It’s been four years since Facebook renamed Meta for celebrating or misleading enthusiasm for the onrushop Metaverse Revolution.
Except for the revolution not being realized. It turns out that although people were fascinated by the growing number of virtual reality headsets, consumers were not thrilled to live inside them, and even Meta seems to admit that early experiences were not great.
“VR is evolving in new ways … It’s hard to navigate, and we at Meta also have a lot to learn,” said Samantha Ryan, Meta VP and head of Metaverse content, Thursday under the Meta Connect developers.
Meta Cto Andrew Bosworth, who opened the session, repeated these comments and said, “It’s been a pretty minced couple of years there,” he added with a smile, “But AI helps to smooth us.”
Apart from all the new smart AI glasses (such as the amazing Meta Ray-Ban screen, which also gets a big lift from AI), the last two days have been somewhat surprising to their renewed focus on the Metaverse and Horizon Worlds, the enormous environment and its partners have built in the virtual space.
First, there are major updates that come to the programming platforms used by developers to build Metaverse environments: Meta Horizon Engine & Meta Horizon Studio. The Horizon engine is remarkable because it replaces the widely used unit engine for reproducing these worlds.
These tools allow for far more complex and realistic environments that support concert numbers of people as virtual participants. An example shown more than once over the past two days was a virtual Sabrina Carpenter concert. She appears live on a video screen and the audience consists of thousands of VR AVATARS.
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Still no progress made me stab my ears more than the new fast -driven Build with AI World programming interface. It will allow developers to start with basic, basic worlds and then through promps, add and adjust elements. Obviously, this is drastically simpler than writing code. It is the kind of AI tools that can not only speed up the creation of new worlds, but the ability to adjust them in positive ways based on user feedback.
AI does not solve all Metaverse’s ills. Metaverse is still a proprietary environment you can only get in through a VR headset like Quest 3s. It is mostly boring unless you are involved in a fixed activity.
In fact, games are still the most important VR-based activity. A 2023 study found that 72% of VR -Headset users are in it for immersive gameplay. Outside of Metaverse I tried Deadpool VR in Quest 3s. It is a fantastic demonstration of the game options associated with a virtual, interactive space. By the way, the game is as chaotic, bloody and funny as the franchise.
Inside Metaverse, the best experiences are still games, especially those of vertical communities.
Meta highlighted Golf+, which was born of a simplified VR experience called Pro Putt. When the developers discovered that 50% of its players were real golfers, they decided to lean into it with “full-swing, realistic golf”.
Golf+ is now addressing the golf community with copies of actual golf courses. “More rounds are played in Golf+ played in a single day than an average golf course looks in a single year,” said Golf+ CEO Ryan Angels.
Angels suggested that the keys to success in VR for developers are triple:
- Find your niche
- Think of the long term
- Know your customer
But this perspective is almost contrary to Metaverse’s original goal, to be a virtual home and work area for everyone.
However, the introduction of AI tools may allow future Metaverse developers to better adapt to the strategy of angels and easily build custom worlds that appeal to niche sets of VR users.
Maybe that’s why Discord is now coming as a native app for Quest (and possibly by extension of it Metaverse). After all, Discord is a huge discussion platform that meets the needs of very niche discussion groups. Imagine a Metaverse where Discord users have a place not only to SMS chat, but to engage in and participate almost in their most vertical interests.
It may not be Metaverse Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg who originally imagined, but it is clearly the one who has the most promise.
