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:
Jay Peters / The Verge:
Meta won’t hold its F8 developer conference in 2022, instead holding Conversations, a “business messaging event” on May 19, and an AR/VR event “later this year” — Meta is pausing the event in 2022 — Meta won’t be holding its F8 developer conference in 2022, the company announced Wednesday.
Facebook won’t hold its F8 developer conference this year after pivoting to Meta
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/6/23013527/facebook-meta-f8-conference-pause-2022?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Meta is pausing the event in 2022
Meta won’t be holding its F8 developer conference in 2022, the company announced Wednesday.
“Similar to years past, we are taking a brief break in programming and will not hold F8 in 2022 while we gear up on new initiatives that are all tailored towards the next chapter of the internet, and the next chapter of our company too: building the metaverse,” Meta’s Diego Duarte Moreira said in a blog post. “Similar to the early stages of the web, building the metaverse will be a collaborative effort at every stage — with other companies, creators and developers like you.”
https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/04/06/pausing-f8-in-2022/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alyse Stanley / Washington Post:
Epic Games and Lego partner to “shape the future of the metaverse” by building a digital experience where children can play safely online, but offer few details
Lego and Epic Games partnership aims for a kid-friendly metaverse
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/04/07/lego-epic-metaverse-fortnite/
Epic Games has already outlined ambitious plans for the metaverse and Thursday the “Fortnite” maker announced it intends to build part of it with Lego.
Epic and the LEGO Group have entered a long-term partnership to “shape the future of the metaverse” by constructing a digital experience where children can play safely online. While the companies didn’t go into detail about what that would look like in Thursday’s announcement, they outlined three principles driving development: to prioritize children’s well being, to protect children’s privacy and to equip both children and adults with the necessary tools to shape their digital experience.
“The LEGO Group has captivated the imagination of children and adults through creative play for nearly a century, and we are excited to come together to build a space in the metaverse that’s fun, entertaining, and made for kids and families,” said Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney in a news release.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Epic Games believes the Internet is broken. This is their blueprint to fix it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/09/28/epic-fortnite-metaverse-facebook/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_6
To Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, people are tired of how today’s Internet operates. He says the social media era of the Internet, a charge led by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, has separated commerce from the general audience, herding users together and directing them to targets of the company’s choosing rather than allowing free exploration.
“Now we’re in a closed platform wave, and Apple and Google are surfing that wave too,” Sweeney said. “As we get out of this, everybody is going to realize, ‘Okay we spent the last decade being taken advantage of.’”
For years now, he has eyed a solution: the metaverse. And steadily, over several years, Epic has been acquiring a number of assets and making strategic moves with the goal of making Sweeney’s vision for the metaverse a reality.
The simplest way to define the metaverse is as an evolution of how users interact with brands, intellectual properties and each other on the Internet. The metaverse, to Sweeney, would be an expansive, digitized communal space where users can mingle freely with brands and one another in ways that permit self-expression and spark joy. It would be a kind of online playground where users could join friends to play a multiplayer game like Epic’s “Fortnite” one moment, watch a movie via Netflix the next and then bring their friends to test drive a new car that’s crafted exactly the same in the real world as it would be in this virtual one. It would not be, Sweeney said, the manicured, ad-laden news feed presented by platforms like Facebook.
“The metaverse isn’t going to be that,” Sweeney said. “A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn’t going to run ads. They’re going to drop their car into the world in real time and you’ll be able to drive it around. And they’re going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there, and that it’s receiving the attention it deserves.”
People using the Internet in the 1990s via companies like America Online will recall how the Internet has evolved from logging in over phone lines to check their email, chat in real time over AOL Instant Messenger and perhaps check a website or bulletin board discussion before logging off. Today’s always-online, smartphone-centric culture of curated feeds revolves around social media and monetization through advertising, a dynamic Sweeney believes various companies have exploited to their benefit and the detriment of users.
Sweeney believes platforms like Google and Apple have similarly grown in size while contributing to what he sees as a devolution of the Internet. He refers to the economic ecosystems created by the Silicon Valley giants as “walled gardens,” a term that came up frequently during Epic’s mostly unsuccessful antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
Even as Sweeney and Epic pursue their metaverse dream, it’s one shared by a number of massive, tech-centric companies. One of them is the same that Sweeney decried for the current state of the Internet. Facebook’s Zuckerberg recently said he hopes that users stop thinking of Facebook as a social media company and more of a metaverse company.
Months before Zuckerberg’s announcement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was among the first American tech executive to refer to his company’s offerings as part of an “enterprise metaverse.” Chinese conglomerate Tencent, whose holdings include everything from social media apps to stakes in Hollywood studios, has also accelerated its efforts.
The shared ambitions of these giant corporations set the stage for a high-stakes race to craft the metaverse. And Epic sees itself as well positioned in the pack.
The Washington Post interviewed a variety of executives, developers and stakeholders at Epic Games to discuss its vision for the metaverse. The messaging from Epic Games and its companies is clear: What Sweeney and his colleagues want to create is a marked departure from modern social media platforms. And the company believes it is well suited to realize its metaverse vision through its own technologies and series of acquisitions. But there remain significant obstacles, seemingly outside of Epic’s control, that present formidable barriers to Sweeney’s aspirations.
At the core of Epic’s metaverse vision is a change in how people socialize on the Internet. Sima Sistani, co-founder of the video chat social network Houseparty that was acquired by Epic in 2019, believes interactions will move away from “likes,” comments and posts about people’s personal lives and toward more complex interactions where users share and participate in experiences across various services.
“If the last generation is about sharing, the next generation of social is going to be about participating,” said Sistani, who has held positions at Tumblr and Yahoo before starting Houseparty. “Maybe I didn’t call it the metaverse then, but that’s what it is. It’s people, interactive experiences, coming together and moving from one experience to another, having this shareability to move beyond walled gardens.”
Sistani’s description closely resembles the innate, interactive nature of video games, which offer more ways to engage with brands and other users than simple ad-filled timelines.
“We’ve seen this happen in the past,” Sistani said. “I come from a media background, and people moved from traditional media to social media. And this new generation is moving from social media to games. That’s where they’re having these conversations. That’s where it’s beyond the ‘like,’ beyond the news feed. And that, that’s the metaverse.”
That community interaction is a central concept of the metaverse and how it evolves the Internet from the social media era.
“What exists right now, it’s based on algorithmic feeds that are driven by ad revenue, not a model,” Sistani said. “That instantly takes you into polarized worlds. If you are putting joy at the center of what you’re doing, and not ads, and the goal is collaboration, the goal is fun, the goal is participating, making new friends, those are just super different incentives and motivations.”
The Internet of creators
Epic’s tool kit is well suited for creating the kind of collaborative and fun experiences Sistani describes. Long before “Fortnite” took the world by storm, a 1998 game made by Sweeney himself debuted and became a centerpiece of Epic’s business. The game was titled “Unreal,” and it was powered by what is now known as Unreal Engine.
The game was titled “Unreal,” and it was powered by what is now known as Unreal Engine.
Unreal Engine is used by at least 7 million people, especially game developers, around the world, but it is also heavily used outside of the video game industry. The most famous and recent example is how it powers the sets and backdrops of TV shows like “The Mandalorian.”
Part of Epic’s strategy for the metaverse will require a continual stream of content creation to keep users engaged. To that end, Epic is making Unreal Engine as accessible as possible to novices.
Epic sees those creators as another cornerstone in constructing the metaverse. The desire to shift “Fortnite” to a more creator-friendly business model was discussed at length during Epic’s trial with Apple. That pivot would also mirror an ongoing Internet trend.
In the last decade, Internet culture has evolved to embrace and be driven by tens of millions of content creators all over the world. The most popular have used their massive audiences to attract lucrative deals that have turned many from creators into influencers, the personalities that shape pop culture.
“Some of the top entertainment people in the world today are not found in Hollywood,”
Video game personalities have become a new tier of celebrity class, sometimes dwarfing traditional celebrities.
Facebook may be the leading social network, but the New York Times reported in July the company is playing catch-up in courting creatives in its spaces, which include Instagram. This effort included trying to lock well-known video game personalities on Twitch and YouTube into contracts to stream exclusively on Facebook.
Real obstacles to a virtual world
If video game worlds can be considered buildings of interactivity, Epic Games has been one of the biggest providers of construction materials thanks to the widespread use of Unreal Engine. Now Sweeney wants to help build bridges between those buildings.
For years, Unreal Engine has been used by a number of different industries outside of video games.
“I think [Epic] is a unique company because we’ve always served both the consumer audience and the developer audience, and we’ve built our business on the synergy between the two,” Sweeney said. “It’s the same position to build an ecosystem. It’s both great for consumers and for developers and to avoid the kind of pitfalls which turn consumer ecosystem companies into overlords that exert too much power.”
Critics may point to the prospect that Epic Games itself is a walled garden for the moment, much like the companies Sweeney has pilloried. Sweeney acknowledges this. Outside of log-ins using various other services like Microsoft or social media, Epic’s own storefront, the Epic Games Store is still a closed-off marketplace.
Sweeney pointed out that even if the last year of quarantine accelerated the acceptance of persistent online worlds operating like our real one, there’s a host of standards and practices that need to be ironed out to create any kind of metaverse, not unlike how government-funded researchers in 1986 formed the Internet Engineering Task Force to formally develop and promote Internet standards.
“You need an entire suite of standards, and the Web is based on several,” said Sweeney, citing such factors like HTML becoming the standard file format for displaying web browser pages. “The metaverse will require a lot of them, file formats for describing a 3-D scene, networking protocols for describing how players are interacting in real time. Every multiplayer game has a networking protocol of some sort. They don’t all agree, but eventually they ought to be lined up and made to communicate.”
And therein lies Sweeney’s biggest challenge in realizing his vision. While Epic could weave a kind of metaverse out of its many creations and others built on Unreal Engine, it would not be “The metaverse” that Sweeney and others envision until the barriers between some of the world’s biggest brands are broken down.
“I think the real force that’s going to shape the metaverse into an open platform is the power of all the brands to participate in it,” Sweeney said.
Sweeney said he’s optimistic and hopeful that the Internet’s next evolution may return to the spirit of cooperation — and the fear of monopoly — that drove the AIM alliance of 1991, the landmark agreement between Apple, IBM and Motorola to standardize personal computer technology.
“You’re going to have hundreds of industries entering this, each one cognizant of the need to protect their brand,” Sweeney said. “I think that’s going to be the ultimate checks and balance system in a way that it was not in the social media revolution. … I think that’s going to lead to very robust development in the way the Internet was.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Verge:
Meta rolls out a test for some creators to sell virtual items and effects in Horizon Worlds, which will take a 25% cut of any sale after app store fees — Horizon Worlds will take a 25 percent cut of any sale after app store fees — Meta is testing new features to let creators …
Meta will let Horizon creators sell virtual items
Horizon Worlds will take a 25 percent cut of any sale after app store fees
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/11/23020684/meta-horizon-worlds-test-creators-sell-virtual-items-monetization?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Meta is testing new features to let creators make money within Horizon Worlds, the company’s social metaverse platform for Quest VR headsets that is soon coming to mobile phones and possibly game consoles.
