Who Cares About the Metaverse? — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:05♪
2. 0:10♪
3. 0:11- Somebody tell me why this was never
4. 0:14in any of Meta's presentations.
5. 0:17How is me putting a phone camera
6. 0:18in the Quest Pro headset the most compelling demo
7. 0:20of VR I've seen in like the last five years?
8. 0:22But I have some hot takes on this whole metaverse thing
9. 0:27that I kept to myself for a little while,
10. 0:28but I think it's finally time to share them.
11. 0:30So buckle up, let's get into it.
12. 0:32So Meta's stock is down over 60% this year.
13. 0:35Facebook's growth has flatlined,
14. 0:37and their CEO, Mark Zuckerberg,
15. 0:39has doubled down on this commitment
16. 0:41to the whole Metaverse thing,
17. 0:42which they've continued to pour tons and tons of money into.
18. 0:46It's like, what is going on here?
19. 0:48But let's just zoom out a second
20. 0:49and start with some definitions.
21. 0:51VR is virtual reality, which is, you know,
22. 0:54putting a headset on and being completely immersed
23. 0:56in a new virtual world.
24. 0:58AR is augmented reality,
25. 1:00which is overlaying virtual things
26. 1:03on top of the real world.
27. 1:05I'm gonna use that a lot in this video.
28. 1:06Those two things, though,
29. 1:07are both particularly hard to demo.
30. 1:11You kind of have to try it
31. 1:13and use it to actually understand it and appreciate it.
32. 1:15So I know there's a lot of curiosity about VR,
33. 1:18especially lately, and it can be kind of hard to tell
34. 1:20if it's like, just another trend in tech,
35. 1:22like 3D TVs, whatever happened to those,
36. 1:25or if it's actually the future
37. 1:27that we'll all be living in like "Ready Player One."
38. 1:31Or maybe more like "WALL-E." Hard to tell.
39. 1:32Either way, there's basically one visible mega-company
40. 1:36that's clearly pushing all their chips in
41. 1:38on this definitely being our future.
42. 1:41And that's Meta, formally known as Facebook,
43. 1:44with their CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
44. 1:46This guy. This guy right here.
45. 1:47And he explained to me many times
46. 1:49that they really believe in this metaverse thing.
47. 1:52And he showed me all of this Quest Pro stuff right
48. 1:55before it was announced on stage.
49. 1:56So I got to form my opinions on it
50. 1:58before the slightly more cringeworthy presentation version
51. 2:01we've all seen.
52. 2:02The metaverse might have
53. 2:03a pretty terrible reputation already,
54. 2:06but let's try to take a step back,
55. 2:08look at it objectively like a piece of tech, shall we?
56. 2:12(upbeat chaotic music)
57. 2:16So like I said,
58. 2:17VR is one of those things you kind of have
59. 2:18to try to understand and appreciate.
60. 2:21But also, the spectrum of how much people care
61. 2:23about the metaverse is hilarious.
62. 2:26Like, all the way from not caring at all
63. 2:28and never having tried VR in their life all the way
64. 2:31to like serious believers,
65. 2:33like companies hiring a chief metaverse officer
66. 2:36and metaverse being in every headline
67. 2:39and just like a weird obsession with it.
68. 2:40So it can be kind of hard to give a single answer to this,
69. 2:42but I actually think it's pretty simple.
70. 2:45The internet as we have it right now
71. 2:46is mostly controlled by two things:
72. 2:50ads and devices.
73. 2:51And so if you control the ads,
74. 2:53then you're the one connecting people
75. 2:54to the things that they buy.
76. 2:56That's basically what Google does.
77. 2:58Like, Google's job is to know everything they possibly can
78. 3:01about people, and then show them ads for things,
79. 3:03not just on Google search results,
80. 3:04but all over the internet with Google AdWords.
81. 3:07Pretty much every company in the world
82. 3:08who does online advertising pays Google to do it for them.
