The Metaverse: The Unfulfilled Promise of Virtual Reality

In October 2021, Mark Zuckerberg made a strange move aimed at changing the direction of its digital empire . Motivated by new digital trends, but also by the need to make a marketing shift after the scandal of Cambridge Analytics that brought Facebook’s reputation to the ground – Zuckerberg announced that his new app conglomerate including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and other services would be called Aim .

Revealing an icon that resembles that of virtual reality viewers, the rudder tower sought to move the company away from thinking of itself as a social media company but one focused on develop and expand the idea of ​​the then dynamic metaverse .

In case you need a refresher, the metaverse is the name given to a type of parallel reality , a digital space designed to live more human and immersive experiences in a virtual environment . Whether it’s having meetings with friends miles away or being able to watch concerts from the front row in the comfort of your home. The price to get into this venue? A virtual reality headset .

The idea of ​​the metaverse may have made a lot of sense in these years of confinement, when routine work shifted from office life to Zoom meetings and WhatsApp groups and the search for a little more humanity was sought everywhere. But between the return to normal and an unusual interest in Silicon Valley that translated into more ideas than products, The metaverse has ended up being one of those words that we learned and that no longer have any value. .

And the fact is that, to a large extent, the meaning of the Metaverse depended on a supposed ideal world in which the majority of those connected to the Internet would have a device in their heads in the same way that our pockets do, at one point or another they start filling up with revolutionary little computers called smartphones.

Of course, Meta had its products: already in 2014, Facebook bought Oculus the revolutionary company that brought virtual reality back into fashion, at least in the nerdy world. Oculus was a system that promised wireless virtual reality headsets, meaning that all the computations would be done within the headset, instead of being tethered to a computer. The idea attracted attention because it was also relatively inexpensive, although as we know, When a very advanced product has a very low cost, there is a trap .

And the catch is that to enter the world of Oculus, you had to have a Facebook account and with that, there would surely be a collection of personal data. Oculus then became Quest and today it is Objective Quest . Today, Meta Quest is the world’s most popular virtual reality headset with over 20 million units sold this decade, according to 2023 figures. But despite this, virtual reality remains. a niche taste which, at a time when the price of technology in particular is increasing alongside the cost of living, makes the entry of disruptive technologies much more difficult.

But for many, the hope for mass VR lay, as it often does, in the hands of Apple. Apple usually has the Midas touch when it comes to adopting new technologies. We’re not just talking about the iPhone. Think of how Apple made wireless earbuds (and the disappearance of the aux port) a custom, or how it normalized having a standalone smartwatch that wasn’t an iWatch. Or how about talking to a cell phone to find answers. In the end. Apple may not always be the one inventing technologies, but their implementation always makes them at least interesting to a wider audience.

Therefore, when they announced their mixed reality goals, the Apple Vision Pro Many bet that this would be the moment when wearing a technological visor on the face would become cool and aspirational. With a system capable of seeing the movement of your eyes to control it, analyzing your gestures to navigate it, a screen resolution never seen before and applications that sought to add digital elements to your daily life, the Apple Vision Pro was seen, in its role, as a new success for the company.

However, none of that happened. After a brief period of excitement in the weeks following its launch, mainly thanks to YouTube videos, TikTok, and Reels, Apple’s Vision Pro simply didn’t take off. Sales forecasts for the model were cut in half, from 800,000 to 400,000 units, and Apple is estimated to have lost $1.4 billion during that period.

The reasons? There could be several: of course if the high price : your $3,500, with which you can buy up to 10 Meta headsets. Also for having been officially launched only in the US market. Or because Apple preferred to launch the “Pro” model rather than a massive model, with a lower cost, weight, battery, etc.

The truth is that, beyond the technical advances that allowed its existence, the fact that it was not launched with a brilliant ecosystem of applications that justified its existence, beyond being able to duplicate the screen of your Mac or being able to watch movies on a single giant screen, ended up “killing the hype”. In Apple’s latest presentation, the Vision Pro appeared on the screen for about 5 seconds. Which does not mean that in the future the company will try to relaunch the team taking into account what has been learned. But apparently, there is much to learn .

So we are faced with a technology that wanted to be the new fashion and ended up living in the same niche in which it was born: video games . Today, the world of gamers is perhaps the one that most exploits the technical and immersive capabilities of virtual reality and some also claim that games like Fortnitewith their ability to organize online music concerts and short film festivals, are the closest to the Metaverse idea that succeeded. But at the end of the day, they’re just games. PlayStation has its VR system and the most popular paid apps on Meta Quest are still games.

But even in the world where it shines brightest, VR remains a niche. According to statistics from Steam, the largest digital gaming platform for PCs, only 2% of its users, who, I repeat, are the most advanced gamers, use a virtual reality device to play.

The main problem with virtual reality is that No one knows if they’ll need it until they try it. . Unlike Artificial Intelligence, it is a system of advantages that are not so obvious and that you will not be able to capture with a simple description of what it can do, much less a promotional video. Because we are not consumers of pure technologies, there are also human factors that must be taken into account: we can be dizzy, be myopic, that is why we must use them with or without glasses, for some they are still very heavy or not very intuitive.

That’s why Today, we are focusing more on mixed reality than on purely virtual reality. . Mixed reality combines the use of high-resolution cameras with spectators, to be able to see in real time and with great detail what is outside our lenses and thus avoid the feeling of confinement. For someone who is outside, of course, he always sees someone who may not be willing to talk, but at least it helps to know that someone is talking to you, to walk through a house or an office and feel that these headphones accompany reality more than we take it out of it.

It is, in a way, the defeat of the metaverse considering that what these helmets want today is to be able to use technology without leaving our environment. This is how Meta presented this week the Meta Quest 3S the cheapest mixed reality system on the market, starting at just $300. They’re still traditional headsets, they still ask for your Facebook data, but at least they’re cheap. And if that doesn’t add people, they’re at least looking to renew the enthusiasm of those already involved, who will be able to sell or give their device to someone who isn’t convinced.

And also, they announced the Orion project, which aims to be the first advanced augmented reality glasses. The beauty of Orion is that, except for its frames, which seem very thick at the moment, they are traditional graphics, which can be used normally and provide data on what we see, in addition to placing digital layers on the world around us.

According to Meta, Orion is “the key to unlocking the next stage in human-oriented computing,” something we’ve heard before with the Metaverse, but this time, Meta has an advantage: its work with Ray-Ban has shown that, as long as they look fashionable, people are willing to wear a computer on their head. Ray Ban glasses, by the way, are much simpler: they can take pictures, record videos, listen to music, and answer questions, but you just have to turn them into the most fruitful collaboration the company has ever had .

For now, and perhaps for a long time to come, virtual reality will be relegated to the most enthusiastic circles of technology, and it will remain so until a magic moment arrives, one of those that doesn’t come around very often anymore, that shows why it is essential to invest in the metaverse.