Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of those in the technology community have imagined a future state of, if not quasi-successor to, the Internet – called the “Metaverse”. Metverse is a vision of the future networking that sounds fantastical. The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space[1] including the sum of all virtual worlds and the Internet. The idea is to create a space similar to the internet, but one that users (via digital avatars) can walk around inside of and where they can interact with one another in real time. Keeping it simple, the metaverse is a potentially vast three-dimensional online world where people can meet up and interact virtually.
The metaverse was originally conceived as the setting for dystopian science fiction novels, where virtual universes provide an escape from crumbling societies. Now, the idea has transformed into a moonshot goal for Silicon Valley, and become a favorite talking point among startups, venture capitalists and tech giants. Imagine a world where you could sit on the same couch as a friend who lives thousands of miles away, or conjure up a virtual version of your workplace while at the beach.
Tech titans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are betting on as the next great leap in the evolution of the internet. Although the full vision for the Metaverse remains hard to define, seemingly fantastical, and decades away, the pieces have started to feel very real. Metaverse has become the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants. Big companies joining the discussion now may simply want to reassure investors that they won’t miss out on what could be the next big thing, or that their investments in VR, which has yet to gain broad commercial appeal, will eventually pay off.
‘Metaverse’: the next internet revolution? article tells that metaverse is the stuff of science-fiction: the term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, in which people don virtual reality headsets to interact inside a game-like digital world.
Facebook Wants Us to Live in the Metaverse. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “What is the metaverse? It’s a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces. You can kind of think of this as an embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at.” Metaverse vision was the driver behind Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR and its newly announced Horizon virtual world/meeting space, among many, many other projects, such as AR glasses and brain-to-machine communications. In a high-tech plan to Facebookify the world advertisements will likely be a key source of revenue in the metaverse, just as they are for the company today.
Term Metaverse was created by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 dystopian novel “Snow Crash” to describe a virtual space where people interact with one another through user-controlled avatars. That “Snow Crash” novel coined the terms “Metaverse” and “Avatar”.
Venture capitalist Matthew Ball has also written extensively on what he believes are the main attributes of a metaverse: a full-functioning economy, real-time persistence (no pausing), and interoperability of digital “belongings” such as clothing across multiple platforms. Experts working in the space tend to agree on a few key aspects of the metaverse, including the idea that users will experience a sense of “embodiment” or “presence.”. Read more at The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite and Big Tech has its eyes set on the metaverse. Here’s what that means
Proponents of the metaverse say there could eventually be huge business potential — a whole new platform on which to sell digital goods and services. If metaverse could be properly realized and catches on some future year, it is believed that metaverse would revolutionize not just the infrastructure layer of the digital world, but also much of the physical one, as well as all the services and platforms atop them, how they work, and what they sell. It is believed that verifiable, immutable ownership of digital goods and currency will be an essential component of the metaverse.
Did you hear? Facebook Inc. is going to become a metaverse company. At least that’s the story its management wants everyone to believe after a flurry of interviews and announcements over the past couple of weeks. Zuckerberg is turning trillion-dollar Facebook into a ‘metaverse’ company, he tells investors article tells that after release of Facebook’s earnings CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a moment to zoom out and wax on the company’s future goals, specifically calling out his ambitions to turn Facebook into “a metaverse company.”
Some pieces of the metaverse already exist. Services like Fortnite, an online game in which users can compete, socialize and build virtual worlds with millions of other players, can give users an early sense of how it will work. And some people have already spent thousands of dollars on virtual homes, staking out their piece of metaverse real estate.
Who will be big if metaverse catches on. Bloomberg article Who Will Win the Metaverse? Not Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook article claims the social networking giant and its CEO have vast ambitions to dominate the next big thing in computing, but other tech giants are in a better position to turn the hype into reality. Facebook’s actual track record on VR tells a story that has not been very promising. The two critical components needed for companies to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise from any potential metaverse are advanced semiconductors and software tools. Facebook is not strong on either front.
There are many other companies with Metaverse visions. For example Oculus’s technology has been surpassed by smaller competitors such as Valve Index, which offers better fidelity. Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella said last week that his company is working on building the “enterprise metaverse.” Epic Games announced a $1 billion funding round in April to support its metaverse ambitions. Companies like graphics chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) and gaming platform Roblox (RBLX) are also playing Metaverse game.
Despite the current hype cycle, the idea is still amorphous, and a fully functioning metaverse is probably years and billions of dollars away — if it happens at all. Another question is are we emotionally evolved enough for it? There is a host of concerns about how the metaverse could be used or exploited. “Are we safe to start interacting at a more person-to-person level, or are the a**holes still going to ruin it for everybody?” “If you can now replace somebody’s entire reality with an alternate reality, you can make them believe almost anything,”
Keep in mind that the metaverse is a relatively old idea that seems to gain momentum every few years, only to fade from the conversation in lieu of more immediate opportunities. Though “Fortnite” and “Roblox” are often described as precursors to the Metaverse, the most significant precursor to the Metaverse is the internet itself.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Metaverse job ads are here for brands like Nike, Gucci, and Facebook, signaling potential for new types of virtual careers
https://www.businessinsider.com/current-and-future-metaverse-jobs-nike-facebook-roblox-2022-1
If tech companies have their way, the next iteration of the internet will involve heavy use of augmented and virtual reality for gaming, entertaining, socializing, and working.
Experts aren’t necessarily convinced by the hype around the metaverse but Meta, currently an $819 billion company, is effectively betting its future on the idea.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta’s new metaverse business lost more than $10 billion in 2021. Former Evernote CEO Phil Libin says the company’s metaverse vision is “uncreative.”
Meta’s vision for the metaverse is an ‘old idea’ that’s ‘never worked,’ tech CEO says
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F3J4nsGn&h=AT0xYpWqZvSPatwmWJPHQaXzjmOoMDBny2xXR3A3Ld3M2A2D_EW3yA-He22lcc9iFnbU-sOQx4NxAzNbOpFGvc12xI-DyhQtbzex1pPckQj-TvGD_V2zDEQ_afiCWf3Akg
Phil Libin is the former boss of Evernote and is now CEO of videoconference company Mmhmm.
He told Insider he’d tried out Horizon Workrooms, Meta’s VR meeting software, and wasn’t impressed.
He described Meta’s vision of the metaverse as “uncreative.”
When tech founder Phil Libin donned his Oculus VR headset to try out Meta’s first metaverse product, he was hoping it wouldn’t be terrible.
“I had a very, very strong feeling that it would suck, but I went into it with as much hope as possible that I would be pleasantly surprised,” Libin said in an interview with Insider.
Libin said his gut instinct turned out to be correct. “It was only tolerable for a few minutes,” he said.
He believes that using VR for meetings is less enticing than familiar technologies such as Zoom , where people can still do real-world things like drinking a cup of coffee. “Can’t do that with a giant plastic thing on my face without spilling hot coffee all over myself,” Libin said.
In its fourth quarter earnings report Wednesday, Meta said its new metaverse business lost $10 billion and its user base shrank for the first time in its history. Meta stock plummeted 26.4% Thursday, erasing nearly $240 billion from the company’s valuation in the largest one-day wipeout in US corporate history.
Libin has previously been critical of the hype surrounding the metaverse. In a podcast interview last month, he compared the hype with communist propaganda he received as a child living in the former Soviet Union.
And he remains unconvinced.
He says the vision of the metaverse presented by Meta – one of an “interconnected 3D world that we experience for many hours a day, both for fun and for work primarily through VR” – “that package of things is godawful.”
“It’s an old idea,” Libin told Insider. “It’s uncreative, it’s been tried many, many times over the past four decades and it’s never worked.”
