If you have a rich social life with friends you can interact with in person frequently (say in San Francisco, Manhattan, or locale of choice) why would you want to be in VR all day?<p>I understand the scenarios where your friends are far, or you're tired, or you're introverted (like me!), or you want to do things you cannot do in reality like fly, but I don't see how it will be anything more than a niche.<p>I know people like to compare VR with the internet, using the internet as a counterexample, but the internet is different because the internet does not require you to isolate yourself physically the same way VR does.<p>I know the metaverse is not VR, but right now it seems AR is very much in its infancy.<p>edit: and to clarify, I think even 10 million yearly active users would be "niche" (fb is ~3 billion active users for comparison).
>Rule #2: The Metaverse is for everyone.<p>>Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse.<p>I'm no expert and to be honest, a bit like I was with the internet back in the day, don't see the point but if those two rules aren't adhered to then the "metaverse" is dead on its feet.<p>I feel the internet had an advantage in that at the start there was no Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc, either around or interested in it. If these companies get in at the start of this thing their wall gardens will kill the metaverse just like they're current effort to create wall gardens on the internet are chipping away at what made the internet what it is today.
There are some groups talking about "metaverse standards", but they're off in philosophical territory and nobody is paying much attention to them.<p>We need metaverse standards in at least three areas:<p>- Portals. You should be able to move your avatar through a portal from system A to system B, and it should Just Work, assuming B will let you in. That's what the author is talking about here. Systems not resident inside a web browser need to do more work to do this, but it should be made to work. This is what makes multiple virtual worlds a metaverse.<p>- Assets. You should be able to take your purchased asset, if you really own it, from system A to system B, assuming B will let it in. The NFT crowd does not have this. Try to export an NFT from Decentraland.<p>- Money. When in system A, you should be able to buy from anyone who wants to sell to you, and not be required to use system A's currency or payment system. This is what Apple and Epic are currently litigating.<p>For standards purposes, it's time to talk about the mechanics of this. If it works and some systems offer those features, users will clamor for interconnection. (And third parties will somehow bolt it on whether the systems like it or not.)
Yeah interoperability and the ability to travel between worlds is key. Just the other day I implemented a portal between two virtual worlds in WebGL, it works on mobile/desktop but as stated in this thread the experience is ruined when in VR because selecting a link pops you out to a 2D view. To sustain the feeling of immersion, the user's state needs to be maintained when hopping between worlds.<p>This is something the folks at Oculus Browser/Meta are considering though! Ideally it needs to be a standard, just like HTTP and TCP/IP. I'm incredibly bullish that the metaverse needs to be built on top of our current World Wide Web, so the ecosystem itself isn't owned by any one corporation. The destinations themselves, sure, they can be properties of a startup or larger co like Meta or Microsoft.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/r07VAb0DFgc" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/r07VAb0DFgc</a>
Can’t wait for the day we get actual virtual cookies thrown at my VR set and a pop-up that comes with it. Or maybe an NPC telling me about cookies on their Verse.
Sorry but the "metaverse" is a joke, and I say this as a person who loves VR and is optimistic for its future. VR is just not immersive enough and I don't think even next-gen tech will be good enough. It's not just the hardware but the whole kinaesthetic experience you're not getting just by having your brain tricked into seeing things in three dimensions. Even tiny jumps in latency between frames is enough to completely throw off any immersion, and unfortunately the operating systems we have today like to do tasks in the background at any time which can cause this.<p>Let's stop fantasising about a Ready Player One world and be realistic about what we can achieve with what we have.
Who controls WebXR? I hope my smell is wrong, but it sounds like Chrome (Google) don't want the open Web to be the metaverse.<p>We have fullscreen mode. That gives complete rendering control to the content. Mouse can also be captured.<p>The "security" concerns are a solved problem.
Everytime I read about the metaverse, it reminds me of all the hype around VRML back in the late 90s.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VRML</a>
"Rule #1. There is only one Metaverse."
"Rule #3: Nobody controls the Metaverse."
"Rule #4: The Metaverse is open."<p>the metaverse hasn't even been invented yet and they are already trending false.
Yeah these “rules of the metaverse” are a fever dream of somebody who cant see the way the cookie is crumbling.
Our future is looking more like a cyberpunk dystopia than libertarian wonderland.