Most notably, a “handful” of Horizon creators will be able to sell virtual items and effects in the worlds they create for others to explore. The idea is that creators can sell everything from access to a VIP section of their world to virtual items like jewelry or a special basketball, according to Meaghan Fitzgerald, the product marketing director for Horizon. Participants in the US will also be able to earn money from a $10 million creator fund Meta recently set up to reward creators with the most engaging worlds.
With this test of “in-world purchases,” Meta is following in the footsteps of other 3D social platforms like Roblox and Rec Room, which both let creators sell items that they make. Roblox has built a huge business from this model, while Rec Room is growing quickly and prioritizing creator monetization as well.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Epic Games’ new, real-time, photorealistic renderer reaches well beyond just games.
Will the Unreal Engine 5 Realize the Metaverse’s Potential?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/unreal-engine-5-metaverse?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&socialux=facebook&share_id=7003368&utm_medium=social&utm_content=IEEE+Spectrum&utm_source=facebook
Epic Games’ new, real-time, photorealistic renderer reaches well beyond just games
Unreal Engine 5′s MetaHuman can be used to create photorealistic avatars, such as this feature demonstration from The Matrix Awakens.
The race to build the metaverse is on—but first, developers need the tools to do it.
Unreal Engine 5, released on April 5, is among the leaders. Its creator, Epic Games, is best known for its megahit game Fortnite, but the company’s engine expertise has deep roots.
“I think Unreal Engine 5 is a great step forward for the metaverse and AR/VR, especially when you consider that a lot of what the company has been building is thinking about the metaverse and AR/VR,” said Anshel Sag, Principle Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.
Immersion, after all, and real-time, photorealistic rendering that is as all-encompassing an experience as possible is the name of the game.
To that end, Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) packs in dozens of features and refinements, but two take the spotlight: Lumen and Nanite.
Lumen can handle global illuminations that include diffuse reflections with potentially infinite bounces. If you think this sounds like ray-tracing, you’re right.
Nanite, meanwhile, is a virtualized geometry system that can alter polygon counts in real time to meet a performance target. It helps developers achieve a level of optimization not previously possible.
“In my opinion, Nanite could be a vital component to helping VR experiences expand in scope for high-end VR, such as [PC-tethered VR a.k.a. PCVR] or [Sony's] PSVR 2, if it can help us to add more detail and scale to our worlds,” Alistair Hume, Co-Founder of metaverse developer Axon Park, said in an e-mail.
These features are supported by MetaHuman, a tool for generating photorealistic avatars; World Partition, used for dividing world assets into groups for improved optimization; and Quixel Bridge, used to import objects from Megascans, a database of high-fidelity 3D assets.
Epic has leaned into metaverse hype by releasing The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience alongside the film The Matrix: Resurrections.
The demo delivers a virtual world as realistic as that in the first Matrix movie yet runs in real-time on modern home consoles and PCs. UE5 includes the demo’s city as a free sample any developer can download—which has already led to a viral hit inspired by Superman.
You could be forgiven for thinking UE5 is ready to dominate AR/VR and metaverse development. This notion is reinforced by the company’s other metaverse efforts, which includes a partnership with The LEGO Group focused on a kid-friendly metaverse experience.
Despite this, Lumen and Nanite do not support VR development at launch, and Epic has no timeline for their release. Developers hoping to use them must take a wait-and-see approach.
“[Extended Reality or XR] developers need as much performance as they can get and not being able to take advantage of Lumen or Nanite is challenging,” said Sag. “Unreal Engine is already a great engine for XR, but the lack of its flagship new features may turn off some developers.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta Plans to Take a Nearly 50% Commission on Purchases Made Inside the ‘Metaverse’ Despite Complaining About Apple’s 30% App Store Cut
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/13/meta-cut-on-purchases-despite-apple-complaints/
Meta, better known as Facebook, plans to take a nearly 50% commission on digital asset purchases made inside the “metaverse,” the company has revealed, months after it had complained about the maximum 30% cut that Apple takes for purchases through the App Store.
This week, Meta announced new ways it’s allowing creators to monetize and earn money from the “metaverse.” One way it’s enabling that is through letting creators sell NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, through its Horizon Worlds platform. In the post, Meta declined to specify how much of a cut it would take for those purchases, but a company spokesperson told CNBC it would be 47.5% commission, inclusive of a 30% hardware fee and a 17.5% platform charge:
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to CNBC Wednesday that Meta will take an overall cut of up to 47.5% on each transaction. That includes a “hardware platform fee” of 30% for sales made through the Meta Quest Store, where it sells apps and games for its virtual reality headsets. On top of that, Horizon Worlds, will charge a 17.5% fee.
Meta’s vice president of Horizons, Vivek Sharma, told The Verge that the nearly 50% commission is “a pretty competitive rate in the market,” adding “we believe in the other platforms being able to have their share.”
Ironically, Meta itself, including company CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has been vocal about Apple’s 15% to 30% cut from the App Store.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Sources: Meta to release Nazare AR glasses V1, not tied to a phone, and a cheaper pair codenamed Hypernova in 2024; Nazare V2 expected 2026, and V3 in 2028 — Mark Zuckerberg has a grandiose vision for the metaverse, and he hopes that you’ll one day see the same thing, too — quite literally …
Mark Zuckerberg’s augmented reality
https://www.theverge.com/23022611/meta-facebook-nazare-ar-glasses-roadmap-2024?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
MarkMark Zuckerberg has a grandiose vision for the metaverse, and he hopes that you’ll one day see the same thing, too — quite literally, through a pair of augmented reality glasses.
Zuckerberg calls AR goggles a “holy grail” device that will “redefine our relationship with technology,” akin to the introduction of smartphones. During the special effect-laden video announcing Facebook’s corporate rebrand to Meta last October, they acted as the connective tissue for his metaverse pitch, letting people play games and work with virtual humans Star Trek-style. At one point, Zuckerberg wore them while fencing with a hologram. “Don’t be scared to stab,” his virtual sparring partner quipped.
Zuckerberg may have big hopes for smart glasses, but the near-term reality of the technology is far less lofty. The demonstrations during Zuckerberg’s Meta presentation, such as playing virtual chess on a real table with someone’s avatar, weren’t based on any functioning hardware or software. And Meta doesn’t yet have a working, wearable prototype of its planned AR glasses but rather a stationary demonstration that sits on a table.
Meta is racing to release its first AR glasses in 2024, but sources believe it’ll take a lot longer for them to become mainstream
Still, Zuckerberg has ambitious goals for when his high-tech glasses will be a reality. Employees are racing to deliver the first generation by 2024 and are already working on a lighter, more advanced design for 2026, followed by a third version in 2028. The details, which together give the first comprehensive look at Meta’s AR hardware ambitions, were shared with The Verge by people familiar with the roadmap who weren’t authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment for this story.
Animating the push for AR glasses and Facebook’s rebrand to Meta is a desire by Zuckerberg to cast the company he founded as innovative once again, people familiar with his thinking say. The social network’s reputation has been stained by a series of privacy and content moderation scandals, hurting employee morale and faith in leadership. Regulators are trying to break the company up and curb its business of personalized advertising. And among its Silicon Valley peers, it has become known as a ruthless copycat.
Meta’s CEO also sees the AR glasses, dubbed Project Nazare, as a way to get out from under the thumb of Apple and Google, which together dictate the terms that apps like Facebook have to abide by on mobile phones. The first version of Nazare is designed to work independently from a mobile phone with the assistance of a wireless, phone-shaped device that offloads parts of the computing required for the glasses to operate. A marquee feature will be the ability to communicate and interact with holograms of other people through the glasses, which Zuckerberg believes will, over time, provide people with a more immersive, compelling experience than the video calling that exists today.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Daniel Van Boom / CNET:
Meta’s plan to take up to a 47.5% cut of each virtual transaction on Horizon Worlds draws criticism from NFT proponents; OpenSea takes a 2.5% cut — Meta, previously known as Facebook, is figuring out how to monetize the metaverse. … It’s been nearly six months since the company formerly known …
Meta’s New 47.5% Fee on Metaverse Items Has NFT Twitter Pissed
Meta, previously known as Facebook, is trying to figure out how to monetize the metaverse.
https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/metas-new-47-5-fee-on-metaverse-items-has-nft-twitter-pissed/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Thompson / Stratechery:
OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and other AI models’ ability to generate new content at zero marginal cost has major implications for the metaverse, social networks, and more
DALL-E, the Metaverse, and Zero Marginal Content
https://stratechery.com/2022/dall-e-the-metaverse-and-zero-marginal-content/
Dall-E 2 is a new AI system from OpenAI that can take simple text descriptions like “A koala dunking a basketball” and turn them into photorealistic images that have never existed before. DALL-E 2 can also realistically edit and re-touch photos…
DALL-E was created by training a neural network on images and their text descriptions. Through deep learning it not only understands individual objects like koala bears and motorcycles, but learns from relationships between objects, and when you ask DALL-E for an image of a “koala bear riding a motorcycle”, it knows how to create that or anything else with a relationship to another object or action.
The DALL-E research has three main outcomes: first, it can help people express themselves visually in ways they may not have been able to before. Second, an AI-generated image can tell us a lot about whether the system understands us, or is just repeating what it’s been taught. Third, DALL-E helps humans understand how AI systems see and understand our world. This is a critical part of developing AI that’s useful and safe…
Tomi Engdahl says:
Deloitte: Younger generations have one foot in the metaverse via gaming and social media
https://venturebeat.com/2022/03/28/deloitte-younger-generations-have-one-foot-in-the-metaverse-via-gaming-and-social-media/
Deloitte said that younger generations are behaving in a way that suggests they will live their lives online and embrace the metaverse.
The big accounting and consulting firm said that young generations are embracing gaming and social media, and the entertainment TV platforms may have trouble keeping with gaming and social media up among younger viewers.
We’ve seen many definitions of what the metaverse can be, but for shorthand I’ve been saying metaverse is the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://futurism.com/metaverse-communist-propaganda
Tomi Engdahl says:
Live Longer for 150 Years in Metaverse But Only If You Are Willing to Permanently Leave Your Physical Body and Become a Living App
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36856/20220329/live-longer-150-years-metaverse-willing-permanently-leave-physical-body.htm
Tomi Engdahl says:
STARTUP SAYS ITS TECH CAN INFLICT ACTUAL PAIN IN THE METAVERSE
https://futurism.com/the-byte/startup-inflict-pain-metaverse
AS IF THE METAVERSE WASN’T PAINFUL ENOUGH ALREADY!
Feel the Pain
A Japanese startup called H2L Technologies wants you to be able to feel pain inside the metaverse, via a wristband that dishes out small electric shocks.
It’s a strange new development that goes to show companies are willing to go far in their quest to blur the lines between reality and the virtual world, the Financial Times reports.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“[It's] the only thing Mark wants to talk about.”