Proponents of the metaverse believe we’ll have to wait to see its full potential, Libin said, but he doesn’t think that’s how great technology works.
“I think great technology starts out being primitive, but it starts out being great immediately,” he said. Over time, he said, great technology gets “more polished and more mature and more sophisticated.”
As for Horizon Workrooms, Libin said: “It’s not gonna get better because it started bad. It started stupid. It can get more sophisticated, but it’ll just be more sophisticated – but still bad.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ryan Broderick / Garbage Day:
Meta, which ignored creators for years, has only “shameless” publishers and their content to fall back on in its pivots to video and eventual irrelevance — Read to the end for a tremendous meditation on February — Facebook Made Its Own World And Now It’s Stuck In It
The end of the metaverse hopefully
Read to the end for a tremendous meditation on February
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-end-of-the-metaverse-hopefully
Facebook Made Its Own World And Now It’s Stuck In It
Meta, the company that owns Facebook, had a pretty bad day yesterday. The company, on an earnings call, reported that it had lost users for the first time in its history. The market then responded. The company’s valuation dropped $232 billion, the biggest 24-hour drop in the stock market’s history.
Many outlets are pointing to Facebook’s completely idiotic pivot to “the metaverse” as the main reason for its current predicament. Nikita Bier, the founder of the tbh app, which was acquired by Facebook in 2017, had a good take on this, tweeting, “Facebook’s hands are tied. 1—High ARPU coastal users have churned; TikTok is eating their lunch. 2—They can’t acquire because of antitrust scrutiny. 3—They can’t build because founders don’t want to be there. 4—IDFA killed their ability to target ads. 5—The metaverse is 10yrs out. RIP.”
And he’s right! Cool young people aren’t on Facebook or Instagram anymore. After growing up in the shadow of the Facebook-designed viral pop culture of the 2010s, young adults are now much more interested in posting inscrutable Tumblr memes on TikTok. And Meta, as a company, can’t keep up because it actually has not designed anything of value since it launched the News Feed in 2006. Every “innovation” made by Zuckerberg and his team has actually been an acquisition. And now, as Bier points out, they can’t buy up any new good ideas. The Identifier for Advertisers feature has been effectively killed by Apple, meaning Facebook’s ad tracking has become much worse. And, finally, most crucially, no one wants virtual reality. If virtual reality is going to catch on, it’s not going to be Facebook’s sanitized Habbo Hotel Zoom call world. Obviously, the only thing that’s going to make virtual reality catch on is some kind of sex machine that is so addictive people starve to death strapped into their jerking chair or whatever.
Every few weeks, someone on Twitter notices how demented the content on Facebook is. I’ve covered a lot of these stories. The quick TL;DR is that Facebook’s video section is essentially run by a network of magicians and Vegas stage performers who hack the platform’s algorithm with surreal low-value content designed to distract users long enough to trigger an in-video advertisement and anger them enough to leave a comment.
Unlike YouTube, which, for all its mistakes over the years, actually seems to be regularly in public conversation with its creators, Facebook, from what I can tell, has pretty much ignored theirs. Their biggest creators, both video creators and native publishers, are not only absent from pretty much all publicity the company does, but the platform’s algorithmic tweaks over the years seem to be actively antagonistic to them, which has, it seems, only made the surviving creators and the content they produce more aggressively shameless.
Basically, Facebook and Instagram is Squid Game, the algorithm is the big piggy bank, and the last three traumatized contestants in tuxedos armed with knives are an out-of-work magician, an antivax chiropractor, and a QAnon mom from Tuscon who runs a drop-shipping pyramid scheme.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The metaverse property deal was completed January 27, with the company paying 425,000 MANA for the “Portion District” in Decentraland.
This NFT marketplace CEO explains why he bought a $1.2 million plot of metaverse land as the ‘first digital gentrification’ ramps up
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftrib.al%2FSUbMjPL&h=AT2KunL9MRS7di-uIDhAeBEqUsY3ZD72MyDxu3NCAOBxxu3Pj7eIJ0j3BOrxw9kx33in5h1B2GUYUdsfl1B4_6S3grXnZ-utyED_5sHU9o79IVQ3wk_tvB9NpRtlvEjRcA
Portion, an NFT auction house and marketplace, purchased a $1.2 million plot of virtual real estate last month, and the company’s CEO believes property values and market trends in the metaverse mirror those in the physical world.
The metaverse property deal was completed January 27, with the company paying 425,000 MANA, worth about $1.2 million at the time, for the “Portion District” in Decentraland.
“We took this giant leap for a mega plot in Decentraland because artists have kept asking us to build something, a space to bring NFTs to life in a new way,” Portion CEO and founder Jason Rosenstein told Insider.
While he said the metaverse is “super experimental,” he remains optimistic on the purchase, calling the rush into virtual land “the first digital gentrification” in history.
Portion selected its 52-parcel plot in Decentraland because it was next to a road and a major plaza where other brands were buying land, Rosenstein explained. “Plus, you want to be as close to the center of Decentraland as possible.”
For companies looking to get involved in digital land, he recommends starting small, and double-checking that your audience will take to the metaverse space — “it’s not for everyone,” he said.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Famous Marketing Professor Calls Facebook’s Metaverse a “Flaming Bag of S**t”
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fthe-byte%2Fmarketing-professor-metaverse&h=AT0vV6hr_xAAFTBgHjfqog_ZeZ1jFPxIGBDpkfScLRi5CXmQKLtIEy_-ydAfUb6rGG-v6Vwks8F_-JDdKvuni6QRKDD7cppXdL203FkmL-eglYBp6MWAqgmQpk6IgGx06Q
Turns out at least one major marketing expert agrees with what the plebeian public already knows — Mark Zuckerberg may not be able to pull off this Metaverse thing.
On a new new episode of Vox’s Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher, renowned NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway laid the cards on the table. While he gave Zuckerberg credit for being a “visionary” who’s doing the right things to try and pivot a sinking ship — aka Meta-formerly-known-as-Facebook, which is now losing active users for the first time ever — but he’s not convinced that its Metaverse is headed in the right direction.
“If he pulls it off, it’ll be one of the most impressive feats in — not even corporate renewal — but vision around maintaining growth,” Galloway said during the podcast. “I don’t think they’re going to. I think this thing is already a giant flaming bag of shit.”
Part of Zuckerberg’s problem, according to Galloway, is that Meta’s Quest headset, previously known as Oculus, is still way too clunky to impress Meta’s target audience.
“The people in this universe are not impressed with the universe he envisions, and specifically the portal,” Galloway said on the podcast. “One of my predictions in November of 2021… was that the biggest failure in tech-product history might be the Oculus.”
There’s also the issue of spending. Zuckerberg sank $10 billion into the Reality Labs division, only to see company stock prices dip by more than 20 percent this week. Galloway says that with public opinion of Meta so low, there’s little hope the company can recoup its investment.
Of course, Galloway could totally be wrong.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The company is running into several problems at once, as evidenced by its plummeting stock price.
Meta’s Virtual-Reality Arm Is a ‘Flaming Bag of Sh*t’
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/02/metas-virtual-reality-arm-is-a-flaming-bag-of-sh-t.html
But keep in mind what happened with Facebook when you’re talking about numbers. In five minutes, after the release of the earnings and the missed numbers, Facebook shed the value of Pinterest, Twitter, BMW, and Mercedes. It lost $180 billion in market capitalization. And I think money is power in a capitalist society and a signal of their channel power, which is what Lina Khan says you should focus on.
