Maria Korolov – Page 8 – Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation

March 28, 2022

We’ve been added to “the list for destruction”

An OSgrid shop titled “From Ukraine with Love” that sells items in support of Ukraine on OSgrid’s Big Easy region. (Image courtesy The Big Easy.)

So I just got a warning in my email inbox from a “touche@1studi.ru.” The domain name is associated with a company that runs a couple of Russia-based OpenSim grids.

Apparently, the flag of Ukraine is now a “Nazi” flag. Now, I mean sure, there are Nazis in every country — the United States and Russia are both filled with crazy right-wingers — but these guys seem to be referring to Ukraine’s leadership.

Of course, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is himself Jewish, his grandparents fought the Nazis, and his greatgrandparents were killed by the Nazis when their village was set on fire. There’s isn’t even a whiff of connection between him and any neo-Nazis. And the country’s last prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, was Jewish, as well.

It feels like the Russians are making a desperate attempt to connect the war they’re fighting now in Ukraine with World War II, the last war in which they fought against a clear evil.

I believe they’re following the “big lie” principle of propaganda — if you tell a giant lie often enough and loudly enough, then some people will start to believe you, no matter how obviously ridiculous it may be.

It’s a little disturbing that they’re using an official company email account for this. There doesn’t seem to be any concern about repercussions for pushing the propaganda.

I doubt their accounts were hacked. I don’t think that Russia’s state-sponsored cyber warfare teams would care much about OpenSim.

Here’s what they said:

You should be more careful in making decisions about your journal.

This is not a threat, but a warning. If you continue to distribute Nazi
symbols (the flag of Ukraine, etc.), publish calls to “help” Ukraine
financially, publish links to donations, your magazine will be included
in the list, along with “opensimworld” for destruction.

So let me provide some information about how to help Ukraine financially and publish some links to donation sites:

Global Giving‘s page for Ukraine lists dozens of projects from help for abandoned babies to medications for children’s oncological units. They currently have a top rating from Charity Navigator.
UnitedHelpUkraine.org has projects such as providing medical supplies, humanitarian aid and help for wounded warriors. They also have a high rating from Charity Navigator.
Save the Children provides families with immediate aid such as food, water, hygiene kits, and cash assistance. According to their site, $100 helps supply a month’s worth of nutritious food to a Ukrainian family in crisis. The organization has a top rating from Charity Navigator.
Direct Relief provides medical aid, emergency response packs for first responders, oxygen concentrators, critical care medicine, and more to the Ukrainian people. The organization has a top rating from Charity Navigator.
Doctors Without Borders provides Ukrainian hospitals with medical supplies. The organization has a top rating from Charity Navigator.
World Central Kitchen is supplying thousands of fresh meals to families fleeing their homes as well as meals to those people who are staying in Ukraine. The organization has a top rating from Charity Navigator.
The Humane Society International is providing support and emergency funds to groups that are working to help with relief efforts, care, and providing for animals. They have a high rating from Charity Navigator.
Support Airbnb. They’ve waived guest and host fees for bookings to help funnel money directly to Ukrainian hosts and also have an initiative to provide housing to Ukrainian refugees.
Help Ukrainians with disabilities by supporting Fight For Right’s GoFundMe campaign. This is a Ukrainian organizations that’s almost reached its 400,000 Euro goal.
And here’s the full list of top-rated charities recommended by Charity Navigator that are focusing on helping Ukraine. These are vetted organizations, so you can be sure that your money is making the biggest possible impact.

And since Hypergrid Business is a media organization, I’d like to throw in a pitch to support independent media in Ukraine.

Kyiv Independent’s GoFundMe campaign has surpassed its 1.2 million Euro goal. This new publication is an English-language outlet run by a team of experienced journalists who were formerly with the Kyiv Post before that newspaper was bought and shut down by a businessman who didn’t like its independent voice.
Support other Ukrainian media, including Ukrainska Pravda and Zaborona, by donating to a separate GoFundMe that the Kyiv Independent is running for other media outlets. This campaign has already surpassed its 800,000 Euro goal, but I’m sure they can use more money.