83. 3:11So for as much as we talk about like the Pixel
84. 3:13and Google Chrome and Android on this channel,
85. 3:15Google is, at its core, an ads business.
86. 3:18And then if you control the devices people use,
87. 3:21then you very much have control
88. 3:22over what makes it to people's eyeballs.
89. 3:24Facebook has wanted to make a popular device,
90. 3:27but they don't make one.
91. 3:28Trust me, they've tried.
92. 3:29But now in 2022, as popular as Facebook is,
93. 3:32they have clearly saturated the market.
94. 3:35They've peaked.
95. 3:36They've begun their inevitable, very slow decline.
96. 3:38And so they've made their bazillions of dollars.
97. 3:42But now with things like the iPhone adding
98. 3:44that Ask App Not to Track button,
99. 3:46that took a multi-billion dollar chunk out
100. 3:48of Facebook's ads business.
101. 3:50Didn't really hurt Google as much
102. 3:51because people still go to google.com
103. 3:53and type in a box what they're looking for.
104. 3:56Google still knows a lot about people.
105. 3:57So bottom line.
106. 3:58Bottom line is Facebook is accepting that L.
107. 4:03You know, they dominated the early parts of the internet
108. 4:05and that was great,
109. 4:06but now the slow decline has begun,
110. 4:08and they're moving on to the next big thing.
111. 4:11And if you could look all around at all the technologies
112. 4:13that could maybe be the next big thing,
113. 4:15that one thing that keeps bubbling back up
114. 4:17to the surface has been VR and AR.
115. 4:19And so if Facebook, Meta,
116. 4:21can control as much of this VR future as possible,
117. 4:26the software, the hardware, the ads,
118. 4:29the things that make it to people's eyeballs,
119. 4:31then they will regain the control,
120. 4:34and the money, that they're after.
121. 4:36So cue them rebranding themselves to Meta
122. 4:38and pouring billions and billions of dollars
123. 4:41into that exact mission.
124. 4:44(upbeat futuristic music)
125. 4:47Okay, so this might be kind of a hot take,
126. 4:49but the Meta Quest Pro,
127. 4:51this headset, is $1,500,
128. 4:54and I'll explain the thinking behind that in a second,
129. 4:56but it is actually pretty good.
130. 4:59It's a pretty good,
131. 5:00technologically speaking, a pretty good headset.
132. 5:02It is much more comfortable than a lot of others I've tried.
133. 5:04So they've split the components now
134. 5:06between the displays and lenses in the front,
135. 5:08and speakers and buttons through the middle,
136. 5:10and then the battery at the back.
137. 5:12It is lighter than it looks,
138. 5:15but I think it's more about the balance and the weight.
139. 5:17Here you can see it feels like the balance point
140. 5:19is right in the middle there, which is better.
141. 5:22But then you put it on and you look like this.
142. 5:23Here you go. Boom.
143. 5:26And without the blockers on the side,
144. 5:30there is a little bit of a gap.
145. 5:31And you do have peripheral vision light coming
146. 5:34in from the sides and not the top.
147. 5:36Inside, there is a custom Snapdragon XR2+ processor,
148. 5:40256 gigs of storage, 12 gigs of RAM,
149. 5:43and then a slimmer set of displays and lenses.
150. 5:45And then the screens inside
151. 5:46are giving you 1,920 by 1,800 per eye
152. 5:49at up to 90 fps.
153. 5:51And it can do this decent, full-color passthrough
154. 5:53with the 10 sensors and cameras scattered
155. 5:55around the outside.
156. 5:56It's not the best passthrough I've ever seen,
157. 5:59but it does work and it lets you feel like you're
158. 6:01in a normal environment.
159. 6:03Plus, there's these new Touch Pro Controllers,
160. 6:05which have cameras and sensors of their own.
