Virtual Reality

[Dogg Thang]

The problem is that these companies are all about growth.

Exactly this. Raise more money, bloat the company, sell the company, gut the company. This is how it seems to be expected to work. I guess sometimes you just don't sell the company.

[QualityChimp]

I guess Zuckerberg was tired of Musk grabbing all the headlines for being the biggest dick in tech, so had to claw a bit of coverage back.

[Lebowski]

I guess Zuckerberg was tired of Musk grabbing all the headlines for being the biggest dick in tech, so had to claw a bit of coverage back.

The former head of marketing at twitter was talking about social media she pointed towards the cycle of boom and bust, Meta and twitter are now struggling with image problems, Musk has accelerated twitters downfall by the exodus of celebrity and its troubling firings. Facebook is seen as the old man of social media and has no new younger generation to replace customer fall off. They need the next big thing IE the VR metaverse or they go the way of myspace, Vine, ect. thing is your never going to get everyone on VR like they did with their social app the user-base isn't their and wont be until smartphones are replaced by unobtrusive VR headsets that do what smartphones do and more. Meta are betting their whole company on a big if with tech that's not there at the moment.

[Neon Ignition]

I'd be interested to see which parts of the company Meta drops staff from. Could be very telling as to just how much the company see's VR being a key part of their future down the line over their other ventures.

[Asura]

I'd be interested to see which parts of the company Meta drops staff from. Could be very telling as to just how much the company see's VR being a key part of their future down the line over their other ventures.

Pretty sure it's mostly Meta VR Labs.

[Neon Ignition]

If they cull the VR sector then they're essentially starting to line up the nails around the edges of the coffin on it. It's a bit like admitting the Metaverse/VR drive has failed and that they will be refocusing elsewhere. They'd no doubt still produce things like Quest 3, 4 etc but it's something that would be consigned to its niche rather than building on the success of Quest 2

[huxley]

I`ve been doing a bit of reading around the web on the Facebook layoffs. I cant figure out the exact figure they blew on Horizons but from what i`ve read its in the billions! How can they of spent so much money on it? It looks like a rip off of Nintendo's Miiverse but with no users.
VRChat and Second life have more daily users than Horizons. Are they even promoting it on their own platforms?

For something they are so heavily invested in they are not putting enough effort in promoting.

[Asura]

I`ve been doing a bit of reading around the web on the Facebook layoffs. I cant figure out the exact figure they blew on Horizons but from what i`ve read its in the billions! How can they of spent so much money on it? It looks like a rip off of Nintendo's Miiverse but with no users.
VRChat and Second life have more daily users than Horizons. Are they even promoting it on their own platforms?

For something they are so heavily invested in they are not putting enough effort in promoting.

People are, admittedly, comparing it to services like VRChat which isn't an apples-and-oranges comparison.

VRChat lets you experience loads of stuff and in theory, make stuff. But you can't make anything within the software; you have to close VRChat, install Unity and its SDK, and basically do proper game development work in order to make anything. This is a problem as it's just beyond most people (not in, like, intelligence - people could do it - just it requires more time investment to start than most people would have the patience for).

Second Life is a better comparison, but SL has tons of problems; the most critical being that Second Life isn't performant; SL has, for most of its existence, always felt like it's meant to be running on computers that don't exist yet. It's very easy for a user to have an avatar that will absolutely destroy the performance of the people around them, giving it too detailed cloth simulation or similar. And while SL has sims (its term for worlds) that look good, generally, the experience looks quite poor.

Horizon Worlds is a crazy expensive piece of software for numerous reasons.

Firstly, because it's trying to do all the VRChat-type stuff, but it's also trying to have a Little Big Planet-style creation tool suite within the software, so you can develop from within the experience itself. That also means you can work with friends, and collectively build out locations and experiences, even scripting them live. This is extremely complex; in practice very few experiences have ever managed to do it, and Horizon Worlds is aiming for one of the more complex versions of that to exist.

It also includes all these hooks to plug into Microsoft Teams and other business software, which is attempting to appeal to a very different userbase.

The software is a weird conflux of Second Life, VRChat, Playstation Home and several others, trying to take the functional, best parts of each and to merge them into one experience. Unfortunately that's expensive, as it's an enormous chimera of purposes, each of which are pulling in slightly different directions.

I do think they've overspent on what they've produced, even considering they have loads of stuff part-finished or waiting in the wings. But there's definitely a "if you're gonna make an omelette" situation here.

[huxley]

Ok that makes a lot more sense. The thing that worries me is Facebook trying to make themselves the gate keepers to the meter verse.
I`m sure Neal Stephenson is over joyed.

[Neon Ignition]

It takes two seconds to realise that the Metaverse is a dodo project. Daft way to try and grow the business.

[huxley]

It takes two seconds to realise that the Metaverse is a dodo project. Daft way to try and grow the business.

It just shows how desperate they are to control user data a ground level especially after the iOS privacy updates.
I don’t know why they don’t just promote oculus on Facebook as a gaming platform

[Asura]

It takes two seconds to realise that the Metaverse is a dodo project. Daft way to try and grow the business.

Its biggest problem is that it's trying to be "the next internet", when part of the reason the internet exists as it does today is because of its decentralised nature. No one person or company "owns" the internet and no-one can, and the standards that made it work came together from multiple firms who contributed different things at different times.

The Metaverse won't exist unless we see a similar process, but it's hard to see how that can work in 3D.

[huxley]

It seems VR is in another lull phase at the moment. Not seen a lot of attention worthy releases to pique my interest.
The modders on the other hand have been busy and Praydog has continued working on the Resi PC mods, these are being updated weekly.
Just completed Resi 7 - unlike the playstation version you have full use of hands, now a few hours into Resi 8

https://github.com/praydog/REFramework-nightly/releases/

DLSS incoming

https://twitter.com/Flat2VR/status/1587301191406460928?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1587301191406460928%7Ctwgr%5E50d513be46cb56f41a8f694a1fea48f2b40d52db%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.roadtovr.com%2Fvr-mods-news-monthly-november-2022%2F

[Lebowski]

It just shows how desperate they are to control user data a ground level especially after the iOS privacy updates.
I don’t know why they don’t just promote oculus on Facebook as a gaming platform

The concept was make this amazing transformative vr platform that supports business and social interaction in the virtual space making it easier and quicker to do business face to face. They failed on so many levels from the cartoon like dead eyed avators to the expense of the set up a thousand+ per user just for a screen to let you into the metaverse and the same again for a computer capable of running it. They're incorrectly betting on the VR being the next big thing and want to control that space doing what windows dose for pc's, the problem is the adoption isn't their yet and neither is the tech.

[huxley]

Levitation workshop mod is out.

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2881604879