If there's a bull case on FB to me it starts with the release of this Facebook Spaces beta.
Spaces - or something like it - along with an eventual great set of AR glasses or contact lenses - is the end game.
There's no question the long goal for corporate AR is to digitize the entire physical world, catalog it, and then sell outrageously effective ad inventory / flair against everything that we see.
Using a fairly controlled VR environment as the beta case for this to get us all hooked is a huge step in the right direction and they already own the entire social graph to execute in this direction.
I don't know whether I should be excited or terrified that it's FB leading this effort.
They have the scale to execute, they have the technology to support the crucial relationships but they are SO FUCKING INVASIVE into our lives as a company.
Raph Koster's lecture at GDC got some fairly broad attention on this concept, although his was geared more to the potential negative consequences, but it's still 100% worth a watch for anybody interested in the space.
>> There's no question the long goal for corporate AR is to digitize the entire physical world, catalog it, and then sell outrageously effective ad inventory against everything that we see.
From working in industrial AR for awhile, this is a tiny, tiny tip of the iceberg. The (actually very reasonable) buzzword bingo is smart contracts + blockchain + reality capture + HMI = rather a lot more than better advertising.
AR is a human interface (transparent head mounted display) plus reality capture.
HMD lets humans interface with the world of the computer. Reality capture lets the computer interface with the world of humans.
Reality capture feeds smart contracts; if the AR cameras see you're low on some stock, "the computer" can order more, and direct the people to pick them up. Smart contracts are a reasonable mechanism for doing that.
Block chain is a shared ledger that's suitable for multiple entities tracking anything (say, reality) together, and a communications medium that's good for things that need to be auditable (say, tasks).
I agree with all of your points, except the last one. I don't think a shared ledger is required for interacting between multiple entities. We basically want a database that is beyond the control of any corporation - seems to me that a government-controlled database would fit the need.
The associated complexities and limitations with blockchain ledgers are a lot. The nodes must be propped up by large amounts of computing power, which only big companies/groups can provide, not individuals. And it's not as if the government can't be trusted, there are so many stock market indices & financial markets that aren't under anybody's control.
No. Think of blockchains as formalizing consensus reality. Each block, some "lucky" processing node (miner) somewhere gets to determine what that consensus actually is. The various techniques (proof-of-work, -stake, -etc) more or less make it hard for a bad actor to be that "lucky" node.
BC does this by letting everyone submit answers, but making it really hard (computationally intensive, aka, burn electricity) for your answer to the be the one that's accepted.
PeerCoin (to pick one) does this by making your likelihood of being The One correlate with your investment in the worth of the coin (literally how many of the coins you control). If you're the One, either your answer is accepted, or you're selected to give the answer, and then it's accepted - I'm not sure which.
You can also limit participation in your blockchain in combination with these; for example, a closed (invite-only) bitcoin would still burn electricity, but not nearly as much.
He mentions early in the talk about how some people working in VR/AR make a comparison that they're building the tech from 'Snowcrash' which he calls out as wrong model for thinking about VR.
A while later he describes a companies responses to building features after a player virtually groping another player in a virtual archery space.
The model for AR/VR that seems most plausible to me is what's described in the book 'Lady of Mazes'[1] - really recommend people check that out if they find this talk interesting.
Thank you for sharing Raph Koster's talk. It gave me a lot to think about that I never really thought about before. I have a feeling this Spaces tech doesn't include a whole lot of what he's advocating for, and it probably should.
> There's no question the long goal for corporate AR is to digitize the entire physical world, catalog it, and then sell outrageously effective ad inventory against everything that we see.
That's too far away to be able to predict accurately and it all rests on the lynchpin of the masses being interested in augmented reality.
Although slightly different, this was the case when computers were brought to the mass market. People didn't drop their real lives to become fully immersed in the digital world. Sure there is the minority of societal outcasts that spend their entire waking lives immersed, but that's all they are: a minority.
Of course, most things are on the uptrend to becoming "digitized" in the sense that everything you could ever need is online, but it's been a very slow course.
The average Joe barely even comes close to using the internet to its fullest potential. What makes you think something as complex and convoluted as AR (not to mention expensive) will be any different?
"The average Joe barely even comes close to using the internet to its fullest potential. What makes you think something as complex and convoluted as AR (not to mention expensive) will be any different?"
I think that AR will become as ubiquitous as our phones because all of the core functionality on a phone will be better on AR.
Instant alerts in my peripheral vision (again a non-obtrusive display is crucial)?
