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I'm not sure the 3D shopping model will come to meaningful fruition. We'd have people jostling for the best view, and whatever "immersive" metaphor for presenting is likely to be clunkier than a classic Zoom call where the slides are just walked through on one big window. The thing I'm picturing is doing a PowerPoint presentation in VR. What confuses me on point 2 is that I think we're going to have to basically invent new paradigms for "window management". I'd expect this would be mostly gaming, media consumption, and some specific built-for-the-platform educational products.Ģ) We figure out new paradigms that make it worthwhile to replace current collaboration or communications tools.
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Now, there's two ways this could end up panning out:ġ) The "metaverse" ends up sticking to the scenarios where immersive experiences add value. I'm not even sure it would beat playing a pen-and-paper RPG with friends over Discord and Roll20. The Google Hangouts (or whatever it's called this week) meetings with my team at work would not be better either. This conversation would not be meaningfully better as a virtual/augmented reality 3D live chat.
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I think for a lot of social interactions, it doesn't, or it offers rapidly diminishing value. To me, the problem is finding situations where immersiveness actually adds value. That same innovation trend hasn't happened with AR/VR, and "the metaverse" that people talk about now will likely be totally different 20 years after it becomes a thing, post-iteration and innovation. I'm not sure that the windowed operating systems we have today would have been the obvious way that computers would be used if it weren't for constant iteration on keyboard centric UI and experimentation over many years. Obviously the applications and benefits aren't as clear cut right now. But if you had a "Metaverse equivalent" you could view a 3D model, see it in action, and physically size compare it to other objects in your house much easier than manually checking dimensions. If you want to, e.g., buy a product on Amazon, you're dealing with photos and imagery of a product, and reviews. Long term, I think that you have to look at it like this: most desktop computing is very very 2D centric and touch centric. VRChat is already one of the most popular VR apps for a reason. For example, VR/AR sense-of-presence totally outclasses video calls, if the intent is to feel like you're really in a room with someone. The pitch from Meta and with AR/VR is that with the ability to use 3D space, you can actually turn Second Life-style virtual worlds into something useful with actual tangible benefits. Conceptually speaking, the difference with AR/VR is that you can have a truly immersive experience, which really does give you more possibilities than just Second Life, which was always just a 3D game world on a 2D screen.
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