161. 6:07And they all charge on a single dock through some pins,
162. 6:10which you'll be doing often
163. 6:11because sadly the headset does just have like
164. 6:13a 1.5-hour battery life when unplugged.
165. 6:15But then there's also a suite of sensors
166. 6:17on the inside facing your eyes,
167. 6:19facing your face for face tracking.
168. 6:21Okay, right now I'm looking at an alien face,
169. 6:25but a little bit more interesting
170. 6:27than that is the alien face is, in real time,
171. 6:30showing what the headset sees my face doing.
172. 6:33And so every expression that I make,
173. 6:36every little facial movement
174. 6:38or the eye movements, the...
175. 6:43It's kind of a lot of the little things too,
176. 6:45like the little muscles on your face that move when you talk
177. 6:47and you make little microexpressions.
178. 6:49So if I was in (laughs) a virtual world
179. 6:52and trying to convey emotions to another person,
180. 6:54then they would see everything.
181. 7:01That's pretty cool.
182. 7:02VR and AR both worked pretty well through this headset,
183. 7:05but at the end of the day, it still is a pretty chunky,
184. 7:08it's a pretty big headset.
185. 7:09It doesn't fold down, either.
186. 7:11So if you wanna travel with it,
187. 7:12you need like a bag or a backpack.
188. 7:14This version might not be tempting to you.
189. 7:17Zuckerberg keeps telling me, you know,
190. 7:19people buy a new $2,000 machine
191. 7:22as their desktop computer all the time,
192. 7:24and this is maybe a replacement for that someday.
193. 7:27But this might not be tempting to you.
194. 7:30But theoretically, in a couple of years,
195. 7:32a new version of it is much, much smaller,
196. 7:34closer to like a regular pair of glasses.
197. 7:36And then even further down the road,
198. 7:38another version is even smaller,
199. 7:40maybe lightweight like Google Glass used
200. 7:42to be back in the day.
201. 7:43And then eventually it's an incredible,
202. 7:46actually portable piece of tech.
203. 7:48And so, theoretically,
204. 7:50if you pour enough money and talent into something,
205. 7:53it can become amazing,
206. 7:56which leads me to my next point.
207. 7:58(upbeat electronic music)
208. 8:01This is the real question here.
209. 8:03Every time I see a new VR headset pop up,
210. 8:05whether it's this like Pico Pro headset
211. 8:08or the Meta Quest Pro or anything like that,
212. 8:10the question is always like,
213. 8:12is this VR thing really actually gonna be the future?
214. 8:15Like, it's cool, the tech, and it works and everything,
215. 8:17but are we actually gonna be spending meaningful time
216. 8:19in VR at some point?
217. 8:21And the answer, of course,
218. 8:22depends on who you ask, obviously.
219. 8:24I feel like I've noticed
220. 8:26the younger the person is that you talk to,
221. 8:27the more likely they are to want to give VR a chance,
222. 8:30or to try it more often.
223. 8:32But if you ask Meta,
224. 8:34if you ask anyone in leadership at Meta,
225. 8:36the answer is yes, absolutely, 100%,
226. 8:39this is the future that we are all going
227. 8:41to be living in, using VR all the time.
228. 8:44Metaverse for sure.
229. 8:45Now, of course, they have to believe in that
230. 8:46because the whole company is a huge ship barreling
231. 8:50in that exact direction.
232. 8:51But also, watching the presentation of everything
233. 8:53at the Meta Connect keynote,
234. 8:55as miserable and awkward as it was, the more you watch,
235. 8:59the more it kind of crystallizes their whole plan, for me.
236. 9:02Basically, step one:
237. 9:04Think of all the things people normally do on the internet.
238. 9:07Step two: Make those things in VR,
239. 9:11and then pour tons of money into them.
240. 9:14And then that's kind of the whole plan.
241. 9:16If you get the time and you actually get
242. 9:18to watch through that presentation,
243. 9:20it happens over and over again
244. 9:21where basically they realized
245. 9:23that people do certain things in real life,
246. 9:25and then they want to bring that thing into VR.
