

Ready Player One – what Oculus + FB will look like?  - malanj
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One

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thinkofnothing
Highly doubtful, unless you're sarcastically implying that FB's implementation
will end up as a Disney-esque world that's obsessed about a generation long
past and of little relevance 60 years in the future. If so, you might be onto
something.

Ready Player One was a fun read but ultimately a Willy Wonka type of story -
impractical and its explanations of the actual VR implementation were
questionable at best (or omitted entirely? I don't remember exactly, since my
only impression at the time was that it was trivial).

For better ideas on how a virtual world could work, including reasonable hard
science to back up claims, read Snow Crash (Stephenson), True Names (Vinge),
or Rainbow's End (Vinge) instead. After that, you will quickly realize why
many VR purists absolutely detest Oculus's acquisition.

As a side note, I distinctly remember Oculus PR in the past claiming they were
"building the Metaverse" a la Snow Crash, but I guess they quickly jumped ship
to Ready Player One's image instead. Makes sense, seeing as how _spoiler
alert_ the fictional monopoly that develops optical hardware in Snow Crash
ends up completely corrupt and a perfect example of Schumpeter's classic
theories on economics and innovation. I guess Oculus pictures their future
selves to be enlightened, benevolent multibillionaires like Og in Ready Player
One. Unfortunately, with FB in the mix and the choices Oculus has made, seems
like Stephenson's vision is much much more relevant.

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digitalengineer
Think of education. Right now there is a great demand for video-courses. We
have people looking at medium res video's and teatchers explaning and
answering questions via email or skyper-sessions. _Should_ 3D work as in Ready
Player One (loved the book), why not sign in online in a 3D classroom? Or
login to a pre-recorded 3D session? Make notes, highlight

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aaron695
> We have people looking at medium res video

Given we can't even afford high res video wouldn't 3D be meaningless :)

It's not a 3D problem, it a lot of other things problem. Cost of teachers,
creating environments that give automated re-enforcement. Making students
actually learn / turn up.

Fiction often glosses over this bit. Ready Player One was really about kick
ass AI / bandwidth needed to make the environments work. Computer games are
already at graphic limits. It's just taking to many people to create their
environments. There was an example article on HN this week. Can't find link.

~~~
viraptor
> Given we can't even afford high res video wouldn't 3D be meaningless :)

It depends... How abstract is the picture you're going to transfer? The
mid/low res video of the teacher would take a lot more bandwidth than a static
texture + moving model. (or even partial static/dynamic texture for the
body/face, as long as we don't hit the uncanny valley problem) Video with
someone drawing a graph would take more b/w than the actual 3d model of the
same graph.

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viraptor
While we're at comparing to books, if FB tries to join Oculus with "social",
I'd probably go with the castle basement from Walking on Glass:

[giant field of people with their heads in ceiling holes / helmets] "Each of
these people is inside the head of a human being from the past [...] these
have chosen to live out what time they have left as parasites, in the minds of
others in forgotten times. They experience what others have experienced, they
even have the illusion of altering the past, so that they seem to exercise
free will, and apparently influence what their hosts do. It is to delay death,
to turn to something like a drug, to turn away from reality, to refuse to face
one's own defeat. I have heard it said that this is better than nothing,
but... [...] Well, the castle feeds all the people you see, at any rate.
They're eased out of the head-hole and given a bowl to sup from; they sit
there with empty eyes, as though asleep, drink or sup, then like zombies go
back to their own little world again. Their wastes are taken away in the same
trains."

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archenemy
I read it last week. While I enjoyed it, at times it seemed almost like a Da
Vinci Code of teenage scifi, and sported an enormous namedrop of culture pop
memes for advancing the plot...

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treerock
I liked all the 80s movie and video game stuff in the book. Though I think
most of it would have been like ancient history, rather than pop culture, to
the teenage readers the book is aimed at.

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trimtab
Only in this version, the corporation behind the evil "Sixers" buys the OASIS
before it ever launches corrupting the VR world to their corporate ends.

Or at least, that's what a lot of the commenters on HN, Reddit, etc. appear to
believe.

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drawkbox
Great book, Warner Bros. owns the rights, expect it any summer now.

~~~
hrkristian
It actually is in development already.

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toast76
This is one of the first things I thought of when I heard the announcement,
but not in a good way.

~~~
r00fus
Exactly, just as if IOL bought out the Oasis headgear rights well before the
Oasis really launched.

Zuck is pretty much the antithesis of the James Haliday character from the
book.