Meta, when it reports bad earnings, loses the value of BMW, Mercedes, and all of social media, except for Facebook and Google. My point is, people don’t recognize just how incredibly unhealthily, awfully powerful these companies are.
Swisher: I don’t know which they’re worried about more. Is it TikTok, is it the Apple thing? Or the Metaverse? The one thing that it shows, and this is something I’ve mentioned before, but Mark has always said they have competitors, and they’re not a monopoly. With TikTok doing so well, I think they actually have a very good argument in that regard. One thing that was interesting was his quote: “Although our direction is clear, it seems our path ahead is not quite perfectly defined.” So the direction is not clear, right? I wrote a column that said, “You’d imagine $10 billion would buy a better map.” So we’ll see what happens with this company. It’s very … there’s a lot going on here.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Removing characters’ hands evidently not enough to halt harassment…
This is going well: Meta adds anti-grope buffer zone around metaverse VR avatars
Removing characters’ hands evidently not enough to halt
https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/05/meta_grope_gap/
Meta Platforms Inc, better known for its controversial turn as Facebook, says its mission is to, “Give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.” But not too close, it seems.
The mega-corp wants to keep people apart in its metaverse. The ad biz, besotted with virtual reality now that it can no longer move fast and break things with impunity in the real world, has committed to cartoon social distancing.
Henceforth, avatars in its Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues will be able to approach no closer than four feet – as that distance would be rendered to whatever scale fits the viewer’s display screen – to prevent virtual molestation.
Vivek Sharma, VP of Meta’s Horizon group, refers to the company’s grope gap as a “Personal Boundary.”
“Personal Boundary prevents avatars from coming within a set distance of each other, creating more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid unwanted interactions,” he explained in a blog post on Friday.
These Personal Boundaries, he says, will prevent other avatars from invading your avatar’s personal space, without any haptic feedback to simulate a collision.
https://www.oculus.com/blog/introducing-a-personal-boundary-for-horizon-worlds-and-venues/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2600net/permalink/3234087793480990/
This gives a whole new meaning to the term “social distancing”…If anything this just makes me believe more and more that Mark Zuckerberg had nothing to do with creating of Lifelog… oops I mean Facebook! Oops again!… I think this shit is called “Meta” now? The app icons still looks the same… anyways it kind of reminds me of Star Wars because after seeing the “second three star wars movies” I got the feeling that the originals were done by a ghost-writer. Anyways, Welcome to the future everyone! It ain’t what I pictured… you?
Facebook Metaverse forces avatars 4-feet apart as gropers wreak virtual havoc
https://stealthoptional.com/news/facebook-metaverse-gropers/
Facebook Metaverse Horizon Worlds is just the start for the company’s massive Metaverse plans. In its launch form, the virtual reality experience is designed to be a taste of what virtual reality will be able to offer users in the future.
However, the proto-Metaverse has consistently suffered with a massive problem since its inception: sexual harassment. Despite a niche audience, and the fact that avatars don’t even have legs, gropers are running wild in Horizon Worlds, but there’s a plan to stop it.
Facebook Metaverse forces everyone apart
Reported by Ars Technica, Horizon Worlds has an answer to its rampant groping issue. After previously blaming harassed victims for not using a hidden protective bubble feature, the Facebook Metaverse has a new idea.
Now, avatars in the virtual world will all have an invisible protective cylinder that will limit anyone from getting too close to anyone else. In the new update, the Facebook Metaverse will make it so that no user will ever be able to virtually touch another.
Meta establishes 4-foot “personal boundary” to deter VR groping [Updated]
Invisible cylinder will keep Horizon avatars apart by default.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/02/meta-establishes-four-foot-personal-boundary-to-deter-vr-groping/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple source code references ‘realityOS’ for potential VR/AR headsets
https://www.engadget.com/apple-source-code-references-reality-os-for-potential-vrar-applications-131058267.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
References to “realityOS” appear to have briefly shown up again in Apple’s code, this time in a GitHub repo; reports of a new AR headset OS date back to 2017 — The long-rumored Apple headset could have a new OS — Apple’s long-rumored virtual or augmented reality headset might …
Is ‘realityOS’ Apple’s newest operating system?
The long-rumored Apple headset could have a new OS
https://www.theverge.com/22925038/apple-realityos-augmented-reality-headset-operating-system-rumors?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-metaverse-q4-zuckerberg-old-idea-never-worked-phil-libin-2022-2
Is Metaverse just another bad idea? Interesting viewpoint to counter all of the Metaverse hype.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Potentially coming to a Metaverse near you.
McDonald’s Files Trademarks For Virtual Metaverse Restaurant And Food
https://www.iflscience.com/technology/mcdonalds-files-trademarks-for-virtual-metaverse-restaurant-and-food/
Do you want NFT fries with that? It looks like McDonald’s is making its way into the metaverse by registering for 10 trademarks in the virtual space.
Josh Gerben, a trademark lawyer and founder of Gerben Intellectual Property, recently spotted that McDonald’s had filed ten trademark applications that suggest the fast-food giant is interested in setting up a “virtual restaurant featuring actual and virtual goods,” as well as a “virtual restaurant online featuring home delivery.”
Among the many facets of the application, McDonald’s sought to extend its own intellectual property, like names of foods and visual branding, to cover “virtual food and beverage products”, including “downloadable multimedia files containing artwork, text, audio and video files, and non-fungible tokens [NFTs].”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/09/how-to-ruin-the-metaverse-build-it-around-profit-and-centralization/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Expert Says People Will Soon Live Entire Lives in Metaverse
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ffuturism.com%2Fthe-byte%2Fpeople-entire-lives-metaverse%3Futm_campaign%3Dtrueanthem_AI%26utm_medium%3Dsocial%26utm_source%3Dfacebook&h=AT2xv1TS9Pz3t-R6Nzz7b0-NmyDLAyOpxZECH_5fGdIL_ZPqKHmab-GYwcipCHrOLVJ8efNHcWJSirgHFQYI5yL4UoVJFzlV0IrBFsdb_YhNSSIeN8twRcIAHYqhMDbJxNgtP8nPB0xynMkd6g
https://futurism.com/the-byte/people-entire-lives-metaverse
Tired of the day-to-day grind? Want to travel the world, see amazing things, and even transform into an entirely new person? You’re in luck: experts believe that you’ll soon be able to live your whole sad life in the metaverse.
Melanie Subin, the director of consulting for the Future Today Institute, told The New York Post she believes “a large proportion of people will be in the metaverse in some way” by 2030. While many will be using it only for work, she believes that it’ll play a bigger role for others.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tein oman NFT kokoelman!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GliF0t0clbg
Tomi Engdahl says:
Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post that a new value is “Meta, Metamates, Me,” a play on words of the naval saying, “ship, shipmates, self.”
Mark Zuckerberg wants his employees to be ‘Metamates,’ putting their ‘ship’ and crew before themselves
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftrib.al%2FGvGCk74&h=AT35VJVefToLusTEDvu6dYmAQwK66-UnuUymkJQt7I2XT6JoyYWGPU9o7G0_LxgjY6xDIwUndwi-I8doTVL2kRXHVpr5pDYjpc58dlnL_b2NAPb0BhXPvVC4FhpA1ec3ew
Tomi Engdahl says:
16-Year Old Jailed As A “Terrorist” For Blowing Up Russian Government Building In Minecraft
BY RHIANNON BEVAN
PUBLISHED 5 DAYS AGO
The teenager and his two friends were arrested after they expressed their support for an imprisoned Putin critic.
https://www.thegamer.com/minecraft-russia-terrorism-explosion-teenagers/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Meta confirms its combined monthly user base for Horizon Worlds and Venues grew to 300K people, up 10X since launching in December — That’s a 10x increase in about three months. But can the growth continue? — Facebook has bet its future on virtual reality and the metaverse …
Meta’s social VR platform Horizon hits 300,000 users
That’s a 10x increase in about three months. But can the growth continue?
