Comment The Metaverse, as the company formerly known as Facebook defines the term in financial filings, is “an embodied internet where people have an immersive experience beyond two-dimensional screens.”
It’s more or less another stab at Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), the standard file format for 3D graphics dating back to the mid-1990s, and the naïve vision of federated spaces run by competing companies.
The Web3D Consortium, which was created to develop VRML and currently promotes X3D, a royalty-free open standard file format, recently took to Metaverse to present its definition. [PDF].
“In our view, the Metaverse will emerge as a property of today’s two-dimensional World Wide Web (WWW), an Internet-like online, networked microcosmic ‘microuniverse’ created by individuals and corporations that will interact and interact. and institutions. Interconnection between micropen will be provided by the Internet itself.”
The definition of meta is broader – the web is a subset of the internet – but suffice it to say, the Metaverse has been with us for decades, and experiencing it with VR goggles and 3D graphics is no more compelling than seeing it on the Internet. flat screen.
A metaverse of closed environments can be implemented at any time. After all, this is the internet and the internet. We know how to make connections. Minecraft users can click on an object and be transported to another game with a VR interface like Eve: Valkyrie. If cryptocurrencies can be transferred via blockchain bridges, there is no reason why two or more games cannot be interoperable.
This is not due to technical obstacles; that companies are not trying to make it happen. It’s simply not in their best interest to do so.
But if you can get paid to move VR costumes and other digital gadgets from one place to another, Meta could try a piece of the action. Its Diem bankruptcy at least showed the company’s interest in digital currency transactions.
Meta’s contributions to the Metaverse to date include evangelism, billions of dollars in investment, VR headsets, software, an app distribution platform that receives 47.5 percent of revenue, and now legs – Something missing from Horizon Worlds avatars.
Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who brought us Facebook, continues to talk about creating an open ecosystem for Metaverse-oriented firms, as opposed to the presumably totalitarian vision Apple is expected to adopt once it gets into the mainstream hardware business.
It’s a vision driven by competition between Facebook, Instagram, and WhatApp, and the likes of TikTok, with little growth opportunity — and Meta’s lack of an operating system (still evident) to sell investors on growth. a request).
Apple, Google, and Microsoft have gatekeeping and distribution power through products that rely on software to function.
Being a platform applicant, Meta has a large audience through those who use their social apps instead. But the ad business saw how Apple’s App Tracking Transparency technology on iOS devices denied access to ad targeting data and reduced the value of its business.
Until a functioning Metaverse payment terminal is established, the company is focusing on partnerships to realize its embodied internet. Partnerships are what tech companies do when they don’t have the goods themselves, in which case the goods are apps that people will pay to use.
The big news to come out of the company’s developer event Meta Connect 2022 this week was its deal with Microsoft to make Windows 365 — the streaming version of Windows — available on Meta Quest devices, as well as Microsoft 365 apps and Mesh apps. Teams.
It’s surprising that anyone would want to use any Microsoft software through the Meta Quest headset. Consider that Vishal Shah, Meta’s VP of Metaverse, recently berated employees for not showing interest in the company’s own Horizon Worlds environment. Managers were told they would probably be held accountable if their teams didn’t use Horizon Worlds.
When your marketing consists of gavage, things don’t go well. ®