It appears Meta’s Horizon Worlds may literally and figuratively not have legs after all.
It’s closer to being a Betaverse than anything of value.
and nothing of value was lost
(Except of course the billions of dollars spent building it)
That’s the only thing I like about this situation. That money went to the people who worked on the project.
Did it really or did it just grow market caps
it wasn’t meta spending on privacy invading crap that sticks around so whether it ended up as salaries or fake money it didn’t go directly to bad things
Seems unlikely that zero of that investment benefitted projects like the upcoming Steam Frame.
How would the Steam Frame have benefited from Meta’s funding?
Because they were able to learn from the technology that was created.
They already had the valve index VR headset released 2 years before Meta’s metaverse became a focus in 2021
Then they all get laid off. And they lose their health insurance. And their houses get foreclosed on.
But, for time they had employment and the money wasn’t going to a yacht maintenance crew and hookers
Holy tax write-offs, Batman!
I love how Facebitch changed the name of the company to Meta, and still haven’t changed it back.
… What?
The parent company changed their name to Meta because they were “focusing on the metaverse.” It’s still called Meta despite not a single person ever using their shitty second life oculus clone.
They changed their name to meta because they wanted to expand to more than just Facebook.com, pretty sure it was shortly after they bought instagram
You are dead wrong. They bought Instagram like a decade ago. They changed the name like 3 or 4 years ago if that, and they picked Meta because they were all in on the metaverse
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/technology/facebook-meta-name-change.html
https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/facebook-buys-instagram-for-1-billion/
I recall thinking Zuckerberg had copied the google/alphabet change from several years prior. And naming this meta-business-entity was super easy with his metaverse obsession, lol.
Yes I know that, I don’t understand what the relevance is? Why would they change their name back?
IT WAS STILL AROUND???
Second Life outlived it lmao
it was also more advanced despite having been released like a hundred years before
Meta (the company hilariously rebranded with this non-sense as their foundation) has moved on to the next grift: AI and mobile video surveillance devices.
To be fair, they’ve been doing mobile surveillance for a long time.
Sure, but I did specifically say mobile video surveillance. Pretty sure their goal is to reduce the friction of taking out your phone to start capturing a video.
I’ve already ended a friendship over these stupid things.
Based. Corporate shit impacts the planet’s survival, there will be time for friends if we don’t go extinct
Yeah those glasses are even ruining the rest of Ray bans sunglasses for me. Sucks because they fit my face well.
Those glasses are the evolution of VR.
The knockoffs are pretty comfortable, and much cheaper, and come with no gimmicky tech.
Yeah I wear knockoffs most of the time since I’m not very careful with them.
They still sell the regular wayfarers too, but I don’t want make people have to look twice to make sure I’m not surveilling them.
Ah, yeah. That makes sense. I’ve don’t that double take many times, and it gets exhausting. I appreciate you thinking of others like this. Seriously. Thank you.
after thier propaganda feeds in fb wasnt generating enough profit.
I love that they changed their name to show how serious they were about the metaverse being the future of tech and it never even came close to being a thing.
isnt meta kinda late in the game for AI anyways, apple was even later and they abandoned for the most part.
Considering they developed the framework everybody builds upon nowadays, I doubt it.
They’ve been in the AI game for about as long as everyone else. I would consider their lab to be one of the best in CV tech.
Not later than anyone else that hopped on the chat gpt bandwagon.
It’s funny because the meta quest recently had an update that got rid of custom/user created environments for the home area and only gave you some shitty options. The default one was a shitty balcony that overlooked a big stupid tower advertising this and they made the “portal” to it permanent and unremoveable.
In addition to this almost every time you opened a menu it would pop up a fucking ad/link to enter the application almost every time.
Pretty sure now this was a desperate last ditch effort to try to increase traffic - but clearly NO ONE wanted it and it just pissed everyone off more.
If they want to save face to any degree they should revert that fucking patch ASAP. I miss my home environment being a fucking derelict warehouse.
It always amazes me that some executives think that taking away customization is the way to get more traffic instead of driving away to people who put effort into making a customized thing
It amazes me that so many people bought this product from Meta. When the Oculus Rift was first announced I was so excited and hopeful that we were finally going to get VR right… then they got bought by Facebook and I knew right then that I’d never own one. Here’s hoping the new Steam headset can live up to the hype.
I miss my original Oculus Home. Had a nice arrangement of furniture, a shooting range, a little shelf that held virtual cartridges of all my games, various little statues and trophies that you could display for achievements… and they just got rid of it all.
Immediately killed any interest I had in customizing my virtual space. Why bother if they’re just going to rug pull it at any time. They could’ve at least let us continue to visit it “offline”.
It’s funny how almost everyone from FAANG is failing hard in the gaming space. Like Google fails with Stadia, Amazon shutdown how many game studios, Netflix shutdown that studio that were making a Squidgame game and the Zuck dumped billions into the metaverse void. Looks like the Silicon Valley way of doing business just doesn’t work in the games industry.
Which is weird, because the gaming industry is full of low effort, hyper monetized slop that sells extremely well.
Almost any other company and Stadia could have survived.
Stadia was amazing for what it was, so obviously Google had to kill it
Is he being hunted in this picture?
Billionaires are the most dangerous game
Nah, he’s on one of those stupid foil boards.
https://bigworldtale.com/world-news/mark-zuckerberg-appears-relaxed-as-he-foil-boards-in-hawaii/
That’s the most human looking picture of Mark Zuckerberg I’ve ever seen
Metaverse was like the AI nobody asked for getting pushed into apps. Nobody wanted Wii Mii like hangout rooms where you have to water a clunky headset.
