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Mesh for Teams, Mozilla Hubs, Sony SAPARi: Audio Science Review VR World

Saidera

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There exists these things called Mesh for Teams, Mozilla Hubs and Sony SAPARi.

How about an Audio Science Review VR World?

This is in relation to a suggestion to use Mozilla Hubs or an equivalent web browser-based VR platform as a way to create a shared space to experiment and interact with the ASR community.

Forums are primarily text-based at the moment and are easily preserved. YouTube videos remain available forever. But interactions in VR are not preserved for future viewers to experience again. There is absolutely no reason to include an ASR-exclusive VR world and yet I am still suggesting it. Allow me to explain why:

So a while back I saw an old VAIO MX desktop computer discussed in a thread here, and in it there was this software called SAPARi (by Sony) which many fans worked to rebuild. They did very deep research. So another thread here introduced the bare essentials of SAPARi.

Now I saw that something called Mesh for Teams would be released next year from Microsoft. I also saw that Facebook would become Meta. As a person whose only deep connection with VR is the extensive infatuation with SAPARi throughout my life, I really was surprised and forced to respond (here). Most researchers and employees of Sony involved in SAPARi (that is, to be precise, the underlying CP architecture that supports it) have a deep and well-founded conviction that such colourful, apparently fun looking VR experiments have relatively little benefit for society, are not all that fun even if interesting people use them (let alone if nobody uses them), and just generally involves hard work to maintain and no viable business model for corporations to really find useful ways to apply them. For decades a variety of VR experiments have been attempted. The ordinary young person on the street might be able to name ‘Second Life’ and ‘VRChat’ these days. People don’t have a need for VR goggles or MR glasses even if they were given away for free. So how is it that a ‘metaverse’ is being pushed out yet again despite the overwhelming success of text, photos, videos and interactive elements in a mostly 2D environment on the Internet? Is there perhaps some use for VR after all? Is there any benefit in being an avatar? Or is this merely another experiment. Perhaps computing power has increased and people are getting unnecessarily excited over nothing again.

It seems that only recently have the technological barriers to experiencing VR been removed with the release of Mozilla Hubs and similar web browser based VR platforms. Those barriers included the need to install a third party VR browser specifically to access the VR platform and the need to conform to various file formats (perhaps proprietary ones). Now though, anyone can visit a VR World via a link to Mozilla Hubs through their web browser (like Firefox) and create content using Blender.

Since I followed the line starting from VRML97 to X3D to WebGL to A-Frame and finally Mozilla Hubs, this has been a very long wait for people. Mozilla Hubs has arrived too late. Perhaps I prefer Hubs because Firefox is related to the old open sourced Netscape Navigator which in turn supported many VRML97 plugins back in the day. It just wasn’t possible to run VR in web browsers until Mozilla Hubs.

Something called Open Cobalt existed but it never got past alpha testing in 2009 and it stalled around 2012-15. It enabled voice communication and the viewing of media within the VR world. It was run in a separate browser and it was ‘open’. It had potential and many features but it stalled anyway. Mozilla Hubs replicates it but in a better way, and no extra browser is needed.

As with anything, the more users and interest that is generated the better the VR experience gets. At present it is rudimentary but don’t let that put you off Hubs. The possibilities remain largely unexplored. So I have simply put this suggestion out there to the community because I am sceptical of VR but my SAPARi history forces me to support it.
 
OP
Saidera

Saidera

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So Mesh for Teams is coming in 2022

Combined with the pre-installation of Microsoft Teams in Win 11, I think the future VR/Metaverse will become heavily monopolised somehow.

VRChat, SecondLife, Mozilla Hubs and the like can never compete against an amalgamation of videoconferencing software, business strength and support - most importantly - a strong business purpose. I always reckoned Skype would be more successful if it had VR in it. Of course, Microsoft Mesh for Teams may yet fail because VR is essentially without a strong purpose or need.
 

KSTR

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Looks like "we find a problem for every solution" type of thing to me.
What exactly is gained here from VR, within our context? You didn't even give an example.