Call up directions while driving with cortana / siri and have lay over unobtrusively?
Watch TV on a 100" screen anywhere?
All things that I've done / played with in Hololens demos, all amazing, all "no question" will be massively adopted when they get the form factor correct.
Heck just look at a current app like SNAP - already on 50%+ of phones of 18-24 year olds - is a perfect app use case.
Camera, stories, sharing - all better and more accessible in AR.
And they're already demonstrating the desire / utility of AR via "filters" and their new "World Lenses" release today.
Want that bunny rabbit filter on all day as your "look"? Done.
Want it only accessible to your co-workers and not your boss, cool set it and forget it as long as the device knows your social graph.
That's a lot of functionality, and there is a market for this functionality, however this market isn't the mass market.
Like computers, phones are also barely used to their full capacity. There is a quote about how we have the most powerful tools and the largest repository of information all at our fingertips, yet we concede to our whims and spend it on frivolities (see: usage of social media and mobile games vs. non-entertainment apps).
The regular consumer does not give a shit about any of this supposed functionality of AR. You can tell them "oh it'll have this, and instant alerts will be unobtrusive, and the UI, it'll be optiimized to hell and back!" But, these are weightless promises. Consumer phones haven't even gotten to the point of seamlessness and great UX (though Apple is coming close).
Snapchat is simple, AR is most definitely not.
This is an adoption problem. You can't keep throwing features at it and believe the problem will fix itself.
You don't need customers to "use AR to its full capacity" though. You need them to use one or two pieces of it enough to justify the device.
Sure, the early iterations might be more like Blackberry popularizing email-on-the-go for a small segment of the market. Not everybody needed that. But by now pretty much everyone has found at least one aspect of smartphones that they've come to depend on.
Does my mom use her smartphone to its full capacity? Certainly not! There are thousands of apps she's never even seen, some of which can do pretty great stuff! But she checks her email, organizes recipes, and takes pictures of her dog, and that's what she has the phone for.
Heck, I don't either. If anything I'm trying to use my phone for less stuff, but I'm still glad I have it.
>We want Facebook Spaces to be a comfortable place for everyone. You have control of your experience, including the ability to pause at any time. Pausing moves you into a quiet space where you can take a break away from other people and activities. You can also choose to mute your friends or remove them from your space. Facebook Spaces is all about connecting with friends and family that you know and trust, and we’re committed to making VR a positive place for all.
As a general concept I agree, but this is limited to your facebook friends. This isn't randomly joining a multiplayer server, this is intentionally adding friends to a space. Ostensibly, you should know them. Adding muting capabilities seems like some weird power play that'll just lead to bullying. If you don't want someone there, just remove them. Hell, unfriend them.
I see Facebook are still pretending the HTC Vive and SteamVR is not a thing.
Oculus need to support other headsets or they are going to fall even further behind. Win the mindshare where you can, because you are certainly not anywhere near winning the PC-VR space.
All they have to do is release Facebook Spaces for the HTC Vive. Why not? Why tie themselves to only one VR platform? That would be like Facebook only supporting iPhones.
My guess is that the higher-ups are suffering from the sunken cost fallacy, and think that they have to stay exclusive to the Rift to justify their Oculus purchase. After all, if they support the Vive, why did they need to purchase Oculus in the first place?
Why not an open API for that matter? What if I want to use my Virtuality HMD, hacked PowerGlove and surplus Ascension Flock-of-Birds rig to drop into a VR world? Why shouldn't I be able to do that if I have the equipment and skills to get it to work?
BTW - I actually do own all of that equipment (collecting older VR gear is a side hobby of mine).
An open API will allow for any VR gear manufacturer to participate.
Think about it this way - what if in the beginning, Facebook only supported Dell branded PCs - or more realistically, only Mozilla on Linux - back when they started? Do you think they'd have been as successful? No way to know, of course, but only supporting one (or a few) manufacturer's devices doesn't seem like the best way forward for quick market saturation.
Whereas an open api would allow for far more people to get into the game; and if things started to take off, you would also see new independents spring up to sell lower cost HMDs, VR rigs, tracking systems, etc as demand heated up.
They won't support Steam and it will be their demise. And when they finally realize all is lost they'll add support, but it'll be too late. PC gamers like all of their digital PC games in one silo and that silo is Steam. Microsoft has repeatedly tried and failed to compete with Steam so the hubris of Facebook/Oculus to think they can win is amusing.
and this is why I think these initiatives will ultimately fail. They're way too closed and Facebook has yet to do anything meaningful outside of its social media space. VR is a totally different beast and you can certainly dress it up in social media clothing, but it doesn't mean VR suddenly falls under social media rules.
