On February 27, Vice President of Meta Connectivity Dan Rabinovitsj published a blog post asking for help to build the metaverse.
Rabinovitsj discussed the limitations currently preventing the metaverse from achieving its full potential, with the call to action requesting help from other companies and industries as part of a “global effort” to fix many connectivity issues.
In the post, Rabinovitsj discussed the major setbacks the company has identified when attempting to establish the metaverse, which mostly boil down to connectivity bottlenecks. He discussed how “latency-sensitive applications, like video calling and cloud games, have to meet a round-trip time latency of 75-150 ms.”
Furthermore, the more complex multiplayer games will need around 30 ms of time latency. However, these same applications in the metaverse “will need to move an order of magnitude faster – from single to low double digit ms” in order to provide the necessary level of immersion necessary for online and collaborative VR experiences.
Unsurprisingly, the blog post didn’t offer any concrete solutions to these issues— only some vague suggestions regarding “some sort of hybrid between local and remote rendering” and the insistence that these infrastructure developments “will require innovations across the hardware and software stack, as well as revolutionary improvements in network throughput.”
Rabinovistj went on to discuss the numerous ways that Meta planned on pursuing these innovations and improvements, including several substantial investments in telecom projects, open source software, and subsea cables. However, he stressed that “overcoming these challenges will take a global effort that no single company, or even industry, is capable of sustaining on its own.”
Compare this cry for help with recent comments made by Microsoft’s CEO about the metaverse. Satya Nadella expressed optimism that Microsoft could play a significant role in building the metaverse from a game design perspective; perhaps the company would be open to collaborating with Meta on solving many of these problems.
But needless to say, it’s not a good look when the company that named itself after the metaverse admits that it isn’t currently able to create a functional metaverse. It sounds like the social media company may have bitten off more than they can chew, and it calls into question their intentions when pivoting away from Facebook as a brand.
Are they really optimistic about creating a new online experience, or are they just attempting to distract the public from their many ugly controversies?
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