
That sounds amazing and I'm jealous.
posted by trig at 6:19 AM on May 10, 2023
Oh, the driving simulator (or stimulator, as we so wittily named it). We had that, too. Our district had theirs in a trailer, and it would travel between the three high schools as needed. Even in the late eighties, those movies were dated. I hadn't considered the VR aspects of it before, which seems a bit silly of me in retrospect.
posted by mollweide at 6:28 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by mollweide at 6:28 AM on May 10, 2023
I think Zuck bet that the manufactured lunacy would distract the media and masses away from the real dangers of the company, costs be damned, and it worked.
He could have done that for FAR less than $100 Billion. Nah, this pivot wasn't (just) distraction, he believed in it.
posted by tclark at 7:14 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
He could have done that for FAR less than $100 Billion. Nah, this pivot wasn't (just) distraction, he believed in it.
posted by tclark at 7:14 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I would also totally mess around with some AR glasses that had apps like plant and wildlife identification, or starwatching or other cool educational and science applications not unlike Stellarium.
I once saw a demo of a Google glass for technician-based office and home fiber optic internet installs, including where to drill through top plates in attics to do cable drops. It was pretty cool, and though it didn't change it from extremely skilled labor to moderately skilled labor, it still cut down training time by like 1/3. Unfortunately, due to multiple issues (very much including making some techs motion sick), it never made it past a demo stage.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I once saw a demo of a Google glass for technician-based office and home fiber optic internet installs, including where to drill through top plates in attics to do cable drops. It was pretty cool, and though it didn't change it from extremely skilled labor to moderately skilled labor, it still cut down training time by like 1/3. Unfortunately, due to multiple issues (very much including making some techs motion sick), it never made it past a demo stage.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
we spent $20 billion a year on housing vouchers we would help a lot of homeless people, but not end homelessness.
While true and also while there are structural reasons besides lack of home stock that leads to homelessness even in crazy pants Canadian Vancouver and using Canadian dollars a hundred billion dollars would build 250,000 600 sq ft single bedroom non market units or 133,000 1100 sq foot three bedroom units. Units that would provide housing for 50-150 years or more at realistic rents that decrease in real terms over the years and would lower market rents to boot. You could probably boost that number by 50% or more by not concentrating the units in one of the most expensive housing cities in the world.
There are about 580k sheltered and unsheltered homelessness people in the USA. I'd bet 100 billion would get at least 75% of them into homes while simultaneously greatly increasing the quality of life for maybe @ 100 million more by reducing exploitive rent seeking.
In comparison this was an unmitigated waste of money and resources.
Any billionaires out there want to be remembered fondly? Built non market housing and slap your name on it in cities across the country. You'll be remembered as having done something good for centuries even if all your rent seeking buddies think you're an asshole.
posted by Mitheral at 7:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
While true and also while there are structural reasons besides lack of home stock that leads to homelessness even in crazy pants Canadian Vancouver and using Canadian dollars a hundred billion dollars would build 250,000 600 sq ft single bedroom non market units or 133,000 1100 sq foot three bedroom units. Units that would provide housing for 50-150 years or more at realistic rents that decrease in real terms over the years and would lower market rents to boot. You could probably boost that number by 50% or more by not concentrating the units in one of the most expensive housing cities in the world.
There are about 580k sheltered and unsheltered homelessness people in the USA. I'd bet 100 billion would get at least 75% of them into homes while simultaneously greatly increasing the quality of life for maybe @ 100 million more by reducing exploitive rent seeking.
In comparison this was an unmitigated waste of money and resources.
Any billionaires out there want to be remembered fondly? Built non market housing and slap your name on it in cities across the country. You'll be remembered as having done something good for centuries even if all your rent seeking buddies think you're an asshole.
posted by Mitheral at 7:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Metaverse could contribute up to 2.4% of US GDP by 2035, study shows
Oh, the embarrassment when your PR team doesn't remember to cancel the press release.
posted by jaduncan at 8:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
May 9 (Reuters) - The metaverse could contribute as much as $760 billion or about 2.4% to U.S. annual gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035, according to a study commissioned by Facebook owner Meta Platforms (META.O).
