The drive to be a part of Metaverse has reached insane heights. In a piece of latest news, HTC’s day-in-the-life conceptual video suggests that Viverse would also be full of plenty of metaverse buzzwords.
HTC’s Metaverse Teaser
With HTC’s Viverse, users would be able to exercise with AR fitness data, buy wine at a virtual tasting with cryptocurrency and browse NFT art (including the ‘Meowna Lisa’ naturally). Although HTC’s teaser is an unusual mix of real products with purely imagined scenarios and no practical way to link them all besides what looks like a gateway app. HTC is also hopeful about the adoption of this technology since there is no NFT backlash or cryptocurrency legal issues in the virtual world.
The Parental Control
HTC is also introducing parental control, the Vive Guardian, to protect the privacy and safety of kids (and concerned adults) in VR spaces. The ‘Free Mode’ enables users access to specific apps and content that children can explore on their own terms. Moreover, users can also choose ‘Broadcast’ to limit young ones to specific experiences such as apps and TV shows beamed from the companion app on their Android phone or tablet.
They can see what their children are using, and they will need permission to download content or make purchases. Vive Guardian will be available on Google Play and Viveport, although it wasn’t listed as of this writing. It will support Vive Focus, Vive Focus Plus and Vive Flow headsets.
Safeguard on Metaverse
The existence of safeguards isn’t surprising when other metaverse operators have had to restrict content. Meta introduced personal boundaries in Horizon Worlds and Venues to discourage harassment, while Microsoft shut down AltspaceVR’s social hub following problems with harassers. It is just a question of whether or not HTC’s efforts are enough to protect users—it’s not clear that you can fence off every potential threat in a given VR environment.
