Weekly Metaverse #124: AR to keep tabs on your house
And also to run model trains through it like you've never seen
Happy Tuesday! For those of you in the US, I hope you had a delightful Labor Day weekend. For those not in the US, we took yesterday off to celebrate working, I guess? Honestly I’ve never really understood the holiday, but I’m not going to argue with it.
Anyway, let’s start with some neat AR stuff from Twitter!
Some Neat AR Stuff From Twitter
Twitter is a great place to watch people playing around with AR. At this point, it’s geeks/enthusiasts/what have you, but you better believe that a bunch of the stuff they’re working on will give you a solid glimpse into what the future will look like.
Here’s an example:
Since the metaverse, at least as your humble newsletter writer sees it, is largely about connecting the digital world to our physical spaces, it has an enormous amount of potential for controlling and managing your home. Want to know which lights (or TVs or AC units or anything else) are on in your house? Throw up a map and get a clear visual instantly.
Another great use case is your garage. You know what I’m talking about - it’s a shitshow in there, and you have no idea where anything is. While AR isn’t magically going to solve that mess right now, it’ll probably be able to help by the time you move all that junk to a new house.
When you’re moving in, pop on a pair of AR glasses and start dumping stuff in your garage. Apply a little AI to understand what each object is, and suddenly you’ve got a system that knows exactly where everything is. For items that it can’t identify, you can just provide some narration (e.g. “That’s a box full of costumes that I used to wear to theme parties in college and can’t throw away, because that would be too symbolic as to how my youth is gone.”).
Now when you need to find your winter jackets for your upcoming ski trip, pop on your AR glasses, ask your AI and get a visual indication of where they are, plus instructions on the best way to get to them.
I know you were fired up about AR for organization of storage spaces, but did you know it can also be used for less exciting things, like gaming?
I’m psyched for Tilt Five. I love board games, and this technology is going to make them awesome. I haven’t put my deposit down out of a principled stand against pre-ordering anything, but when they’re available for purchase, you best believe you’ll be hearing from me about how great mine is.
This is from AR House, which is in LA and has a bunch of AR nerds that play with AR. If you like seeing neat AR stuff, their Twitter account is a must-follow.
As you can see, they threw a party with AR decorations. I really think that decorating is going to be an enormous use case once AR glasses/contacts are ubiquitous. I love Christmas decorations, and they’re going to be orders of magnitude cooler than strings of lights when we have people dedicated to making AR Christmas displays. Same with Halloween, the Fourth of July (AR fireworks shows… think about it) and any other occasion where visuals help to set the mood.
On a related note, here’s a cool AR decorating use case that unfortunately doesn’t embed quite as nicely here, because it’s on Reddit and not Twitter: AR model trains!
Just think of all the ways this is better than the real thing when your kid comes asking you for a model train set. You don’t have to buy a bunch of trains and tracks and decorations. You don’t have to clean anything up when you’re done playing with them (and the elaborate setup you made is immediately ready next time you want to pick them up again). You don’t have to find a place to store them when they’re not in use. The visual effects are way, way cooler. AR model trains > physical model trains.
Fraud in the Metaverse
Here’s a headline I didn’t expect to read: Metaverse Scammers Have a Bridge to Sell You. This Alabama Regulator Is Fighting Back. I mean, the metaverse scammers part sure. The Alabama Securities Commission cracking down, not so much.
Jokes about Alabama being good at football and bad at understanding technology aside, what I really question here is why they would spend the time to attempt to go after criminals who may well be in Russia (which feels a little out of reach for the Alabama Securities Commission).
To be fair, the article does say they’re presently more focused on educating people about investing (and scams) in the metaverse, but even that seems odd to me. After all, grandma’s probably not popping on her VR headset or scoping out plots in Decentraland.
I guess this is all to say that I think the whole idea of fraud in the metaverse is overhyped. My suspicion is that if anything, fraud will be less prevalent in the metaverse than it is in the internet now. Sure, people can pick their avatar and thus choose to look like someone else (or like the avatar that someone else typically uses), but we’re already at the point where scammers are interviewing for jobs using deepfake technology.
When you’re on Zoom with someone, the default assumption is that if the person you’re seeing and hearing looks and sounds like someone, that it is, in fact, that person. In the metaverse, you’re dealing with digital representations, not videos, and I think that very much changes the mental calculus.
Ultimately, what we really need is some form of third party verification service that validates you are who you say you are for videoconferencing, the metaverse and anywhere else we have live interaction. Whoever manages to become the trust provider for the next generation of the internet will provide an incredibly valuable service for digital commerce and also probably make the kind of money that it takes to buy a yacht. A real yacht, not a metaverse yacht.
News About the Metaverse
U.S. Army approves order for thousands of Microsoft combat goggles: The HoloLens is headed to the military.
SNL’s Kenan Thompson Is Looking For Comics In VR: The VR comedy club Failed to Render has found an A-list partner to help make it mainstream.
Snap Lays Off 20% of Staff, Increases Long-term Focus on Augmented Reality: Remember when Snap was just for sending nudes? Simpler times.
Venture into the metaverse on Venice Immersive Island: The Venice International Film Festival is the next festival to integrate VR.
Early version of Seoul’s metaverse revealed: Seoul continues to push forward with creating a digital twin city.
Google’s immersive Street View offers glimpse of ‘metaverse’: Google Street View was a revelation for many, including yours truly - you could suddenly take a virtual walk down any street, anywhere. No surprise that they’ll now let you have the same experience in VR.