I have friends that got married, never had kids, and spend large chunks of their free time in MMORPGs, League of Legends, and a seemingly endless array of virtual-based entertainment. They also seem to get a lot of personal meaning and satisfaction from nerd pop culture like Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings which is evidence that their rich fantasy lives have such deep meaning for them.
So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world, provided it wasn’t clunky and caused headaches.
> So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world
I, on the other hand, know nobody that uses virtual worlds. I find it plausible that a tiny amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world. I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.
>I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.
there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world. A good percentage of that are partaking in games that easily qualify as virtual worlds.
no personal anecdote needed, huge amounts of people are already spending time in places that qualify as virtual worlds.
Our interfaces are clunky, and you can shift 'virtual world' around to mean something else, but it feels evident to me that this isn't an uncommon pastime/desire among people.
> there are 2.5 billion adult gamers in the world.
I don't think casually playing a mobile game every once in a while translates to going full VR. The amount of gamers that care enough about the medium to buy a console or gaming PC is only around 500 million or so.
I'm an adult gamer, and I also own a Valve Index VR kit.
VR is fun, but has serious limitations. A nice way to take a walk on the rings of Saturn, but no way in hell am I going to trust it with my privacy. And it's totally overkill for something like scrolling cat-meme videos or wishing someone happy birthday via social media.
Plus the Index is pretty good but it still gives me headaches and dizziness after extended periods.
I absolutely think there is more to come with VR, but it's only after there is already a flourishing ecosystem that social media will find its place there, not before.
You're making a giant unsubstantiated leap from "there are 2.5 adult billion gamers in the world" and the idea that the current types of "virtual worlds" means that a significant number of these folks want anything resembling the metaverse.
I am one of those "adult gamers". I even occasionally play VR games with an Oculus Quest. The thought of living substantially more portions of my life "in the metaverse" is pretty much the definition of dystopia for me. I've seen Wall-E, and I'll pass, thanks.
I find it completely implausible that a huge amount of people would.
But people already do.
Email, Facebook, twitter, messaging, slack, all of it, is by no means real, human interaction. It is a step away from that.
Some even say that this type of interaction is so fake, so filled with disinformation, and algorithmic monkeying, that it is toxic poison.
Yet people will be with friends at a restaurant, or hanging out, and so addicted, so unable to stop, that they are constantly be staring at their screen instead of interacting in person!
People cannot help themselves, and people cannot resist addictive platforms.
So sadly, Zuck probably has a good idea. He's probably a bit early, but you can be sure when VR takes a Musk implant, and a simple pair of glasses for full immersion, people will be in VR while having lunch with you.
It’s a huge jump from what you mentioned rather than a “small step away.” (I see you edited your post, but I’m sticking with the original quote) Everything you mentioned can be done in short spurts of time and interwoven with other parts of someones life. VR as it stands today is way too burdensome and all consuming to pull that off. I’m not even getting into the additional hardware costs.
Jaron Lanier made an incisive point many years ago. Someone asked him what virtual reality was. "Virtual reality is where you are when you're on the telephone."
I'd extend that to, "Virtual reality is where you are when you're not present in the here-and-now." That encompasses all forms of media, entertainment, and communication with people who aren't in the room with you. The idea that it has anything to do with goggles, 3D graphics, avatars, or Facebook is something some people made up.
Games like Gorilla Tag and VRChat have tens of millions of monthly users. They are on a hardware devices that give most people nausea after 30 mins. Meta has the most popular hardware by far. Seems huge
I take the entire breadth of my lived experience when trying to predict the future, and I place high value on anecdata. My strategies have served me well thus far, but if you want to outsource all of your thinking to “experts”, good luck to you.
You don't need to "outsource all of your thinking to experts" to understand that data is not the plural of anecdote.
I, too, know people who met their future spouse online. However, after meeting online, they invariably meet in person before getting married, and then live together after getting married. Even the most plugged-in exemplars of the metaverse can't escape from the desire to interact outside of it.
And yet, while HN places zero trust in anecdata and personal observation, it it critical in real life decision-making. Most mega-successful entrepreneurs got there by trusting their instincts, not disregarding their own observations and instead only ever searching for studies conducted by others.
