Ask HN: What are the hardest problems involved in building out the metaverse?
8 comments
Having Mark as a boss..
1. Defining what "the metaverse" is even supposed to be.
2. See (1)
2. See (1)
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If people are going to be able to move freely between servers, the metaverse will probably need a decentralised identity and trust system. This is a major unsolved problem in internet engineering generally.
The web would also benefit from such a system, but it's maybe less critical for the web, since most websites only contain information that is broadcast to users, and the users can't manipulate the state of the server or interact with other visitors.
The web would also benefit from such a system, but it's maybe less critical for the web, since most websites only contain information that is broadcast to users, and the users can't manipulate the state of the server or interact with other visitors.
Certainly there are technical challenges, but I don't see that as being different than technical challenges in other new areas. The non-technical challenges will be the barriers. I wasn't convinced these could be overcome in the near future, but I wasn't thinking as FB would. How could normal people be strongly influenced into doing non-normal things, and it seemingly become normal, spending excessive amounts of time in it? I can scarily think of some ways this could effectively be done with even a small fraction of ~FB~ Meta's resources.
1. Not 1 but 2-3 companies making competitive metaverses for diversity in their offerings e.g. Epic Games, Hello Games
2. Feels a bit early from a hardware/graphics pov. Need atleast 10-50x lower power-to-efficiency on compute.
3. Need both persistence and concurrency to occur at the same instant for atleast 1b+ people (also tech capability to hook in 1b+ people).
4. Need real world integration with retail, real estate (home & office), transportation, schools/universities (& pizza delivery ofcourse) for a seamless blend into real world experience. E.g. apartments pre-built with non-headset related immersive/functional experiences, apartment OS with home/building AI.
5. Would need re-orienting the cloud led model to pushing clever ai, massive on device processing for real time, low latency UX.
6. Secure, standard low latency networking across currently fragmented routing hardware & networking services market (e.g. pre configured BGP routers, specialized IX and even optimized wireless routers)
7. Secure transactional capabilities with peer to peer resiliency in absence of single clearing house
8. Digital rights and digital ownership and protection of assets (which could be upheld by an assembly or independent council of regulators, Original Experience Manufacturers (OEMs), etc)
9. hackable editors and tools to code/build and community contributed world assets and functions. E.g. more user friendly version of Godot or Unreal engine.