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/17/22939297/meta-social-vr-platform-horizon-300000-users?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Facebook has bet its future on virtual reality and the metaverse, rebranding to Meta and spending billions a year to build hardware and software that extends beyond traditional social media. But the company has, at least so far, shared little with the public about how well its early bets are performing.
Meta’s highest-profile bet right now is a social VR platform for the Quest headset called Horizon Worlds. It was recently featured in Meta’s Super Bowl ad, and Zuckerberg called it “core to our metaverse vision” on the company’s most recent earnings call. During a virtual Meta all-hands earlier this week — yes, the Metamates one — the company’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, gave employees a previously unreported update on Horizon’s user growth.
“Since early December, its monthly user base has grown by a factor of 10x”
He said that since Horizon Worlds was rolled out to all Quest users in the US and Canada in early December, its monthly user base has grown by a factor of 10x to 300,000 people, according to an employee who heard the remark. Meta spokesperson Joe Osborne confirmed the stat and said it included users of Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, a separate app for attending live events in VR that uses the same avatars and basic mechanics. The number doesn’t include Horizon Workrooms, a VR conferencing experience that relies on an invite system.
Before its December rollout, Horizon Worlds was in a private beta for creators to test its world-building tools. Similarly to how the gaming platform Roblox or Microsoft’s Minecraft works, Horizon Worlds lets people build custom environments to hang out and play games in as legless avatars.
Given that it has only been a few months since Horizon Worlds was made widely available, it’s too early to tell if the platform’s rapid growth will continue or whether it will be able to retain users over time. Monthly users for social products are always higher than daily users, which Cox didn’t disclose to employees. And a holiday season boost in sales for the Quest headset certainly helped drive interest in people trying Horizon.
Meta still hasn’t disclosed how many Quest headsets it has sold to date
Even though Horizon Worlds doesn’t make money for Meta yet, the pressure is on for it to be successful, especially given how the company’s stock has tanked as investors question its expensive metaverse push.
Beyond solving the problems with content moderation and underage users in VR, Meta has to make Horizon reliable enough for millions to use.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Any Metaverse devs here care to comment on this?
Turns Out It’s Really Easy for Kids to Visit Sex Clubs in the Metaverse
https://futurism.com/the-byte/kids-virtual-sex-clubs-metaverse
“IT’S CHILDREN BEING EXPOSED TO ENTIRELY INAPPROPRIATE, REALLY INCREDIBLY HARMFUL EXPERIENCES.”
While Mark Zuckerberg might have you believe that the metaverse will usher in a utopian future, others aren’t so sure. Case in point: one metaverse app is being criticized for allowing children into virtual sex clubs.
A researcher posing as a 13-year-old was able to gain access to a virtual sex club via a metaverse app called VRChat, during an investigation from the BBC. The researcher was reportedly approached by numerous adult men, and also shown sex toys, condoms, and various avatars simulating sex.
“It’s children being exposed to entirely inappropriate, really incredibly harmful experiences,” Andy Burrows, head of online safety policy at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, told the broadcaster.
Metaverse app allows kids into virtual strip clubs
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60415317
Some apps in the virtual-reality metaverse are “dangerous by design”, the NSPCC has warned in response to a BBC News investigation.
A researcher posing as a 13-year-old girl witnessed grooming, sexual material, racist insults and a rape threat in the virtual-reality world.
The children’s charity said it was “shocked and angry” at the findings.
Head of online child safety policy Andy Burrows added the investigation had found “a toxic combination of risks”.
The BBC News researcher – using an app with a minimum age rating of 13 – visited virtual-reality rooms where avatars were simulating sex. She was shown sex toys and condoms, and approached by numerous adult men.
The metaverse is the name given to games and experiences accessed by people wearing virtual reality headsets. The technology, previously confined to gaming, could be adapted for use in many other areas – from work to play, concerts to cinema trips.
Mark Zuckerberg thinks it could be the future of the internet – so much so, he recently rebranded Facebook as Meta, with the company investing billions developing its Oculus Quest headset.
That headset – now rebranded the Meta Quest – is thought to have as much as 75% of the market share. It was one of these headsets which the BBC News researcher used to explore an app, and part of the metaverse. The app, called VRChat, is an online virtual platform which users can explore with 3D avatars.
While it is not made by Facebook, it can be downloaded from an app store on Facebook’s Meta Quest headset, with no age verification checks – the only requirement being a Facebook account.
The BBC News researcher created a fake profile to set up her account – and her real identity was not checked.
Inside VRChat, there are rooms where users can meet: some are innocent and everyday – such as a McDonald’s restaurant, for example – but there are also pole-dancing and strip clubs.
One man told our researcher that avatars can “get naked and do unspeakable things”. Others talked about “erotic role-play”.
Following the BBC News investigation, the NSPCC (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) said improvements in online safety are a matter of urgency.
Mr Burrows, from the NSPCC, told us what we had found was “extraordinary”.
“It’s children being exposed to entirely inappropriate, really incredibly harmful experiences,” he said.
He believes technology companies have learned little from mistakes made with the first generation of social media.
“This is a product that is dangerous by design, because of oversight and neglect. We are seeing products rolled out without any suggestion that safety has been considered,” he said.
Meta says it does have tools that allow players to block other users, and is looking to make safety improvements “as it learns how people interact in these spaces”.
BBC News also spoke to a safety campaigner who has spent months investigating VRChat and who now posts his videos on YouTube.
He has spoken to children who say they were groomed on the platform and forced to take part in virtual sex. He chooses to remain anonymous because he is concerned for the safety of his family.
The safety campaigner explained because VR is so immersive, children actually have to act out sexual movements.
I was surprised how totally immersed in the spaces you are. I started to feel like a child again. So when grown men were asking why I wasn’t in school and encouraging me to engage in VR sex acts, it felt all the more disturbing.
VRChat definitely felt more like an adult’s playground than a child’s. A lot of the rooms were overtly sexualised in pink neon, similar to what you might see in the red light district in Amsterdam or in the more seedy parts of London’s Soho at night. Inside, sex toys were on display.
The music playing in the rooms, which can be controlled by the players, adds to the impression that it is not a space that is suitable for children.
Everything about the rooms feels unnerving. There are characters simulating sex acts on the floor in big groups, speaking to one another like children play-acting at being adult couples.
It’s very uncomfortable, and your options are to stay and watch, move on to another room where you might see something similar, or join in – which, on many occasions, I was instructed to do.
‘Very little moderation’
People whose job it is to observe developments in VR are also concerned.
Catherine Allen runs the consultancy Limina Immersive and is currently writing a report about VR for the Institute of Engineering and Technology.
She says her research team has found many of their experiences in VR “fun and surreal”, but others have been “quite traumatic and disturbing”.
She described one incident in a Meta-owned app where she encountered a seven-year-old girl.
A group of men surrounded them both and joked about raping them. Ms Allen said she had to step between the men and the child to protect her.
VRChat told us it was “working hard to make itself a safe and welcoming place for everyone.” It said “predatory and toxic behaviour has no place on the platform”.
Meta’s product manager for VR integrity Bill Stillwell said in a statement: “We want everyone using our products to have a good experience and easily find the tools that can help in situations like these, so we can investigate and take action.”
He added: “For cross platform apps…we provide tools that allow players to report and block users.