Facebook Employees Say Mark Zuckerberg Is Weirdly Obsessed With the Metaverse
https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-obsessed-metaverse
Ready or Not
The metaverse is looking less and less exciting all the time with brands hosting bizarre events nobody wants to attend, but the slew of companies bringing VR realities to life certainly aren’t failing for a lack of trying. In fact, employees at Facebook say founder and company head Mark Zuckerberg obsessed.
“[It’s] the only thing Mark wants to talk about,” an anonymous former director-level employee told Business Insider in a new report published today.
According to the report, Zuckerberg is focused solely on metaverse content creation but says the project will take a decade or more to complete, likely requiring improvements to the Oculus Quest 2, also called Meta Quest 2 since Facebook purchased Oculus and later changed its name. Despite the project’s scope, Zuckerberg isn’t giving employees a clear strategy, but he still wants to inform every department company-wide about the pivot to focusing on the metaverse.
The result is internal chaos, BI reports.
Meta’s plan to help advertisers on the platform make bank could ruin the potential fun for everyone by executing a good idea badly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Games, NFTs, crypto, VR, AR, the blockchain, they’re all wrapped up in this idea of a virtually-integrated society in which our Fortnite costumes will carry over to our Onlyfans accounts and we will never, ever have to log off.
The metaverse is bullshit
By Wes Fenlon published October 29, 2021
https://www.pcgamer.com/the-metaverse-is-bullshit/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=facebook.com
You’re not losing your mind: it really does just sound like a worse version of the internet.
We have Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash to thank for popularizing avatars as our digital personas, from early internet message boards to full-body VRChat. We also have Snow Crash to blame for the absolute hell we find ourselves in today, as every tech billionaire on the planet slobber all over themselves as they declare the metaverse—the next phase of human culture!!—is within reach. Games, NFTs, crypto, VR, AR, the blockchain, they’re all wrapped up in this idea of a virtually-integrated society in which our Fortnite costumes will carry over to our Onlyfans accounts and we will never, ever have to log off.
The absurdity of it makes me want to scream, or maybe die, or maybe just spoon out the part of my brain that knows what an NFT is. But there’s one thing that keeps me going:
The absolute gleeful, cackling, deep-in-my-bones certainty that it’s all complete bullshit.
Watching people spend $69 million in fake money to buy a JPEG should make you feel like you’re living in an age of unparalleled nonsense.
But the good news is that the metaverse and the tech industry’s very expensive obsession with trying to make it a reality will be a schadenfreude generator the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
The metaverse is bullshit because it already exists, and it’s called the internet
Being ‘inside’ a virtual world was never really the important part
When Epic’s Tim Sweeney and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg talk about the metaverse, they’re primarily drawing from the foundational visions of cyberspace created by science fiction authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. Their books in the ’80s and early ’90s looked at what computers were capable of at the time and imagined them decades in the future, just abstract enough to let our imaginations run.
Men in tech have been chasing this vision of the metaverse for a long time, but their vision for what qualifies as the real metaverse keeps being pushed further and further to the horizon because they’re chasing a science fiction vision that never had to be justified beyond a few sentences of enticing description. Being “inside” a virtual world was never really the important part.
Gibson and Stephenson were conjuring up spaces that made for entertaining stories you could picture in your head, where characters could do things other than sitting at monitors typing. Tech companies are now spending billions of dollars straining against that basic fact: For most of what we do online, sitting at a monitor and typing is going to be the most practical interface for a very long time.
The internet as we know it is so much bigger than Stephen’s metaverse because it’s *not* just one shared environment
We’ve had a perfectly functional version of Gibson’s cyberspace since the popularization of the World Wide Web in the mid ’90s (or earlier if you were into BBSes). We created the metaverse when millions (now billions!) of devices became connected simultaneously, able to access information from anywhere, linking people across continents in mere seconds. The point was never that cyberspace needed to look like the internet in Johnny Mnemonic. Can you imagine having to use that shit just to make a phone call?
Hell, even Gibson said that his description of cyberspace was basically just supposed to sound really cool:
“All I knew about the word ‘cyberspace’ when I coined it, was that it seemed like an effective buzzword. It seemed evocative and essentially meaningless. It was suggestive of something, but had no real semantic meaning, even for me, as I saw it emerge on the page.”
As for The Street, Stephenson’s metaverse equivalent of the Las Vegas strip where anyone can take on an avatar to escape the crushing reality of their normal existence: That’s just fucking Second Life. We made a virtual world where you can do anything (including being advertised to by Toyota) in 2003.
Or maybe The Street is World of Warcraft, or VRChat. The internet as we know it is so much bigger than Stephen’s metaverse because it’s not just one shared environment. It’s vastly more flexible, a connecting medium for whatever broad or niche virtual worlds we want to create.
Why don’t the tech billionaires chasing after sci-fi metaverses get that these fictional virtual realities seem great on the page but would be hell to actually live in 12 hours a day? I truly do not know, but I think it may have something to do with their refusal to admit that they are the baddies.
More than NFTs or cryptocurrency or any of the other brain-melting nonsense tied up in the tech landscape of 2021, this is the part that truly makes me want to stick my entire fist in my mouth and bite down. The push to create the metaverse, at least from companies like Epic and Facebook, seems entirely built on a teenage boy’s reading of Snow Crash: zeroing in on the awesome vision of future technology while totally missing the book’s satirical skewering of capitalism.
In a September 2021 Washington Post interview, Tim Sweeney imagined the future of advertising. “A carmaker who wants to make a presence in the metaverse isn’t going to run ads,” he said. “They’re going to drop their car into the world in real time and you’ll be able to drive it around. And they’re going to work with lots of content creators with different experiences to ensure their car is playable here and there, and that it’s receiving the attention it deserves.”
But how is a virtual car tempting you to drive it in the metaverse—aided by an army of “content creators”—any better than watching a YouTube pre-roll ad? Extrapolate this out, and the metaverse will be a place where advertisement and authenticity are even harder to tell apart. It’s a commercial dream, not a creative one.
If Facebook—sorry, Meta—is one of the key drivers of the metaverse, then of course it will have some new spin on the ad-laden news feed. It’ll just be a natural extension of the gig economy, some poor soul being paid .00000000001 bitcoin an hour to virtually dress up like a carnival barker and shout about the latest horrible news out of Syria on some virtual street corner. And if Epic somehow created Sweeney’s utopian metaverse, it would still be built to promote Epic’s own interests and profit above all else. There’s no way for any massive tech company to build the metaverse without becoming the villains.
The metaverse is bullshit because its promised cross-compatibility doesn’t actually work
Perhaps the most cited claim about the metaverse as it pertains to gaming is that it’s the key to uniting our digital lives into an ur-account. The magic of the blockchain will then let us, say, “own” and access the same weapon across Diablo and New World, or sell the ring we spent a month grinding to get for real money (and by real money I mean cryptocurrency that constantly fluctuates in theoretical value). This hyped up interoperability ignores about a thousand problems with how games are made.
many difficulties of making even simple items carry between games. “We should not underestimate the magnitude of the task of figuring out what value a cooked pie from Breath of the Wild has in Halo—or mapping every game to every other game,” he says.
“There are no standards right now for ‘what things can do’ in a virtual world, and we shouldn’t want them. The act of setting the standard is also setting the limit, which would curb creativity enormously. There’s far too much possibility to be explored still.”
Koster does go on to talk about how it can work, but technical possibility still runs headfirst into design challenges, even with something as simple as, say, an apple. For example: “If you can carry food to a new world and eating restores health, that might really unbalance a game where you aren’t supposed to be able to heal at all.” Or: “A survival game might want actual nutritional values rather than a single ‘food’ value.”
Does every metaverse-compatible game just become a mushy Fortnite glob of everything mixed together? During Facebook’s metaverse presentation, John Carmack called metaverse development as it exists today “a honeypot trap for architecture astronauts,” aka “programmers or designers who want to only look at things from the very highest levels.”
The people currently hyping this technology seem to have little or no experience even making “normal” games that don’t grapple with these problems, as if citing the right buzzwords can make an idea reality. Take Decentraland, a Second Life for crypto fans that was barren when we explored it last year. It apparently has enough life in it to hold an in-game festival with Deadmau5 and Paris Hilton DJing just this month, which this metaverse-focused blog put it, the festival “really showcased what amazing feats can be achieved within Metaverse spaces.”
There are plenty of other blockchain-based games. The Six Dragons, for example, which looks like the fake version of Skyrim someone would mock up for an episode of Law & Order (a common aesthetic in these circles). These games typically market themselves on the plain novelty of being “decentralized” or player-owned in some vague way, but I’ve yet to see one pitch itself as a unique videogame. The metaverse can’t exist just for the sake of justifying itself.
The metaverse is bullshit because no one can actually explain why it’s better
Someone alive on the planet earth may be able to convince me that the metaverse truly is the future of human interaction. Don Draper could do it, and make me weep in the process. But so far it’s clear that in the same way William Gibson coined cyberspace as “evocative and essentially meaningless,” the Zuckerbergs and Sweeneys pitching the metaverse claim it’s the future without any convincing arguments for why it should exist.
What do we truly have to gain by trying to merge all entertainment into one giant Ivan Ooze of content?
Zuckerberg calls the metaverse “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” Has he used the internet? Actually? How much of it would you like to embody?
Zuckerberg talks a lot of shit about screens, but the great thing about screens is that they only require a portion of your attention, not complete sensory immersion.
In an hour-and-a-half keynote, the only real ideas Facebook presented for living in the metaverse were having a virtual version of your house (made up of crappy 3D rendered objects), attending virtual meetings (so you can’t even turn off your camera if you’re feeling Zoom fatigue) and having a virtual workspace instead of a physical one (never mind how clunky and awkward a virtual desktop is compared to a real one). So much development on the metaverse is focusing on recreating worse versions of things we already have in the real world. This metaverse pitch, seemingly, is just another avenue for selling people the same crap.
In an interview earlier this year, Sweeney said that the killer feature of the metaverse will be “you and your friends together having great social experiences” and “being in a 3D world, interacting together.” He uses Fortnite as an example. But what about the metaverse will make that experience better? We’ve been playing games and chatting for decades! What do we truly have to gain by trying to merge all entertainment into one giant Ivan Ooze of content?
Social media and telecom companies are evidence enough that consolidation is bad. Even when we get amazing AR glasses that let us play a more realistic Pokémon Go, I don’t need that Pokémon to carry over to my crappy metaverse mansion.
Tech companies are going to keep pushing the metaverse, and eventually we’ll all have to deal with it. But in the meantime, don’t feel like you’ve lost your mind when every pitch for it feels absolutely meaningless. The metaverse is most definitely bullshit.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Once fully implemented, you’ll never be able to leave the #metaverse.
