Good uses for the VR metaverse, #1

Reposting from Tumblr, in response to a posting about Lucidscape‘s intent to produce a Metaverse framework for distributed physics simulation.


 

imagine Grand Theft Auto V as the Windows of the future

A combination of getting shot by violent thugs and having everything locked down by a giant corporation? Sounds delightful.

Seriously, a fascinating idea but an odd approach to my mind. If I understand it right it’s a distributed “back end” to handle the physics interactions of a virtual world that contains all connected services.

I’m not sure I like it being seamless. It feels like it enforces conventional 3D space constraints on an inherently hyperspacial data space. If a VR world engine can’t handle non-ecluidian spaces, it’s a pale imitator of what a virtual web could be.

It also breaks a basic rule of technological advancement; does it do something better that current methods? This seems to be pushing something people want to exist into being, but from bloodymindedness and fantasy rather than any real improvement.

What do I mean? Here’s an example; how do you switch tabs in a virtual world? Every major browser does this now and it was a wonderful step up from having dozens of different browser windows open.

Virtual worlds represent 3D spaces with avatars within them. It’s a live environment, an interactive world without the ability to pause. At best you could maybe leave an avatar in some sort of AFK mode or maybe get a bot to run it? Leave an answering machine message maybe? If you dare limit it to one instance at a time, it will be dead in the water no matter how pretty.

What I’m saying is that no matter how well it’s rendered or the physics are simulated, it’s still a worse way of presenting bulk information. It actively detracts from it.

If you want the fantasy of a VR metaverse to take off, find ways of using it that are better than using a browser or file explorer for the same ends. And do so in a way that can be applied to the existing data that’s out there.

Here’s an idea; a good virtual disk manager. You’ve got an extra dimension, so use it. I want a render of my hard-drive floating in front of me, I want to be able to display the physical locations of all the files on the disk, overlay the access times and highlight the bad sectors. I want all the partitions as clear borders, all the fragmented files pulsating in time with their individual fragments and the related I/O split counts bucking upward like a graphic equaliser. I want the wasted area to glow with the void of space and the wireframe case to strobe softly with refreshing SMART data tracing out in graphs either side of it. I want the sort of tool that would be an incomprehenisible mess in 2D but gives you every available facet of the dataset AT A GLANCE when rendered in VR. THAT is what I’m talking about! THAT IS THE POTENTIAL OF VR!

The sadest thing for me is logging onto something like SecondLife and seeing houses with stairs and doors. Stairs you don’t need to climb, because there’s no real gravity, where you have no actual feet to touch a ground that doesn’t exist. Doors meant to keep people out of an imaginary space there was no need to render or load if it was really undesired.

Stop rendering your avatar in one location and render it in another. The need for movement is bypassed.

Don’t block the view of something, just decline to render it at all.

Don’t step into one room from another, step out of one existance into a different one.