And if you want to know more about what OpenSim grids are doing to help Ukraine, check out our previous article, Grids stand with Ukraine following Russian invasion.

But let’s get back to the email I just got. Here’s the rest of it:

Again, this is not a threat, but a warning. Please don’t forget who you are dealing with. Look at Ukrainian and Polish government websites, intelligence, finance and law enforcement websites.

If you continue your activity, your journal will be added to the list for destruction.

This is not a threat, but a warning.

Think twice. We don’t repeat twice.

Oh, noes, I’m so scared. Also, I don’t think they know the difference between “threat” and “warning.” It kind of sounds to me that they’re making a threat.

In any case, I would be super duper stoked to be added to a “list for destruction.”

I’ve been feeling a little guilty that I haven’t already jumped on a plane to cover the war in Ukraine. Twenty years ago, I would have.

In fact, after the fall of the Soviet Union, I actually went to Russia and the former Soviet republics and covered the wars there for Reuters, United Press International, the Moscow Tribune, and other publications. I reported from Chechnya, from Georgia, and from Tajikistan. I was taken prisoner twice, I had a death squad show up at my door. I was shot at. I was shelled. I walked through mined villages and slept in trenches while bullets flew overhead. I caught rides on tanks and helicopters. I was on the ground in Abkhazia with a UN delegation when Russian planes flew overhead in a bombing run. I helped surgeons operate on a little girl who had fragments from a shrapnel bomb through her body, and who died on the operating table. I visited prisoners of war and interviewed refugees and crossed borders and front lines.

I saw first-hand what happens when former Soviet republics try to leave Moscow’s orbit.

The Ukrainians saw all this, too. And they knew that the West didn’t step in and help, that Russia was allowed to bomb civilians in Chechnya, in Georgia, and in other republics with few repercussions. Even when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, all Russia suffered was some relatively minor financial sanctions.

Ukraine is not part of NATO, not part of the European Union. But it’s fighting anyway.

I personally think it’s an inconceivably brave stand to take.

So I’m donating to the charities, and I hope that our readers will, as well.

March 20, 2022

What is the metaverse?

“Metaverse” is a word thrown around a lot lately, and its meaning seems to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean. Here’s a breakdown of the most common definitions.

(Image courtesy Julien Tromeur via Pixabay.)

Metaverse as virtual reality

The term “metaverse” was first coined in Neal Stephenson’s 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash. He used it to refer to an immersive, virtual reality world in which people are embodied as their avatars.

If you want a movie version, think of Tron, The Matrix, or Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.

Most recently, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg tried to hijack the term to refer to Facebook’s own virtual reality platform.

More likely, the metaverse will come to mean the web of interconnected virtual worlds that will evolve out of all the closed, proprietary ones we have today, similar to the way that America OnLine, Compuserve, and other walled-garden online platforms were eventually replaced by the World Wide Web.

So, in the metaverse, any company or group will be able to put their own virtual world online for the public to teleport to and play inside. Some will be gaming-oriented, some will be business-focused, some will be social worlds, and others will allow users to create their own virtual environments for other people to visit.

I personally would be very interested in working with someone on a virtual reality version of WordPress, an open source platform that helps people, groups, and companies create their own virtual environments for anyone to visit. Like Second Life, but in VR, and with better content management features. If you’re a developer or VC, call me!

Metaverse as augmented reality

You look around and through your glasses — or through your high-tech contact lenses or brain implants — you see a digital overlay over everything around you. When you look at a person, you’ll see their name and short bio hanging in the air next to them. When they talk, you’ll get subtitles translated into your language. When you look at a building, you can see its blueprint. When you look up into the sky, you’ll see the names of the stars.

(Image by Reto Scheiwiller via Pixabay.)

If you turn on an app, you can see Pokemon hiding behind the bushes, or magical beasts from the Harry Potter franchise.

If you turn on another, you’ll get pop-up ads. No, quick, turn that app off.

If you go into a cafe and sit down at a table, you’ll see a menu show up in the air in front of you. And your friend — who’s actually sitting a table on the other side of the world — will pop up across from you and the two of you can have a conversation as if you were actually in the same place.