Oh, the embarrassment when your PR team doesn't remember to cancel the press release.
posted by jaduncan at 8:27 AM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
Simple question… When I look upon the world it is in 3D thanks to my binocular vision. These VR devices… Do they present a world in 3D? Or am I just looking at up close 2D screens?
posted by njohnson23 at 9:04 AM on May 10, 2023
posted by njohnson23 at 9:04 AM on May 10, 2023
As someone who is still locked out of his 'primary' Meta/Horizon account because of a stupid issue with his Facebook account (and yes, its 3 accounts) I can tell you that support is completely rubbish - worse than dealing with fraud on Roblox.
The Meta support forum is full of cases like mine and they don't even bother with a response at this point. Over on Reddit there's a few folks claiming they got this sort of issue sorted out but of what real value is anything on Reddit in 2023? Meta is even ignoring folks complaining on Twitter.
The only working solution so far has been to reset the device and lose all the game progress and all the connections to online friends. So the family thinks I'm the bad guy here for busting this account. Plus I'm out the 100 bucks I had spent on stuff on that account.
posted by zenon at 9:07 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
The Meta support forum is full of cases like mine and they don't even bother with a response at this point. Over on Reddit there's a few folks claiming they got this sort of issue sorted out but of what real value is anything on Reddit in 2023? Meta is even ignoring folks complaining on Twitter.
The only working solution so far has been to reset the device and lose all the game progress and all the connections to online friends. So the family thinks I'm the bad guy here for busting this account. Plus I'm out the 100 bucks I had spent on stuff on that account.
posted by zenon at 9:07 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
I do a lot of repeatative measuring at work. It would be great if AR could overlay a ruler on objects.
Have you seen the augmented reality happening in the US military?
https://bluetoad.com/publication/?i=519635&article_id=3164493&view=articleBrowser
There's tictok (via reddit) about it in action here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/xyvck4/maintenance_person_examines_the_interior_of_a/
The larger program seems to be stumbling, but for mechanics and other trades this would seem a huge step forward.
posted by bonehead at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Have you seen the augmented reality happening in the US military?
https://bluetoad.com/publication/?i=519635&article_id=3164493&view=articleBrowser
There's tictok (via reddit) about it in action here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/xyvck4/maintenance_person_examines_the_interior_of_a/
The larger program seems to be stumbling, but for mechanics and other trades this would seem a huge step forward.
posted by bonehead at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
These VR devices… Do they present a world in 3D? Or am I just looking at up close 2D screens?
It’s a very high-resolution, relatively small LED or OLED screen that passes through some fancy lenses so the left eye sees only the left half and the right eye sees the right half, with each half displaying the current scene from the perspective of the corresponding eye. Which your brain synthesizes into a single stereoscopic view with depth perception. There is a bit of padding/buffer - extra potential pixels rendered outside the displayed view in the current framebuffer - so that if the user turns their head very sharply the screens can *immediately* update to display whatever is just slightly offscreen in the direction of the headturn, without waiting on the next frame.
(a sort of modern take on Carmack’s old offscreen buffer tricks for Commander Keen, pre-Wolfenstein, which solved smooth platform game background motion for early 90s PC gamers.)
In order to prevent motion sickness the traditional gamedev mantra of “60FPS average, 30FPS worst case” has to be raised to *at least* 120 and 90, respectively. The usual rule of “humans can’t perceive above 90FPS” doesn’t apply when constantly fighting equilibrioperception. And this while dealing with a total number of pixels roughly equivalent to a 4K display (so, 4 times as much as your standard 1080P high definition display).
Performance-wise we’re being asked to do (frequently) photorealism at something on the order of 8 to 12 times the total pixel throughput of typical 3D game rendering.