247. 9:28Oh, you'd like to do this? Here's a VR version.
248. 9:30Oh, you do this other thing? Here's a VR version.
249. 9:32Over and over again.
250. 9:33And ideally, for them, anyway,
251. 9:35convincing people to use the VR version just will become
252. 9:39a matter of making the VR version really, really good.
253. 9:42Hopefully better than the real life version.
254. 9:46And that's where I think my hot take comes in,
255. 9:48which is that some of these VR applications
256. 9:50are actually scary good and starting to look better
257. 9:53than the non-VR version.
258. 9:55And for Meta,
259. 9:56if they can get enough of these things to be real,
260. 9:58then they'll be making this metaverse thing happen.
261. 10:02- Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen.
262. 10:05It's not going to happen.
263. 10:06- Okay, so some are easier than others, right?
264. 10:08Gaming, yeah. We've got some good games already in VR.
265. 10:11Now, we gotta work on getting more,
266. 10:13like a better variety of games,
267. 10:15better fidelity, et cetera, more immersion.
268. 10:17And pouring money into this ecosystem will entice developers
269. 10:20to rapidly improve games and make better games,
270. 10:23which is awesome.
271. 10:24But there's more to life than just games.
272. 10:26What else do people do all day in 2022?
273. 10:28Zoom calls? Okay, perfect.
274. 10:29Yes, they've got Zoom calls, but better.
275. 10:32They've built an entire virtual meeting room experience
276. 10:35where you can do video conferencing in VR with other people.
277. 10:39So, you know, if some of your friends
278. 10:40or coworkers don't have VR headsets, that's fine.
279. 10:42They'll show up as a floating video feed in the Metaverse.
280. 10:45But now with a bunch of people in meetings,
281. 10:46you can talk to the people around you,
282. 10:48you can do breakout meeting rooms instantly,
283. 10:52really good, immersive presentations, et cetera.
284. 10:55Now, currently, as you can tell,
285. 10:56these are all using these avatars.
286. 10:59And these, I think, are bad. They're pretty cringey.
287. 11:02I mean, you can customize them, of course,
288. 11:04with a bunch of different things.
289. 11:05Different hair and features
290. 11:07and outfits and piercings, et cetera.
291. 11:09Which is kind of neat, sure,
292. 11:10but you still end up feeling like a metaverse meeting
293. 11:13is just a bunch of Mii characters from Nintendo Wii.
294. 11:16But it's very much a stopgap because we also saw
295. 11:18that Meta announced this live avatar demo
296. 11:22that looked absolutely wild to me.
297. 11:24You can essentially use your phone
298. 11:26to take a scan of yourself,
299. 11:29and then the headset takes that
300. 11:30and puts a photorealistic version of you
301. 11:33into the virtual environment,
302. 11:34complete with that face tracking
303. 11:36and eye tracking and everything that we talked about before.
304. 11:39That is super next level.
305. 11:41So you can imagine now,
306. 11:42instead of just a Zoom call with coworkers,
307. 11:44a really good meeting is a bunch of people
308. 11:47from all over the world all in one room
309. 11:49with all the advantages of the eye contact
310. 11:52and relative audio positioning
311. 11:53and being able to like, lean over to the person next to you
312. 11:56and say something really quietly just to them.
313. 11:58All of this is stuff
314. 11:59that you can't really do in a Zoom call.
315. 12:01And so just replace these weird avatars
316. 12:03with the hyperrealistic ones
317. 12:05and they might be onto something.
318. 12:07But that's just meetings. That's not even that much time.
319. 12:09What else do people do?
320. 12:10Maybe they just work remotely, period.
321. 12:12Sure. Okay.
322. 12:13Then they'll build this whole metaverse,
323. 12:15this whole virtual office building for people to work in.
324. 12:18So if they work all over the world in different countries,
325. 12:20they can all collaborate in the same spaces.