In a way I pity Zuckerberg. I feel like he's only known how to be a monopolist and, frankly, got lucky with both friendster and myspace being messy user-unfriendly messes who dropped the ball for him to pick up.
Spaces should have SteamVR, Hololens, and Daydream support on day one. Rifters already are geeky types who shun the facebook product and, if being social, can be found on Altspace or Rec Room. Its a big move, even for them, to go to Spaces where all your relatives are one click away and where you can't even use a fake name.
Worse, getting Grandma on a VR set is somewhat ridiculous. Even if we imagine a gen 2 or 3 in the coming years, there are practical limits to how much these things can be shrunk considering the FoV you want. They will always be clunky things you need to attach to your face. I'm sorry but Facebook casuals aren't running the to store for nerd goggles.
Everything about this is off message. I suspect this is another Zuck stinker like the Facebook phone. The problem is phones have competition so consumers chose against it. VR social apps have competition as well and I don't see consumers rushing to Facebook for this either.
the seriousness that vr and vr social apps are addressed with is dumbfounding to me. watch the video at the bottom of the page -- this is a huge joke. nobody will ever put on a headset and grab their controllers when they could just use skype. skype, which is much less hassle and gives you a real face to face experience with the other persons actual face. vr/ar contact lenses are never coming within a window of time that any of us care about. vr in general will remain a useless gimmick for longer than any of us are willing to wait, probably well past all of our deaths. im sick and tired of vr hype.
If you've actually tried a social/multiplayer VR experience, you would know the presence that being "physically with" the other person is much more impactful than a video chat. The avatars don't even need to look good, as long as they have a head and hands + voice communication, having a virtual environment that is much more human-like than talking to a flat screen is MILES better.
I'd rather hang out with long-distance friends in VR than in video chat, which I've always found to be awkward and uncomfortable personally.
I agree, but Spaces looks boring. When I hang out with my far away friends, we pile into Skype and play a game. MMOs like World of Warcraft have long served this niche, and it seems that Facebook has learned little from them.
When I hang out with friends in real life, we usually do some activity too. It's not just showing up at their house with a photo album every weekend. We watch movies, play board games, cook food, or various other things while we socialize.
Until you've played in a multi-player VR world with friends you are voice chatting with, you won't understand.
The other day, I played VR disc golf with my buddy who lives on the other side of the globe in a completely different country.
After that, we went into a virtual world sandbox where we essentially played giant legos together and drew and shaped a bunch of stuff. We collaboratively built a rocket ship and then we blew it up. We literally just spent hours together, playing together like kids, even though we are grown up adults. It was a blast.
Is that true? I mean the utility of the computer was instantly recognized and brought into offices as soon as practically possible. We've way deep into 'practical' territory for VR and it really hasn't done anything but appeal to some limited industries and a tiny slice of gamers.
You can't just hand-wave the "Google Glasses" part of VR away. There are concrete barriers to entry here. Grandma is not going to like strapping a huge screen to her face, even if it can be made a few ounces lighter, for example. People don't like to be 'locked into' interfaces. Nausea is an unsolved problem. Video card power is significant for non-trivial displays.
> I mean the utility of the computer was instantly recognized and brought into offices as soon as practically possible.
You may be too young to remember, but that is definitely not true. During the 80's, the only use they could advertise computers to adults was "you can keep you recipies in it" and "you can do accounting". Heck, "there is a world market for about five computers" was a sentence aimed at business at some point.
Wait till the Marketing departments find a way to create the need on all those FB followers, with those "trendy lifestyle" ads.
I've always found Skype/Facetime/etc. to be off-putting - if only because by looking at the person I'm talking to forces me to appear to look under them (looking at the screen vs looking the camera). During interviews, I make the conscious effort to look at the camera so as to present a more normal eye contact for my viewer, but this undercuts my ability to read their physical responses. If I had true-to-size representation of a person, either in VR or with a 2D screen, that allowed me to use natural eye contact and body language I would use it far more often.
Use the camera and a model to re-map the video image in such a way that it appears the person is looking at you, despite looking down (or wherever) when looking at your image on the screen...? Might have to use some kind of ML system or something to "fill in the missing details", or some other kind of graphics tricks to make it look somewhat proper...
anecdote: a week ago I tried to get on Skype with a coworker, he couldn't hear me. we hop on google handouts, now I can't hear him. we ended up just falling back to a phone call.