Two additional problems immediately arise to make the situation far worse:
1) in realtime rendering for games whenever we can get away with it we amortize rendering costs of computationally expensive things - like updating volumetric slow-moving lights’ illumination values in each voxel (volume-cell) of the scene (eg realtime setting sun) - across multiple frames. The interior shadows and subsurface scatter of roiling storm clouds at sunset? If we only update a fifth of the pixels (texels, technically) of the clouds each frame so that internal lighting updates from sunlight angle changes are always stretched across five frame blocks… amidst all that turbulent noise you’re never going to notice even if it’s very much filling the screen. But VR implementations often draw things left eye frame/right eye frame alternating, with as much reuse between frame pairs as possible. Every single low-level graphics system that was amortizing over multiple frames now has to be rewritten to track amortization state for each eye independently, doubling memory usage and more likely just turning your code itself into a roiling, turbulent mess.
2) focal depth and HUD / UI elements - what depth value do you assign to the player’s health bar so that it always stays in focus when the player’s eyes might be attempting to instantly switch from those lovely clouds miles off to the enemy two meters away? Even once you’ve got your method for determining that nailed, you’re still going to want to render the healthbar in worldspace at the appropriate depth rather than compositing it as a flat screenspace overlay of the 3D scene in post (technically post-post-process as it (Slate) is a separate renderer in Unreal but nevermind). Problem: since the UI elements are now directly in the world scene you’re probably going to want them translucent. Bigger problem: translucent objects by definition do not write to the depth buffer (as they are intended to blend with or otherwise modulate whatever is behind themselves), meaning in a deferred renderer (most modern game engines) we can no longer sort HUD elements back to front to determine which polygons of the HUD object itself are drawn vs occluded. The equivalent sorting issue when rendering a human would be if they were turned so you shouldn’t be able see their left arm, and yet said arm being drawn over the top of the person in question because there is no objective sorting data. I’m pretty sure this is why Epic reintroduced the old forward renderer back into the codebase around the time they started taking VR seriously (~2016).
So yeah, apologies this comment got away from me but when I said developing games for VR is pure fucking misery I was not joking. Everything is broken, perf demands are roughly an order of magnitude above already tight margins, and even the slightest bit of UI that should take 20 minutes to slap together turns into a two days/two all-nighters nightmare. And this is before getting into all the weird constraints and compromises on camera motion to make those of you not genetically immune to motion sickness stop throwing up constantly, goddamnit.
The pay was amazing for gamedev work but no fucking thank you. That general attitude of “well this is doomed but the money’s nice” was all-pervading in my short but intense experience with VR devs, which I’ll gladly take over the all-backstabbing clusterfuck that seems to pervade all things crypto if I were short on cash, but just no to all of it, really.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT makes normal gamedev suck less. If you’re wondering why I get defensive above over people conflating those three technologies, well, there you go.
posted by Ryvar at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
It’s a very high-resolution, relatively small LED or OLED screen that passes through some fancy lenses so the left eye sees only the left half and the right eye sees the right half, with each half displaying the current scene from the perspective of the corresponding eye. Which your brain synthesizes into a single stereoscopic view with depth perception. There is a bit of padding/buffer - extra potential pixels rendered outside the displayed view in the current framebuffer - so that if the user turns their head very sharply the screens can *immediately* update to display whatever is just slightly offscreen in the direction of the headturn, without waiting on the next frame.
(a sort of modern take on Carmack’s old offscreen buffer tricks for Commander Keen, pre-Wolfenstein, which solved smooth platform game background motion for early 90s PC gamers.)
In order to prevent motion sickness the traditional gamedev mantra of “60FPS average, 30FPS worst case” has to be raised to *at least* 120 and 90, respectively. The usual rule of “humans can’t perceive above 90FPS” doesn’t apply when constantly fighting equilibrioperception. And this while dealing with a total number of pixels roughly equivalent to a 4K display (so, 4 times as much as your standard 1080P high definition display).
Performance-wise we’re being asked to do (frequently) photorealism at something on the order of 8 to 12 times the total pixel throughput of typical 3D game rendering.
