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In late 1990s and early 2000, I tried out "Active Worlds" and more. They let me register an account and then walk around in a vast 3D world and chat with people/avatars. It was surreal and frankly felt more scary and unsettling than exciting, in spite of the bright and colorful visuals.

Fast-forward to ~2007, there was a brief mainstream "Second Life" craze. I tried it out for about 15 minutes then and was forced to conclude that it looked even worse than what I remember from those many years earlier.

Now there's yet again this "Metaverse" being constantly mentioned/pushed. This time, I didn't even bother downloading anything (I bet I couldn't even join it now anyway, as it seems to require a Facebook account or something), but rather just watched gameplay footage on YouTube.

It looks exactly like it did 22+ years ago. No joke.

It's still the same worse-than-cartoony, deadly dull, sterile look. I expected it to be literally photo-realistic at this point, but they seem to not even be trying.

Can somebody please explain to me how it's possible that so much happened up until the late 1990s, but since then, apparently, nothing has improved whatsoever? I know for a fact that they are able to make extremely realistic simulations, so why can't I launch an EXE on my desktop right now which lets me walk around in first person in an extremely realistic virtual city and own my own virtual apartment and go down to the store and buy items and have all kinds of exciting adventures which I would never dare or be able to do in real life?

Not only are we "not quite there yet" -- they don't even seem to be trying, or even using existing technology. I don't get it.

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  • $\begingroup$ Could you add links to some examples (images or videos) for the various content you are discussing? $\endgroup$
    – pmw1234
    Jan 20, 2022 at 17:20
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    $\begingroup$ "Can somebody please explain to me how it's possible that so much happened up until the late 1990s, but since then, apparently, nothing has improved whatsoever?" This is ultimately going to be entirely subjective, based on one's personal definition for what "improved" or "extremely realistic" might mean. $\endgroup$
    – Nicol Bolas
    Jan 20, 2022 at 17:58
  • $\begingroup$ Probably not the graphics display technology but rather the difficulty of actually designing all the graphics. Someone would have to draw that apartment, shop, etc $\endgroup$
    – user253751
    Apr 11, 2022 at 9:33

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One of the main reasons is that a number of these “metaverse” (ugh) products are meant to run on consumer VR hardware, which is at best a high-end desktop machine with a good GPU, but is much more likely to be a mobile device like a Quest. VR demands high frame rates—75 to 90 frames per second as a rule—and in the absence of fancy techniques like foveated rendering (which requires eye-tracking hardware absent from most consumer headsets), you have to render two full-size viewpoints rather than one.

In other words, a virtual world that can run at 60fps at 1080p resolution—already a bar many games don’t clear on midrange consumer PCs—would need to be optimized to run more than twice as fast for an acceptable VR experience. Add slower mobile processors into the equation and the visual quality has to drop dramatically to be at all viable.

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    $\begingroup$ After the raw performance hurdle, there is the "uncanny valley". $\endgroup$
    – pmw1234
    Jan 21, 2022 at 11:36
  • $\begingroup$ Definitely true, though I think recent games have largely managed to get past that—a few I’ve played recently with extremely convincing performances were Horizon Zero Dawn, Death Stranding, and the 2018 God of War. $\endgroup$
    – Noah Witherspoon
    Jan 21, 2022 at 18:22

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