- The metaverse is immensely computationally intensive, not simply because 3D graphics are more difficult to process, but because to make it immersive, persistent and simulatenous involves coordinating interaction between many countless distributed parties at the same time. One solution to this problem involves moving processing into large data centres to reduce the reliance on individual consumer devices as the locus for processing.
- There are ontological questions for the [[metaverse]] posed by the network architecture. If it’s reliant on transmission and recombination, the experience of simultaneity and immersiveness could be said to be fundamentally illusory. What are the implications of this for the kinds of philosophical questions which someone like Chalmers (and I suspect my CSO colleagues) want to ask about it?
- Variable latency means that devices will process things in different ways because they have different information available at any given moment in time, creating networked coordination problems which manifest in coordination problems for the player. There are two versions of the truth in this situation and the server must pick. This varies according to devices as well, with the same immersive world (e.g. Fortnite) being rendered differently across different consoles and mobile devices. This means the overall complexity of a virtual world is limited by the capacities of the lowest order device which can access it.
- Concurrent users is a key factor to understand the development of the metaverse. Each user makes it more complex, as evidenced by the constraints on numbers who can enter current virtual worlds. This will constrain the network effects upon which a platform model will rely in order to scale.
- Epic Games have sought to develop trust with developers by minimising the control they have over the platform. This cultivation of relationships is an excellent example of [[Platform and agency]] as discussed in [[The Public and their Platforms]].
- [[Metaverse]] economies will be platform economies; in fact the lock in will be more profound because metaverse content will likely have to be completely redeveloped to move between platforms, in a way which is unlikely to be true of videos and photos.
Raiding the inarticulate since 2010
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Mark Carrigan 