Two additional problems immediately arise to make the situation far worse:
1) in realtime rendering for games whenever we can get away with it we amortize rendering costs of computationally expensive things - like updating volumetric slow-moving lights’ illumination values in each voxel (volume-cell) of the scene (eg realtime setting sun) - across multiple frames. The interior shadows and subsurface scatter of roiling storm clouds at sunset? If we only update a fifth of the pixels (texels, technically) of the clouds each frame so that internal lighting updates from sunlight angle changes are always stretched across five frame blocks… amidst all that turbulent noise you’re never going to notice even if it’s very much filling the screen. But VR implementations often draw things left eye frame/right eye frame alternating, with as much reuse between frame pairs as possible. Every single low-level graphics system that was amortizing over multiple frames now has to be rewritten to track amortization state for each eye independently, doubling memory usage and more likely just turning your code itself into a roiling, turbulent mess.
2) focal depth and HUD / UI elements - what depth value do you assign to the player’s health bar so that it always stays in focus when the player’s eyes might be attempting to instantly switch from those lovely clouds miles off to the enemy two meters away? Even once you’ve got your method for determining that nailed, you’re still going to want to render the healthbar in worldspace at the appropriate depth rather than compositing it as a flat screenspace overlay of the 3D scene in post (technically post-post-process as it (Slate) is a separate renderer in Unreal but nevermind). Problem: since the UI elements are now directly in the world scene you’re probably going to want them translucent. Bigger problem: translucent objects by definition do not write to the depth buffer (as they are intended to blend with or otherwise modulate whatever is behind themselves), meaning in a deferred renderer (most modern game engines) we can no longer sort HUD elements back to front to determine which polygons of the HUD object itself are drawn vs occluded. The equivalent sorting issue when rendering a human would be if they were turned so you shouldn’t be able see their left arm, and yet said arm being drawn over the top of the person in question because there is no objective sorting data. I’m pretty sure this is why Epic reintroduced the old forward renderer back into the codebase around the time they started taking VR seriously (~2016).
So yeah, apologies this comment got away from me but when I said developing games for VR is pure fucking misery I was not joking. Everything is broken, perf demands are roughly an order of magnitude above already tight margins, and even the slightest bit of UI that should take 20 minutes to slap together turns into a two days/two all-nighters nightmare. And this is before getting into all the weird constraints and compromises on camera motion to make those of you not genetically immune to motion sickness stop throwing up constantly, goddamnit.
The pay was amazing for gamedev work but no fucking thank you. That general attitude of “well this is doomed but the money’s nice” was all-pervading in my short but intense experience with VR devs, which I’ll gladly take over the all-backstabbing clusterfuck that seems to pervade all things crypto if I were short on cash, but just no to all of it, really.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT makes normal gamedev suck less. If you’re wondering why I get defensive above over people conflating those three technologies, well, there you go.
posted by Ryvar at 10:58 AM on May 10, 2023 [10 favorites]
Regarding zenon's comment, one problem nowadays is that a lot of "tech" problems are really bureaucracy problems, because everything has to have an account. And Meta did a lot to confuse that by starting with Oculus accounts, then forcing you to link those with Facebook accounts, then introducing Horizon profiles, etc.
But they're in love with the idea of an unholy mash-up of the Apple app-store and social media for potential profit, even though that can also make it difficult to use the product they ostensibly sell.
posted by RobotHero at 11:13 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
But they're in love with the idea of an unholy mash-up of the Apple app-store and social media for potential profit, even though that can also make it difficult to use the product they ostensibly sell.
posted by RobotHero at 11:13 AM on May 10, 2023 [4 favorites]
Ryvar, thanks! Sounds like a horrendous mess… But what if you are hopelessly nearsighted like me? Prescription VR?
posted by njohnson23 at 11:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 11:22 AM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Focus is focus, unfortunately. I have -5.75 contacts (= 20/750 vision) for both eyes and get by fine with that. The heat is just barely tolerable in terms of not drying out the contacts over a four hour session. For people who must have glasses (astigmatism or really strong correction) better quality HMDs have the ability to slide the whole screen/lens assembly back and forward to account for varying eye socket depth, and in the better units to accommodate users with glasses. I’ve worked with most HTC Vive models including the Valve Index, and all of them supported anything smaller than aviator frames. I have (unusually) never touched an Oculus HMD and can’t vouch for them.
