What happened to VR and the metaverse? : NPR

Ailsa Chang, host:

So I was hanging out recently on a crowded soil at a video game conference here in Los Angeles, when I entered this completely alternative reality.

I am surrounded by darkness but also huge corporate logos (laughs).

It was the first time that I have known virtual reality.

I am in what looks like a technological laboratory.

Well, what I am actually is a video game called Deadpool VR of Marvel, with massive glasses and a joystick in each hand. In this other world, I become the superhero Deadpool. And yes, like Deadpool, things become a little violent.

I am, like the head, the head of the head of a guy on a counter. Oh, my – Oh, it’s actually a little cathartic right now.

And, hey, I don’t only have hands as weapons. I have virtual pistols attached to my size with unlimited balls that I can trigger with the pressure of a joystick.

That’s right. Take that. Take that. Down. Down. Very well, I have finished. I killed everyone in this room.

Ok, so I feel like a hard to cook total at this stage, and all I have to do now is to cross the room to open a door. And it was then that a wave of nausea strikes me.

I feel like I’m going to Barf, but it’s …

This Marvel superhero clearly cannot manage transport evil, and it is completely obvious for the whole team here.

I will continue. Continue. Turn left. Oh my God. I am about to vomit. ALL RIGHT. I’m going to stop.

Unidentified nobody: let me help you now.

Chang: Like, like IV or something? (Laugh).

Unidentified person: yeah, yeah.

Chang: For almost as long as games have existed, there have been statements that virtual reality would be the future of the game. But it may be a problem if you want to vomit a few minutes after having experienced this future.

(Soundbit of archived registration)

Palmer Luckey: What we do at Oculus is trying to create the best virtual reality headset in the world designed …

Chang: In 2014, Facebook bet big on virtual reality when she bought the Oculus startup for $ 2 billion. And then Facebook bet even more. When the company renamed Meta, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg presented a new vision called Metaverse.

(Soundbit of archived registration)

Mark Zuckerberg: Now we have a new northern star, to help Metaversse life.

Chang: The idea of ​​the metavers was, instead of simply consulting online content, you could live in this content.

(Soundbit of archived registration)

Zuckerberg: Imagine that you have put your glasses or helmets and that you are instantly in your domestic space. He has parts of your physical house recreated virtually. He has things that are only possible.

Chang: But almost four years later, the reality of virtual reality is hardly a glow of the vision that Zuckerberg described. Meta loses money every year on VR. Helmets are always expensive for the average person, and the number of people who meet in Meta’s VR social spaces is always a tiny fraction of people who meet on Facebook or Instagram. These are just some of the problems that Vishal Shah must now worry. He is the president of Metave de Meta.

Your title seems that you should pilot a spacecraft or something like that (laughs).

Vishal Shah: It’s a funny title and certainly a starter of conversation to dinners.

Chang: Shah always wants people to remember, look, VR is already changing people’s daily life.

Shah: Doing things like watching a film together, playing a game together, going to a live concert together, going to a sporting event together – just things we do in the physical world, but we can’t always do.

Chang: OK, but the promise of the metavese that Zuckerberg presented in 2021 has been made?

Shah: It has absolutely not yet been achieved. Because we decided to build a long -term vision of more than 10 years, it was going to take time. And so I think the vision has been exposed. I think the media threshing around the metavers, I think, is dead. And it is good because we have not invested in this space for media threw. We have invested in it because we believe in what he can create, the feeling he can create for people. And that is why it is not yet there, but we invest strongly because we believe in it.

Chang: Thank you for admitting that the beateering seems to have died right now. I mean, I also want to highlight in addition to that, like roughly – what? – 20 million helmets have been sold, but most of them are used for games. Does it feel like using virtual reality, virtual reality, to meet and connect with people is always a kind of relatively niche niche in the minds of people? What do you think?

Shah: I think it develops much faster than people think. I think you are properly called that the game, especially immersive games, where you are in another place, acting like any other character, is one of the earliest use cases that really resonated with RV people because the device was only able to transport you in a completely different place.

Chang: But I’m going to tell you that it did not resonate with me, as, when I played this game, the game Deadpool where I lived the character of Deadpool, I could not even understand how to walk in a room without wanting to vomit. How do you suggest that someone like me live in the metavese?

Shah: Well, I think you have to go back to the basic use. I mean, do you play a lot of video games in general?

Chang: No, not generally, to be fair.

Shah: If you’re not a player, I totally understand. It’s not for you. But what is more and more popular in RV is this idea of ​​spending time with other people, because in the same way as the device is unique to transport you elsewhere, it is the only device on the planet that helps you feel like if someone else is in the room with you, even if it is at the other end of the world.

Chang: Ok, so help us imagine this. Like, because when I try to imagine the metavese in my head, it always seems so science fiction. It is still so abstract. Can you simply paint a portrait of what the metavers should look like an average person like me who does not play all the time?

Shah: People always ask me, you know, what is your definition of the metavese? What are we building? And I say, listen, we are here at this dinner or in a bar or wherever we are, and we have this face to face conversation. But we can only do it once a year, once every two months if we live nearby, and if you live on the other side of the world, maybe every two years. How do we build something that has the impression of being next to the person who is close to your heart, your best friend halfway around the world, you feel like you are together, to do something together? And so there are constituent elements that we must get there from the point of view of technology, from the point of view of social acceptability, so I do not say that it is a reversal of the switch and suddenly, we are there, but the vision consists a lot in bringing people together so that they have the impression of being with each other even when they are not physically together.

Chang: Vishal, can I ask you a philosophical question now?

Shah: Of course.

Chang: If we aspire too much to live in an alternative reality, do we lose the ability to live in the present, in our physical reality?

Shah: I love this question for two reasons. First, it is important. We must consider it. And I don’t think everything we build will replace the physical connection with another person. But two, and it’s one, you know, converse yourself and I can have, this cat by phone. I will hypothesize that you are quite happy with your physical environment.

Chang: Yeah. I am. I am. I like to live in the now. I like to live in my world.

Shah: The exhaust in another place is therefore not as interesting for you. But there are hundreds of millions, if not billions of people in this world which do not have the opportunity to frequent the best schools, to have the opportunity to do something that their physical environments prevent them from doing. It is extremely important for you to have a technology that allows you to go and via the laws of physics, to escape where you are today so that you can find a better opportunity for yourself.

Chang: It’s Vishal Shah, Vice-President of Metaverse in Meta. Thank you so much.

Shah: Thank you.

Mary Louise Kelly, host:

And a note that Meta is an NPR financial sponsor.

(Soundbite of “Beat saber” by Jaroslav Beck)

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