Charities advise parents to check which apps their children are using on VR Headsets and, where possible, try them out for themselves, to assess whether they’re appropriate.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Gabe Newell: ‘Most of the people talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about’
By Wes Fenlon published 1 day ago
“They’ve apparently never played an MMO.”
https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-metaverse/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=facebook.com
I think the metaverse is bullshit, but my opinion hasn’t stopped Facebook from spending billions on R&D or startup investors from flinging millions of dollars at any company that says the words “blockchain” and “metaverse” in a sentence. While talking to Valve president Gabe Newell last week about the Steam Deck, cryptocurrency, and more, I was relieved to hear that he doesn’t get the buzz, either.
“There’s a bunch of get rich quick schemes around metaverse,” Newell said when I asked him if he believes metaverse trends are helping push technology forward.
“Most of the people who are talking about metaverse have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. And they’ve apparently never played an MMO. They’re like, ‘Oh, you’ll have this customizable avatar.’ And it’s like, well… go into La Noscea in Final Fantasy 14 and tell me that this isn’t a solved problem from a decade ago, not some fabulous thing that you’re, you know, inventing.”
“Obviously the gaming industry has been exploring these technologies for a long time,” he said. “It will be interesting to see if anybody who’s sort of coming to the party late has much to add, rather than a desire to have a whole bunch of people give them a bunch of money for magic reasons. But you know, in the end, customers and useful technology win out, so I’m not super worried about that.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
I went to a metaverse recruitment fair with 30 companies and 200 attendees. The avatars were creepy but I liked it — take a look around.
https://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.businessinsider.com%2Fmetaverse-job-fair-avatar-creepy-careers-2022-2&h=AT3oYqK1Tjzvajl2vWQFkAXXZD28w_nC1p_l-DD3EYJ_gbSsPTDiDv7uomowBN1H-kW0Z86XJSaEG6sYuskJ_voNH4aT3QOLC8G4ljpIQRfnJ55obSN23ZLmVB1D_uNG1dmAY-AE5SQ7ygpjgA
The recruitment firm Hirect hosted a metaverse jobs fair for Y-combinator backed startups.
There was a lobby, an exhibitor’s hall, and auditorium, which participants could walk freely between.
The tech was clunky but it was easy to meet people and to contact them.
I’ll admit to being slightly skeptical when I was invited to spend three hours in a virtual conference hall atop a mythical mountain range, attending a metaverse recruitment fair.
Since Meta, formerly Facebook, revived the concept of the Metaverse, it’s been promoted as the future of everything from concerts to meetings — and now recruitment.
I’ve always found recruitment to be about building personal connections so was keen to know whether this could be recreated virtually. I was pleasantly surprised.
The event, Hired in the Metaverse: The New Frontier of Recruiting, was hosted by the recruitment app Hirect, in conjunction with tech startup Venu, who designed the events portal.
Attendees could wear an Oculus Quest 2 headset — which Hirect sent out to job seekers in the US — if they wanted to attend in VR but they could access it through their web-browser. I ran out of time to set up my quest so attended via the latter.
I initially thought that the avatars were quite impersonal and a bit creepy.
Avatars had their name and email address written above their head, which made it easy to connect.
A lot of them had the same outfit and, other than their mouth moving, there was no facial or body language cues.
Sometimes the avatar would randomly sit down, which isn’t the best look if you’re trying to impress a potential employer.
I controlled my avatar using the direction arrows on my keyboard. It felt a bit like playing an early video game.
I controlled my avatar using the direction arrows on my keyboard. It felt a bit like playing an early video game.
The first half of the fair featured live presentations in the auditorium. Guests appeared as avatars on stage as part of panel or Q&A sessions.
It was a format similar to in-person events but felt quite strange. It didn’t really work and would have been better as a Zoom presentation.
Usually, this would be a great time to network with the people around you but it was impossible in the auditorium so I didn’t really feel like I was gaining anything by replicating the experience of standing in a room.
I left the auditorium to find my Insider colleague Rachel DuRose — who was tuning in from the US — to talk about the event.
The tech was quite clunky and you couldn’t hear what the other person was saying if you weren’t at the right angle.
The employer displays in the exhibitor’s hall were very interactive.
A video started playing when you got close enough. Clickable links enabled you to email the recruiter or go to the company’s website. You could walk up to anyone in the exhibitor’s hall and start a conversation like you would in person.
Once I mastered the tech I found it quite easy to meet people. Their username and email were displayed above their head, which was helpful.
You could click directly on their email address to send them a message.
I actually quite liked it.
All in all, I think the metaverse could work quite well as a recruitment platform in specific contexts.
It was the first time I’d ever experienced anything quite like this. If it became the norm of recruitment — as some, including Hirect, say it could be — I imagine it would quickly become a bit tiring and boring.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Even in the metaverse, you can’t escape the taxman
Second Life will begin passing state and local sales tax charges on to players.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/even-in-the-metaverse-you-cant-escape-the-taxman/
Second Life, the long-lived online metaverse that still attracts nearly a million monthly active users, has announced it will start charging US users local sales tax on many in-game purchases for the first time since its launch in 2003. That could be a significant drag on the online universe’s robust in-game economy and serve as a warning for other nascent metaverse efforts hoping to sell virtual goods to US residents.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/how-long-will-indians-take-to-recognize-and-accept-metaverse/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-10-metaverse-crypto-projects-to-look-out-for-in-2022/
Tomi Engdahl says:
X-Reality (XR)
lisätyn todellisuuden (Augmented Reality AR), yhdistetyn todellisuuden (Mixed Reality, MR), virtuaalitodellisuuden (VR)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Avatars are for More than Just the Metaverse
Feb. 7, 2022
SapientX’s Sage avatar makes use of rule-based symbolic logic to provide natural language interaction.
https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revolution/video/21215638/electronic-design-avatars-are-for-more-than-just-the-metaverse
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lohkoketjutekniikalla digitaalista taidetta – jopa metaversiumissa
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2022/03/11/lohkoketjutekniikalla-digitaalista-taidetta-tulevaisuudessa-jopa-metaversiumissa/
Uudenlainen LFT-lohkoketjutekniikka näyttää mullistavan digitaalisten taideteosten välittämisen. välityksessä digitaalinen teos voidaan myydä uudelle omistajalle omistusoikeuksineen verkon kautta. Nuorempi sukupolvi ainakin uskoo NFT-ilmiön kasvuun, kertoo Samsung kyselyssään. Tulevaisuudessa digitaalinen taide nivoutuu myös uuteen metauniversiumin tulemiseen.
NFT-ilmiössä (A non-fungible token) on kyse digitaalisesta sertifikaatista, jossa digitaalisten luomusten omistusoikeuksien ja kauppahistorian todistamisesta salattujen lohkoketjujen avulla. NFT-tekniikka on noussut maailmanlaajuiseksi puheenaiheeksi juuri välitettyjen taideteosten valtavien myyntihintojen ansiosta: tähän asti suurin NFT-teoksesta maksettu hinta huitelee lähes 100 miljoonassa dollarissa.
Tämän hetken suurin NFT-sektori on digitaalinen taide, joka käsittää muun muassa taideteosten, videoiden ja äänitiedostojen digitaalisen kaupanteon.
Digitaalinen NFT-teos voi tosin olla mikä tahansa muukin digitaalinen esine, kuten kauppakortti tai pelin kaltaisessa digitaalisessa maailmassa sijaitseva maa-alue, talo tai vaate. Aivan kuten fyysisen alkuperäisteoksen hankkiessa, myös NFT-teokseen käsiksi pääsee ainoastaan sen ostaja.