Metaverse: Augmented reality pioneer warns it could be far worse than social media
https://bigthink.com/the-future/metaverse-augmented-reality-danger/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1651106687
If used improperly, the metaverse could be more divisive than social media and an insidious threat to society and even reality itself.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Social media manipulates our reality by filtering what we are allowed (or not allowed) to see. We live in dangerous times because too many people use social media to disseminate untruths and promote division. Augmented reality and the metaverse have the potential to amplify these dangers to incomprehensible levels
At its core, augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse are media technologies that aim to present content in the most natural form possible — by seamlessly integrating simulated sights, sounds, and even feelings into our perception of the real world around us. This means AR, more than any form of media to date, has the potential to alter our sense of reality, distorting how we interpret our direct daily experiences. In an augmented world, simply walking down the street will become a wild amalgamation of the physical and the virtual, merged so convincingly that the boundaries will disappear in our minds. Our surroundings will become filled with persons, places, objects, and activities that don’t actually exist, and yet they will seem deeply authentic to us.
A dystopian walk in the neighborhood
Let’s face it: We find ourselves in a society where countless layers of technology exist between each of us and our daily lives, moderating our access to news and information, mediating our relationships with friends and family, filtering our impressions of products and services, and even influencing our acceptance of basic facts. We now live mediated lives, all of us depending more and more on the corporations that provide and maintain the intervening layers. And when those layers are used to manipulate us, the industry does not view it as misuse but as “marketing.” And this is not just being used to peddle products but to disseminate untruths and promote social division. The fact is, we now live in dangerous times, and AR has the potential to amplify the dangers to levels we have never seen.
Imagine walking down the street in your hometown, casually glancing at people you pass on the sidewalk. It is much like today, except floating over the heads of every person you see are big glowing bubbles of information. Maybe the intention is innocent, allowing people to share their hobbies and interests with everyone around them. Now imagine that third parties can inject their own content, possibly as a paid filter layer that only certain people can see. And they use that layer to tag individuals with bold flashing words like “Alcoholic” or “Immigrant” or “Atheist” or “Racist” or even less charged words like “Democrat” or “Republican.” Those who are tagged may not even know that others can see them that way. The virtual overlays could easily be designed to amplify political division, ostracize certain groups, even drive hatred and mistrust.
Now imagine you work behind a retail counter. AR will change how you size up your customers. That is because personal data will float all around them, showing you their tastes and interests, their spending habits, the type of car they drive, the size of their house, even their gross annual income. It would have been unthinkable decades ago to imagine corporations having access to such information, but these days, we accept it as the price of being consumers in a digital world.
The metaverse could make reality disappear
Over the last decade, the abuse of media technologies has made us all vulnerable to distortions and misinformation, from fake news and deepfakes to botnets and troll farms. These dangers are insidious, but at least we can turn off our phones or step away from our screens and have authentic real-world experiences, face-to-face, that aren’t filtered through corporate databases or manipulated by intelligent algorithms. With the rise of AR, this last bastion of reliable reality could completely disappear. And when that happens, it will only exacerbate the social divisions that threaten us.
After all, the shared experience we call “civilized society” is quickly eroding, largely because we each live in our own data bubble, everyone being fed custom news and information (and even lies) tailored to their own personal beliefs. This reinforces our biases and entrenches our opinions. But today, we can at least enter a public space and have some level of shared experience in a common reality. With AR, that too will be lost. When you walk down a street in an augmented world, you will see a city filled with content that reinforces your personal views, deceiving you into believing that everyone thinks the way you do. When I walk down that same street, I could see vastly different content, promoting inverse views that make me believe opposite things about the very same citizens of the very same town.
You can’t ever leave the metaverse
And no, you won’t just take off your AR glasses or pop out your contacts to avoid these problems. Why not? Because faster than any of us can imagine, we will become thoroughly dependent on the virtual layers of information projected all around us. It will feel no more optional than internet access feels optional today. You won’t unplug your AR system because doing so will make important aspects of your surroundings inaccessible to you, putting you at a disadvantage socially, economically, and intellectually. The fact is, the technologies we adopt in the name of convenience rarely remain optional — not when they are integrated into our lives as broadly as AR will be.
Don’t get me wrong. AR has the power to enrich our lives in wonderful ways. I am confident that AR will enable surgeons to perform faster and better. Construction workers, engineers, scientists — everybody, young and old, will benefit. I am also confident that AR will revolutionize entertainment and education, unleashing experiences that are not just engaging and informative but thrilling and inspiring.
But AR also will make us even more dependent on the insidious layers of technology that mediate our lives and the powerbrokers that control those layers. This will leave us increasingly susceptible to manipulations and distortions by those who can afford to pull the strings. If we are not careful now, AR could easily be used to fracture society, pushing us from our own information bubbles into our own custom realities, further entrenching our views and cementing our divisions, even when we are standing face-to-face with others in what feels like the public sphere.
Being an optimist, I still believe AR can be a force for good, making the world a magical place and expanding what it means to be human. But to protect against the potential dangers, we need to proceed carefully and thoughtfully, anticipating the problems that could corrupt what should be an uplifting technology. If we have learned anything from the unexpected evils of social media, it is that good intentions are not enough to prevent systems from being deployed with serious structural problems. And once those structural problems are in place, it is extremely difficult to undo the damage. This means the proponents of AR need to get things right the first time.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yuga Labs raises ~$320M by selling 55K virtual land plots in its Otherside metaverse, causing Ethereum blockchain ripple effects and skyrocketing gas fees — Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collection of NFTs, launched a sale Saturday of virtual land related …
Bored Ape Metaverse Frenzy Raises Millions, Crashes Ethereum
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-01/bored-ape-metaverse-frenzy-raises-millions-disrupts-ethereum
Users scramble for NFT deeds to 55,000 plots of virtual land
Prices soar in secondary market, Ethereum gas fees jump
Yuga Labs, the creator of the popular Bored Apes Yacht Club collection of NFTs, launched a sale Saturday of virtual land related to its highly anticipated metaverse project, raising about $320 million worth of cryptocurrency in the largest offering of its kind. Demand was so strong that activity related to the event caused ripple effects across the entire Ethereum blockchain, disrupting activity and sending transaction fees soaring.
Holders of the ApeCoin token who verified their identities jockeyed to buy deeds for 55,000 parcels of virtual land in Otherside, the project’s planned metaverse game and the latest extension of the Bored Ape franchise. Anticipation that interest would be strong for the plots — Ethereum-based NFTs called Otherdeeds — had pushed up the price of ApeCoin last week ahead of the sale.
Each plot cost a buyer around $5,800 based on ApeCoin’s price of $19 as of Saturday, plus transaction costs, or “gas fees,” in Ether, which skyrocketed after the sale went live at 9 p.m. New York time as the land grab attracted heavy demand. Transaction costs just to mint Otherdeed NFTs after the launch reached $123 million, with each Otherdeed requiring about $6,000, or 2 Ether, in transaction fees to mint, according to data from Etherscan — or more than the price of the deed itself.
“Yuga Labs’ virtual land sale has triggered one of the highest spikes in transaction fees on Ethereum,” said Jason Wu, founder of decentralized lending protocol DeFiner. “I have seen other NFT launches causing high gas fees, but this is definitely one of the highest.”
Minting a token or making a transaction on Ethereum requires token creators or traders to pay a fee to those that order transactions on the network. Transaction fees go higher when the network becomes congested
The ApeCoins raised in the sale will be locked up — meaning that they can’t be sold, thus reducing coins in circulation — for one year, according to Otherside’s Twitter account. A Yuga Labs spokesperson declined on Friday to say whom the raised money would go to, or whether large holders of ApeCoin, including Andreessen Horowitz, Animoca Brands and others planned to participate in the land sale.
Besides the 55,000 Otherdeeds sold Saturday, another 45,000 were allocated to holders of Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape NFTs, as well as Yuga Labs and other project developers, with another 100,000 of the tokens expected to be awarded later to certain Otherdeed holders, according to the Otherside website.
ApeCoin is striving to become widely used in a variety of so-called web3 apps, using digital coins and blockchains. The idea is for owners to be able to access a variety of events, services, merchandise and games. It’s also the governance token of ApeCoin DAO, whose board includes Reddit Co-founder Alexis Ohanian, FTX’s Amy Wu and Animoca’s Siu. Ahead of the Otherdeed sale Saturday evening, OpenSea said it would accept ApeCoin.
Venture capital investors that helped with ApeCoin’s March launch, including Andreessen Horowitz and Animoca, were some of the biggest recipients of ApeCoin, which was created as an “airdrop,” in which certain groups of crypto holders automatically received 1 billion tokens as a reward. They and other launch partners received 14%, or 140 million tokens. ApeCoin’s price has nearly tripled since the coin’s release, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
The frenzy around the land is in sharp contrast to much of the crypto market, which has been trading sideways in recent months, with bellwether Bitcoin down about 18% since the beginning of the year. Monthly sales volume on OpenSea, the world’s biggest NFT marketplace, were higher in April than in March, but still down from an all-time-high in January, according to data tracker Dune.
While many apps have sold virtual land for cryptocurrency before, most have seen only a small number of users and transactions. On Decentraland, for example, the number of transactions is down 35% in the last 30 days, according to data tracker DappRadar.
Otherside’s release date hasn’t been disclosed yet, according to the Yuga Labs spokesperson.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ultrasonic array provides lip stimulation within VR
https://blog.arduino.cc/2022/05/02/ultrasonic-array-provides-lip-stimulation-within-vr/
Virtual reality technology is advancing quickly and today’s headsets provide a very immersive visual and auditory experience. But they neglect the other senses. Haptic feedback, via vibration motors in controllers, is the only common technique for imparting a sense of touch. While haptic vests and other experimental devices exist, consumers continue to show that they have little interest in wearing bulky equipment. To enhance feedback in VR, a team from Carnegie Mellon’s Future Interfaces Group built an ultrasonic array that stimulates the user’s mouth.
The mouth may seem like an odd choice, but it is more sensitive to touch than anywhere else aside from hands. It is also close to the eyes, which users are already accustomed to covering with VR goggles.
The team controlled the ultrasonic transducer array through an Arduino Mega 2560 board. It connects via USB to a laptop running Unity to render the virtual reality world. When something happens within that virtual world, such as the user taking a sip of coffee, Unity tells the Arduino to activate the relevant transducers. It can simulate a range of different sensations by controlling both the frequency of transducers and the pattern in which they activate. The prototype transducer array fits onto the bottom of a standard VR headset and doesn’t cover the user’s mouth, which results in a comfortable experience that consumers might accept.
Tomi Engdahl says:
SCIENTISTS INVENT WEIRD DEVICE TO SIMULATE KISSING IN VR
https://futurism.com/the-byte/invent-vr-device-kissing-simulation-haptics
Pucker up baby, because researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, aka the Future Interfaces Group or FIG, figured out how to make users feel sensations on their lips, teeth and tongue in virtual reality.
They released video footage of their research as well as a text report this week
Tomi Engdahl says:
VR Researchers Have Basically Figured Out How to Simulate the Feel of Kisses
https://gizmodo.com/vr-researches-simulate-kisses-with-ultrasonic-transduce-1848849489
A modified VR headset can create the sensation of touch, either on a user’s lips or even inside their mouths.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The dystopia is here.