Metaverse as a single closed virtual world

This vision of the metaverse, of one single giant virtual world controlled by a single entity is the view of the future we saw in Ready Player One, where that one platform was the Oasis.

You also had a single virtual world in The Matrix, except this time it was controlled by aliens.

Meta’s virtual world is called Horizon. Some people might think it’s the same thing, and that Zuckerberg is himself an alien. But that’s a topic for another article.

Meta’s Horizon platform starts with Horizon Home. That’s where users of the Meta Quest — formerly Oculus Quest — find themselves when they first put on the headset. It’s kind of your home screen for VR. Horizon Home is going to evolve into customizable personal rooms and people will be able to invite their friends to join them in these rooms. You can watch a video about Horizon Home here.

There’s also Horizon Venues, for concerts and other events, and Horizon Workrooms, for business meetings.

Horizon Worlds will be a platform where people can create entire virtual worlds, with in-world objects and interactivity.

You can watch a video about Horizon Worlds below:

Metaverse as any 3D world

There are currently many immersive, 3D games that can be played on a traditional screen, without a virtual reality headset. First-person shooters, for example. Second Life, for another. You play as an avatar, inside a virtual world.

Some are even hyper-connected. For example, virtual worlds running on the OpenSim open source virtual world platform allow people to teleport from one company’s world to another’s — much the same way that you can follow hyperlinks to other websites.

I personally like this definition of a metaverse, but that’s probably because I’m a huge fan of OpenSim.

Most of these worlds don’t currently support VR access but could, in theory, be updated to include VR support.

In fact, Second Life has tried to add VR support to their main platform and failed. The problem is that the old-style virtual worlds and games are designed to look good on a computer screen. That means that they try to show as much of the view as possible all at once, and if there’s a slight delay, well, so be it. It doesn’t matter too much if the screen takes a quarter of a second to load or ten seconds.

In virtual reality, however, the view has to be updated often enough, and consistently enough, that it feels realistic to users. That means a fast and steady refresh rate. It can’t lag behind if you move your head. If it does, your body will think you ate something bad and you’ll want to throw up.

OpenSim, for example, can be accessed via a virtual reality headset with a little fiddling around. But the refresh rate is too low and inconsistent, so it gives me motion sickness.

As computer speeds go up, though, this might become a non-issue.

Metaverse as any 3D world plus crypto

One definition of the metaverse that I’m seeing a lot in the news lately is that of the crypto enthusiasts. The pyramid schemers in particular, looking for any opportunity to sell their NFTs, virtual coins, and blockchain tech are jumping on the metaverse bandwagon hoping to convince people that crypto will eventually have some value.

For example, they say, the blockchain can be used to prove the authenticity of items. And yes, once you put something on the block chain it does have a digital signature built in, so that you can’t change it later. But just because someone put it on the blockchain doesn’t mean it’s any good. Lots of people are putting stolen content on the blockchain — the blockchain is not a substitute or replacement for good old copyright law. Plus, anyone can create a blockchain. My block chain says I’m the owner, your blockchain says that you’re the owner. Who’s right? Now we’re back to the courts. The fact that someone has something on a blockchain is no more proof or ownership than sending a copy to yourself by registered mail or posting it on Twitter under a verified account or registering it with the Copyright Office.

Another claim I’m seeing is that crypto can be used as a payment mechanism, and that the metaverse won’t succeed without it. Well, the Internet was doing fine before crypto, and the vast majority of payments are still done without crypto. In fact, cryptocurrency makes a lousy payment mechanism. It’s slow, expensive, and too volatile to be used in any practical way.

Criminals use it because it evades regulation. But regulators are starting to step up, so, eventually, even this use case will probably shrink down as well.

I’ve also heard of people promoting NFTs as a funding mechanism. Metaverse creators can sell NFTs and make money. Virtual worlds can sell NFTs and make money. This is technically true. You can also sell beanie babies and make money. The problem is, once the fad is over and the bottom falls out, it’s the people who bought in last who’ll lose all their money — and these are the people who often can least afford it. The smart money gets in and out quick.

