Poly_and_RA t1_j9av002 wrote
This far nobody has come up with an actually compelling reason to use it, other than in gaming where already people are spending piles of time navigating fictional universes in 3D. (mostly without VR-headsets that *also* tend to subtract more than they add -- even people who do own VR-headsets usually end up spending more time playing without them than with)
I think it's a solution in search of a problem, really.
No, Amazon would *not* be a better place to shop if it was a "virtual mall".
4morian5 t1_j9e6pr8 wrote
< No, Amazon would *not* be a better place to shop if it was a "virtual mall" >
That one video of the virtual grocery store is where I really saw through the BS. I was already iffy up to that point, but that was the moment that really drove home how out of touch and ignorant the people designing and pushing this thing were.
Making something more clunky and unintuitive is the very opposite of innovation.
Poly_and_RA t1_j9j3p8p wrote
Yepp. And the other killer features they tend to brag about are similarly dumb and/or already covered by better options.
Hang out with your long distance friends they say.
But here's the thing: I've already been playing games with long-distance friends in virtual worlds for over 2 decades. There's nothing new in this. World of Warcraft came out 20 years ago, and it's been 45 years since the first MUDs came online.
VR plays no role worth mentioning in this. Advertising and wild claims notwithstanding playing WoW in VR isn't more compelling than playing it on a plain old monitor.
Converse with your friends they say.
But for this my main wishes are things like high-quality video and audio with a minimum of lag, stuttering or other quality-issues. And VR doesn't actually help with that in the slightest. No I don't really care whether I can "walk around" my friend that I'm talking to -- but I do care that the audio-quality is good and that the picture doesn't freeze.
It's possible that some killer use for VR will be found at some point. But this far I've seen nothing compelling.
3SquirrelsinaCoat t1_j9c79k0 wrote
>I think it's a solution in search of a problem, really.
That's really well put. An industrial metaverse/collection of virtual worlds could be huge for innovation, iteration, safety training, etc. It's not like those things aren't possible now but if there's an angle worth a damn, it won't be commercializing the experience. The economic benefit should come from whatever happens in the metaverse that gets exported to the real world. The reverse is going to fail. "Come to our metaverse and enjoy our entertainment and blah blah blah." Nobody is paying for that because it is just a novelty. But if you could create something in the metaverse, experiment with it, refine it, meet with others in a 3D space, and then the final product gets exported (whether its a sales thing, a product, a new service), then you can make money, because it does not require anyone to buy VR headsets and look at shitty avatars.
Poly_and_RA t1_j9cgaq3 wrote
I don't know. Nobody has this far made a VR environment that has any benefits for any of that. What benefits would people derive from "meet with others in a 3D space" relative to just having a video-meeting? I've not seen it, neither has anyone else.
I just video-meetings extensively, and yet I see zero point to meeting someone in a 3D space instead.
Hell it's not managed to become popular even for porn, which is often an early adopter of new tech.
3SquirrelsinaCoat t1_j9d4l6r wrote
I can imagine scenarios. Say we're building a new jet engine. Prototyping is expensive so automatically we're iterating with a digital twin. Currently that's done through 2D interfaces, maybe augmented reality at best, and nonstop video conferences. That is ripe for improvement. A jet engine is going to be a large engineering team with global assets, depending on which part of the engine is being developed at any one time. And instead of a bunch of engineers standing over an actual piece of machinery or using computers and talking over the phone, they are in a perfect duplication of a real world lab, except when they make a mistake or drop something or whatever, it doesn't matter, and it also doesn't matter where in the world anyone is.
That's still a little bit ahead of us but not by much. Valid and valuable use case for, idk, next-gen engineering call it. That's one hypothetical where a "metaverse" (which is just a 3d environment with extra sensors) is useful, bringing together AI, VR, advanced computing, haptics, all of it, into a new way of working. That makes sense to me.
What doesn't make sense is asking someone to pay for the experience. Large companies can afford this shit, and if there's breakthrough innovations, I think it will come from the industrial space funded entirely by R&D.
skelleton_exo t1_j9evafx wrote
Think building your production line in a digital environment to optimize before you build it.
This is where the industry is looking to.
It would be a win if you can see your bottlenecks and common error scenarios before you actually build the thing on the real world.
Poly_and_RA t1_j9j300v wrote
We've been doing this for a long time already. 50 years ago complex factories were built as scale-models first in order to detect problems before construction starts on the real factory. Today (and for the last couple decades) we use digital models instead.
But VR and "the metaverse" play essentially zero role in all of this. 99% of it happens on ordinary flat 2D computer-monitors.
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