COMPANY INSTALLS VR-ENABLED MASTURBATION POD FOR EMPLOYEES
https://futurism.com/the-byte/company-vr-masturbation-pod?utm_campaign=trueanthem_AI&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_term=futurism
SOUNDS LIKE A… STICKY SITUATION
Working Hard
A sex startup says it’s created a VR-enabled masturbation pod for companies that want to make their employees very uncomfortable, very quickly.
Stripchat, a porn site, announced in a blog post that it’s developed something it’s dubbed a “Wank Pod” to give company employees a place to engage in a little office onanism. The company even installed one in their own workplace, and plans a commercial roll out in the future.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Virtuaalimaailmassa voi pian käyttää suuta – mahdollistaa etäsuutelun
Metaversumissa voimme pian tuntea kosketuksen kasvoillamme
https://www.iltalehti.fi/digiuutiset/a/06b5d4a6-31f5-4a25-af38-ad4a7606258b
Oikean ja virtuaalimaailman sekoittava metaversumi on tulossa vauhdilla. Yksi sen parissa puuhaavista jättiyrityksistä on Meta, joka on maalaillut kuvia maailmoista, joissa voi tehdä käytännössä mitä tahansa.
Metaversumin ideana on tehdä kokemuksesta mahdollisimman aito verrattuna oikeaan maailmaan. Nyt Carnegie Mellon -yliopiston tutkijat ovat kehittäneet VR-laseihin lisäosan, joka seuraa suun liikkeitä ja saa tuntemaan ”kosketuksen”. Asiasta kertoi Digital Trends.
VR-lasien alle on sijoitettu ultraääniantureita, jotka tuottavat ääniaaltoja, joita ihmiskorva ei kuule. Nämä ääniaallot voi kuitenkin tuntea iholla paineen tunteena. Tutkijoiden mukaan suu valittiin ensimmäiseksi testialueeksi sen herkkyyden vuoksi.
Mouth Haptics in VR using a Headset Ultrasound Phased Array
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q6dZQfV1x8&t=1s
Today’s consumer virtual reality (VR) systems offer limited haptic feedback via vibration motors in handheld controllers. Rendering haptics to other parts of the body is an open challenge, especially in a practical and consumer-friendly manner. The mouth is of particular interest, as it is a close second in tactile sensitivity to the fingertips, offering a unique opportunity to add fine-grained haptic effects. In this research, we developed a thin, compact, beamforming array of ultrasonic transducers, which can render haptic effects onto the mouth. Importantly, all components are integrated into the headset, meaning the user does not need to wear an additional accessory, or place any external infrastructure in their room. We explored several effects, including point impulses, swipes, and persistent vibrations. Our haptic sensations can be felt on the lips, teeth and tongue, which can be incorporated into new and interesting VR experiences.
Vivian Shen, Craig Shultz, and Chris Harrison. 2022. Mouth Haptics in VR using a Headset Ultrasound Phased Array. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 14 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501960
Researchers develop VR headset with mouth haptics
https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/vr-headset-with-mouth-haptics/
Whether we like it or not, the metaverse is coming — and companies are trying to make it as realistic as possible. To that end, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed haptics that mimic sensations around the mouth.
The Future Interfaces Group at CMU created a haptic device that attaches to a VR headset. This device contains a grid of ultrasonic transducers that produce frequencies too high for humans to hear. However, if those frequencies are focused enough, they can create pressure sensations on the skin.
Mouth Haptics in VR using a Headset Ultrasound Phased Array
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491102.3501960
Tomi Engdahl says:
Over the Lips, Through the Gums, Look Out Gamers, Here It Comes — Or So It Seems
Ultrasound System Targets Mouth To Create Virtual Reality Haptic Effects
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2022/mouth-haptics-chi
Lips are famously sensual but, together with the gums and tongue, they are also surprisingly sensitive, second only to the fingertips in nerve density. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have exploited this latter characteristic to devise a practical new way for people to receive tactile feedback in virtual worlds.
Their system uses airborne ultrasound waves to create sensations on the lips, teeth and tongue
Tomi Engdahl says:
Companies with this meta employees
https://www.qatarairways.com/html/redirect/qverse/#/OnBoarding
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/05/12/can-you-help-nasa-build-a-mars-sim-in-vr/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Scott Stein / CNET:
Mark Zuckerberg demos mixed reality on Meta’s Project Cambria headset; Meta will enable MR app development for Quest 2 and Cambria via its Presence Platform
Mark Zuckerberg Just Showed How Meta’s Next Mixed Reality VR Headset Will Work
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/mark-zuckerberg-just-showed-how-metas-next-mixed-reality-vr-headset-will-work/
A demo of Meta Cambria demonstrates how it blends AR and VR, while Quest 2 headsets could be used to develop apps in the meantime.
The next Meta VR headset after Quest 2 will be something called, for now, Project Cambria. It’s a mixed reality-focused headset arriving sometime in 2022, and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg just demonstrated for the first time how it’ll work.
Unlike AR headsets like the HoloLens 2 and the Magic Leap 2, which have transparent lenses and layer semitransparent holographic images on top, Meta Cambria is a VR headset that uses more advanced cameras to pass color video through and blend VR into the feed. The existing Quest 2 can do this to some extent, but with grainy black-and-white video. Meta Cambria will provide higher-res color video to make the experience more realistic and useful.
The technology has existed before, but in high-end professional headsets. I tried the Varjo XR-3, a lidar-equipped VR device that also blended video feeds with VR to achieve surprisingly convincing AR effects.
Meta seems to be angling for the Cambria headset to be used for professional and work purposes. Zuckerberg also hints at its use for fitness (putting trainers in your room) and for extending virtual monitors for work. In a conversation with CNET last year, Zuckerberg told us that this pro-focused headset would also help build out its vision of a work metaverse. Meanwhile, Meta will be enabling development of mixed reality apps through what it calls its Presence Platform, which will allow experiences to be cross-developed for Quest 2 and the next-gen headset. Quest 2 can do mixed reality, although in lower-quality form, with the idea that these apps will eventually work on Cambria in higher quality when it releases.
Zuckerberg also announced that a demo mixed-reality app, called The World Beyond, will be available soon for download on the Quest 2′s App Lab.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The “static Metaverse” lives and can be experienced again, and again, and shared! I just published a new article with free source code that explains how to create immersive 360 degree experiences in VR for your Oculus Meta Quest 2 in a browser. At this time it is no trivial effort, but it should become easier in the future.
https://michael-mcanally.medium.com/my-360-mind-place-web-app-for-caputuring-immersive-vr-moments-free-open-source-code-295e4f9fbdf0
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://sulava.com/metaverse/mita-metaverse-tuo-koulutukseen-ja-oppimiseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2022/05/15/hackaday-links-may-15-2022/
Another one from the “Why didn’t I think of that?” files — contactless haptic feedback using the mouth is now a thing. This comes from the Future Interfaces Group at Carnegie-Mellon and is intended to provide an alternative to what ends up being about the only practical haptic device for VR and AR applications — vibrations from off-balance motors. Instead, this uses an array of ultrasonic transducers positioned on a VR visor and directed at the user’s mouth. By properly driving the array, pressure waves can be directed at the lips, teeth, and tongue of the wearer, providing feedback for in-world events. The mock game demonstrated in the video below is a little creepy — not sure how many people enjoyed the feeling of cobwebs brushing against the face or the splatter of spider guts in the mouth. Still, it’s a pretty cool idea, and we’d like to see how far it can go.
https://www.figlab.com/research/2022/mouth-haptics
Tomi Engdahl says:
Maailma muuttuu kohti metaversumia
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2022/05/18/maailma-muuttuu-kohti-metaversumia/
Viihteellä tulee olemaan olennainen rooli tulevan metaversumin hyödyntämisessä, arvioidaan kännykkävalmistaja Samsung Nordicin teettämässä kyselyssä. Suomalaisista vastaajista peräti 40 prosenttia määritti viihteen tulevan metaversumin tärkeimmäksi osa-alueeksi. Prosentti vastaajista haluaisi siirtyä kokonaan metaversiumiin.
Metaversumi eli virtuaalisten ja digitaalisten 3D-maailmojen tila on ollut viime kuukaudet teknologiamaailman uusista termeistä, jota toistelevat kilpaa niin alan suuryritykset, muotitalot kuin somejättiläisetkin. Siksi myös kännykkävalmistaja Samsung Nordicin halusi selvittää alueen mielipiteitä kyselytutkimuksellaan.
Ainakin metaversiumin idea on selvinnyt Samsungin uuden Digitaalinen lähikontakti -raportin mukaan juuri nuoremmille, sillä’18–29 -vuotiaista peräti 56 prosenttia tietää mistä on kyse ja vain 13 prosenttia ikäluokasta ei ole lainkaan kiinnostunut alueen hyödyntämisestä.
’’Nuoremmat sukupolvet ovat kasvaneet aikana, jolloin Internetin käyttö ja esimerkiksi online-pelaaminen ovat kasvaneet erittäin voimakkaasti. Siksi askel digitaalisesta maailmasta toiseen ei myöskään ole heille niin suuri, mikä näkyy selvästi tuloksissa’’, sanookin Samsungin Suomen mobiililiiketoiminnan johtaja Mika Engblom.
Hänen mukaansa metaversumin käyttö voidaan nähdä jatkona nykypäivän internetin käytölle, joka on mobiililaitteiden myötä myös jatkuvasti saavutettavissa. Siten myös metaversumin suosio tulee kasvamaan tulevien sukupolvenvaihdosten myötä Z-sukupolven eläessä ja hengittäessä jo vahvasti mobiililaitteiden kautta eri teknologioita, palveluita ja elämyksiä,
Vastauksissa korostuu viihteen, kuten konserteissa käymisen ja pelaamisen ohella johonkin aiheeseen tai harrastukseen syventyminen sekä nykyisten ja uusien kavereiden kanssa ajan viettäminen.
Myös metaversumin tulevaisuuteen on usko kovina nuorten keskuudessa. 18–29 -vuotiaista kyselyyn vastanneista suomalaisista 19 prosenttia näkee metaversumin osana jokapäiväistä elämää 15 vuoden kuluttua ja peräti 40 prosenttia arvelee, että siellä tullaan vierailemaan vähintään silloin tällöin.
Kiintoisan näkökulman toi vastaukset, jonka mukaan moin prosentti ilmoitti haluavansa elää elämänsä metaversumissa – Suomen väkilukuun suhteutettuna se tarkoittaisi yli 50 000 suomalaista.
’’Ihmiset viettävät jo nyt ison osan päivästään digitaalisten laitteiden parissa ja tutkimuksessamme nähdään viitteitä siitä, että metaversumi on kaappaamassa kasvavan osan tuosta ajasta’’, Samsungin Engblom arvioi tulevaa kehitystä.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Steering the Metaverse via Wearables with Optical Finger Navigation Technology
https://www.eetimes.com/steering-the-metaverse-via-wearables-with-optical-finger-navigation-technology/?utm_source=www.edn.com&utm_medium=partnered-content
The immersion of users residing in the metaverse requires the combination of physical hardware and software contents of AR/VR to produce a feeling of real engagement with the simulated world. Through years of experience-vision study in PixArt, the Optical Finger Navigation (OFN) is evolving into wearables technology to enable users to interact well via the AR/VR devices in the virtual world.
