Also, whenever the Ready Player One analogies pop up with Metaverse, I wanna facepalm. Ready Player One is deliberately set in a dystopian universe. (In fact, OASIS is the bread and circuses meant to distract from the IRL dystopia, and OASIS itself is a bit of a dystopia.) Why does anybody want that?! Some escapist fantasy it is, “let’s flee from dystopia into another dystopia!”
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Apple Not Among Founding Metaverse Standards Forum Members
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The problem with companies like Meta and Epic setting the points of entry is that this facilitates their control of the information on the sites and ultimately the users on them as well. To say this is a good thing is to say that control of other people and companies is a good thing. The reference to Ready Player One is instructive here, since that was a dystopian world to be avoided.
It also is problematic that the so-called standards group does not include Roblox or Second Life - two existing meta verse providers that do not pay fealty to the Facebook world. One only needs to look at the much lower fees that Second Life charges creators to understand the Facebook scam here.
Apple is not among the founding members of a new "metaverse" standards body that includes Meta, Microsoft, Sony, Epic Games, Nvidia, Adobe, and others (via Reuters).
Announced in a press release, "the Metaverse Standards Forum brings together companies and standards organizations to foster alignment on requirements and priorities for metaverse interoperability standards, and accelerate their development and deployment through pragmatic, action-based projects." The organization seeks to enable communication between a wide range of organizations and companies to give the metaverse "real-world interoperability" and help different visions of the metaverse work with each other.
Over 35 founding members include 0xSenses, Academy Software Foundation, Adobe, Alibaba, Autodesk, Avataar, Blackshark.ai, CalConnect, Cesium, Daly Realism, Disguise, the Enosema Foundation, Epic Games, the Express Language Foundation, Huawei, IKEA, John Peddie Research, Khronos, Lamina1, Maxon, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAR Cloud, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Otoy, Perey Research and Consulting, Qualcomm Technologies, Ribose, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spatial Web Foundation, Unity, VerseMaker, Wayfair, the Web3D Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the XR Association.
Apple is noticeably missing from the list of members, despite its heavy investment and ongoing work on multiple devices in the augmented-reality and virtual-reality space. Apple has been heavily involved in creating standards in the past, such as HTML5 for the web. It created Thunderbolt with Intel and the "USDZ" file format for three-dimensional content with Pixar and Adobe. Most recently, Apple touted its involvement in developing Matter at WWDC 2022, a new open standard for smart home accessories.
Gaming companies Roblox and Niantic, and crypto-based metaverse platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland, are also absent from the Metaverse Standards Forum. The forum is open to any organization at no cost, so Apple and others could join in the future.
Article Link: Apple Not Among Founding Metaverse Standards Forum Members
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While I did upvote your post, I had to point out the irony that we're on a message forum with a bunch of avatars, and no faces to boot!
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That standard committee is a bunch of wannabee who all tried opening an Appstore and failed. Except Microsoft who awns Xbox store none of them have a highly successful Appstore.
And this is what it will be if/when Apple releases a VR/AR device. Apple has no history of being open source or playing nice with others. They will set the rules and if you want to play in their walled garden you will have to do what they say. There is good and bad to this, but ultimately it is one company controlling hardware and software on top of your data.
Yeah, but it’s not like I use MacRumors or Facebook to interact with my friends who live in the same city! I just use it to discuss the sorts of things that would bore my IRL friends to death.
But seriously, though, there seems to be good reason to be concerned about the current generations of youngsters growing up in front of screens. It’s not that they can’t socialize offline at all, no, but more that heavy social media usage breeds insecurity, habit forming usage (at an age when their brains are still forming), and unhealthy comparisons. I don’t exactly expect VR to improve on those things, and it likely will contribute to greater body dysphoria (seems like Snapchat style face filters have already done that to some extent). Social media isn’t inherently harmful (like nicotine), but it is very open to being abused (like caffeine).
Oh, yes, wouldn't they all like to know more about what Apple has in the works? Why should Apple join a "forum" only to find out later it's not at all beneficial and be compelled to drop out?
As far as I can tell, the "metaverse" is nothing more than a VR operating system with some apps that are seamlessly integrated.