”Taiteen luomisen digitalisaatio on jo pitkällä, mutta tähän asti alkuperäistaiteen ostaminen, omistaminen ja kuluttaminen on ollut vahvasti ei-digitaalista. NFT on esimerkki tämän kehityksen edistymisestä, kun alkuperäistaidetta on mahdollista tuoda reaalimaailmaan digitaalisenakin”, sanoo Mika Engblom, Samsung Suomen mobiililiiketoiminnan johtaja.
Samsung on tutkinut NFT-kaupan trendiä innovoidakseen siitä uusia myytäviä tuotteita. Yritys on panostanut kännyköihin ja tabletteihin, joissa on mukana piirtokynä ja tarvittavat ohjelmistot. Lisäksi yhtiö järjesti viime torstaina Glasshouse Helsingin galleriatilassa NFT-tapahtuman, jossa kokemuksiaan luovasta NFT.työskentelystä esitteli tapahtumassa muassa valokuvaaja Reka Nyari.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The metaverse, explained
While boardrooms chase a VR internet no one asked for, video game metaverses are all around us
https://www.polygon.com/22959860/metaverse-explained-video-games
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revolution/video/21215638/electronic-design-avatars-are-for-more-than-just-the-metaverse?utm_source=EG%20ED%20Connected%20Solutions&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CPS220307026&o_eid=7211D2691390C9R&rdx.ident%5Bpull%5D=omeda%7C7211D2691390C9R&oly_enc_id=7211D2691390C9R
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Meta adds basic parental controls for Quest VR, almost three years after launching the headset, starting with an unlock pattern for specific apps in April — Despite releasing its first virtual reality headsets in May 2019, Meta is only now adding parental supervision tools to its Meta Quest VR headset.
Meta will add basic parental supervision tools to its VR headset almost three years after launch
Amanda Silberling
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/16/meta-quest-parental-controls-virtual-reality/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGVjaG1lbWUuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAD5kQ-7Mc3FYWcwkwhj7DxVTGs-nMzde7EDIYBI1W8wZEwxaIH-YoAgOOmd6LnQTgAAsRKqEmcfKUdADUdtRHoYNmyph1fFJ082AIHdC-j_InJTa-2GY7Vunf5vOV26OfK-5LVpgwFObuwbMM3V6O3Fz_rXVM7_6XCM0uWYz0ADv
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Meta launches Family Center, a suite of parental supervision tools for its apps, starting with Instagram in the US and rolling out globally in the coming months
Instagram’s promised parental controls arrive in the US
Allowing parents and guardians to keep a watchful eye
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/16/22980648/instagram-parental-control-supervision-vr-family-center?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Tomi Engdahl says:
WATCH OUT FOR THE TOP 10 METAVERSE COMPANIES IN INDIA IN 2022
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/watch-out-for-the-top-10-metaverse-companies-in-india-in-2022/
Tomi Engdahl says:
EyeSyn Simulates Human Eye Movements to Boost the Metaverse
The virtual platform simulates how humans look at the world, allowing companies to better train AR/VR programs.
https://www.hackster.io/news/eyesyn-simulates-human-eye-movements-to-boost-the-metaverse-f421da44505a
Computer engineers at Duke University and TU Delft have developed virtual eyes capable of simulating how humans look at the world that is accurate enough for companies to train virtual and augmented reality applications. Known as EyeSyn, the virtual platform replicates how human eyes track stimuli, which developers can utilize to build the metaverse. That stimuli can be anything — engaging in conversations, viewing paintings in art galleries, or purchasing products online.
Tomi Engdahl says:
With the start of Crypto Fashion Week, designer Rebecca Minkoff is debuting her brand’s second NFT collection. But this time, the looks are designed to exist strictly in the metaverse
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2022/03/18/rebecca-minkoff-nft-drop-crypto-fashion-week/?sh=130d066f160d&utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social&utm_content=6582707931&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainFB
Tomi Engdahl says:
With the start of Crypto Fashion Week, designer Rebecca Minkoff is debuting her brand’s second NFT collection. But this time, the looks are designed to exist strictly in the metaverse
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2022/03/18/rebecca-minkoff-nft-drop-crypto-fashion-week/?sh=130d066f160d&utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social&utm_content=6582707931&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainFB
Tomi Engdahl says:
With the start of Crypto Fashion Week, designer Rebecca Minkoff is debuting her brand’s second NFT collection. But this time, the looks are designed to exist strictly in the metaverse
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2022/03/18/rebecca-minkoff-nft-drop-crypto-fashion-week/?sh=130d066f160d&utm_source=FBPAGE&utm_medium=social&utm_content=6582707931&utm_campaign=sprinklrForbesMainFB
Tomi Engdahl says:
The dawn of Web 3.0 is upon us, Sam Lessin writes, and it’s the culmination of three simultaneous but distinct trends. He writes about what seems certain, and what we should be asking ourselves.
The Metaverse Is Coming. What Happens Next?
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-metaverse-is-coming-what-happens-next
After a good 15-ish–year run, most technology watchers agree that we are nearing the end of Web 2.0, and that the dawn of Web 3.0—aka the metaverse, depending on whose positioning you prefer—is upon us.
This transition is taking place against a complicated backdrop featuring no fewer than three simultaneously developing but fundamentally distinct trends:
First is the rise of crypto, which is leveraging technical and economic breakthroughs to make it finally possible to put memory, assets and ownership natively on the web.
Second is the seeming imminence of the experiential web via augmented and virtual reality. As many see it, this set of technologies will have a profound effect on our relationship with digital spaces and communities.
Last is a cultural revolution—long brewing among the younger generations but accelerated and disseminated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which forced great swaths of people to work and socialize in purely digital spaces. People are now rapidly coming to value their digital lives, communities and spaces every bit as much as their physical ones.
Things didn’t have to play out this way—that is to say, none of these trends is the direct result of any of the others—yet here we are. Let’s use this moment to take stock.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“The Metaverse is not coming. It’s still too clunky.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Snapchat’s new feature lets creators build AR experiences for landmarks in their communities
https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/16/snapchats-custom-landmarkers-feature-lets-creators-build-ar-experiences-in-their-communities/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
Snapchat is launching a new feature called “Custom Landmarkers” that lets creators build unique AR experiences for local places they care about, the company announced on Wednesday. The company says the feature, which is accessible in its Lens Studio, can be used to create landmarkers for things like statues and storefronts in creators’ local communities.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-metaverse-is-coming-what-happens-next
Tomi Engdahl says:
Is the Metaverse Even Feasible? Just to make the network work will require new technologies and vast sums of money
0https://spectrum.ieee.org/is-the-metaverse-even-feasible?share_id=6966303
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/is-the-metaverse-even-feasible?share_id=6966303
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/top-10-metaverse-cryptocurrencies-for-10x-profit-in-2022/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/322278407910875/posts/2067789696693062/
Facebook has laid out an aggressive strategy of building its own consumer hardware to lessen its dependence on Apple and Google. The seriousness of its ambitions is reflected in its headcount: Nearly 10,000 people are working in its group developing AR/VR devices, or nearly one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce.
The People With Power at Facebook as Its Hardware, Commerce Ambitions Expand
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-people-with-power-at-facebook-as-its-hardware-commerce-ambitions-expand?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=6261198914756_6269272277356&utm_content=6269272280956&fbclid=IwAR31Qlqt4FfINb7_E8ZymPj4SM8JqyXJoLcLJDNkSaQ37UpGl8XjyqbZgfc
Facebook in recent years has laid out an aggressive strategy of building its own consumer hardware to lessen its dependence on Apple and Google, makers of the two dominant mobile operating systems. The seriousness of its ambitions is reflected in its headcount: Nearly 10,000 people are working in its group developing augmented and virtual reality devices, or nearly one-fifth of Facebook’s total global workforce, according to internal organizational data reviewed by The Information.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The dawn of Web 3.0 is upon us, Sam Lessin writes, and it’s the culmination of three simultaneous but distinct trends. He writes about what seems certain, and what we should be asking ourselves.