The OFN technology had been widely used as the optical trackpad in mobile phones before the era of touch-screen smartphones. The ease of use of the OFN is making users quickly adapt to its friendly interaction on a gadget for the HMI control. Let’s see how it works!
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple executives previewed the upcoming mixed reality headset to the company’s board last week; Apple ramped up reality OS development in recent weeks — Apple Inc. executives previewed its upcoming mixed-reality headset to the company’s board last week, indicating that development …
Apple Shows AR/VR Headset to Board in Sign of Progress on Key Project
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-19/apple-shows-headset-to-board-in-sign-it-s-reached-advanced-stage
AR/VR device will be its first major new product since watch
The headset combines virtual and augmented reality features
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s Headset Said to Feature 14 Cameras Enabling Lifelike Avatars, Jony Ive Has Remained Involved With Design
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/20/apples-headset-said-to-feature-14-cameras-enabling-lifelike-avatars-jony-ive-has-remained-involved-with-design/?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Earlier this week, The Information’s Wayne Ma outlined struggles that Apple has faced during the development of its long-rumored AR/VR headset. Now, in a follow-up report, he has shared several additional details about the wearable device.
For starters, one of the headset’s marquee features is said to be lifelike avatars with accurate facial expressions captured by 14 cameras:
Other challenges, such as incorporating 14 cameras on the headset, have caused headaches for hardware and algorithm engineers. The cameras include those that will track the user’s face to ensure virtual avatars accurately represent their expressions and mouth movements, a marquee feature.
The report adds that Apple’s former design chief Jony Ive has remained involved with the headset project as an external consultant to the company
Apple’s Struggles With Long-Rumored AR/VR Headset Detailed in New Report
https://www.macrumors.com/2022/05/17/apple-ar-vr-headset-technical-challenges/
The Inside Story of Why Apple Bet Big on a Mixed-Reality Headset
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-inside-story-of-why-apple-bet-big-on-a-mixed-reality-headset?irclickid=UCMRQyQhcxyIU51VVZTY1warUkD0fbUBgX-R3Y0&irgwc=1&utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=cpa&utm_campaign=10078-Skimbit+Ltd.&utm_term=macrumors.com
For years, Apple has toiled in secret on an augmented and virtual reality headset that could one day lead it to a post-iPhone future. In the first of two stories, we chronicle how the project struggled to get off the ground and has been beset by delays caused by technical and leadership challenges.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FingerX is a gadget that lets people feel the shapes of VR objects physically
https://blog.arduino.cc/2022/05/18/fingerx-lets-people-feel-shapes-of-vr-objects-physically/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lightspeed’s Mercedes Bent on why the metaverse isn’t overhyped
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/21/lightspeed-venture-partners-investor-mercedes-bent-metaverse-hype/?tpcc=tcplusfacebook
the crypto space — the metaverse. Mercedes Bent, an investor at Lightspeed Venture Partners who focuses on consumer investments in crypto, joined us to unpack this loaded term and explain why she sees its potential.
“It’s become like a punching bag,” Bent told TechCrunch. “If you think about the potential of it, and why maybe a geek like me gets excited about it, it’s because there are things you can do [in the metaverse] that you could not do in the real world.”
The prospect of attending an event with tens of thousands of other attendees across the world in the metaverse, for example, excites Bent. But even more than entertainment, Bent is enthusiastic about the potential for the metaverse to have an impact through education. She shared the hypothetical example of public school students being able to learn from the best instructors in the world in a metaverse similar to the movie Ready Player One — though without the dystopian elements, she qualified.
But what will the metaverse actually look like? When we asked Bent, who once worked for virtual reality technology company Upload, she said she used to think the metaverse had to be tied to VR technology, specifically the head-mounted display screen.
She’s since realized that what the metaverse has to offer has less to do with how users access it physically and more to do with the sense of community it can foster.
“I think what this era — the 2021 and 2022 era of the metaverse terminology — has shown is that it’s not about the headset, it’s not about what physical apparatus you use, it’s about the sense of [a] collective being together, and presence,” she added.
While VR tech itself has been around for decades, Bent posits that the metaverse gained traction as a concept last year because it offered one thing classic VR games like Second Life did not — the ability to transfer in-game currency to fiat currency. Cryptocurrency, she believes, made that switch possible.
“There was obviously in-game currency and there were obviously virtual goods you could buy before, but the ability to be able to transfer that to fiat and then go use it in the real world to pay your rent bill is just something entirely different that we didn’t have in such a mass quantity before,” Bent said.
That technological development coupled with the onset of the pandemic, which gave people the opportunity to spend more time online, gave the metaverse new life, she continued.
Skeptics think the metaverse gets a lot of hype and isn’t backed by substantial technology or user adoption. Bent said that in her experience, skepticism is to be expected for any early-stage consumer products.
“There are not very many companies [in web3] that I would say have scaled to what I would call a mass audience yet. We have Metamask, which is pretty far along, but I think all of these companies are up for grabs in terms of [whether] somebody else could come along to replace them,” Bent said. “I think we’re going to see the next WhatsApp, AOL, and Google founded in short order.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
Q&A with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney on creating the metaverse, Unreal Engine’s role, Apple’s and Google’s app store monopolies, Meta’s metaverse investment, and more
Tim Sweeney: Epic will fight Apple and Google to keep the metaverse open
https://www.ft.com/content/e13ce526-0e33-4ca2-9699-184d0138eada
‘Fortnite’ game creator says tech giants must not be allowed to use monopoly power to dominate new platforms, as they do with smartphone apps
Online game Fortnite is arguably the closest thing to the metaverse that exists today. Some 70mn gamers immerse themselves in its digital world each month to engage in ‘Battle Royale’ fights.
But virtual concerts, talk shows, and the ability simply to hang out with friends have transformed Fortnite into something beyond a game: a preview of what digital platforms could look like beyond the smartphone, as virtual world and real life merge.
Fortnite’s parent company, Epic, increasingly sees the game as an open ecosystem where other developers can distribute their content.
But in a candid interview with the FT’s San Francisco correspondent Patrick McGee, Epic chief executive Tim Sweeney expressed his concerns that tech giants Apple and Google could “unfairly” extend their “stranglehold” on smartphone platforms to “dominate all physical commerce taking place in virtual and augmented reality.”
Patrick McGee: How convinced are you that the metaverse — this immersive virtual world — really is the next digital platform beyond the smartphone?
Tim Sweeney: It’s happening already. If you look at Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft and other real-time 3D social entertainment experiences, you can readily identify at least 600mn monthly active users in a medium that’s growing at a significant rate every year. So, there’s no question that this phenomenon is happening. The only question is: when does it reach billions?
PM: When I think of the metaverse, it’s much broader than gaming. It’s doing work in the metaverse, and meeting your colleagues in there. What are the challenges of bringing that vision into existence?
TS: I’m not sure if that vision actually works, because it’s not very fun to sit around in 3D and just talk to people. It gets really awkward really fast. A bunch of guys can’t get together and just sit in a room for hours and have a conversation, right? You have to be shooting darts or playing billiards or shooting hoops or doing something together to break up the dull moments and keep you entertained for a long period of time. And that’s what this medium does. I think if you strip the entertainment aspect from it, you end up with a super creepy version of America Online chat rooms!
PM: You’re not just doing Fortnite, of course. You’re doing quite a bit with the [3D graphics software] Unreal Engine. Can you give an overview of how important is that to the future of metaverse?
TS: The Unreal Engine powers any real-time 3D needs any customer has. It’s used for building video games. It’s used for live, virtual production on film and television sets. It’s used by architects to prototype buildings. It is used by engineers in product design and by automotive companies.
We see this as the on-ramp for all the companies to bring their physical products into the digital world.
Nowadays, everybody is designing digital assets first. The fashion industry is designing digital clothing and visualising it before they decide they’re actually going to make it. So, the entire world’s creation pipeline is digital and then it’s brought to the physical world.
PM: Is there some future in which the Unreal Engine is a major revenue driver on a par with Fortnite?
TS: Epic Games plans for the Unreal Engine to be a massive revenue driver for our customers and not so much for us. We aim to give everybody the 3D real-time content creation tools they need to bring content to the metaverse and our aim is . . . to offer a premier destination for them to bring their content to.
PM: A perfect segue into a main thrust of our discussion: you’ve railed against Apple and Google — in fact, you’ve sued them as monopolies [that are] stifling innovation and hurting competition. Could you explain your frustration?
TS: The problem here is a classic monopoly tie. You start with hardware.
They prevent all other app stores from competing with them on hardware that’s owned by a billion end users. That’s the first tie and that completely obstructs all competition
And then the next tie is that Apple forces all apps in their app store to use their payment processing service for digital goods. PayPal charges 3 per cent; Mastercard and Visa charge 2 per cent; Apple charges 30 per cent.
As a business, they won fairly in one market: hardware. And they use that position to gain an unfair advantage over competitors and other markets.
Epic’s view is that every company participating in the tech industry should have to compete, and should actually compete fairly, in every market in which they do business.
TS: I’m terribly afraid the current monopolies will use their power to become the next monopolies on new generations of platforms — and continue to use that power to exclude all competition.
Epic [is] fighting Apple and Google currently over their smartphone practices. If these practices continue on smartphone, they’re not only going to dominate digital commerce and digital goods on smartphones, they’re ultimately going to dominate the metaverse and they’re going to dominate all physical commerce taking place in virtual and augmented reality.
PM: So Apple and Google are ideological enemies of Epic. Microsoft is more of an ally. Where does Meta fit on this spectrum?
TS: There are two sides to Meta. There’s the metaverse side, where they’ve articulated a really interesting vision. It’s in many ways broader than Epic’s. We see this as a central entertainment medium, and they see this as a medium that will connect everybody across distances for any purpose including work, and just hanging out chatting. And they talk a lot about open platform principles: they’re not building a Meta walled garden, they’re trying to contribute to standards and practices that lead towards an open metaverse. And I really like that vision that they’ve articulated.
On the other hand, there’s all their actual existing business practices and all their actual existing businesses, where they run ads associated with your content feed and don’t revenue share that with the creators of the content that drove the engagement.
The revenue share is very little — around 5 per cent of its total revenue — with the creators.
PM: Do you have any reason to think Meta’s fee structure, or their rules, are going to be less onerous and more pro developer?
TS: My understanding is that, on Oculus [Meta’s virtual reality technology] platforms currently, Oculus runs a store and they charge the fee of 30 per cent but they don’t force all developers to use their store and they don’t block competing stores, so it’s not analogous to the Apple situation. If it changed I would complain about that, but we’ll have to see.
I think there is another major factor that’s in play. If you look at the history of iPhone and Android, and the first social networks, everybody in the outside world was duped, all the major brands were duped, into handing their customer relationships over to these companies — based on the promise that they’d be able to have direct relationships with their customers. Then, over time, Apple and Google and Facebook built ever higher walls blocking them from directly reaching their customers.
