Metaverse

what even is it?

Meta released Quest Pro yesterday; £1499 !! Is that what one has to pay as an entry point into it? Is there a non VR version that can be used on desktop or something?

No one knows what it means. But it's provocative, it gets the people going.

This guy doesn't even think it exists (yet)
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/12WhHZ2K13SHPySU1OhDECiceCeHV9aXDOeSdwUeQ95E/edit#slide=id.g13aed3992dc_2_417

tldr: Whenever anyone refers to the metaverse, they are really talking about gaming.

Not sure I totally agree, as Horizon Worlds is closer to a true 'metaverse', even though it's a walled garden, but it's an interesting take

are you a Horizon user?

It's also rolling out legs according to the news today. I don't really know what to though.

You can just use a regular Quest 2

Metaverse isn't really a thing yet but VR is very fun

I am quite curious to try

regular Quest 2

400 quid !

Yeh it was 300 to a month or so ago and they then put the price up which was bizarre for aging tech. It has always been claimed that they lost money on every unit in the hope to build the user base and they have now reached a point that they can afford to sell fewer units as they have sufficient critical mass.

is that the lowest price to pay as an entry point though? Some on fat llama renting for £12 a day, might give it a go

what even is it?

I imagine it as a hamster cage placed over your head that you can’t remove until you’ve responded to/liked every item in a virtual inbox filled with LinkedIn requests, marketing offers you didn’t subscribe to and nanoceleb self-promotion vomit.

But yeah, legs are the killer app. I may give it a go.

Not sure how renting like that would work as you need an account to log on to the device and games are tied to the account. There is a lot of free stuff you can play tbf. Lots of gaming lounges have them to rent as well now and you land up moving around in a very large space which makes the experience far more emersive

It's either going to be one of those things that dies out of circulation due to Facebook's claim of ownership (like Google Glass type of thing, huge possibilities unrealised at the time), or we will be looking back at this page like I sometimes do to hippy's first post on the Bitcoin thread.

Try Second Life if you want a non-VR taste of the metaverse

Of course you do.

Does that still exist? Blast from the past but yes, that is what I imagine the metaverse being, the VR version of Second Life

One of the biggest challenges they have to overcome are humans, I don't play too many multiplayer games with randoms but some of them are infested with kids which kills the experience. People seem to of outsourced parenting to letting their child scream racial and sexual abuse, have a melt down when they die and generally acting like a child in a virtual world with no consequences. Totally ruins the experience, I haven't used Horizons yet but think they have tried to reduce this but kids find a way and just lie if it is a case of entering your age.

It is easy to mock it but playing mini golf with a few friends who now have kids, busy jobs and don't live close is much easier to arrange and a nice interactive experience, much nicer than a zoom or phone call

Quite enjoy a couple of the fitness based games and the meditation apps

A lot of is people doing things you wouldn't consider like VR fishing and they are mainly just chilling looking at the scenery for escapism or going in to a communal cinema to watch a film with others

I had a go on Decentraland just on a laptop a while ago as it's free access if you've already got a computer - it was just like Second Life.

One issue is that given the opportunity to start things again, people just seem to rebuild what they already have/know. It was just loads of city looking buildings, rubbish NFT galleries and populated by people exclusively dressed like they wanted to be minor characters in the matrix.

Quite enjoy a couple of the fitness based games and the meditation apps

is this inside Horizon?

No, outside, thats why I don't think the metaverse exists yet as I think when there is a true metaverse I will pop my headset and be within a world and do those things rather than loading up stand alone apps

Got it, so atm its a VR headset and bunch of games/apps and the central character is an avatar (of you)?

fitness based games

what were these? Something like Wii?

Les Mills Bodycombat, Thrill of the Fight, SynthRyders with the difficulty cranked up. Some are like Wii, some are like attending a exercise class but with better feedback and interaction

This site rates games by exertion level
https://vrhealth.institute/vr-ratings/

central character is an avatar (of you)?

don't think of it being one avatar that is always you, at the moment every environment has its own avatar which might be more realistic or might be cartoonish or might not exist as you are in first person. If it ever gets to metaverse I imagine it being you have one avatar you do everything through like Ready Playerone

That's the problem with the current crop of companies creating the 'metaverse'. They are all silo-ed off. So someone in Horizon Worlds will have no interaction with someone in Decentraland. They will be kind of like different social networks, but with VR.

thats a shame

i guess people peddling metaverse on their PPTs have either no idea or doing so just to be 'edgy'

in my head a single metaverse was the ecosystem/environment for the apps and games

Yep, exactly. That would be the ideal. And maybe all the other metaverse competitors will die off and we will all have to pay £1500 for a headset and congregate in Meta's Horizon Worlds so we can be targeted with massive 3D VR ads all day long