Setting the display assembly further back is always going to mean occupying less of your field of view and impair immersion. Plus it’s another complicating factor in the cramped/sweaty feeling - if you can use contacts and are shelling out the bucks for a real VR setup then that’s your best bet.
posted by Ryvar at 11:40 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
Setting the display assembly further back is always going to mean occupying less of your field of view and impair immersion. Plus it’s another complicating factor in the cramped/sweaty feeling - if you can use contacts and are shelling out the bucks for a real VR setup then that’s your best bet.
posted by Ryvar at 11:40 AM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
MetaFilter: another complicating factor in the cramped/sweaty feeling
posted by hippybear at 12:01 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 12:01 PM on May 10, 2023 [5 favorites]
The motion sickness is really a blocker. I come from the days of Pac-Man and Galaga and once I started buying PC games, I had to just exclude all FPS games from my portfolio because stuff like Unreal made me super sick and gave me a terrible headache. I can't imagine VR would work out for me.
Also, remember the whole 60Hz CRT monitor thing? People used to say that was the setting needed to appear steady to humans, but I was always like "ugh why is this thing flickering" until I set it to ... I think is was 72Hz.
posted by caviar2d2 at 12:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Also, remember the whole 60Hz CRT monitor thing? People used to say that was the setting needed to appear steady to humans, but I was always like "ugh why is this thing flickering" until I set it to ... I think is was 72Hz.
posted by caviar2d2 at 12:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
At 60Hz your display is refreshing exactly in sync with the subtle flicker of AC room lighting. At 72 it only lines up every fifth frame.
posted by Ryvar at 1:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Ryvar at 1:16 PM on May 10, 2023 [3 favorites]
Half-Life: Alyx proved a few years ago that VR games can look incredible, be incredibly immersive, and be genuinely great games on top of that. The issue is that you need a pretty beefy gaming PC to get the best graphics and framerate... And you really don't want to play it with a choppy framerate. Unlike with normal games, 30 or 60 FPS isn't sufficient for VR, 90 FPS is necessary to minimize motion sickness.
If you want to really see the game in all of it's glory, at the moment you'll probably want to spend over $1,000 on a gaming PC, plus another $400-$1200 on a VR headset. The PSVR2 has a similarly steep price proposition, of $400-500 + 600. The Quest 2, which is by far the most popular stand alone headset, is pretty expensive at a starting price of $400, and while it's a good headset the graphics are very dated unless you plug it into a gaming PC.
That means that cutting edge, near-photorealistic VR is limited to people who are willing to spend over a thousand dollars on a platform that really doesn't have that much in the way of killer apps... And big releases are slowing to a trickle, because most developers don't want to spend a ton of money on a platform with a small install base. And since most people haven't even tried room scale VR, it's tough to get across to them how great the experience can be, in part because things like cheap cellphone VR headsets promised VR and under delivered. And then there's the problem that a lot of activities that are normal in games, like using a controller to walk around, or driving a car, will make a lot of people horribly motion sick in VR, even with perfect head tracking and a flawless framerate...
I like VR as it is. I've gotten my money out of my relatively cheap $300 Windows Mixed Reality headset... But I think it's still a good ways off from being mainstream. When standalone headsets can deliver graphics on par with a PS4 or PS5 game and a rock solid framerate, and cost $300 or less, I think there's the potential for them to really go mainstream. That could take a decade or longer, though, and there's no guarantee of them finding a mass audience even then. And of all the awesome things you can do in VR, sitting in a virtual meeting is about the least exciting.
posted by ThisIsAThrowaway at 1:21 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
If you want to really see the game in all of it's glory, at the moment you'll probably want to spend over $1,000 on a gaming PC, plus another $400-$1200 on a VR headset. The PSVR2 has a similarly steep price proposition, of $400-500 + 600. The Quest 2, which is by far the most popular stand alone headset, is pretty expensive at a starting price of $400, and while it's a good headset the graphics are very dated unless you plug it into a gaming PC.