Apple did look at that with game developers and app developers — saying: “Go and build apps for our platform” and, then, 10 years later, we find they are making by far the majority of the profit from these apps. They’re making much more profit from the apps than the developers are making themselves.
So you take 30 per cent off the top, which has a 70 per cent profit margin for Apple. And developers bear all of the costs, including now paying Apple to give them the first search result for their own brand name!
But the good news is all these brands and software developers and ecosystem participants are not going to be duped again.
We know this because we were talking to all these companies and they’re all very consistent and adamant about remaining first-class citizens in the metaverse and not being intermediated by any company they partner with.
PM: Isn’t it quite possible that there end up being numerous versions of the metaverse rather than the open collaborative approach that you see? When Apple comes out with the ‘iMetaverse’ or whatever it’s going to call it, what’s stopping that from being completely separate . . . distinct from Meta’s metaverse and distinct from Google’s metaverse?
TS: What we have now are a bunch of metaverse precursors that are disconnected from each other, even though many of them are increasingly self-contained economies.
PM: Like Roblox, for instance?
TS: Yes, Roblox and now Fortnite . . . Then, there are central entertainment experiences that haven’t gone that way yet . . . these are still separate. The situation we’re in now feels like the transition to the internet in the mid-1990s.
In the metaverse evolution, there’s a lesson that we can all learn from that. We need to expand and connect all our systems together. We need to connect our economies. We need to move our proprietary technology to open standards, file formats and networking protocols so that all our systems can interoperate and we can all be participants in the metaverse.
That’s going to be a process that will happen over the next decade. Right now, we have separate executable programs on your computer to run Fortnite and Roblox and other things. In the future, I think you’ll see something more like a metaverse browser that points to the right standard and you can visit any metaverse experience. You’ll have metaverse servers that different companies operate.
You’ll have first-party content and third-party content.
I think the major brands will just opt out of companies that aren’t an open road map.
PM: What role do regulators and policy writers play?
TS: I think the most essential thing right now is tearing down the blockades that enable Apple and Google to simply veto the metaverse.
I think if that happens, then we’ll end up in a very normal period of incremental build . . . in which monopolies don’t get dictate the terms to anybody but everybody is competing with each other. And instead of having one or two dominant companies control everything you can have a really rich ecosystem. It exists in almost all industries except for the tech industry right now.
PM Do you imagine 20 or 30 years from now people are in autonomous cars happily commuting an hour and half somewhere because they [can go into] the metaverse shooting aliens, or whatever?
TS I don’t foresee in the next decade or two that people’s lives become immersed in this kind of medium. I think this is something you do, definitely for recreation, perhaps for work in the future, too. But I think it’s a real stretch to go as far as a lot of the science fiction literature went in these regards.
If you look at how smartphones affected people’s lives, we’re in much closer contact with all of our friends and we have much better connectivity everywhere we go. But our lives aren’t centred around smartphones. And I don’t think their lives will be centred around the metaverse in the future.
PM: That seems questionable: “Our lives aren’t centred around smartphones”!
TS What you’re doing is you’re watching videos you would previously watch on your TV, so you’re using one device instead of another. But the smartphone hasn’t fundamentally transformed the fact that you’re watching a TV show. You’re watching it on demand and you’re watching it wherever you are.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Agne Cimermanaite / Metaverse Post:
Jadu, which is developing an AR game built around virtual objects owned by players in a metaverse, raises $36M led by Bain Capital Crypto
Jadu raised $36M to build a Web3 AR gaming platform
https://mpost.io/jadu-raised-36m-to-build-a-web3-ar-gaming-platform/
Jadu Mirrorverse — an AR game built around virtual objects owned by the players — just raised $36M to help create the Web3 “definitive AR & gaming platform,” where Metaverse avatars and virtual identities will be central to the game. Now, the startup has over $45 million to accelerate development.
Bain Capital Crypto led the fundraising round. Other investors included LG Tech Ventures, The Venture Reality Fund, Permit Ventures, and Cozomo De’Medici. Lydia Hylton from Bain Capital Crypto said they “were blown away by the ingenuity of the Jadu team, the immersive AR gameplay, rich narrative around the Mirrorverse and devoted community.”
The gaming company believes that “augmented reality is a new medium of expression that requires radical new tools of capturing and distributing value to reach sustained mainstream success.”
This summer, Jadu will release avatars developed for mobile AR. The Jadu App should also appear in the TestFlight beta and allow players to connect their Ethereum wallets to the app, choose a favorite NFT avatar, and access AR gameplay.
Jadu plans to support 3D NFT avatars from Deadfellaz, CyberKongz, FLUFs, VOIDs, ChibiApes, Meebits, and other collections.
Jadu has two NFT collections on OpenSea (Jetpack and Hoverboard). The NFT items will be playable in the AR video game. The floor price of a Jetpack NFT (1,111 NFTs in total) is 4.3 ETH, with over 3,700 ETH in traded volume.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It’s Easy To Mod Your Oculus VR Headset With Prescription Lenses
https://hackaday.com/2022/05/26/its-easy-to-mod-your-oculus-vr-headset-with-prescription-lenses/
The Oculus brand VR headset and other similar devices allow you to view 3D worlds, but they can be blurry and unsatisfying if you’re a glasses wearer. Alternatively, you might be able to see fine, but find your glasses get in the way of a comfortable experience. Either way, you might want to integrate prescription lenses into your headset, and thankfully, there’s a straightforward way to do so thanks to [tanvach].
The way to do so is by using these 3D-printed lens adaptors. They take standard single vision lenses as designed for the Zenni #550021 round glasses frames, and let them fit nicely inside a Oculus Quest, Quest 2, or Rift S headset. [tanvach] supplies instructions on how to order the lenses for your own prescription, and notes that the key is to get the antireflective coating to reduce glare. And, if you don’t want to print your own adapters, you can source some pre-printed instead!
Oculus prescription lens adaptor (Quest 2, Quest and Rift S)
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3642004
Tomi Engdahl says:
David Heaney / UploadVR:
Kuo: Sony will mass produce ~1.5M units of its PSVR 2 headset in H2 2022 for a possible Q1 2023 launch, depending on the development schedule of flagship games
Kuo: PlayStation VR2 Mass Production To Start H2 2022
https://uploadvr.com/kuo-psvr-mass-production-h2-2022/
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Wireless AR Smart Viewer reference design from Qualcomm enables OEMs and ODMs to build untethered augmented reality (AR) glasses.
http://arw.li/6181zpV47
#EDN #Qualcomm #OEM #ODM #AR #augmentedreality
Tomi Engdahl says:
Metaverse app BUD raises another $37M, plans to launch NFTs
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/22/metaverse-social-bud-funding-37-million/
BUD, a nascent app taking a shot at creating a metaverse for Gen Z to play and interact with each other, has raised another round of funding in three months.
The Singapore-based startup told TechCrunch that it has closed $36.8 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India, not long after it secured a Series A extension in February. The new infusion brings BUD’s total financing to over $60 million.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is working on VR versions of FaceTime and Maps, SwiftUI for AR and VR apps, and extending a Mac’s display to its headset, bringing it into 3D — Apple is set to hold its WWDC event on Monday, ushering in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, tvOS 16, watchOS 9 and macOS 13.
Apple’s AR/VR Headset Will Dominate WWDC—Even Though It Won’t Be There
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-06-05/apple-reality-headset-details-wwdc-to-bring-ios-16-ipados-16-watchos-9-macos-l41cwir8
Apple is set to hold its WWDC event on Monday, ushering in iOS 16, iPadOS 16, tvOS 16, watchOS 9 and macOS 13. But a future Apple AR/VR headset will hover over the show—regardless of whether it’s there or not. Also: Apple pledges to improve schedules for retail workers.
Though Apple Inc.’s Worldwide Developers Conference likely won’t include a debut of its next big thing—a powerful mixed-reality headset—the device will still cast a shadow over the event.
Excitement over the secretive new product continues to build among developers, consumers and Apple engineers, and the company may at least give a few hints during next week’s WWDC about what’s eventually coming.
That’s because Apple’s headset initiative isn’t simply the device and its operating system. It’s an entire set of new VR- and AR-powered Apple apps and experiences, a slew of input paradigms never seen before on the company’s products and a completely new platform for third-party developers.
In recent months, work on the operating system and its accompanying frameworks for developers has ramped up significantly. I would pay close attention to Apple’s next updates to Metal, Reality Composer and various video codecs. It’s also no coincidence that recent updates to Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro added virtual reality video and Spatial Audio support, respectively.
As part of its work on a development platform for the headset, Apple is aiming to make user interface elements like body tracking, hand tracking, gestures, hand-based typing and Siri access automatically embeddable inside third-party apps—just like iPhone elements such as the keyboard get automatic integration into iOS apps.
Apple is also working on a new version of SwiftUI for building AR and VR apps. The system will predictably work closely with RealityKit and Metal. And the company is working on a new development environment for the Mac to let developers simulate the headset and their in-development apps before getting the device in hand.
The Apple headset’s operating system started as an offshoot of iOS and tvOS, and the company has explored a feature for easily converting iPad and Apple TV apps to the headset—not dissimilar from its Catalyst framework for converting iPad apps into Mac apps.
While third-party apps are a key ingredient of this project, Apple is also planning a slew of its own apps. That includes a VR version of FaceTime that can scan a person’s face to replicate their movements in a Memoji, a new VR version of Maps, and rOS variants of core Apple apps like Notes and Calendar. Also in the works is a way for the headset to extend a Mac’s display, bringing it into 3D.
Moreover, the company is leveraging its entertainment arm and acquisitions like NextVR to build 3D versions of its content. Don’t be surprised to eventually see virtual reality iterations of Apple TV+ shows and Fitness+ workouts.
All that excitement and future potential should help make the headset the talk of WWDC this year, even if it’s not actually there.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2022/06/09/lisatty-todellisuus-tulee-tietotekniikan-korjaamiseen/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Sylvia Varnham O’Regan / The Information:
Source: Meta will not publicly release the first version of its AR glasses, scheduled for 2024, to focus on its second version, unlikely to arrive for years — Meta Platforms has scaled back its plans to release a series of augmented reality glasses over the next several years as part …
Meta Scales Back AR Glasses Plan Amid Reality Labs Shakeup
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-scales-back-ar-glasses-plan-amid-reality-labs-shakeup
Meta Platforms has scaled back its plans to release a series of augmented reality glasses over the next several years as part of an effort to trim heavy investments it is making in its Reality Labs hardware and AR/VR division, employees were notified Wednesday.
