Will There Be Parallel Metaverses?

[MineralMan]

Clearly, Meta, which used to be Facebook, is planning to create a metaverse. In fact, it sort of exists even now, with people wearing silly headsets and playing around with avatars in a sparsely populated imaginary reality.

However, Meta won't be the only metaverse out there. Others will be introducing their own imaginary realities, where people can experiment with their disembodied avatars and try out what is possible and not possible in an alternate reality that exists only in people's imaginations.

Will there be wars between competing metaverses? I mean, blasting someone in some other metaverse with irony waves could be the next way we attempt to destroy others. That might be entertaining. And like another imaginary place, "Heaven," will there be sex in the metaverse, or will all metaversians be genderless and chaste?

So much to wonder about. Want to go exploring? Well, get yourself one of those goggle thingies, jam your phone into it, and log into your own personal impersonal virtual reality. Find out for yourself. You can be anyone or anything you want to be in the metaverse, because it is all imaginary.

[TrogL]

1. There already has been for some time

Second Life started in 2003 as a closed system.

An open source version became available that now has dozens of interconnected grids with tens of thousands of users on each grid. Unlike Second Life everything is pretty much free unless you want large regions of land to build on. Optionally, you can do what I did, build your own server and set up your own grid or regions on an existing grid.

You have an avatar, you can change its appearance, get clothes, houses, vehicles, aircraft, boats, ships, or build your own from scratch. There's a sophisticated programming language and tools for landscaping and building simple shapes (prims) that you can combine into larger objects. I have a massive castle with working doors built of over 1000 prims.

To get around you can walk, run, fly or teleport including between grids.

You can see all this for yourself. The two biggest grids at the moment are

Http://www.osgrid.org
Http://www.aviworlds.com

You only need one account to explore all grids in the Metaverse as they are connected together into one Hypergrid.

[MineralMan]

2. It's all still small potatoes, though.

Interesting, but far from compelling for most people. Sort of like Linux. Anything that requires programming knowledge to participate will remain small, frankly, and not become universal.

[TrogL]

3. No programming knowledge is required unless you want to use it

Most people are perfectly happy to go around talking to people, going to concerts or dances, attending AA meetings or religious services, hanging out at nude beaches, attending courses or any of the other myriad of things available to do, or you can start your own group and create your own fun.