I'm an old fashioned guy and good text form is all I need. Videos have been shown to be much less efficient for learning and understanding complex abstract topics. Your post would be a perfect example. I don't understand a single word as it appears to be full nerd stuff. But I can look it up... which I can't (or at least it's way harder) when the format is video which puts you in passive slave mode compared to active master for a written text. How would VR improve that, and what kind of VR?
 

KSTR

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[...] as a way to create a shared space to experiment and interact with the ASR community.
To me the idea of a forum is to retrieve information and occasionally to bring in information. Information only.
I neither need nor even want to interact with persons because, well, that simply gets personal all too quick.
 
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Saidera

Saidera

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Hi there KSTR,

Thanks for taking the time to reply

So have you used VR before? I know I have not. I am simply imagining that the text form has its limitations and may not be as efficient in some cases. Videos are generally entertainment. Actually passiveness can occur when reading text, viewing videos, talking etc but I agree it's harder to engage with content-rich videos because one can't look things up - on the other hand one can pause the video and think. Critical thinking and other skills aren't related to the medium of expression, probably, for most people anyway.

A forum is for information only - so the associated VR world of the forum is where the personal interactions take place. I mean, attempts have been made here to have a food thread, fun topics and so on. Perhaps also of interest to me is the (now obsolete) area of laws relating to virtual worlds. In a VR world, we are not persons, we are avatars. Right now we are using avatars - a photo of Kazaguruma no Yashichi 風車の弥七 is mine.

What exactly is gained here from VR I don't know - but then - if we ask Microsoft researchers and Facebook what they gain, they don't know either. Most likely some adults working there have a child within them and VR (essentially child's play) appeals to them. Everyone's different and their reasons for using VR are different. There's no set way to use VR. It's just an option, which is how Mesh has been positioned within the Teams software.

I suppose if VR is used for interaction, the mere act of communicating will (maybe) overcome the passiveness of a video. The problem of course is that there aren't many people who stay around in VR ready to take questions etc. It might end up being AI bots again. Instead of a chunk of text or images in one go, information must be elicited actively by the information-seeker.

Like I explained in the OP I am not an expert in VR so I have no persuasive reasons to have VR included or amalgamated with traditional static webpages. It was a simple dream partly shared at Sony CSL to enable web surfing of 3D worlds – instead of clicking a link in search results and getting a big slab of text, you would enter a 3D world. The idea is that by becoming an avatar and experiencing things one would not ordinarily experience in reality, one learns something different or becomes somebody else. Perhaps it could assist in reflecting on matters or merely provide a form of escapism. It could assist healthy and able persons to become a disabled unhealthy person – for example medical professionals could finally understand what it is to be a patient by feeling approximately what they feel and sense. The patient’s voice could be (finally) given the respect it has lacked. Of course some of these things require a full body suit and it may be discomforting – if someone throws a rock in VR at you then your suit in reality would generate feedback. To really understand someone else, or something perhaps loosely called empathy, is fairly important. In the meantime, improvements of oneself on the individual level contributes to an improvement on a societal level. If one cannot look after oneself how can they look after others. Let alone control others. Perhaps power is what every human being strives to gain – power over others – particularly manifestly apparent in global politics but consider that the greatest power is that which is exercised over oneself. Perhaps called self-control. But it can be many things to many people.

In any case, I am very young and my writings are directed to the age group born around the 21st century. I happened to come upon Mesh and Meta and was compelled to respond online, through the only social media that I use – ASR. These days using social media is just so pointless in most cases but ASR is very different to social media. If Mesh integrates VR into ‘Skype’ while Meta does the same for social media, ASR should do the same but earlier. Actually, ASR is very powerful now and could lead the rest of the Internet, including countless other audio forums, into VR the proper way. It isn’t right for the traditional forums to just stand by and watch Mesh and Meta occupy the market and define what a metaverse is to be.

On the other hand, Mesh and Meta might be a flop. At a time when exposure to digital and the Internet has become the greatest threat to humanity and health, it’s predictable that there won’t be mass uptake or routine usage of these technologies.

In VR I don’t think communication truly becomes personal – it is detached – the avatar is an agent of the person behind the screen who creates it.
 
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