sweasel.com

Zuckerberg’s Metaverse is – and I cannot stress this enough – ugly.

I’ve been trying to find a way to show you, but (no surprise) you’re not allowed to take screenshots in the normal way. When you take them with your virtual phone, you can only share them with Facebook friends – which, annoyingly, does not include your own self.

So let me describe. The character design of the avatars is poor. Those people in the picture above? It’s worse than that. This isn’t an actual screen shot (their usernames aren’t floating above their heads).

You do not have legs in the Metaverse. You are a floating torso that pootles around like a malfunctioning robot.

The Oculus Quest has multiple cameras to track the position of your head and hands. This means you can look over at people and wave or, like, fake robot dance. But wait! Your hands are also how you control everything. For example, to call up your menu, you raise your left arm and look at your wrist. But it doesn’t pop up unless you catch it just right, so you usually need a few tries.

Yes, that’s right – a whole room of zooming legless robots making gentle wanking motions.

The tracking is so good, it can track individual finger movements (there are some fun-looking games based on this idea). Even better! Imagine if you will an auditorium full of ugly torsos, zooming around waving their arms in the air and wiggling their fingers. Only a man as socially awkward as Zuck could think this would appeal.

One of the reasons the Oculus is so inexpensive compared to most VR rigs is that it can’t handle some of the more sophisticated visuals. But really, that’s no excuse for ugly design. I’ve spent my whole day on this island, which is a masterpiece of a silly VR world the Oculus can handle just fine.