Conceptually speaking, the difference with AR/VR is that you can have a truly immersive experience, which really does give you more possibilities than just Second Life, which was always just a 3D game world on a 2D screen. The pitch from Meta and with AR/VR is that with the ability to use 3D space, you can actually turn Second Life-style virtual worlds into something useful with actual tangible benefits. For example, VR/AR sense-of-presence totally outclasses video calls, if the intent is to feel like you're really in a room with someone. VRChat is already one of the most popular VR apps for a reason.
Long term, I think that you have to look at it like this: most desktop computing is very very 2D centric and touch centric. If you want to, e.g., buy a product on Amazon, you're dealing with photos and imagery of a product, and reviews. But if you had a "Metaverse equivalent" you could view a 3D model, see it in action, and physically size compare it to other objects in your house much easier than manually checking dimensions.
Obviously the applications and benefits aren't as clear cut right now. I'm not sure that the windowed operating systems we have today would have been the obvious way that computers would be used if it weren't for constant iteration on keyboard centric UI and experimentation over many years. That same innovation trend hasn't happened with AR/VR, and "the metaverse" that people talk about now will likely be totally different 20 years after it becomes a thing, post-iteration and innovation.
To me, the problem is finding situations where immersiveness actually adds value.
I think for a lot of social interactions, it doesn't, or it offers rapidly diminishing value.
This conversation would not be meaningfully better as a virtual/augmented reality 3D live chat.
The Google Hangouts (or whatever it's called this week) meetings with my team at work would not be better either.
I'm not even sure it would beat playing a pen-and-paper RPG with friends over Discord and Roll20.
Now, there's two ways this could end up panning out:
1) The "metaverse" ends up sticking to the scenarios where immersive experiences add value. I'd expect this would be mostly gaming, media consumption, and some specific built-for-the-platform educational products.
2) We figure out new paradigms that make it worthwhile to replace current collaboration or communications tools.
What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to have to basically invent new paradigms for "window management". The thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint presentation in VR. We'd have people jostling for the best view, and whatever "immersive" metaphor for presenting is likely to be clunkier than a classic Zoom call where the slides are just walked through on one big window.
I'm not sure the 3D shopping model will come to meaningful fruition. We have plenty of retailers who can't even get text descriptions right, especially when it comes to huge catalogues. Are they really going to spend bazillions of dollars building accurate models, making sure the sizes track properly, etc?
I would argue that the metaverse is not competing with Google Hangouts or Discord. In fact, you will still be able to use these things inside the metaverse and will still get value out of them.
The metaverse is not competing against the 2D internet by trying to make it immersive, but rather against the physical world by trying to make it more useful. From that perspective, VR offers value everywhere the laws of physics are inconvenient, which is just about everywhere.
Take the example of walking to a college class on a rainy day. In the physical world, you have to carry an umbrella, and the walk takes 15 minutes. In the metaverse, you can tell the rain not to make you wet, or you can teleport to class without ever going outside.
Similar to what I said in GP, the metaverse is not a competitor to Zoom but to the physical world where you are using the laptop.
In the physical world, you have to buy that laptop and maintain it. You need to keep it close to you in order to access Zoom. It takes up space, has weight, and has one screen of fixed size which may crack or degrade. The layout of the keyboard can't be changed if you decide you want to try DVORAK instead of QWERTY, or if you decide you would type faster with a numpad. Any of the keys may stop working. Fashions may change so that the laptop looks ugly or retro, or simply looks bad to you, and your only recourse if you want to change that is to buy a new one. If you are using the laptop and someone is standing behind you, he can see your Zoom call and hear what you say regardless of whether you want him to. Earbuds give some privacy but come with a lot of the same issues as the laptop.
Eventually, there will be none of these physical limitations in the metaverse. There will be limitations on the headset, or whatever hardware you're using to access the metaverse, but that's only one item instead of every aspect of your life.
We're living in a prison of physical constraints, but we see them as so inevitable that we don't even bother to complain.
The physical world and its constraints don't cease to exist because you're wearing a headset, but a headset-based metaverse does cease to exist if you've only got a pocket sized phone with you.
In that respect the metaverse adds rather than subtracts physical constraints compared with a world where we interact with people remotely over low bandwidth video rather than expensively rendered high definition virtual environments
It’s the spatial factor. Imagine being in a room with 40 other people and then breaking up into groups of 5. My group of 5 will organize together spatially so that we can hear each other well but still being able to hear some background noise from others. If something from another group catches my eye, I can walk over there and see what’s up and interact.
This is not possible to do in a zoom meeting because it doesn’t even have a sense of 2D let alone 3D space.
Note that Amazon already supports product listings with interactive 360 degree product visualizations. It's only a small step from there to full 3D modeled product renderings. That said, I can't say I would find it especially compelling to peruse a 3D model in VR as opposed to perusing it on a normal screen. Either way it just involves rotating our perspective around the rendering and observing it via the 2D planes of our eyes. I can imagine some small utility if I could accurately measure the dimensions of the product at arbitrary angles in VR, as a sort of freeform replacement for schematic diagrams, but that requires trust that the product listers will actually get the scale correct, and it would not be an overwhelmingly common use case.
From experience in DTC retail, this is more of an AR (not VR) benefit. I think (because I can’t remember the exact examples) that Amazon, IKEA, and a few others already do a “See it in your room!” feature. With smartphones with LiDAR/equivalent scanning this becomes really easy. Other retailers like H&M already use digital human models and clothes so it’s a short leap there as well.
