Cycling in the Metaverse

[dustyrider]

I just don’t see a lot of people in the USA that want to do things anymore. The dream of working hard and achieving your desires has become: I’m entitled to what I desire because I participate. Hard to imagine a vr/ar simulation even being desirable to people when they’d rather just ask chatgpt to tell them what happened while they scroll through social media influencer’s content.

There may be a moment for things like vr audience engagement, but how long will people be willing to pay for an on bike camera, or seat at a live performance, when some ai generated code could be written to mimic the same thing and in turn allow some form of control over outcomes? That’s when vr/ar experiences become free. That’s when the era of micro transactions hits and it’s, oh you want to hear the pit crew, that’s 99 cents, want to know the watts pulled up that hill, that’s just 99 cents, you want the rider to have a face tattoo, that’ll be 99 cents.

Maybe I’m wrong and the reliance that people have on technology will allow someone to put on a suit and head gear and feel a “ride” on a bike, but I somehow think it will be like that scene in back to the future with duck hunt when the kids say, “eww you have to use your hands!”.

[slowpoke]

Originally Posted by carlucci1106

Did you try one of these? https://sandboxvr.com/experience/ambersky
Can you go into more detail about the experience, if so-- and expound on the heat issues experienced in the haptic suit? Thanks!

It's really fun! But you're wearing a computer strapped to your back so it gets hot. The headset is still a "rig" not a simple pair of glasses. And the feedback is pretty crude.

Visually, it was believeable. But for the other senses, it's not enough to suspend reality yet.

[Ewiser]

I think sweat will limit VR tech for a long time.

[Louis]

Way better than the metaverse:

Cycling at the Copenhagen Fashion Week.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/s...ainabilty.html

Sorry, no free link, but here's a free look:

[monkeybanana86]

Originally Posted by prototoast

I would be extremely surprised if, in my lifetime (born 1985), technology advanced to the point where it could accurately simulate and distinguish the feeling of riding on two similar bicycles.

I don't know man we're really close in age and AI generated art and ChatGPT are creeping me out. They're so good. I feel like we're going to be Matrix in rl in no time. You won't even know because they will have put you under and transferred your conscience into VR and we'll be walking around as Replicants not even knowing if we're real. AHHHHHHHHH!

[monkeybanana86]

Originally Posted by Veloo

Woah, slow down there.
You need legs before you can ride.

https://mashable.com/article/metaver...tter-reactions

LOL. Re: legs the article says "Everyone has been waiting for this." I don't know much about Meta but it looks like the Sims and I feel like they are the new Google Glass. Nice idea but poorly executed. I may be wrong but I'm not on FB.

[Wolfman]

At least for me, I'm most excited about the AR side of things.

For example, I don't know how to bleed brakes, but would definitely put on some goggles and saunter over to the Campagnolo metaverse with haptic gloves and have the Italian-accented bots talk me through it a few times... mess and all.

Spectating from different points in a classic would be great, as well... I'm sure that there's going to be a way to get a "live camera ball on a stick" stuck at 6' high on a pole on the Oude Kwaremont so I could plug in to the live feed when they go by...

I have optimism that it's not going to be Wii-looking avatars and fake backgrounds... there's going to be some cool stuff.

[Gwerziou]

This video by Adam Conover explores the Metaverse in a satisfying way, along with skewering Musk, et al:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVj4kZF-Fgk

[carlucci1106]

Originally Posted by Louis

Way better than the metaverse:

Cycling at the Copenhagen Fashion Week.

No doubt, Louis. Cool pic

[carlucci1106]

Originally Posted by monkeybanana86

LOL. Re: legs the article says "Everyone has been waiting for this." I don't know much about Meta but it looks like the Sims and I feel like they are the new Google Glass. Nice idea but poorly executed. I may be wrong but I'm not on FB.

This is really the tone of many naysayers around AI. But I'm afraid we have a bit of amnesia.

Remember the first video games? Atari, PacMan, etc. Now look. Just in our lifetimes we've gone from pixilated, very low bit-rate 2D games to immersive games like the Sandbox one. That's 40 years, without AI.

Remember the first mobile phone you had? The brick one? (the general audience, I too would have been too young to own one, a handful of years older than you, but remember them). How long did it take before the compact flip phone came about, and affordable for most? 15-odd years? Then how long until a phone could do virtually anything a PC could? Another 15-20 years?

My point is that tech does not follow a linear progression, it's exponential.

Zuck may be publicizing too much at fundamental stages of the tech. People want the science fiction in its most developed form, NOW- and like I said, there are only humans working on it. When the AI software is where they want it, humans will step back and let the AI all talk to each other and create, based off of the foundation of all the information in the universe. Your (monkeybanana)'s response of ambitious fear is probably the right one.

[s4life]

Originally Posted by monkeybanana86

I don't know man we're really close in age and AI generated art and ChatGPT are creeping me out. They're so good. I feel like we're going to be Matrix in rl in no time. You won't even know because they will have put you under and transferred your conscience into VR and we'll be walking around as Replicants not even knowing if we're real. AHHHHHHHHH!

Those are different research directions though and despite the fact that transformers have unified the field of AI in terms of predictive techniques, the bottleneck is and always will be the impossibility of producing sensible counterfactuals and/or search spaces for complex, interesting problems where you could carry out optimal exploration. Text in the interwebs isn't real life.

[monkeybanana86]

Originally Posted by carlucci1106

This is really the tone of many naysayers around AI. But I'm afraid we have a bit of amnesia.

Remember the first video games? Atari, PacMan, etc. Now look. Just in our lifetimes we've gone from pixilated, very low bit-rate 2D games to immersive games like the Sandbox one. That's 40 years, without AI.

Remember the first mobile phone you had? The brick one? (the general audience, I too would have been too young to own one, a handful of years older than you, but remember them). How long did it take before the compact flip phone came about, and affordable for most? 15-odd years? Then how long until a phone could do virtually anything a PC could? Another 15-20 years?

My point is that tech does not follow a linear progression, it's exponential.

Zuck may be publicizing too much at fundamental stages of the tech. People want the science fiction in its most developed form, NOW- and like I said, there are only humans working on it. When the AI software is where they want it, humans will step back and let the AI all talk to each other and create, based off of the foundation of all the information in the universe. Your (monkeybanana)'s response of ambitious fear is probably the right one.

My post above that one agrees with you in terms of technology. But I am a Mac person and right now Meta is Windows.

Edit: Meta up $100 billion in value
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/b...e=articleShare

[monkeybanana86]

Originally Posted by s4life

Those are different research directions though and despite the fact that transformers have unified the field of AI in terms of predictive techniques, the bottleneck is and always will be the impossibility of producing sensible counterfactuals and/or search spaces for complex, interesting problems where you could carry out optimal exploration. Text in the interwebs isn't real life.

I hope you are right. Otherwise I call dibs on Rachel.

[Louis]

Originally Posted by carlucci1106

No doubt, Louis. Cool pic

What I especially like is all the smiles and how much fun presumably jaded models are having with the bikes - everyone loves bicycles and likely has fond memories of riding them when they were kids, even if they haven't been on one in ages. (except for the grumps in "cages" that we know so well)