I don't find the life sized hologram thing to be that valuable. I would much rather all that money go into a zero-latency, high quality video/audio experience. life sized holograms don't solve this fundamental quality of communication issue.
I disagree with you. I work remotely, I've had a lot of brainstorming meetings... and they almost always suck, to me the holy grail of remote work would be VR. I really want to have a meeting in VR where I can stand at a whiteboard (or an even better VR version) and show my ideas. The traditional tools REALLY suck.
It's very Black Mirror, it sort of makes me uncomfortable but I can't explain why. I think it could be a much better version of what Facebook is trying to be, but .... something's off.
Very interesting. At this point, there may be many smaller startups that are more innovative or have higher quality VR apps, but if they are competing against FB's massive hold on all aspects of everyday life, there isn't much doubt who the winner will be.
More experienced peers, who lived in times when IBM or Microsoft seemed to be all-pervasive (like FB/Google are today): Do you think these companies will fade away in the next few decades? Or they will go on to be 100-year old companies, like today's car/oil companies.
I'm maybe not that experienced, but I do think that FB/Google are fundamentally different. Microsoft and IBM's 'products' depreciated very quickly. 5-year old software just isn't worth as much as brand new software (especially during that era.) Data, on the other hand, is like a wine that just gets better with age. FB's info about you only gets more valuable the longer they keep getting it. As long as FB/Google have active users, the moats around their businesses will likely seem impenetrable.
People age and die, though. I doubt FB will implode like MySpace, but oldsters like me, who got tangled up in its webs back when it was only open to ".edu" addresses, will die off. Then FB will have lots of data on corpses, which can no longer click on ads. It can frantically copy rivals for awhile, but once the first generation of kids stops bothering to sign up, it's on its way to the nursing home.
I watched the presentation. The most striking feature is that the avatar is created automatically from profile photos. It's probably possible to game the system, but the default is an avatar that looks like the real person. Compare this with Second Life avatars, if you've been there 10 years ago: they defaulted to some different 20-25 yo person. Not that the avatar of the speaker didn't look younger than she was, but it was still her.
I think this has to do with making Spaces a "comfortable place for everyone", where you recognize your friends and don't mingle with strangers. It means it's an extension of the real world and actually many of the Spaces in the video were overlays over the real world. It goes more in the direction of augmented reality than virtual reality.
They also presented some interesting stuff in the areas of object recognition, 2D pics to 3D scene transformations, interacting with objects in those scenes, simultaneous localization and mapping (setting virtual objects precisely at a position). Technologically they were the most interesting announcements, in my opinion.
The news about Messenger were somewhat underwhelming: smart replies, M suggestions, game challenges, chat extensions. Interesting but not ground breaking. I'm still waiting for end to end encryption to chatbots (encryption is granted on the network but FB's servers see the messages in clear) and for WhatsApp bots.
That also removes a layer of anonymity which, in theory isn't needed because you would be conversing with family and friends. But the second you get other people in the mix, you'll really wish you had the ability to NOT look like yourself.
This looks exactly like every other social VR app, and is probably ripping off elements from several. (Of course, one could argue that social VR has been borrowing from Facebook all along.)
Do they have psychologists or psychology department in VR team/department?
After facebook era, I don't really buy what facebook is building. That doesn't seems to be a right social network (driving people crazy, lonely, unhealthy addicted, etc.)
If we are going to go full healthy virtual world, please think carefully.
I used to live in a city (Bangkok) that has most active facebook users in the world. The society is sick. When everyone is psychopathic, no one knows who is. That's bad to me, then I moved out to a peaceful city in the northeastern, closed facebook account. Life is going normal now.
I'm surprised they are so creepy looking. You'd think Facebook could afford a decent illustrator to mock up the avatars? But knowing Facebook they're probably algorithmically generated avatar images...
Uncanny valley is not the explanation for all creepy looking models. It is specifically a problem with very realistic looking models and textures not being quite right, for a variety of reasons. These models are not attempting to be realistic, nor are they particularly close.
Not much creativity plus low-poly gives you that creepy look.
They can't be particularly creative without alienating subsets of the audience. What you're seeing is basically committee-approved art: many layers of approval given the ability to veto stuff that's 'weird', leading to a bland pablum that offends everybody equally.