The Metaverse Is Coming. What Happens Next?
By Sam Lessin | Nov. 12, 2021 9:01 AM PSTPhoto: Sam Lessin
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-metaverse-is-coming-what-happens-next?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=6261198914756_6269272277356&utm_content=6269272277556&fbaid=6269272277556&fbclid=IwAR3uQ9H7TpxpXOg3waE49a7HiHdllLXRQHqhR9yzD5Dz0OtXqc5TRPAd3X8
After a good 15-ish–year run, most technology watchers agree that we are nearing the end of Web 2.0, and that the dawn of Web 3.0—aka the metaverse, depending on whose positioning you prefer—is upon us.
Tomi Engdahl says:
High prices have pushed some toward collective ownership, but the future of metaverse properties is uncertain.
Surfing the Metaverse’s Real Estate Boom High prices have pushed some toward collective ownership, but the future of metaverse properties is uncertain
https://spectrum.ieee.org/metaverse-real-estate?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&socialux=facebook&share_id=6973929&utm_medium=social&utm_content=IEEE+Spectrum&utm_source=facebook
The real estate boom isn’t limited to reality. A prime plot in Decentraland, a metaverse platform, sold for the equivalent of 2.4 million dollars in November of 2021, and less desirable land often sells for six figures.
This creates a problem all too common in the real world. Many who’d like to own a plot in the metaverse are now priced out. So Metaverse decentralized autonomous organizations (a.k.a. DAOs, sometimes jokingly referred to as “group chats with a bank account”) are forming to solve this. In the process, the DAO creates a new model for virtual property ownership.
Tomi Engdahl says:
STARTUP SAYS ITS TECH CAN INFLICT ACTUAL PAIN IN THE METAVERSE
https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-inflict-pain-metaverse
Tomi Engdahl says:
“You know, you can smell a bad idea before it’s fully built.”
CEO Born in Soviet Russia Says Metaverse Is Just Like Communist Propaganda
https://futurism.com/metaverse-communist-propaganda
Entrepreneur Phil Libin, who grew up in the now-defunct Soviet Union, says that Facebook-now-known-as-Meta‘s vision for the metaverse reminds him of communist propaganda, Insider reports — empty promises of an idealized future, in other words, that will never materialize.
“I went to first grade in the Soviet Union,” he explained. “I was subjected to a lot of Soviet propaganda, and I was told as a little kid repeatedly: ‘Communism doesn’t exist yet. We haven’t built communism yet. We’re building towards communism.’”
Despite the many promises, that utopian vision was never fully realized. And to Libin, the same thing applies to Meta’s promises of a fully fledged virtual world that one day could rival reality.
“You know, you can smell a bad idea before it’s fully built,” he told Newcomer on the podcast. “So I don’t want to hear ‘Oh yeah, the metaverse doesn’t exist yet. No, no, no, all this stuff, all this stupid, useless, crappy stuff that exists right now, that’s not the metaverse. The metaverse is coming — it’s coming.’”
Despite being less than a year old, Meta’s vision has already attracted plenty of criticism. The company’s virtual worlds are also teeming with screaming children, as Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson noted in a recent piece — despite technically being limited to users above the age of 13.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE:
A look at Axie Infinity “managers”, who loan in-game NFTs to other players in exchange for a cut of any profits and depend on a constant influx of new players
The Metaverse Has Bosses Too. Meet the ‘Managers’ of Axie Infinity
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88g3ag/the-metaverse-has-bosses-too-meet-the-managers-of-axie-infinity
Managers in play-to-earn game Axie Infinity employ large teams of “scholars” who can’t afford their own NFTs even as the game’s economy spirals.
Even before the advent of professional streaming, gamers were able to earn money from their favorite pastime. Whether by trading accounts or cosmetic items, farming in-game resources to sell other players, or offering bots to automate tasks, underground markets that convert playtime to cash have flourished for a long while now.
It’s only in the past year, however, that games have begun to not only shoehorn cryptocurrency into their rewards systems but also fully build themselves around crypto-tokens and digital assets like NFTs. What’s emerging is an ecosystem known as “play-to-earn,” where the players can generate revenue directly from playing video games, harvesting digital assets, and trading them.
“90 percent of people will not play a game unless they are being properly valued for that time,” Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian said in a podcast earlier this year. “In five years, you will actually value your time properly, and instead of being harvested for advertisements, or being fleeced for dollars to buy stupid hammers you don’t actually own, you will be playing some on-chain equivalent game that will be just as fun, but you’ll actually earn value and you will be the harvester.”
Axie Infinity is arguably the industry standard-bearer for play-to-earn games, and it’s a deceptively simple one at that. Axie, developed by Vietnam-based studio Sky Mavis, centers on NFTs of monsters called Axies that form a team whose battles earn players Smooth Love Potion (SLP) tokens. The game features its own blockchain, named Ronin, to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions for SLP, Axie’s governance token (AXS), and Ronin’s native token (RON). Battling is basic, akin to if your entire team of Pokémon battled at once. Axies, as well as other in-game items, are represented by NFTs which can be bought or sold on an in-game market.
The rise of play-to-earn games, however, has not been as clear-cut as some suggest. The prices of Axie Infinity’s core tokens as well as trading of its Axie NFTs have consistently fallen since their peak last year.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Sullivan / Fast Company:
Interview with Tim Sweeney and Epic executives on Unreal Engine 5′s launch, its “Nanite” graphic rendering tech, using it in building the metaverse, and more — Growing up in suburban Potomac, Maryland in the 1980s, Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games …
How Epic Games is changing gaming—and maybe the metaverse
https://www.fastcompany.com/90736343/how-epic-games-is-changing-gaming-and-maybe-the-metaverse
The gaming giant’s new 3D real-time graphics engine may help build a very different conception of Web3.
Growing up in suburban Potomac, Maryland in the 1980s, Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games–one of the most successful gaming companies in history–wasn’t much of a gamer. His interests lay in the games themselves. The software. The internal logic humming along in the background. The stuff that made everything work.
Sweeney spent much of his time back then teaching himself to program on an Apple II, eventually using that skill to first create his own games and later his own gaming engine.
In the early 90s, Sweeney began building the code that would eventually power Epic’s first hit game in 1998, a first-person shooter called Unreal. After seeing teaser grabs of Unreal, other developers began asking to use the engine. Sweeney decided to oblige. Epic began developing Unreal Engine in 1995 and first licensed it in 1996. Epic continued building new games using the evolving toolset, including Gears of War, Infinity Blade, and Fortnite.
Now, Epic has released the fifth major iteration of the graphics engine, Unreal Engine 5, which packages up a batch of new and upgraded features that let game developers and other creators design more realistic 3D objects, surfaces and people, and create more natural lighting and spatial audio effects. Experiences built on the tool won’t totally simulate reality, but they may cause you to forget you’re inside a sim for longer than a few seconds.
The new fifth-generation engine—buoyed by refreshed software tools and a marketing tie-in with the team behind The Matrix franchise—will certainly enable more life-like games in the future, but it could go beyond that. At a time when lots of people in the tech world are talking about immersive “spatial” computing within something called the metaverse, Unreal Engine’s ability to simulate reality has some interesting implications. The new features in the gaming engine seem to be aimed at allowing digital creators in lots of different industries to build their own immersive virtual experiences.