The crypto bros are pretty aggressive in pushing their stuff. Of course they are — they stand to make millions. So if you follow metaverse news, you’ll see a lot of them trying to hijack the definition of the metaverse to include their crypto scams.

Metaverse as anything beyond the physical world

The widest possible definition of “metaverse” goes back to the root meaning of the word “meta” — “beyond” or “above” or “about the thing itself.”

So, in this definition, Google Maps is part of the metaverse. And so are street signs. Flickr is part of the metaverse. And so are old-timey photo albums and cave paintings. The Internet is part of the metaverse. And so is radio, and television, and libraries, and museums.

By this definition of the term, humans have been creating the metaverse ever since we developed the idea of symbolic expressions.

Heck, ants have a metaverse, with the scent trails that show the paths to food sources.

This is my favorite definition of the term, though it’s not particularly practical or specific.

My vision of the future

Since I started writing about OpenSim in 2009 I’ve come to love the idea of a distributed, decentralized hyper-connected metaverse. And this is what I write about in my Krim World series. Last summer, I started writing daily installments and posting on my website, and now have nearly a dozen novellas and short stories published. I’ve just finished the editing of my third book, Krim Deeds, which is now available for preorder. If you subscribe to the newsletter on my website, you’ll get a pre-publication copy of the book for free. That’s thee one that’s currently going through final edits, so if you find any typos, let me know! My email is maria@korolov.com.

What’s your definition of the metaverse? Let us know in the comments below.

January 26, 2022

How science fiction precedes science fact and what it means for the metaverse

Some days, it feels like we’re all living in a science fiction novel, though more dystopian than utopian. Between a global pandemic, Russian saber-rattling on the Ukraine border, and climate change challenges, you’d be forgiven for despairing about the state of the world. And yet, there is more peace in the world than war, extreme poverty is on the wane in most parts of the planet, and we’ve made incredible progress against childhood mortality.

While we still don’t have the flying cars, time machines, and holographic movies that sci-fi has long offered us, it’s not to say the genre hasn’t delivered on some promises. The Star Trek communicators became the Motorola flip phone. The gentle hum of electric cars in are now selling like hot cakes in the form of Tesla and others.

Jules Verne-inspired space tourism is now a thing, video calls are de rigueur, and we all walk around with powerful computers in our pockets that connect to an infinite web of data and information — and yet we use this incredible computing power to play diverting games like Candy Crush and Wordle.

One subset of science fiction, virtual fiction, or what I like to call ViFi, is having its moment in the spotlight as the tech world leans into a future it believes will be dominated by the metaverse. While there is no one, unifying definition for what the metaverse actually is, the general consensus is that it will involve a more immersive version of the current internet, likely an enhanced digital reality that enables users to connect and communicate in a virtual space — William Gibson called it cyberspace — and perhaps using interface tools such as goggles or headsets to offer a more immersive experience than today’s flat-screen, 2D internet. The term itself was first coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash and popularized on the big screen adaptation of Ernst Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One.

I wrote my own ViFi novel, MetaWars, in 2010 after the Icelandic ash cloud grounded flights across Europe. That event inspired a story world where everyone interfaces digitally in a global metasphere using a brain-computer interface and is even able to upload their consciousness to the internet to achieve a type of digital immortality.

And while it’s easy to dismiss today’s hardware as clunky and uncomfortable — I still loathe headsets and get nauseous after about sixty seconds into any virtual reality experience — it’s notable that in a way, we’re already living in the bunny hill equivalent of the metaverse. Anyone who spends their days working from home, on what feels like non-stop Zoom meetings or Microsoft Teams sessions, is living a type of virtual reality. We each project a version of ourselves, a type of avatar, to present our digital selves in a constructed way. My personal metaverse high water mark was getting a good score on Room Rater, but no one ever sees the laundry hanging on the rack just out of view.

We’re all willingly living in the Matrix, eschewing parts of our real lives to give ourselves over to Big Tech’s tools of virtual interconnectivity. And it shows no sign of abating. Last week’s announcement of Microsoft’s takeover of Activision Blizzard was couched in terms of capitalizing on the metaverse. And last year, Facebook nailed their colors to the mast, rebranding themselves as Meta and declaring their intention to be a metaverse-first company.