I never watered mine. Was that the issue?
I assumed face sweat was sufficient
I watered mine and now it makes weird smells :(
Ha! I can do that without an expensive headset.
Metaverse was like the AI nobody asked for getting pushed into apps. Nobody wanted Wii Mii like hangout rooms where you have to water a clunky headset.
I was willing to give a shot to something like the Metaverse, but the instant I heard it was a Facebook/Meta project I had zero interest and hoped it would die. This was my same experience with Occulus. These are both technologies I want for a cyberpunk future, but Facebook cannot be the one to control them.
I actually liked it back when it was called second life
I never understood why Second Life wasn’t ported to VR circa 2020.
One of the original employees of Oculus stuck around after the buy out, until a couple years ago and rage quit. Because he said that Meta is killing it. So yeah.
They are killing it, but sadly they’re about the only ones keeping it alive, at least at an affordable price.
I wish VR was a commodity product, like TVs. Everything compatible with everything.
Let’s wait for the steam frame
I’m going to guess at comfortably 3 times the price of the Quest 3S.
They might surprise us, but in this economy, I doubt it.
I predict it’ll be four times the price, an overpriced toy with no games
But there are games for it? They say you can play most games on steam with it?
VRChat is the most popular “metaverse” and it’s still growing every year.
So it’s weird to call the metaverse dead when Horizon wasn’t even in the lead among its competitors.
VRChat is not owned by meta, therefore not part of the meta verse.
Metaverse is not the same as VR.
Metaverse is a (imo cringe) term for VR experiences in general, but in particular VR social experiences. Facebook changed their name to Meta specifically to try to brand themselves as the metaverse company, it wasn’t the other way around.
VR is virtual reality. A mode of interacting with 3D space using a head mounted display.
The metaverse is just social VR where you experience a shared 3D space with others in VR headsets. Don’t let Mark fool you into thinking only they make social VR spaces/the metaverse. That’s what he wants. He didn’t invent the term. He just claimed it as his own. And in my opinion, pissed all over it too.
Might as well call Second Life a part of the Metaverse. It isn’t, but by your reasoning it would be.
You don’t use VR headsets in SecondLife. It’s a lame flat screen third person thing where you play with dolls.
SocialVR is about embodiment too. Being your avatar. Eye contact. Presence. Third person control of a character model is not the same thing.
No, You don’t. It is possible, and people do. VR ≠ The Metaverse. VR is used in all sorts of things that have nothing to do with The Metaverse
I’m not saying all VR is the metaverse. I’m saying SocialVR and the metaverse are the same.
And does the official client for SecondLife support VR now? I thought they abandoned attempts at that.
No but undeniably the death of the metaverse is taking VR with it, once meta leaves the VR space it will be exclusively for enthusiasts and low quality indie games.
Valve is releasing a new headset.
People here forget that a likely $700+ headset designed for streaming (let’s be honest we have no idea how many games will make native ports) is mostly gonna take off with VR enthusiasts. Like the Index this is an explicitly premium headset.
once meta leaves the VR space it will be exclusively for enthusiasts and low quality indie games.
I literally never even heard of anything associated with Horizons that wasn’t a low-quality cashgrab or some kind of scam.
Disagree. Roblox and Fortnite metaverses will continue long after VR disappears.
VR space it will be exclusively for enthusiasts and low quality indie games.
Good. It’ll finally have a fighting chance to be great.
I guess VRChat will still exist but getting into VR will be very difficult
I get your point, I genuinely do. But the way the general public uses the term metaverse is to refer to Horizon, not that style of game/app in general.
That’s still a thing? Is it just Zuck wondering around his own digital universe trying to find people to be friends with?
But a device you kind of use sometimes (if you remember you own it)
Oh shit I do own one. Thanks for the reminder
May I ask why? It seems like a huge risk due to being tethered to a Facebook account which could get banned at any time. Was the price too good to pass up?
They pretty much have a monopoly on standalone VR headsets atm.
With a throwaway meta account and ADB you can make it somewhat less of a privacy nightmare
Ah. I guess that’s why people were so excited about Valve making one. I’m not really that interested in VR, so I never really evaluated their vs the competition’s offerings.
Valve is still not making one that can do AR, so we’re still stuck with either Meta or Pico for that use case.
Not entirely true. They’ll have black and white cameras at launch and have an expansion port on the front of the device for potential color cameras in the future.
They just said AR isn’t their focus for this device, not that it isn’t possible.
And I get it - everyone I know that already has XR headsets doesn’t bother with AR as the experiences are limited (and I imagine the union between AR gamers and tidy environments with clear surfaces is pretty small).
I expect them not to focus on AR as the biggest usecase for it is for virtual monitor in a real life environment and not gaming. Maybe the give us a colour camera add-on, but I doubt it’ll be their focus from the get-go.
I got it for free like four years ago and have barely used it since
So long… never knew you.
What the fuck is the Metaverse?
Basically a terrible bootleg of “Ready Player One”.
Basically a VR space that Mark Zuckerberg thought was going to be the new internet and everyone will do their stuff there while wearing a VR headset and represented by an on screen avatar.
It means different things to different people.
Roblox is the most successful example.
It’s like an centralised version of lemmy where you have to spend thousands on hardware just to join - and that isn’t even hosting costs.
