/tech/ - Technology

VRChat is is having a meltdown right now because the devs put in anti-cheat even though most users haven't used vanilla VRChat in years. It has been review bombed and talk of an exodus to Neos and ChilloutVR though what is really needed is an open source alternative.

Even Microsoft had a cool pitch for AR being used for engineering and design, speaks to the utter conceptual bankruptcy of Meta if even _Microsoft_ is more creative

>>16021
I thought VR was a cool idea, and you could go to a VR-booth that had a full simulation suite.
The suite would include VR-goggles plus an acceleration harness with force feedback for your arms and legs as well as wind, smell and temperature simulation.
You could rent a simulation-suite by the hour to do impossible stuff like low gravity cliff diving on the moon.

Then the vision got smaller, you would only get a walking simulator (a big smooth pan plus a pair of shuffle shoes) with a retention-arm that held you in place and two simple motion controllers for your hands. And it would be like an expensive gaming set up. This was still interesting, because you could use the gaming-VR-goggles as a poor-mans giant multi-monitor.

Then the Zuck bought one of the most promising open-source vr tech companies, made it closed source, and then the vision got even smaller and much creepier.
Now it's supposed to become a surveillance capitalism reality-overlay with meta-friends and maximum obnoxiousness advertisement, and for good measure a virtual-real-estate scam.

I think if we want to have 3d stuff, we just have to go back to parallax occlusion displays, those were easier to implement technologically and didn't need any glasses.
The effect was less dramatic than VR but still nice.

>>16045
Zuck's Horizon is really not a good example of the tech where their default avatars don't even have legs. What is really holding VR back is you have walled fiefdoms (VRChat, Neos and Chillout) as there is no client that can hop between platforms and you have to convert your assets if you want to port your models from one system to another. Plus users still are at the mercy of the capitalist owners of the platforms. This on top of VR sets not being cheap.

>>16046
Lol Zuck didn't want to pay for leg animations ?
If they make everybody float in the air, why not just leave the legs and make everybody glide above the floor like a grand-master wizard.

>What is really holding VR back is you have walled fiefdoms
Yeah i just looked at a few videos of Horizon, seems really dull.
I guess we wait 20 years for the interoperable free-open-source version.

You know there's something wrong with modern VR when it still hasn't surpassed a chat room from the 90s.

>>16059
NeosVR is closer to ActiveWorlds where you have in game devtools yet Neos tool set is far more advanced due to being two decades newer.

>>16046
this new way of scamming people is fucking hilarious, we're hitting parasitism levels we didn't think were possible to raise the rate of profit

You know it's going to be a land grab - anyone remember that Kickstarter MMO Shroud of the Avatar? It was haves and have nots. They're already talking about brand name clothing you can buy in these things. I hate being a old cranky bastard about tech but you can smell it from here - this one's not about fun or productivity.

>>16089
I see it more a sterile corporate friendly version of VR driving out the hobbyists that were making worlds just because they like to. I am scared over how corporations see the tech as they don't view the user as also a developer but just a consumer.

>>16023
i figured the people running around as "intellectual property" could only last so long

>>16153
I fear more then that. With the death of Geocities and Fortunecities it wasn't just fan sites that went away but the vast majority of DIY websites. It wouldn't be surprised in the future you'd have popular VR worlds were one can't upload your own content.

>>16059
A lot of it still has to do with the hardware and companies developing them. It's clear that Meta's interest in VR is purely advertising driven; the same could be said for all of Big Tech. They wanna skip the expensive enterprise solutions phase of the industry and go straight to cultivating new consumers. I'd love to buy an off the shelf HMD with pass through cameras, boot straight in to a VR desktop environment and start sculpting in Blender on a modest workstation PC. But afaik that's just not his Meta's (or anyone's) vision for The Metaverse

>>16021
Sorry for the necrobump, I didn't feel like making a newthread
The killer feature for vr goggles is giant virtual monitors, nothing more.
Something you can plug into a laptop via USB (version 3 has enough bandwidth for video signals right ?) so that one cable provides power and video. It needs to have good head tracking so that virtual monitors stay still even during head-movements. It needs to retain peripheral vision.
For eye-strain relieve the optics have to be designed that the eyes don't need to focus for close distance. So that the eye focus muscles can remain in a relaxed state. A nice to have feature is simulating the virtual monitor as a light reflective surface like paper.
Basically it's a huge computer monitor that does not use much space or battery-live while being more ergonomic.