So while I agree with your point overall, I think here on HN we're too quick to dismiss people's personal stories.
I sold my Quest 2 because I rarely ever used after initial honeymoon period. It was clunky and required too much preparation before put it on.
But I am looking forward to Quest 3. Because I really miss the part of completely shutting off from my surroundings and being transported elsewhere. And really enjoyed random conversations in Table Tennis game and in their VR World thing.
Only after selling it, I realized how much those few minutes in it were worth.
EDIT: Now I think VR/meta is correct long term move.
That's exactly my feeling, I have a valve index and got my parents a quest. It's still new technology, it's still clunky but it will get better and I've had really amazing moments with VR.
I think the Meta beta is correct long term. It might be too early right now but I think long term, it's the correct move
If my friends and I are socializing in VR, it's not exactly shut off from the world. Anyway Hololens and Apple's upcoming XR glasses don't block out the world in the first place.
100 years ago people would have said the same about having the internet in your house and using the computer of an evening.
In the future, if everything you care about is in VR, then not being in VR would be shutting yourself off from the world, the same as not using the internet is shutting oneself off from the world today (for some of us).
A future where "everything that you care about is in VR" describes a hellish dystopia. Even in a future where humans spend large amounts of time in virtual spaces, our meat bodies still appreciate going for walks in the park.
The average American spends something like 3 hours per day watching TV, and upwards of 6 hours of total screen time, according to a quick Google search. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine a world where the screens we use are part of a head-mounted display?
Think about any time you've been on a bus, train or plane -- most people on board are using their phones or tablets. I suspect within this decade it's common for those devices to be supplanted by AR/VR headsets.
To the defence of VR, most of the experiences encourage standing up and moving. Whereas laptops, desktop monitors, phones are back / neck / arm-killing machines, as ergonomics are the last thing companies are thinking about and customer does not really care until they start having health problems.
To be fair Meta's VR headsets are pretty heavy, which is also bad for the neck, but evolutional pressure will bring the futures headsets' weight down, as ergonomics is on a critical path for these devices adoption.
A future where "everything that you care about is in VR" describes a hellish dystopia
Isn't that the way it is now? Used to be, you'd all get together at the town hall, to discuss problems with the city.
Now people use twitter and Facebook, and community involvement is at an all time low.
We're already in VR version 1. Nothing online is "real"!
In VR2 people will still go for walks in the park, but just as now, where everone is walking and staring at their phone, people will be in VR2 while walking their dog.
I quit social media in 2012 (including FB properties like Whatsapp), but I'm still active on many forum/aggregator sites like Reddit and HN
Ten years in I def feel like I've cut myself off from the world in a significant way. I feel like my Boomer parents now, seeing local events advertised in traditional media instead of on Facebook or in some feed.
The _major_ upside is that I am pretty out of the loop with so much meme-based misinformation and influence. It's crazy to see what people are consuming daily.
I just really hope that VR doesn't go the same way. The 90s cyberpunk vision was you'd jack into this wild west and have access to everything. The current reality is that you're just getting another Marc Zuckerberg-esque curated reality. Thanks but no thanks.
That's solvable, just add proper stereo pass-through cameras to turn the VR headset into an AR headset. The Lenovo Mirage Solo[1] had that four years ago, due to the death of the whole Daydream platform it didn't see much use outside of YoutubeVR, but there it works great. You just hit a button and you can see the world around you while watching Youtube.
Quest2 has been adding similar functionality over the last year, though the image quality of the pass-through still leaves a lot to be desired, but that can be fixed in future headsets.
Depths sensors will also make they way into headsets sooner or later and allow much more flexible integration between real world and virtual objects. Hololens could do that years ago, but the VR space still needs to do some catch up.
No, the problem is you can't really move in the VR environment with current-generation products, so that ruins the illusion. But I think Apple is on the right track in betting on AR rather than VR.
Meta's other problem is that while it owns an overwhelming share of VR headsets thanks to subsidies, it is a pitiful also-ran in services with Horizon compared to the real leaders, Fortnite and Minecraft.
So I find it totally plausible that a huge amount of people would spend large amounts of time in a more immersive virtual world, provided it wasn’t clunky and caused headaches.