“Convergence is happening because you’re able to use the same sort of high-fidelity graphics on a movie set and in a video game,” Sweeney says. “And in architectural visualization and automotive design, you can actually build all of these 3D objects–both a virtual twin to every object in the world, or every object in your company or in your movie.”
And all these experiences, if the original internet is any guide, aren’t likely to stay fragmented forever. At some point, Sweeney believes, the advantages to companies and consumers of connecting them will become too obvious. Then we’ll have something like a real metaverse.
It’s no coincidence that Epic chose The Matrix to demo its new tools. Epic is pushing Unreal Engine toward the goal of creating digital experiences of such high quality that they’re indistinguishable from motion pictures. Epic’s ranks are peppered with people who one worked in the film industry. In fact, some of the people who created the computer-generated imagery (CGI) for The Matrix movies now work either on Epic’s games or special projects.
In other words, The Matrix appeared as a perfect simulation of the real world–except occasionally people would jump 50 feet straight up in the air.
The centerpiece of UE5 is a graphics rendering technology Epic calls “Nanite,” which intelligently adds more or less detail to objects depending on their importance to the scene and their proximity to the point of view of the audience. In the “game” portion of the demo, for example, we watch from behind IO’s shoulder and control her gunfire.
“It’s about being able to spend our (graphics chip) memory on things that are actually going to affect the things you see,”
“Previously you would simulate illumination in an offline process, and in order to do that the world would have to not change,” Penwarden told me. “You could take certain elements such as a vehicle and simulate roughly what it ought to look like, taking global illumination techniques into account, but you couldn’t really interact with the scene fully.” Now the lighting effects work in real time and shift with the camera’s relation to the geometry of the scene.
Penwarden told me the digital humans seen in the demo were created using another Epic tool called MetaHuman Creator, which integrates with Unreal Engine 5. The tool lets designers create digital humans by selecting from a large library of sample humans, then going to work filling out the details, selecting from among endless variations of facial features, skin complexions, hair, eyes, body type, and on and on. The demo’s 1990s versions of Neo and Trinity were created in MetaHumans, but the producers informed those characters’ movements by analyzing video of Reeves’ and Moss’s real-life expressions and body language.
‘Creators’
Unreal Engine is known among developers as a high-end tool that’s commonly used to create high-quality PC and console games. Unreal may not be the least expensive gaming engine license you can get, but the new features in UE5 are aimed at improving the economics of game making as a whole. They do this mainly by cutting down on the time and person power needed to make a high-quality experience, which Sweeney tells me is “by far” the most expensive part of making a game.
“It’s all aimed at making game development much more accessible and making high-quality and photorealistic gaming and creation more accessible to far more developers,” Sweeney tells me.
“I’d like to make it possible for a ten-person team to build a photorealistic game that’s incredibly high quality,” he says. “Whereas right now, if you’re building everything by hand, it might be a 100-person team.”
Unreal seeks to automate some of that work with physics-based intelligent lighting (Lumen) and by offering developers large libraries of high-quality graphics content that can be easily pulled into scenes. This is great for smaller game developers, and creatives who might want to break off from their current developer employer and realize their own game ideas.
But it’s about more than games. Epic hopes the efficiencies in UE5 might also open the door to developers in other industries who might not otherwise have given Epic’s engine a serious look. In fact, Sweeney and his team now often refer to Unreal Engine users not as developers but as “creators,” a broader term that encompasses developers big and small, and within and without the gaming world.
It might be a car company. Rivian used Unreal Engine to create the content for the large heads-up display in its new R1T electric-powered truck. Ferrari has begun designing cars in a CAD system, then moving the design into Epic’s gaming engine to help visualize the product before manufacturing begins.
Instead of green screens, producers now use large LED screens showing scenes and special effects created in Unreal Engine running in real time behind and around the physical set and the actors. This lets the actors react more naturally to the special effects, and it lets the producer see if and how the scene’s digital and physical components are working together.
The fashion industry has begun using Unreal Engine to create “digital twins” of real-world clothing and accessories. Sweeney tells me that fashion brands are excited about the prospect of selling clothing and accessories in the metaverse. “When you’re in the metaverse see some cool item of clothing and buy it and own it both digitally and physically, and it will be a way better way to find new clothing.” Shoppers will be able to put (digital) clothing on their avatars to see how it looks. It’s a very different experience from buying something in a 2D marketplace like Amazon, Sweeney says, where you must have faith that an article of clothing will fit right and look good.
“You can actually build all of these 3D objects,” he says. “Both a virtual twin to every object in the world, or every object in your company or in your movie.”
Toward the metaverse
Despite all the tech industry hype over the past year or so, the concept of the metaverse–an immersive digital space where people (via their avatars) can socialize, play, or do business–is far from being fully realized.
Sweeney and Epic saw the concept coming years ago: Sometime after the 2017 release of Epic’s smash hit survival/battle royale/sandbox game Fortnite, people began to linger in the Fortnite world after the game play ended just to hang out with friends. They began coming to Fortnite to see concerts (Travis Scott’s Astronomical event, for example), or to see movie industry events (such as the premiere of a new Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker clip). Epic calls these “tie-ins” or “crossover events.” One one level, they’re marketing events, but they also demonstrate that people are getting more comfortable doing things within virtual space. Such immersive digital experiences may characterize the next big paradigm in personal computing and the internet.
Today, only small-scale, single-company metaverses exist. Companies like Decentraland, Roblox, and Meta are just beginning to create simple versions of immersive virtual spaces. These are more cartoon-like than life-like, and people are represented as cartoony avatars, which might be OK during the metaverse’s early years.
But bigger and better virtual worlds are likely coming.
tools like Unreal Engine that are already used to create immersive gaming environments will likely play key roles.
Some of the new features in Unreal Engine 5 seem to suggest this. After seeing The Matrix Awakens demo GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi reflected: “It’s…a pretty good sign that Epic Games is serious about building its own metaverse, or enabling the customers of its game engine to build their version of the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.”
In such an “open” universe, single developers wouldn’t so much “build a metaverse” as they would “build for the metaverse.” A social network might build its own virtual island. A gaming company might hold scheduled gaming events at pre-announced places in-world. A retailer might build a large digital storefront with an interior for shopping. Sweeney believes such an open world would require in-world companies and other organizations to use a set of open standards in order to allow people’s avatars to move between “worlds.”
“I think we can build this open version of the Metaverse over the next decade on the foundation of of open systems, open standards and companies being willing to work together on the basis of respecting their mutual customer relationships,” he says. “You can come in with an account from one ecosystem and play in another and everybody just respects those relationships. And there’s a healthy competition for every facet of the ecosystem.”
To build such spaces would also require graphics engines that can render large digital spaces in real-time without requiring tons of compute power. And in order to get comfortable in digital space and spend time there, the people, places, and things within it will have to exist on one side of the uncanny valley or the other. Early virtual spaces might reside on the near side of the uncanny valley; they may look decidedly unreal like the animated world of Fortnite and the cartoony business space of Meta’s Horizon Workrooms.
But eventually citizens of the metaverse will likely demand environments that are true-to-life, just as gamers have consistently demanded more life-like experiences from games. Epic is trying to push Unreal Engine toward being capable of satisfying that demand.
Of course the development of the metaverse depends on more than just life-like graphics. Sweeney sees it as a totally new medium with new forms of commerce and new rules for trust, privacy, and identity.
“Ultimately, these are still the early days of this new medium,” Sweeney says, “and I think we’ll see a vast amount of innovation as more and more companies and people try different things and see what works.”
imagining the likely future of the internet, the metaverse, which could cause a seismic shift as big as the arrival of Internet 1.0. It could be really wild, and could become a place that credibly competes with reality for human beings’ time and attention.