If you realize that this is just a display technology it becomes apparent that chasing after a whole integraded virtual world is pointless. People don't care about virtual-worlds unless it's for entertainment like video games. Nobody is using the technology from video games as an interface for productivity software, even-though that's been possible for over 20 years. Interfaces with 1 dimensional command-line terminals and simple 2 dimensional graphical user interfaces appear to be enough. A file-manager that represented the file system like a mine-craft-world where files are blocks and directories are places in the 3d world , would benefit from spacial memory but 3d file-managers never caught on. Eventho they could have been nice https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=bo3G0xJSqJs (example software from 1999).

Other areas of technology research are advancing e-ink-style screens that can do usable refresh rates with good enough colors. Visual properties are definitely superior to back-illuminated screens, and insanely energy efficient. It's also robust and thin enough to think about haptic feedback. Clicky touchscreens that have similar interactive pleasure as mechanical keyboards could become a thing. That's what people will go for.

The future-vision(tm) from facebook makes sense to corporate control freaks that want to capture all your senses, by strapping a smartphone directly to your face. But the real world use-case just isn't there.

>>16044
MS became alot better after ballmer left

I'm hoping some programmers could pull together a decentralized metaverse with good privacy protections implimented so I dont have to feel like im constantly being watched and having all my bio data recorded to doxx me.

>>16154
Neocities is still around, in case you miss those.

>>17397
>If you realize that this is just a display technology it becomes apparent that chasing after a whole integraded virtual world is pointless.
It just makes what Meta's been doing all the more perplexing. They've popularized 'Standalone VR' as a term and at the expense of enthusiasts pushing more productivity-oriented stuff. I remember John Carmack saying his ideal relationship to VR would be indistinguishable from how a child treats an iPad—that is to say, an all-in-one video game machine that you can pick up and watch ads play on for like an hour or two. This infantilization, which continues to inform Meta's approach to development is really odd because we're just not at the point where HMDs are being sold like monitors yet; even though I think we should. There's no standard for booting straight into a VR desktop environment on PC either. That FSV demo is cool as hell, especially when all of the subfolders are opened at once. I've never seen a 3d file manager depicted like that before.

Necrobumping with Dan Olsen's video on the colossal failure Decentraland has been:

<The Future is a Dead Mall - Decentraland and the Metaverse
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q

I worked for a subcontractor for one of the Metaverses.
3D Modeler, user assistance in game, tester.

Did this for 1 summer. Needed work.

VR is almost all people age 7 to 16 at this time.
VR headsets are developing to be both lighter and spread the weight out around the head (as opposed to all in front).

Acutal uses of VR:
War means don't leave the mountain base, ship, tunnel, submarine. Future wars require hiding underground and using smart munitions and missiles. As such, VR is necessary as you can't see the sky.

The second use case of VR is Guns.
1. Most people under 30 can't afford guns, gun ranges, ammo, transit to gun ranges, permits, and safes. This is a cost effective way to get people proficient at aiming guns.
2. Gun ranges only allow forward fire. VR allows fire in all angles and directions.
3. If going to the gun range takes 20 minutes, you do it once a week. If going into Gun Club VR takes 1 minute, you do it 2 times per day 4 days per week.
4. You will never use paintball in urban environments that are 10 stories tall and 1 KM wide. VR allows this.
5. In the next decade, procedural generation combined with Generative AI (3D Models, textures, and particles) will enable you in the future to fight in any scene you can prompt. You can fight in any scene you think you might need. Want to play NERF in the tunnels. Train here. Want to play NERF in compounds, play here. I think /AKM/ might have an interest.
6. Building personal doctrine. I played this VR game where you can shoot Gas Grenades. I realized if you shoot 3x gas grenades you can attract end users into kill zones. I realized that this could be how police use colored gas grenades, as something shiny for kill zones. You can try stuff out you would not otherwise attempt.
7. Bill is a citizen of Atlantis. This city of Atlantis is problematic. Saying, "do you want to train" to the common masses is legally risky. Saying, wanna enjoy this Battle Royalle Game on my team is legally safe. I think /AKM/ might be interested.