My Day in the Immature Metaverse

You can say what you want about Planet Earth, the physical version, but at least the Life UI is consistent. When I go to Cambodia, my body works the same as it did back in the US. I grab things and throw things the same way in Cambodia as I do at home in the Pacific Northwest.

You can’t say that about the Metaverse and until you can, it’s really Immature. It’s mostly a bunch of parts acting independently with no substantive relationships between them.

As Ruth led me from one world to another, all inside Horizon, the visual styles were all different but all so Horizon-like that my brain gradually let go of the more photorealistic expectations created in ENGAGE.

It goes deeper.

ENGAGE presents itself as objects interacting in time, all of which can be recorded to make new objects and to create scenes. Horizon presents itself as a world building sandbox for self-expression.

It’s metaphysical, more than how the menus work. Platforms have God-like designers who think they know what we want to do there and they enable things according to those beliefs.

Hubs is different than both of them. I showed up there for an early evening meditation and when I say, ‘I,’ it does not mean that I showed up in anthropomorphic form. I was a shape, something like the seahorse fractal shape. My color was lime green and that was my name when someone spoke to me or I was called on.

It was a long way from ENGAGE, where the two leaders were wearing avatar coats and ties. But the meditation leader and the other people there spoke in normal human voices. Being there as a funky avatar was like wearing a costume, which felt natural because everyone else was too. As a costume not meant to express anything or to serve as a personal statement, it conferred deep anonymity.

Hubs doesn’t have the playful feel of Horizon or the university catalog of learning objects offered by ENGAGE. What it has is ease, ease of access and ease of adapting to the worlds on its platform.

Hubs doesn’t make a strong statement about what it is, except easy. It feels to me like a bare bones Airbnb, which is just what you need sometimes.

AltspaceVR has been around forever in digital media years. It has even had a near-death experience.

In July, 2017, the independent pioneering platform was a goner. “AltspaceVR Shuts Down,” the headlines said. Flatlined. Until a few months later when Microsoft used its super power to breath Life back into some code on a bunch of servers.

AltspaceVR is the undisputed leader in Social Infrastructure,. No other part of the Metaverse has well-developed procedures for creating, publicizing, managing, and tracking events. Events can be public or private and there are twenty or more every day on the public events menu. For this reason, it is my home base in the current Metaverse.

It’s ten times harder to get started in AltspaceVR than Hubs, but since I’ve already put in those uncomfortable start-up hours, that consideration is irrelevant to me now — except when I try to bring in someone for the first time. Then I wonder why I didn’t just bring them to Hubs, until I remember there’s not much to do there, or if there is, I don’t know how to find it.

Source: https://arvrjourney.com/my-day-in-the-immature-metaverse-b7a2e94348c9?source=rss—-d01820283d6d—4