That means that cutting edge, near-photorealistic VR is limited to people who are willing to spend over a thousand dollars on a platform that really doesn't have that much in the way of killer apps... And big releases are slowing to a trickle, because most developers don't want to spend a ton of money on a platform with a small install base. And since most people haven't even tried room scale VR, it's tough to get across to them how great the experience can be, in part because things like cheap cellphone VR headsets promised VR and under delivered. And then there's the problem that a lot of activities that are normal in games, like using a controller to walk around, or driving a car, will make a lot of people horribly motion sick in VR, even with perfect head tracking and a flawless framerate...
I like VR as it is. I've gotten my money out of my relatively cheap $300 Windows Mixed Reality headset... But I think it's still a good ways off from being mainstream. When standalone headsets can deliver graphics on par with a PS4 or PS5 game and a rock solid framerate, and cost $300 or less, I think there's the potential for them to really go mainstream. That could take a decade or longer, though, and there's no guarantee of them finding a mass audience even then. And of all the awesome things you can do in VR, sitting in a virtual meeting is about the least exciting.
posted by ThisIsAThrowaway at 1:21 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
The only thing I do on Oculus is a weekly meetup with a disabled friend who only has use of one hand. I note that Horizon Worlds *still* forces you to use the left hand control immediately after starting the tutorital. Despite this being one of their accessibility guidelines.
So we are left with about three or four Oculus apps that (a) are multiplayer (b) allow seated operation (c) allow one-handed control (d) don't require too much dexterity (e) don't suck.
posted by credulous at 2:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
So we are left with about three or four Oculus apps that (a) are multiplayer (b) allow seated operation (c) allow one-handed control (d) don't require too much dexterity (e) don't suck.
posted by credulous at 2:54 PM on May 10, 2023 [2 favorites]
don’t know who may have read warren ellis’ transmetropolitan, but it offers a ‘great’ scenario for AR as a background for our near future daily lives. not central to the story, but often present. warning … lotsa adverts.
posted by buffalo at 4:46 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by buffalo at 4:46 PM on May 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
Hm... what if minetest, but federated??
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 11:55 AM on May 12, 2023
posted by Rev. Irreverent Revenant at 11:55 AM on May 12, 2023
A few weeks ago the company I work for did a trip to a VR "experience" place as part of an IT team building exercise thing.
Pretty fun, and I was impressed at how well it managed to track six people, put us into each other's VR in the right place so we didn't bump into each other, all while maintaining a VR environment and all the zombies it was sending to kill us.
Single player VR is computationally expensive, multiplayer must be significantly moreso. We had to wear anklets and wristlets with mocap glittery spheres on sticks to help it locate us spatially. The room had 32 cameras (I counted) plus 8 wifi hotspots. Not quite sure why there were so many wifi hotspots. Possibly helping triangulate our position that way? Or just to make sure each helmet got enough bandwidth to show the video?
And it worked pretty well. I had one brief moment of disorientation right after the VR came up and I stumbled a bit on my first couple of steps, but after that it was fine. I'm not prone to motion sickness though.
It was also a pretty constraining environment. The room was big enough for six players to not bump into each other, but no more than 8x5 meters or so which meant we couldn't move around very much. I'm pretty sure I spent my entire playtime no more than a meter or so from my starting position.
To avoid people running into the walls it very helpfully put a red line on the floor about half a meter from the wall and if you got close it'd make the part of the wall you were approaching flash red to warn you.
Definitely NOT the sort of thing for home use, but it was neat as sort of the next generation of coin-op arcade games.
posted by sotonohito at 10:54 AM on May 13, 2023
Pretty fun, and I was impressed at how well it managed to track six people, put us into each other's VR in the right place so we didn't bump into each other, all while maintaining a VR environment and all the zombies it was sending to kill us.
Single player VR is computationally expensive, multiplayer must be significantly moreso. We had to wear anklets and wristlets with mocap glittery spheres on sticks to help it locate us spatially. The room had 32 cameras (I counted) plus 8 wifi hotspots. Not quite sure why there were so many wifi hotspots. Possibly helping triangulate our position that way? Or just to make sure each helmet got enough bandwidth to show the video?
And it worked pretty well. I had one brief moment of disorientation right after the VR came up and I stumbled a bit on my first couple of steps, but after that it was fine. I'm not prone to motion sickness though.