All this was foretold in ViFi. Technology tends towards monopoly, or at least oligopoly, and the metaverse will likely not be different. The Pareto Principle applies here, in that there will be a few — or even one — big winners, and a lot of also-rans. Just look at search, mobile operating systems, social media, and virtual real estate micro-leasing to name a few verticals that are dominated by three or fewer players.

The great filmmaker David Cronenberg made an underappreciated film called eXistenZ, which portrayed a world dominated by a fully immersive computer game that required a bio-connection to play and two dominant companies fighting for the attention of the world’s gamers. I wonder if that’s the direction of travel for Microsoft. It’s not such a huge leap given that some ridiculous number of humans believe that Bill Gates has put microchips into vaccines. Maybe the next big game from Activision will require bio-connectivity — real life imitating Cronenberg’s art.

Of course, the virtual metaverse interacts with the real world in very concrete ways. The tap of an app can bring restaurant-quality food to your door in a matter of minutes. Calling an Uber sure feels like waiving a magic wand, summoning a chariot in the form a Toyota Prius. And the fact that I can snap a photo of my kids and share it instantly with their grandparents reminds me that when I was a boy — in what my children teasingly call the nineteen hundreds — sharing photos involved two trips to the drug store to drop off film and pick up prints. These daily parts of our modern lives would have read like science fiction just twenty years ago.

Twenty years from now, will we look back at various ViFi stories as the road map for the way we live? Or, will the metaverse be the flying car, more dream than reality?

December 5, 2021

Register now for OpenSim community conferece

The 2021 OpenSimulator Community Conference is next weekend, and registration is now open — and free.

This year’s conference features more than 65 speakers leading presentations, workshops, panel sessions, music, and social events across the diversity of the OpenSimulator user base.

See the full schedule here.

Attending the conference event is free, but those wishing to financially support the conference can still become a sponsor or participate in the crowdfunder campaign when registering. Participants in the crowdfunding campaign will receive a variety of thank-you gifts depending upon their level of participation, including conference VIP seating, and the ability to have a virtual expo booth at the event. The conference sponsorship or crowdfunder contribution is tax-deductible to the extent allowable by law for US residents.

The OSCC21 presentation events taking place Saturday, Dec 11th, and Sunday, Dec 12th will also be live simulcast streamed to https://www.youtube.com/c/AvaconOrg/live.

Other ways to contribute to this year’s event include volunteering with the conference team and hosting a community event on their own grid as part of the conference program.

December 4, 2021

2021 OpenSim Sentiment Survey

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November 17, 2021

Group seeks $65,000 to bring voice to OpenSim

Aug. 19, 2010 meeting of Hypergrid Entrepreneurs Group on OSgrid using the Mumble-Whisper voice system.

The impending loss of Vivox voice in OpenSim is putting stress on educational institutions and other groups and organizations that need in-world voice.

Vivox was integrated into the viewer and required no additional work on the part of the users.

Other systems, such as Skype or Discord, typically require that users sign into a separate voice platform, in addition to logging into OpenSim.

The problem is that Vivox needs a connector in order to work with OpenSim.

The current integration was developed a decade ago with the cooperation of partners who are no longer part of the project, Unity PR head Ryan Wallace told Hypergrid Business.

As a result, it only supports Vivox version 4, not the current version 5. As Vivox migrates to the new version of the platform, the old connectors will no longer work.

That means that either someone needs to step up and build a new connector, or build an entirely new, open-source, voice system for OpenSim.

One group, the Infinite Metaverse Alliance, plans to do just that, with EchoVoice — but it’s going to cost $65,000.

“We asked for volunteer help from the community for two years without success,” project leader Lisa Laxton told Hypergrid Business.

The group has been working on the project with its own resources, but without full-time developers allocated to it, progress is slow — and time is running out.

As of this writing, the organization has raised $650 of its $65,000 goal on its GoFundMe page.

Project needs unique expertise

The big problem in hiring developers for a project like this is the lack of domain knowledge, said Laxton.

“As with OpenSimulator, there are client and server side components,” she said. “Both are needed and therefore cannot be developed or tested separately.”