I mean (besides it being Facebook), this is all well and good, but I don't see this being mainstream until VR headsets see some sort of mainstream. I guess this is some kind of chicken and egg problem, and Facebook wants to be at the forefront either way, but I can only see this being a very niche blend of Skype.
This is a pretty clever way to avoid the uncanny valley for VR videoconferencing. I assume we're a long way from photorealistic avatars based on the holoportation demo from MS.
The Holoportation video feels a lot less cringe worthy and cheesy to me. At least there's a lot more body language that's being captured, which feels more natural. Their example of being able to record real life in 3D, play it back, and walk around in the experience also seems more innovative. But of course it's much further away from being ready to use unlike Spaces.
The challenge VR videoconferencing faces is that by its nature, the people who are participating are wearing headsets that cover their faces. Even hololens headsets are going to get in the way of eye contact.
Avatars get around this by projecting a person who isn't wearing a headset.
> It’s easy to create an identity that represents the real you in Facebook Spaces. This helps people recognize you and makes VR feel more like hanging out in person.
Can someone remind me if they still require you to go by your full legal name, or do they let you identify yourself the way you prefer to?
While this probably is the future some day, I suspect that it will flop in the interim—creating a sort of Google Glass effect that turns people off to VR.
I'm sure they don't have many choices from a technical perspective, but the cartoon avatars are kind of creepy if not cringe-inducing.
It's like those services that popped up in the 90s that tried to translate things into the internet age. Like the service that would use your printer to print an entire newspaper for you ever morning.
I can definitely see some usecases of these experiences. Not wanting to sound too negative, I would prefer to meet the people in person and drink a beer, eat a meal than to lounge around in some virtual room. I see the allure of it if you are staying in a place that is hard to reach. But travel itself is also an experience that can be enjoyed - even more so if it is far away and exotic.
Not wanting to sound too negative, I would prefer to meet the people in person and drink a beer, eat a meal than to lounge around in some virtual room.
Sure. But once you've had the experience of your circle of friends dispersing to different cities, the appeal becomes immediately obvious.
Actually I am in this position. I rather visit the people and enjoy a weekend with them than put on a VR headset. Also it's a great excuse to go away for a weekend.
And if it has to be something interactive I found video conferences quite practical. Also if a meeting is important I prefer to be present than remote because it is easier to gauge reactions of people.
I've got a circle of friends I see more often than anyone else, but only on TeamSpeak whilst gaming. I would absolutely love to visit them, but we are all without exception too poor to do any such thing, so it's impossible.
I suspect this will play into the success or failure of Facebook Spaces. How many people are on Facebook with enough tech to do this (in its crude low-poly way) but who are also far too poor to flit about physically visiting those they love?
I think this is key and hidden in the comments. Reading this comment, I can easily picture kids and tweens hanging out sharing videos and pics in private VR rooms.
This looks like it will have the same problem as early bluetooth headsets: you look crazy using them. As well as they can get it to work and as popular as it becomes among early adopters, it will never really catch on with the general public because most people are too afraid of looking like an idiot to use it in public.
I dunno, this seems to be more useful when you're chilling at home chatting with your friends on Facebook Messenger. It doesn't matter how it looks if it's just you in the living room.
I'd say the real problem is that chat is good enough - it's why Google Hangouts never really took off as a place to "hang out"
Makes sense, but it could also open up a way to sell premium avatars. Or really, rent their use.
If I could design my own avatar, then pay $10 a month for it to be approved and then available to just myself in various online spaces, that would be very cool.
The company behind Second Life is already working on a VR-centric "Second Life v2", with what seems to me a more interesting vision of the metaverse than Facebook Spaces.
I'd really like them to offer their avatar system for other applications. Identity is so much part of social VR and it would be great to share it between apps.
Spaces - or something like it - along with an eventual great set of AR glasses or contact lenses - is the end game.
There's no question the long goal for corporate AR is to digitize the entire physical world, catalog it, and then sell outrageously effective ad inventory / flair against everything that we see.
Using a fairly controlled VR environment as the beta case for this to get us all hooked is a huge step in the right direction and they already own the entire social graph to execute in this direction.
I don't know whether I should be excited or terrified that it's FB leading this effort.
They have the scale to execute, they have the technology to support the crucial relationships but they are SO FUCKING INVASIVE into our lives as a company.
Raph Koster's lecture at GDC got some fairly broad attention on this concept, although his was geared more to the potential negative consequences, but it's still 100% worth a watch for anybody interested in the space.
https://www.raphkoster.com/2017/03/05/slides-for-still-logge...