That's all nice but I am still failing to see how it solves problems for people outside of the niche within a niche of privacy conscious tech enthusiasts.
I can see how it can solve real problems, I just never hear it doing so. From my observation (correct me if I am mistaken), these projects add a lot of features continually, which is what devs are great at. But I don't see work or an investment being made in quality,reliability and performance. They desparately need central servers that use the metaverse behind the scenes but invest heavily on good UX. Is mastodon inherently better quality than fb? Is matrix more reliable than signal and whatsapp or better performing/moderated than discord? For most people , the decentralized and privacy sensitive features are merely the decoration on the icing of the cake.
I see this term used a lot more by investors than tech people.
We already had, at least one, "metaverse" in Second Life, right? What's the difference this time?
VR? - not with the current delivery mechanisms. Too uncomfortable for extended use and not enough value provided. Another decade maybe. Did second life lose popularity because it wasn't a VR-first experience?
NFTs? - game developers are not going to spend their time recreating your NFT as a custom asset in their game world. There aren't great inter-op standards for taking assets between games. We have fbx as model format, kind of, but then how that's rendered is going to vary. There's also all sorts of potentially liability issues in regards to taking a random image / asset off the internet and injecting it into your game. Unless the game world itself is decentralised. I don't see this going anywhere. "Crypo-gaming" sure, some kind of "metaverse" no.
If the "metaverse" is some AR stuff with your phone then sure, that's coming - putting down virtual furniture in your home, trying on virtual shoes or clothing etc. But that doesn't sound anything like what Facebook is pursuing.
I'm not saying it's not possible and maybe this post will look archaic in five years but I don't see it on the horizon at the moment.
I can see how it can solve real problems, I just never hear it doing so. From my observation (correct me if I am mistaken), these projects add a lot of features continually, which is what devs are great at. But I don't see work or an investment being made in quality,reliability and performance. They desparately need central servers that use the metaverse behind the scenes but invest heavily on good UX. Is mastodon inherently better quality than fb? Is matrix more reliable than signal and whatsapp or better performing/moderated than discord? For most people , the decentralized and privacy sensitive features are merely the decoration on the icing of the cake.