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Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

I've been wondering for a while Unreal doesn't just make the Unreal Browser.

You download and install it.

Then you give it a URL, and it streams down a map, and downloads DLLs containing behavior custom to that map. While you're in a map, you can walk through a portal to another map. Or you can just keep moving in a direction, which streams more and more map.

If you're in a multi-player environment, you connect to a server for that environment. If you're in a solo area, you're just running locally.

Isn't this what the Oasis (from "Ready Player One") is supposed to be like? What stops them from doing this?

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How do you make money from this? Who would buy it? Why would anyone use it? Is there a point beyond "this is a cool thing", which is pretty well captured by Roblox and Second Life and VRChat

1) How do you make money from this?

How do you make money from anything on computers? With Ads, with Paid Memberships, Paid Access to content.

2) Who would buy it? Why would anyone use it?

Isn't that kind of like asking "who would buy the internet? Why would anyone use the internet?"

Remember when Chromebooks were announced and everyone laughed because it's "just a browser?!"

Well, imagine if you were browsing, except it looked like Unreal engine when you got to 3D content. Rather than looking like crappy WebGL content.

3) Is there a point beyond "this is a cool thing", which is pretty well captured by Roblox and Second Life and VRChat

Do you think Roblox, Second Life, and VRChat look as good as Unreal Engine 5?

Would you enjoy playing content in Unreal Engine 5 without having to install an entire game first?

> Do you think Roblox, Second Life, and VRChat look as good as Unreal Engine 5?

The main bottleneck is the price of asset production. Producing assets on the level of this demo videos is magnitudes more expensive than what you would see in those other platforms. So for someone to be able to turn a profit with that, there would need to be either a bigger willingness to spend, or an explosion in player base.

There are also likely technical challenges. I'd imagine that very few people have both the storage capacity and bandwidth to sustain such a system. You see people on here complaining about websites being a few MB heavy. In such a high quality 3D browser, you would need to load multiple GBs per scene.

I think there's a chance the player base would grow if there were one app you launch, and then you're in 3D world. I think it would help in discovery.

On the technical challenges, yes, you need bandwidth. Just like you need electricity to play a console game. Yes.

But maybe Stadia is a good way to limit how much bandwidth you really need? Load the data on the server, and stream the rendered views.

Similar to the concept being attempted at Core, though it's packaged as a game modding platform. https://www.coregames.com/

Yes you can make unending worlds in UE4.

Nothing is stopping them from doing this.

At the same time, nothing is motivating them to do this either.

Isn't that kind of like saying that "we can all just keep using Postscript files. There's no need for this HTTP / HTML thing. Why would I want to stay in the 'browser'? I just use FTP to fetch content, and use my favorite Postscript renderer to view content."

They did. It's called Fortnite. It's been fairly distuptive.

UE4 supports dynamic multiple maps. Fortnite maps are static ones, even though they could be done using that feature.

The hard part of the multiverse is the business model. Features like dynamic maps are just that, features. If you have a business model that works you can bring all the tech features to play. If you bring the tech to play without a business model you just crater spectacularly. This is why Fortnite is important.

It may not be the feature list you thought the multiverse would launch with but in hindsight it will be the feature list that the multiverse did launch with.

For me, if the content is compelling, I'm paying a monthly membership. I expect the multiverse to pay content creators based on how much time I linger in their content.

Did HTML / HTTP have a business model? Or were they a platform upon which other things were built?

The business model for HTML/HTTP was and is advertising.

People initially tried subscription models for HTML content but it didn't work so everyone went to advertising based models. Observationally, subscription HTML content models have continued to not work (yes, Netflix, but Netflix is more about video content than HTML content).

There was no business model for HTML/HTTP.

It was a set of technologies. Advertising later came to it.

There are tons of subscription models for HTML content that you're ignoring. Patreon, YouTube, online news. Some small, some large.

Not unreal engine, but you might be interested in https://aframe.io/

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