The money will be used to pay the salaries of experienced OpenSim developers, she said, who are part of the Infinite Metaverse Alliance team.

“Troy Schultz is the lead developer and designer of the project source code and will be compensated accordingly if sufficient funds are raised,” she said. “Engineering and documentation requires domain knowledge and will be handled by the current team under his direction.”

Schultz has been an OpenSimulator contributor over the years, she said, as well as a contributor on other open-source projects. He is the former owner of Refuge grid, and is the lead admin for the Infinite Metaverse Alliance and Laxton Consulting research and development projects, and is also known as “Seth Nygard” in-world. You can see his LinkedIn profile here.

Laxton herself is a systems engineer with project management experience, and has been CEO of the Infinite Metaverse Alliance for the past five years and president of Laxton Consulting since 2009. You can see her LinkedIn profile here.

Another member of the team is engineer Frank Rulof. You can see his LinkedIn profile here.

Roots in Whisper

The most significant previous OpenSim voice project was Whisper, which was a connector between OpenSim and the Mumble open source voice server. But that project is now several years old and out of date.

I last tried it out in 2010, when there were early signs that it could work — but the free availability of Vivox for OpenSim made Whisper almost completely irrelevant. Plus, unlike Whisper, Vivox didn’t require grids to have a separate voice server for their users — Vivox handled the voice. And although Vivox charges money to its bigger customers, OpenSim grids got the service for free.

According to the Infinite Metaverse Alliance, there is now too much technical debt accrued with the Whisper project for it to be a practical solution going forward.

But the basic idea of Whisper — building a connector between the Mumble voice server and OpenSim — is still a good one.

As with Whisper, the new EchoVoice system will require that grids host and run the Mumble voice server in order to have voice on their grids.

You can watch a video about the EchoVoice project below:

November 1, 2021

Former Enchanted Grid owners say legal action led to server loss

One of the former owners of Enchanted Grid, Dawn Gemma Sian Rhys-Owain, says that legal action has caused the loss of the grid’s servers.

The grid has been down for a couple of weeks due to a management shakeup in which Rhys-Owain and her partner, Dai Rhys-Owain, gave up their share of the ownership of the grid, leaving it the hands of the third partner, Julie Campbell, also known as “Tanya Matahari” in-world, who is now the sole owner and director of the company.

According to Dawn Gemma Sian Rhys-Owain, she became aware of a legal action filed against a grid staff member around October 8.

She and Dai Rhys-Owain physically met with Campbell on October 10, she told Hypergrid Business.

“We brought her up to speed on the legal actions against our staff member,” she said. “That would also include Enchanted Grid.”

In mid-October, all three grid owners decided to remove the staff member from the grid, she said. “The member agreed to go quietly and leave gracefully to save the grid.”

Faewood Forrest region on Enchanted Grid. (Image courtesy Enchanted Grid.)

Servers gone with no recourse

She declined to say what staff member was involved with the legal action, or what exactly the legal action was, but said that it resulted in the shutdown of the grid servers.

“The servers were revoked due to legal reasons,” she said. “They can not be turned on ever again but everything else has been transferred to Tanya quite amicably.”

She added that she had been using personal accounts for both her real-life business and for grid purposes, in order to save money. “We never imagined that this situation would happen,” she said.

She did not explain why the legal action had to result in the destruction of the servers.

Dai and Dawn Gemma Sian Rhys-Owain. (Image via Facebook.)

“I will confirm that the legal actions are still pending against the staff member and they are why the grid got destroyed,” she said. “We are sorry that this happened. It could have been prevented had the staff member left quietly as promised or had Tanya chosen to believe the truth instead of being blindly led by a long-term personal relationship with the staff member.”

She declined to name the staff member involved or to explain how the staff member leaving quietly would have had any effect on any legal action.

“I appreciate it’s hard to put personal feelings to one side when you have had a relationship for 15-plus years,” she said. “However, you cannot let personal feelings influence a business decision.”

She added that there were no backups available.

“We will not be starting another commercial grid,” she said. “We will be concentrating on our real life for the foreseeable future. We wish everyone all the best.”

