Zuckerberg should peel off $5 billion and buy a clue.
What's so strange about VR is that the ideas have been around long enough to be really old. There was Plato's cave, then there was the 1951 Whirlwind computer at MIT that was designed for real-time simulation (flight simulators.) Jean Baudrillard wrote about video games in his 1979 book On Seduction.
Simply to name it requires a certain separation from present art: why isn't Roblox the metaverse? why isn't Minecraft the metaverse? what about Grand Theft Auto? I remember getting into an argument with another graduate student in the 1990s about the relative merits of VRML 2 with contemporary video games such as Quake that were much more sophisticated. This is not a form of short-sightedness you can get away with in 2022, consumers will compare Horizon Worlds to what they are used to in video games and it not just falls short but is embarrassingly bad.
It looks bad. Even if you're targeting lowest common denominator hardware, you can do a lot more with the general art direction to make it look more pleasing.
I think the idea is that they hope it one day becomes so popular/has such strong network effects that people feel they have to be on it irrespective of how it looks. Or how healthy it is to be on there. Or how tightly surveilled you are on the platform. Or how likely you are to become a victim of harassment or worse on there. Or how your data and attention is misused.
Like its the graphics quality that's the holdup here.
The only problem VR has even purported to solve (since the 1990s!) is that of gullible investors with too much money.
How're they doing with the eye fatigue problems? The nausea? How much money has gone into haptic with how much result? Can we even suspend a human so they can walk without moving?
Even the cynical takes from the media are about irrelevancies: the hard problems are intractably bound up in users made of meat and not much is being done to address those problems because the money is easier elsewhere.
I wonder how many researchers have been encouraged to find other work because their research only showed how hard the problems were. The "VR industry" is all about meaningless re-assurances that the problems aren't really problems and will be solved by somebody, somewhen.
> How're they doing with the eye fatigue problems? The nausea? How much money has gone into haptic with how much result? Can we even suspend a human so they can walk without moving?
Nausea hasn't been a major issue for a while AFAIK. I remember showing my father my DK1 and he told me he almost puked (that was a pretty common reaction among people I let try it). Several years later I show him a modern headset with positional tracking and he was able to play games with no complaints.
one of the 3 oculus headset users im aware of complained about it.
In 1991 I sat beside the Autodesk booth at a trade show where they were demonstrating their VR walk through of the Denver Airport. I guess under 50% of their victims had that issue with it, but they had someone vomit a couple times a day through the whole show, too.
The trouble with that image isn't that it is low quality but that it is creepy.
The feeling I get from it is that this is a place where you get sexually harassed by somebody with no legs and in the next room over a pedophile is grooming kids. It's a predictable reaction to those dead eyes. (e.g. it's a common "code" in anime that a pedophile character is drawn with dead eyes)
There is a second order of creepiness in that this is chosen as a promotional image. I do know there will be another Zuckerberg interview where he complains about how he his "misunderstood", but it's not clear to me if this a result of Zuckerberg being surrounded by "Yes Men" or if Zuckerberg gets this feedback but is so devoid of empathy that he can't hear it. Those dead eyes tell the story.
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What's so strange about VR is that the ideas have been around long enough to be really old. There was Plato's cave, then there was the 1951 Whirlwind computer at MIT that was designed for real-time simulation (flight simulators.) Jean Baudrillard wrote about video games in his 1979 book On Seduction.
Simply to name it requires a certain separation from present art: why isn't Roblox the metaverse? why isn't Minecraft the metaverse? what about Grand Theft Auto? I remember getting into an argument with another graduate student in the 1990s about the relative merits of VRML 2 with contemporary video games such as Quake that were much more sophisticated. This is not a form of short-sightedness you can get away with in 2022, consumers will compare Horizon Worlds to what they are used to in video games and it not just falls short but is embarrassingly bad.
I think the idea is that they hope it one day becomes so popular/has such strong network effects that people feel they have to be on it irrespective of how it looks. Or how healthy it is to be on there. Or how tightly surveilled you are on the platform. Or how likely you are to become a victim of harassment or worse on there. Or how your data and attention is misused.
The only problem VR has even purported to solve (since the 1990s!) is that of gullible investors with too much money.
How're they doing with the eye fatigue problems? The nausea? How much money has gone into haptic with how much result? Can we even suspend a human so they can walk without moving?
Even the cynical takes from the media are about irrelevancies: the hard problems are intractably bound up in users made of meat and not much is being done to address those problems because the money is easier elsewhere.
I wonder how many researchers have been encouraged to find other work because their research only showed how hard the problems were. The "VR industry" is all about meaningless re-assurances that the problems aren't really problems and will be solved by somebody, somewhen.
Nausea hasn't been a major issue for a while AFAIK. I remember showing my father my DK1 and he told me he almost puked (that was a pretty common reaction among people I let try it). Several years later I show him a modern headset with positional tracking and he was able to play games with no complaints.
In 1991 I sat beside the Autodesk booth at a trade show where they were demonstrating their VR walk through of the Denver Airport. I guess under 50% of their victims had that issue with it, but they had someone vomit a couple times a day through the whole show, too.
WoW was a bigger social network in its heydays then Metaverse ever will be
The feeling I get from it is that this is a place where you get sexually harassed by somebody with no legs and in the next room over a pedophile is grooming kids. It's a predictable reaction to those dead eyes. (e.g. it's a common "code" in anime that a pedophile character is drawn with dead eyes)
There is a second order of creepiness in that this is chosen as a promotional image. I do know there will be another Zuckerberg interview where he complains about how he his "misunderstood", but it's not clear to me if this a result of Zuckerberg being surrounded by "Yes Men" or if Zuckerberg gets this feedback but is so devoid of empathy that he can't hear it. Those dead eyes tell the story.