326. 12:22But even the first thing I showed in this video,
327. 12:23which is just simply working on your computer,
328. 12:26which is a thing that many people do for many hours a day.
329. 12:28And the Quest Pro has native Mac support
330. 12:31that let me project my Mac's screen onto
331. 12:33these multiple, huge, virtual screens.
332. 12:36So you can take a huge, triple-monitor setup
333. 12:38wherever you go, basically.
334. 12:40You can just take this headset with you and do way more,
335. 12:43with fairly high resolution
336. 12:44that can again get better with time and more money.
337. 12:47They've poured money into Microsoft
338. 12:48to bring Office 365 and Word
339. 12:51and Excel and everything into workrooms natively.
340. 12:54They've poured money into Accenture
341. 12:56to give them like thousands and thousands of VR headsets
342. 12:59to get those people to use the metaverse
343. 13:02to work virtually all the time.
344. 13:04Basically, Meta can, and will,
345. 13:07dump a ton of money into this
346. 13:09because that's all they're doing right now.
347. 13:12There's like a common trope that like,
348. 13:14if you wanna make a bunch of money as a startup right now,
349. 13:16just make a virtual reality tech startup in some way.
350. 13:20And you'll eventually level up enough
351. 13:22to just get acquired by Meta.
352. 13:24It's no wonder chief metaverse officers became a thing.
353. 13:26That became a way
354. 13:27to like make it seem like you might get acquired by Meta.
355. 13:31But that brings us to the last thing.
356. 13:32♪ One more time ♪
357. 13:34(upbeat music)
358. 13:38- Really, there's only one problem
359. 13:39that I have with all of this,
360. 13:41which is that one company controlling the entire foundation
361. 13:47of this second-generation internet,
362. 13:50if you wanna call it that, this metaverse,
363. 13:53is a terrible idea.
364. 13:54So this comes down to Meta wanting
365. 13:57as much control over this future as possible.
366. 13:59Facebook was built on someone else's foundation.
367. 14:01They want to build the next foundation,
368. 14:03and then be the ones responsible
369. 14:05for everything that grows up on top of it:
370. 14:07the workrooms, the games, the experiences, everything.
371. 14:10So they're pretty visibly pouring
372. 14:13as much money into it now as possible
373. 14:15to get as far ahead as possible.
374. 14:17Now, plenty of other companies are developing
375. 14:19and making really cool VR stuff now
376. 14:21along those same lines, don't get me wrong.
377. 14:23There's the Pico headset I just showed you.
378. 14:25There are stuff from Google, stuff from,
379. 14:27I think we all expect in the next year
380. 14:29or so Apple to finally unveil their VR headset,
381. 14:33which I think will make Meta a little bit nervous
382. 14:35because Apple will for sure make sure
383. 14:37that's the best one for iPhone users.
384. 14:39But Meta has already, you know,
385. 14:42made so many connections and built so many technologies
386. 14:45and bought up so many VR companies and VR studios that,
387. 14:51it sucks, but it's like,
388. 14:53if there's any company that can be positioned
389. 14:55to bring this technology over the hump to make it a thing,
390. 15:00then it's Meta.
391. 15:01But the downside of that, especially this company,
392. 15:05having possibly that much control over people
393. 15:08and over the future of the internet,
394. 15:10and possibly doing crazy things like using eye tracking
395. 15:13to make sure you see certain ads,
396. 15:17is way too much for me to wanna root for it at all.
397. 15:19I've said it before, but when companies truly compete,
398. 15:22that is actually when we win.
399. 15:24When there's actually real incentive to get better
400. 15:26because competition makes them better,
401. 15:28that's when we get better stuff.
402. 15:31But man, Mark's metaverse money might make
403. 15:36the meta thing much more mainstream, or maybe not.
404. 15:42Thanks for watching.
405. 15:44Catch you guys later. Peace.