Enchanted Grid never shared its active user numbers, but, as of mid-October, the grid had 336 registered users and 477 regions. All those regions and user inventories are now gone.

October 28, 2021

Facebook changes name to Meta, embraces metaverse

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg speaking at Facebook Connect. (Image courtesy Facebook.)

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook changing its name to Meta in order to focus on the metaverse. He spoke at today’s Facebook Connect, the company’s virtual reality and augmented reality conference.

The stock symbol will officially change to MVRS on December 1, the company said in an announcement released today. Facebook itself will remain, but will now be just one brand in the Meta portfolio, alongside Instagram and WhatsApp.

“We believe the metaverse will be the successor to the Internet,” Zuckerberg said. “When you’re in a meeting in the metaverse you’ll feel that you are in a room together, instead of looking at a row of faces on the screen.”

Connections will be more natural and vivid, he said.

“Screens just can’t convey the full range of human expression and emotion,” he said. “They can’t deliver the feeling of presence.”

He said that people will have photorealistic avatars for work, as well as more cartoony ones for socializing or gaming.

He said that people will be able to create rooms and spaces anyone can teleport to, using an open standard.

“In order to unlock the potential of the metaverse, there needs to be interoperability,” he said. “That goes beyond just taking your avatar and digital items across different apps and experiences, which we’re already building an API to support. You want to know that when you buy something or create something that your items will be useful in a lot of contexts. you’re not going to be locked into one world or platform. You want to know that you own your items, not a platform.”

This is a departure from how Facebook currently works, where social interactions and content are locked into the Facebook ecosystem.

In another departure from Facebook’s current modus operandi, he added, “privacy and safety need to be built into the metaverse from day one.”

He promised that the metaverse will be broadly accessible. People can use virtual reality headsets, or augmented reality viewers, but also computer screens and mobile devices to access metaverse content, he said.

And interactivity won’t be limited to typing. Input methods will include gestures and voice control, he said.

“Or even just make things happen by thinking about them,” he said.

You can watch the whole keynote presentation below:

October 27, 2021

Enchanted Grid sees ownership shakeup, residents concerned

Enchanted grid. (Image courtesy Enchanted grid.)

Enchanted Grid, a mid-sized private grid with a few hundred regions and registered residents, has been down for a few days, and documents were filed today signaling a change in ownership.

The previous owners, Dai Rhys-Owain and Dawn Gemma Sian Rhys-Owain, have been replaced by Julie Campbell.

“No one knows who’s in charge and no one can buy currency or regions right now,” one grid resident told Hypergrid Business, requesting anonymity to avoid being caught up in the cross-fire.

Enchanted Grid was founded this past March and runs on the Halcyon version of OpenSim, first developed by the team behind the now-defunct InWorldz grid, which was once the biggest closed grid in OpenSim.

On its FAQ page, Enchanted Grid lists Tanya Matahari as the owner.

Matahari is a virtual world fashion designer who was well known on InWorldz and in Second Life. Her blog is here and her Facebook page is here.

Enchanted Grid also has a Facebook presence, with a private Facebook group.

I’ve reached out to the former owners, to Matahari herself, and to other people who might be associated with the grid, and will update the story as information comes in.

October 24, 2021

Oculus Quest 2 setup is super easy. Getting OpenSim on it, not so much

Maria Korolov with the Oculus Quest 2 headset.

I just ordered my Oculus Quest 2 headset this morning — and it already came this evening.

Initial impression is that it’s the easiest-to-use headset I’ve tried so far. Very comfortable, very lightweight, and I didn’t even need to charge it up when I took it out of the box.

Next step — figure out how to use it with OpenSim.

First, I need to install Steam and Steam VR (and find a light skin for Steam, since my eyes suck and can’t read white text on a black background). Then, install the Oculus app on my computer.

Then, there’s something called the Firestorm VR Mod, and the latest download link is here. Unfortunately, I get an error when I try to run it.

Welp, I guess this is going to take a while! Anybody have any ideas or suggestions for fixing the Firestorm problem?I’ll keep you guys posted.

Meanwhile, watch my unboxing video below.