Lately I've been thinking of VR/AR as simply a 3D UI for computers. We are already built to handle a 3D world, it is natural and intuitive to us. So VR/AR could be the next popular UI for computers, something anyone can use. Not saying it will happen, it has already not happened several times, but it could and the naturalness of it could be why. It would take a lot of work to make it as easy to navigate and use as the real world is, without also bringing along all the problems with navigating the real world.
>What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to have to basically invent new paradigms for "window management". The thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint presentation in VR. We'd have people jostling for the best view, and whatever "immersive" metaphor for presenting is likely to be clunkier than a classic Zoom call where the slides are just walked through on one big window.
As someone who has given a couple presentations in VR (and spent ~400 hours coding/working in VR), there's a lot to be done here. Some very basic examples of value-adds are:
- You (or your audience) can manipulate the presentation "viewport" to any size and/or replicate it wherever each viewer prefers in their own space (e.g. you can sit down on your couch and watch the presentation on a big screen, or have it as a "second monitor" next to something else, or treat it Hololens-pinned style and have the screen follow you around in your vision while you're working on something with your hands). IME, it's much nicer than effectively giving yourself a limited vertical screen monitor when you split screen a meeting/presentation on Zoom.
- Streaming a replicated presentation video (like a powerpoint) to each individual person instead of streaming a singular one over a Zoom call lets viewers refer back to / rewind to previous slides without disturbing others' views.
- Having a large view of a presentation yourself means you can also take notes directly on that presentation in real time, circle/underline text, draw arrows between concepts, whatever you need to help yourself remember what the speaker said later. I helped beta an app (that unfortunately shut down) for taking notes in the margins of videos in VR which would probably be a perfect use-case for things like presentations/classes. You could play back or scrub through the video later to see your notes in time.
- Obvious, but any presentation about a 3D _thing_ will benefit from being displayed in a 3D space. I'd much rather see a new Tesla in front of me than look at a 2D image of it, or see the scale of a new roller coaster, statue, building plan, etc. In "physical presense" situations like this, there's also a value-add over the real thing because you don't have to "jostle for the best view" -- you can just phase through (or not even see) other viewers and always have a front-row seat (and teleport around if you want more angles). For smaller objects, being able to manipulate the scale of the object (especially without also affecting the scale other people are seeing it at) is a nice QoL, too.
- For meetings and things with audience participation, it's way more intuitive in a 3D space to split up into groups (and e.g. only be able to see/hear people near you) by just... walking over to a group and joining in. I can't imagine doing something like small group icebreakers in a company's Zoom presentation.
There's probably a lot of new paradigms and workflows to emerge when the VR space is a little more mature, as well. I've been out of it for a few months now (moved and haven't re-set-up base stations) and I tried to limit my value-adds to just presentations, but I'm excited to see where it goes in the productivity realm.
You don’t need to spend billions. Generating 3d models from stitching images together is possible and with some automation and focused products it will become much easier
I'm pretty skeptical it'll ever take off. Having tried to hang around in the Oculus Go spaces early on, it was pretty clear no one really had a great reason for being there. You'd sit around a badly rendered bonfire and hear people talking, sometimes interestingly, but it had about the same level of interest as getting on a CB and talking to strangers.
There are two kinds of people you can meet in VR: Friends and strangers. Friends, you can meet privately. You don't need a public space 'verse for that. And as for jostling around or randomly talking to strangers, well, you can walk outside or go to a bar.
It seems pretty nuts that Facebook would actually put its chips on this proposition. I can only view it as a totally desperate attempt to distract from the train wreck of their core business model.
if you live close to one another. If you don't, I guess this could be interesting? I don't really see myself using it but I am so old fashioned that I prefer my laptop over my phone so I get that the world doesn't always agree with me.
Well, or you can meet privately on Zoom, or in VR if you prefer to see fake bodies instead of actual faces. I mean. My friends from around the country have a Zoom poker night every week or two which we started during the pandemic. I'd rather just see their ugly mugs and their kids in the background than sit in a fake room with a bunch of cartoon avatars.
My friends are far-flung and we meet privately in our Discord. We have an audio channel, and anyone who's free hops into it at their leisure. VR wouldn't add much there; to take advantage of it would require us to look at each other, which precludes doing an actual activity like playing a game together.
But there is clubhouse (presuming it’s still popular?) which has turned strangers into friends but maybe that’s because of it being pure audio and minimal interface. It’s possible someone will create a similar popular “gameplay” in vr?
I understand that you point is that it would be such a new paradigm that it's hard to imagine applications. That being said, it is funny that the only 2 use cases you mentioned are 1) a way to see people in person less frequently and 2) a way to buy more stuff.
Long term, I think that you have to look at it like this: most desktop computing is very very 2D centric and touch centric. If you want to, e.g., buy a product on Amazon, you're dealing with photos and imagery of a product, and reviews. But if you had a "Metaverse equivalent" you could view a 3D model, see it in action, and physically size compare it to other objects in your house much easier than manually checking dimensions.
Obviously the applications and benefits aren't as clear cut right now. I'm not sure that the windowed operating systems we have today would have been the obvious way that computers would be used if it weren't for constant iteration on keyboard centric UI and experimentation over many years. That same innovation trend hasn't happened with AR/VR, and "the metaverse" that people talk about now will likely be totally different 20 years after it becomes a thing, post-iteration and innovation.