It was also a pretty constraining environment. The room was big enough for six players to not bump into each other, but no more than 8x5 meters or so which meant we couldn't move around very much. I'm pretty sure I spent my entire playtime no more than a meter or so from my starting position.
To avoid people running into the walls it very helpfully put a red line on the floor about half a meter from the wall and if you got close it'd make the part of the wall you were approaching flash red to warn you.
Definitely NOT the sort of thing for home use, but it was neat as sort of the next generation of coin-op arcade games.
posted by sotonohito at 10:54 AM on May 13, 2023
I've seen people trying to prototype a VR floor that would "move" under you while you moved in a much larger space than the one you're actually in. I don't think those experiments are going well, but they'll get there eventually.
Like, really, we need to be inventing the holodeck, not VR. The holodeck is a space you walk into, you don't wear, and you can be there with other people like normal. This VR thing, the simple fact you have to put it all on... that's going to kill it until we don't have to do that.
That's why phones caught on so quickly. You don't have to wear it, you just have it.
posted by hippybear at 12:23 PM on May 13, 2023
Like, really, we need to be inventing the holodeck, not VR. The holodeck is a space you walk into, you don't wear, and you can be there with other people like normal. This VR thing, the simple fact you have to put it all on... that's going to kill it until we don't have to do that.
That's why phones caught on so quickly. You don't have to wear it, you just have it.
posted by hippybear at 12:23 PM on May 13, 2023
Like, really, we need to be inventing the holodeck, not VR
"We need to invent Solid Light" is, I will admit, about as specific and realistic a technology proposal as Zuck's original metaverse hype.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:15 PM on May 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
"We need to invent Solid Light" is, I will admit, about as specific and realistic a technology proposal as Zuck's original metaverse hype.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:15 PM on May 15, 2023 [5 favorites]
I remember seeing pictures of people wearing VR helmets about 30 years ago. It seems that the idea has never disappeared completely, but it certainly has not taken the world by storm either
See also : 3D movies
posted by panama joe at 9:59 PM on May 15, 2023
See also : 3D movies
posted by panama joe at 9:59 PM on May 15, 2023
"We need to invent Solid Light before great VR" is even a bolder approach! I'd like to sign up for this newsletter.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:21 AM on May 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:21 AM on May 16, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have a hard time believing that Meta actually spent $100 billion on their VR project. They did likely spend many billions, but I bet most of the complete figure is an accounting fiction to help further a tax avoidance scheme.
To pick one example that would be obvious to me, they've already got a shit ton of data centers and servers to run Facebook and Instagram, but for various reasons nobody keeps servers more than a few years. However, the servers they buy today have 50-100% more cores than the ones they bought three years ago and the price is pretty much the same
However, with this nice VR project that just so happens to need all that extra compute you can suddenly charge the entire hardware refresh budget to the VR project even though you'd have spent the money regardless. Now, when VR project gets cancelled, servers get written down to zero because VR project is done for and suddenly you have a big loss to offset your actual operating profit this year and probably for several years to come with the carryover provision.
As I said, I have little doubt they spent a mind blowing amount of money, but I have even less doubt they are exaggerating losses for the tax benefit. It's what every large corporation does every day, so why would they not be doing it now?
posted by wierdo at 10:06 AM on May 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
To pick one example that would be obvious to me, they've already got a shit ton of data centers and servers to run Facebook and Instagram, but for various reasons nobody keeps servers more than a few years. However, the servers they buy today have 50-100% more cores than the ones they bought three years ago and the price is pretty much the same
However, with this nice VR project that just so happens to need all that extra compute you can suddenly charge the entire hardware refresh budget to the VR project even though you'd have spent the money regardless. Now, when VR project gets cancelled, servers get written down to zero because VR project is done for and suddenly you have a big loss to offset your actual operating profit this year and probably for several years to come with the carryover provision.
As I said, I have little doubt they spent a mind blowing amount of money, but I have even less doubt they are exaggerating losses for the tax benefit. It's what every large corporation does every day, so why would they not be doing it now?
posted by wierdo at 10:06 AM on May 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
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posted by JohnFromGR at 7:09 AM on May 9, 2023 [23 favorites]