Mark Zuckerberg's multiple faces
As Meta's vision of the metaverse expanded, Mark Zuckerberg drew increasing criticism online.
Recently, he announced that Horizon Worlds, a VR platform developed by Meta to date at nearly $10 billion, has been officially launched in France and Spain.
The announcement was accompanied by a zuckerberg virtual selfie highlighting the avatar of the Meta CEO, but the avatar was expressionless and had no three-dimensional feel. In addition, the Eiffel Tower and the sagrada familia in the background of the avatar seem to fall to the green ground level.
The announcement immediately sparked a variety of comments on Twitter, with users joking: "Come and work at Meta, their most outstanding technicians have reached the level of technology in 1995." ”
This is not the first time that a similar negative reaction has occurred for Mark.
When Horizon Worlds first launched in the U.S. and Canada in December 2021, internet users weren't bullish either.
The user's avatar is presented as a floating torso reminiscent of video games of the early 2000s. This looks neither the aesthetic expected of a billionaire who claims to be leading the digital future, nor the standard expected by the masses.
Under a barrage of ridicule on social media, Zuckerberg and his team made hasty changes to the face of its metaverse for only four days, and after careful updates, Zuckerberg's metaverse face was smiling and his cheeks were rosy.
Zuckerberg himself added: "We are about to make a major update to Horizon and avatar graphics. I'll be sharing more content on Connect. Also, I know the photo I posted earlier this week is a bit too basic, though it was just taken to celebrate the release. ”
The huge differences in style and quality of Meta's photographs can't help but make people question what the actual intentions of the metaverse are? What should we expect in reality?
Metacosm: Precedents and Expectations
Until 2022, we have high hopes for CGI, an IT services manufacturer.
In movies, computer-generated graphics are so complex that people can't distinguish them from reality. Video games can also display stunning ultra-high-fidelity visuals.
Of course, when it comes to open worlds and role-playing games, high-fidelity graphics become more difficult to render and error-prone, especially in virtual reality worlds like Horizon Worlds.
Back in 2003, Second Life introduced a virtual world where users could create unique identities and interact in real time, but the player's avatar looked stiff and awkward.
In 2017, the multiplayer game Fortnite was officially released, a game full of vibrant stylized graphics and customizable skins. In 2021, the updated NoPixel GTA V role-playing server swept the internet with its seemingly endless possibilities and highly customizable roles.
Metaverse and graphics
And in determining the success of these multiplayer "metaverse" worlds, it's important to consider the number of simultaneous users online, not just graphical fidelity.
As the number of players increases, graphics are generally of lower quality and more prone to malfunctions.
Fortnite's Battle Royale mode requires 100 players, while its Sandbox Creative mode can only accommodate 16 players per server. Meanwhile, the latest NoPixel server can accommodate 250 users at once, a huge improvement since only 32 users joined in 2019.
What baffles onlookers is that Mark Zuckerberg's company doesn't seem to be sacrificing graphic fidelity for the sake of player numbers.
In promoting its metaverse, Zuckerberg boasted that its metaverse would be occupied by hundreds or even billions of users.
However, these players do not occupy the same "world", and since its launch in the United States and Canada in December 2021, Horizon Worlds can only accommodate up to 20 people in the same space.
In February 2022, Meta claimed that Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues had a total of 300,000 monthly users, with users building a total of 10,000 virtual worlds in the game.
Experience Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse
When experienced through a VR headset, Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse environment appears jerky and bumpy.
As with many VR games, the player's hand is difficult to control and appears very clumsy when playing the game. At the same time, depending on the player's environment settings, the audio is filled with a large number of sounds, like a group of people talking to themselves.
And it has some moderation methods, if someone disturbs or offends a certain group, the player can democratically vote to leave the virtual world, while in some open worlds the "patrol" may even personally issue a warning or ban, and the user must be at least 18 years old to enter the metaverse.
As one forbes contributor pointed out, the vision of a metaverse already exists and is being loved in the form of video games that have been wildly popular for years.
Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto and even Roblox let the player community socialize in a virtual world that can be endlessly carved and customized. But regarding the metaversity, there may be an untapped community that wants to participate in virtual business meetings as floating torsos.
As Horizon World advances, we eagerly await the next round of updates to the metaverse.
The original excerpt is from designboom, Chinese content compiled by the MetaverseHub team, please contact us if you need to reprint.