Meta has decided to not commercially release what was to be the first version of the AR glasses, codenamed Project Nazare, which was reportedly scheduled to launch commercially in 2024. The glasses are expected to become a demonstration product instead, according to a person familiar with the matter. Meta now plans to prioritize what was going to be the second version of the glasses, internally codenamed Artemis.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Source: Meta will distribute the first version of its AR glasses, codenamed Orion, exclusively to developers, helping them build software for future devices
The first version of Meta’s AR glasses will be for developers only
It’s also canceling a planned smartwatch with two cameras
https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/9/23161657/meta-to-not-sell-first-ar-glasses-cancel-camera-smartwatch?scrolla=5eb6d68b7fedc32c19ef33b4
Tomi Engdahl says:
Metaverse is one of the most (mis)used buzzwords in the IT industry at the moment, and almost all major cloud companies are investing a lot of money in it.
https://www.facebook.com/294961747876172/posts/pfbid02uuDgpRxuMaAYLHTaUfUmqmi8jgJ227xM7NdZ81gDJK4YgR2hiBSMMyZvobvmZCcfl/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Janko Roettgers / Protocol:
Q&A with Unity CEO John Riccitiello, who thinks the metaverse will be compelling with millions of destinations but won’t be dominated by users’ 3D avatars
Unity CEO: The killer app of the metaverse will be more like TikTok than Fortnite
https://www.protocol.com/entertainment/unity-ceo-metaverse-avatars-tiktok
John Riccitiello doesn’t think people really want universal avatars. Many metaverse destinations won’t require avatars at all, he told Protocol.
Unity CEO John Riccitiello thinks the metaverse is the future of the internet. He just doesn’t believe it will look like Fortnite or Meta’s Horizon Worlds.
Riccitiello called the latter “trapped in a weird view of avatars” in a conversation with Protocol this week, in which he also expressed skepticism about the idea of universal avatars that can be brought from one metaverse experience to another. Riccitiello instead argued that we don’t need avatars at all in many contexts, and that the metaverse’s killer app will look a lot more like TikTok than Fortnite.
Everyone seems to have a different definition of the metaverse. What’s your take?
It’s the next version of the internet. It’s always in real time. It’s often some combination of social, interactive, persistent and 3D, but doesn’t have to be all of those kinds of things. Most things will be three or four of those.
It can be fully digital, [or] a blend [between digital and the real world]. Most companies that have a website today are going to have a metaverse destination. You’re going to have millions, if not billions, of destinations. They will be way more compelling than what we have today.
Most people have also said that embodiment, or avatars, will be a key part of the metaverse. You seem to be a bit more skeptical of that.
Yes, there will be avatars. Avatars are useful in some circumstances, but not in most cases, to be honest. I certainly don’t think I need an avatar to buy a book on Amazon. It’s kind of pointless, counterproductive. If I was trying to make a hotel reservation online, I wouldn’t physically want to embody an avatar and stand in line for 15 seconds and have an avatar check me in.
I’d want a Shopify kind of experience. It recognizes who I am, my credit card, etc. It’s over in a matter of seconds. However, I might want to stand in a fully scanned room where I could look out the window and see if the view is what I think it is. How many times have you checked into a hotel room and been disappointed?
When it comes to avatars, there’s a big focus on interoperability, on giving people the ability to bring their personalized avatar everywhere. You’ve called BS on that. Why?
The universal avatar is born of a business strategy to propound the success of an identity-centric business model. It’s a very company-centric viewpoint around identity. I think you’re going to want different avatars for different use cases.
Many of the other companies in this space have their own metaverse-like platforms. There’s Roblox, Epic has Fortnite, Meta has Horizon. Unity doesn’t have any of this. Does that put you at a disadvantage?
I started at Unity when we were a pretty small, about $20 million company. At the time, we had 10% of mobile, nothing in console and PC to speak of and AR/VR hadn’t launched yet. And we were a much smaller company than Epic. Today, we have 72% of mobile games, half of all games, the leading developer platform for PC and all console platforms and two-thirds of all AR/VR. Part of that is that we don’t compete with our customers.
I actually think Tim is great. I really love having the competition, and I love Fortnite. I just think we’re trying to do different things. I’m not trying to be a game company. I’m trying to be a content creation and operations platform. If you think of Roblox as a destination, I think there’ll be thousands of them. Some will prevail, and most of them will rise and fall.
Given your focus on mobile gaming, which devices do you think will power the early metaverse?
At any given point in time, there are about 100, 150 million households that are using game consoles. Maybe 200 million if you include [gaming] PCs. In a given month, there’s 4 billion or [4.5] billion people playing games on mobile devices. They live in entirely different worlds in terms of market penetration, number of users. My best guess is that we’d be pretty lucky for AR/VR devices to get much bigger than consoles, or consoles plus PC. But it’s a very dedicated use case.
The other thing is: Sites like Facebook reached [billions of] users. Games at their very best top out at about 100 million MAUs. I do believe someone’s going to figure out a real-time 3D interactive social platform that starts to reach TikTok numbers, or Facebook numbers, or Instagram numbers. We haven’t seen that yet, but that’s one of the killer apps that will be spawned by the metaverse.
I don’t know exactly who’s going to make it.
There’s been tens of thousands of social media sites. Only a few of them have prevailed. And big doesn’t always win.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Taylor Hatmaker / TechCrunch:
Meta announces a Voice Mode setting for Horizon Worlds, letting users garble voices from strangers, rolling out in the coming weeks, and launches in the UK — Meta might soon want everyone to hop into its playful virtual realms, but some users are set up for a shock.
Meta adds voice controls for Horizon Worlds, which defaults to live chat with strangers
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/13/meta-horizon-worlds-voice-mode-voice-chat/
Meta might soon want everyone to hop into its playful virtual realms, but some users are set up for a shock.
In the service of pushing people to socialize in Horizon Worlds, the virtual social network has voice chat enabled by default. As anyone — particularly any woman — who’s played an online multiplayer game in the last decade can attest, chatting over live audio with people you don’t know is often a harrowing experience, and one that opens the floodgates for harassment and hate.
Nonetheless, Meta’s virtual social world doesn’t disable the voice chat options off the bat, a strange decision for a company that should be at least a little self-aware that its online platforms have, time and time again, been used to spread hate.
Now the company is adding Voice Mode, a new set of controls for voice chat that will be rolling out in the coming weeks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Oculus headsets are a loss leader for Meta—while headwinds curb the AR/VR industry’s meta-expectations.
Apple’s Metaverse Snub Highlights AR/VR Tech Woes Oculus headsets a loss leader; headwinds curb industry’s meta-expectations
https://spectrum.ieee.org/apple-virtual-reality-metaverse-snub?utm_campaign=RebelMouse&socialux=facebook&share_id=7101141&utm_medium=social&utm_content=IEEE+Spectrum&utm_source=facebook
Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) earlier this month was headlined by Apple’s new M2 processor and dramatic changes to iOS. But what stood out most was Apple’s silence on the metaverse. Its rumored AR/VR headset, and the RealityOS operating system it may use, was nowhere to be seen.
This could be interpreted as a snub. But Apple has a very particular target in mind: Meta.
“Metaverse, as a term, only really gained momentum when Meta started talking about it,” says Anshel Sag, Principal Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. Facebook’s rebrand immediately generated headlines on every major tech website, spiked Google searches for the term, and drove a boom in virtual real estate.
This, of course, is not to Apple’s benefit, and gives Tim Cook plenty of reason to leave the term out of his mouth. But it’s more than a marketing ploy. The vision of the metaverse put forward by Meta is fundamentally opposed to what Apple might embrace should it bring an AR/VR headset to market.
“There was a lot of anxiety in the industry about what Apple was going to announce. Now that they didn’t, there’s almost a sense of relief.”
—Anshel Sag, Moor Insights & Strategy
“Meta has shipped 15 million [Oculus Quest] units, but they’re doing it in a way that costs them,” says Sag. “They’re probably shipping at a loss on hardware.”
Zuckerberg’s vision of an “embodied Internet” is focused on social platforms and services. The Quest headset is impressive and, if projects like the Cambria VR headset come to market, will soon see a generational leap. But Meta’s real goal is the establishment of a new social platform—not developing and selling AR/VR headsets.
For Apple, innovative hardware is the entire point. Whether that hardware is used to access Meta’s metaverse, another company’s platform, or isolated experiences crafted by small developers, is almost irrelevant.
“I wouldn’t read too much into Apple not using the word metaverse,” says George Jijiashvili, Principal Analyst at Omdia. “Rather, focus on what it’s actually doing to enable experiences which could support virtual social interactions in the future.”
Aside from the new RoomPlan Swift API, a technology that developers can use to quickly create 3D floor plans of real-world spaces, Apple had no all-new AR/VR announcements. RealityOS, the operating system rumored to power Apple’s upcoming headset, wasn’t even teased.
This seems a vote of no confidence in all things metaverse and, perhaps, the entire AR/VR space. However, Jijiashvili warns against such pessimism. “
He points out Apple has acquired over eight AR/VR startups since 2015. ARKit, Apple’s augmented reality development platform for iOS devices, continues to see interest from developers,
However, Apple’s lack of news gives the rest of the industry the chance to prepare for its seemingly inevitable push into the space. Though consumer headsets are dominated by Meta, which produces nearly 80 percent of all headsets sold, the industry is rife with mid-sized companies like HTC, Valve, DPVR, Magic Leap, Pico, Lumus, Vuzix, Pimax, and Varjo—to name just a few. Apple’s arrival in the space could threaten these innovators.
Apple’s decision not to show its headset, which is believed to support both AR and VR, strongly hints the company isn’t satisfied with its progress.
It’s not alone. Meta reportedly delayed an upcoming AR headset, known as Project Nazare. The Magic Leap 2 and Microsoft HoloLens 2 seem trapped in the niche world of high-end enterprise solutions despite years of work by both companies.
AR, it seems, is hard to get right.
This leaves no serious alternative to Meta’s Quest 2 on the horizon. Its successor, Project Cambria, is rumored to target a 2022 release and may have little competition if launched this year. “The focus may have shifted more towards VR than people really expected,” says Sag.
The metaverse faces serious challenges, but the dearth of AR alternatives gives Meta time to work out issues. And there’s always the possibility Apple’s headset will, like the company’s rumored self-driving car, fail to appear.
Tomi Engdahl says:
A team of researchers put test subjects through a 40-hour work week in VR, with terrible but “expected” results.
Working in the Metaverse is going to suck, researchers confirm
https://www.pcworld.com/article/789236/working-in-the-metaverse-is-going-to-suck.html
A team of researchers put test subjects through a 40-hour work week in VR, with terrible but “expected” results.
Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg believes in the Metaverse, a new paradigm for the web that has most people interacting with both content and other people in virtual reality. He believes in it so strongly that he created a new halo company and called it “Meta,” more or less erasing the Oculus brand. There’s just one problem: for most common applications beyond gaming or video consumption, VR is kind of ridiculous. A new research paper quantifies the idea that actually working in virtual reality is a bad idea.
The results were, as the paper puts it, “expected.” The test subjects reported a 35% increase in work task load, 42% more frustration, 11% more anxiety, and a whopping 48% increase in eye strain. Participants rated their own productivity at 16% lower and their well-being at 20% lower. Two additional participants, one man and one woman, dropped out of the study on the first day, reporting that they were experiencing migraines, nausea, and anxiety. While some of these factors decreased with longer exposure to VR working environments, the researchers concluded that “VR resulted in significantly worse ratings across most measures.”