As long as they have published standards, Apple can always "embrace and extend," since Apple will have declared no loyalty to the group.
As long as they have published standards, Apple can always "embrace and extend," since Apple will have declared no loyalty to the group.
This is what tech brings to the table now. All these new and wonderful upgrades every year. Better cameras, faster chips, all these things that will truly make you happy and feel complete. Look at the posts even on this site of people worried about buying an M1 chip Mac right now because there is an M2 out there. All this breeds better consumers who constantly are buying, from silly air tag cases to high powered premium computers.Yeah, but it’s not like I use MacRumors or Facebook to interact with my friends who live in the same city! I just use it to discuss the sorts of things that would bore my IRL friends to death.
But seriously, though, there seems to be good reason to be concerned about the current generations of youngsters growing up in front of screens. It’s not that they can’t socialize offline at all, no, but more that heavy social media usage breeds insecurity, habit forming usage (at an age when their brains are still forming), and unhealthy comparisons. I don’t exactly expect VR to improve on those things, and it likely will contribute to greater body dysphoria (seems like Snapchat style face filters have already done that to some extent). Social media isn’t inherently harmful (like nicotine), but it is very open to being abused (like caffeine).
Smell and taste will still be available. Touch will be there, too, but you’ll probably be touching a controller.
No, Apple’s view as they’ve defined it is “put on, use it for a specific purpose, then take off” While developers may create experiences for longer play sessions, once they’re done playing, they’re not expected to drop back into an Apple created virtual meeting room or anything like that. They just turn it off.
Can you explain what it is, and what it does, and how people will use it to benefit themselves?
Idk why you’d work with Meta on anything, hopefully Apple kills the Meta experiment.
Apple is not among the founding members of a new "metaverse" standards body that includes Meta, Microsoft, Sony, Epic Games, Nvidia, Adobe, and others (via Reuters).
Announced in a press release, "the Metaverse Standards Forum brings together companies and standards organizations to foster alignment on requirements and priorities for metaverse interoperability standards, and accelerate their development and deployment through pragmatic, action-based projects." The organization seeks to enable communication between a wide range of organizations and companies to give the metaverse "real-world interoperability" and help different visions of the metaverse work with each other.
Over 35 founding members include 0xSenses, Academy Software Foundation, Adobe, Alibaba, Autodesk, Avataar, Blackshark.ai, CalConnect, Cesium, Daly Realism, Disguise, the Enosema Foundation, Epic Games, the Express Language Foundation, Huawei, IKEA, John Peddie Research, Khronos, Lamina1, Maxon, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAR Cloud, the Open Geospatial Consortium, Otoy, Perey Research and Consulting, Qualcomm Technologies, Ribose, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Spatial Web Foundation, Unity, VerseMaker, Wayfair, the Web3D Consortium, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the XR Association.
Apple is noticeably missing from the list of members, despite its heavy investment and ongoing work on multiple devices in the augmented-reality and virtual-reality space. Apple has been heavily involved in creating standards in the past, such as HTML5 for the web. It created Thunderbolt with Intel and the "USDZ" file format for three-dimensional content with Pixar and Adobe. Most recently, Apple touted its involvement in developing Matter at WWDC 2022, a new open standard for smart home accessories.
Gaming companies Roblox and Niantic, and crypto-based metaverse platforms like The Sandbox and Decentraland, are also absent from the Metaverse Standards Forum. The forum is open to any organization at no cost, so Apple and others could join in the future.
Article Link: Apple Not Among Founding Metaverse Standards Forum Members
I feel like the VR episode of Community effectively summed up why the Metaverse is a stupid idea. In short, reality sucks, and trying to recreate its shortcomings as the interface to computers is a terrible plan. VR has a use case for immersive gaming, exploration, and recreation of physical spaces, but the focus is on the space itself; using it for social interaction is incredibly cumbersome, and not due to technological limitations, but due to the fundamental design of attempting to create reality-like spaces.
I did some work training on ethics in VR recently. I got to thinking about how un-business-y cartoony VR avatars are. There are places in my sub-industry where developers have to dress up in suits and ties. I can’t imagine VR would fly in a place like that. The training also mentioned the importance of facing people while talking to them, which wouldn’t be a problem if you video chat like sane people.