I don’t understand how it’s being presented as something new and interesting and nobody seems to notice/comment on this?
In: 2921
The concept of the metaverse is that it’s an emersive 3D environment that you would do *everything* online in. So replace your browser and all your apps with… something… in VR.
Of course in reality that’s not going to happen, and yes Second Life tried to be that and now Facebook is also trying it.
The biggest, most obvious difference that nobody has once mentioned, is that Second Life is run by and for weird perverts.
Metaverse will be run by and for the ultra-sanitized corporate world of Facebook.
Second Life is pretty much free to play unless you are renting out land, or buying goods and services from other users- goods meaning you can purchase a handcrafted body in the shape of a dragon with tits wider than it is tall, and services meaning you can then pay to use that avatar to have sex with someone else’s twelve foot tall wasp avatar with a dick the size of texas.
This is also why Second Life looks so much better than Metaverse. Perverts are very motivated people.
It’s also unfortunately why the learning curve for Second Life is so high. Their system for creating an avatar and putting on outfits or new skins takes a week of tutoring because, again, perverts are very motivated people.
Metaverse will be easy to operate and will also be boring, sanitized, and ugly as hell. I’ll stick to the wild world of weirdos any day.
For me, it’s almost the same as an mmorpg except it is trying to be realistic and more connected to real life matter. The idea of avatar, first person perspective, land occupation, transaction, market, etc. is nothing new. I don’t know why anyone would care unless there is a game breaking feature which there is yet none.
I always think of the episode of Futurama where they go into the internet, and it’s effectively a VR nexus linking a bunch of websites together like a mall. That’s what I imagine the idea is. A platform that can act as a big hub for different things, like shopping, (In VR) or going to a movie, (In VR… 3D!) or even like, going to work. (In VR.) It’s a fine idea, I suppose. But I think no one talks about it because VR is still pretty young. It’s clunky and frustrating to set up, and a large amount of people likely can’t stomach using it for more than a few minutes at a time. Second life is a game, with property and such. The “Metaverse” is a mall that contains the wonders of the internet in a more immersive way.
I’m going to answer by using the internet as an analogy.
Before the internet became prevalent, in the US there were only three prominent online sites — [America Online](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL) (AOL), [CompuServe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe), and [Prodigy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prodigy_(online_service)) (aka “The Big Three”) — plus a network of mostly amateur / hobby “[BBS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system)” servers called [FidoNet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet).
All these systems were largely proprietary and for the most part did not interconnect with each other. We needed separate software & monthly subscription to connect to AOL vs. Prodigy, for example.
The internet and “the Web” changed everything. Through open standards and connectivity, suddenly anyone with basic HTML skills can create their own website. Instead of domination by “The Big Three” we now have [nearly 2 billion websites](https://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/).
Today, the situation with 3D Virtual Worlds is similar to how services were in the pre-internet days. We have few proprietary, disconnected and incompatible systems like Second Life, VRChat, and IMVU.
Metaverse promises to be the 3D virtual world version of the internet, where anyone can create virtual worlds on the metaverse using open standards. Your “avatar” will be able to seamlessly navigate and traverse from one world to another.
Unlike Second Life, the metaverse will not be owned by any single company (not even by Facebook / Meta). Disney can create their own metaverse — but so can the Swedish government, my local pub, and also my 13 year old niece. All will be compatible and accessible from one standard software.
In Facebook’s / Meta’s vision, the metaverse will also extend beyond 3D VR to “the real life”. E.g., maybe you can have your metaverse 3D avatar make regular FaceTime video calls. Or maybe “appear” on someone’s real-life living room through Augmented Reality (AR).
So we will have a blending of physical, augmented and virtual realities via a global and open internet-scale network.
Metaverse is just a marketing term. There is no “metaverse”, just multiplayer game/chat rooms. Second Life started off as a physics system where you could build things using physics components and it…went nuts. Watching it evolve/devolve was pretty interesting from both a technology and sociology perspective.
It’s the same but using technology that isn’t remotely suitable or scalable and using made up money that is worth whatever the people manipulating it decide it to be worth
The substance is the same, but the interface is wildly different. Metaverse is betting on the upcoming proliferation of AR/MR glasses. Second life was on plain old monitor. Provided the tech becomes popular, its a good bet. VR/AR/MR is one of the few sectors in tech industry where massive growth opportunities still exist, that’s why so many bet on it.
Literally the first thing I said when metaverse was announced was “second life with VR” and most friends agreed. A quick Google search was enough to see that shitloads of others made the same observation. So it is not a new concept really, just has VR as the novelty factor and more money backing it.
You will find that in IT, many concepts were already figured out mathmethically and/or conceptually as early as the 1970’s, and have been continously retrofitted and/or re-iterated in different buzz words over the decades.
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