Another thing to keep in mind is that rideshare revenue in the US is extremely geographically concentrated in urban cores. This is why every AV company was targeting SF as their first city (excepting Waymo, which did some stuff in PHX). 'Hyperfocused expansion' probably looks a lot closer to tackling new, novel areas in different metro areas rather than, say, expanding down in to San Jose and the central valley.

These things, they take time.

They've clearly hit (or projections confidently show they'll hit) a point where each car is profitable. I worked in the space for a while - platform upgrades (new cars, sensors, etc) are planned out years in advance and are pretty complex processes. But generally, each upgrade was a massive decrease in cost per car. (usually 50% cheaper or more). So also possible they want to wait for the next platform transition.

F1 on the other hand was maybe the worst offender as far as literalism is concerned.

I'll admit that the way we were using the image tag was a little unusual, but still something that was imminently supported by a plain HTML image tag.

My point is more that Next is such a bizarre black box that things like this were a regular occurrence.

To clarify: yes, it was the next Image tag. The moment we switched to using a plain image tag it resolved itself.

Isn’t the entire aim of world models (at least, in this particular case) to learn a very high quality 3D representation from 2D video data? My point is if that you manage to train a navigable world model for a particular location, that model has managed to fit a very high quality 3D representation of that location. There’s lots of research dealing with NERFs that demonstrate how you can extract these 3D scenes as meshes once a model has managed to fit it. (NERFs are another great example of learning a high quality 3D representation from sparse 2D data.)

>That said, our belief is that model-imagined experiences are going to become a totally new form of storytelling, and that these experiences might not be free to be as weird and whacky as they could because of heuristics or limitations in existing 3D engines. This is our focus, and why the model is video-in and video-out.

There’s a lot of focus in the material on your site about the models learning physics by training on real world video - wouldn’t that imply that you’re trying to converge on a physically accurate world model? I imagine that would make weirdness and wackiness rather difficult

> To be clear, we don't yet know what shape these new experiences will take. I'm hoping we can avoid an awkward initial phase where these experiences resemble traditional game mechanics too much (although we have much to learn from them), and just fast-forward to enabling totally new experiences that just aren't feasible with existing technologies and budgets. Let's see!

I see! Do you have any ideas about the kinds of experiences that you would want to see or experience personally? For me it’s hard to imagine anything that substantially deviates from navigating and interacting with a 3D engine, especially given it seems like you want your world models to converge to be physically realistic. Maybe you could prompt it to warp to another scene?

Additionally, curious about what exactly the difference between the new mode of storytelling you’re describing and something like a crpg or visual novel is - is your hope that you can just bake absolutely everything into the world model instead of having to implement systems for dialogue/camera controls/rendering/everything else that’s difficult about working with a 3D engine?

https://diamond-wm.github.io/

https://diamond-wm.github.io/

https://diamond-wm.github.io/

In my experience, the best immersive theater experiences find very clever ways to make the atmosphere work. In Sleep No More and other Punchdrunk shows, all of the guests are given masquerade masks to wear, the venue is fogged, and the lighting is dim. The dim and foggy atmosphere hides stuff that would otherwise take you out of the dreamlike 1920s noir setting of the show - that the other guest walking next to you is wearing a graphic tee, for example. The masks cast the audience as a shuffling horde of vengeful spirits haunting the characters for the sins they commit throughout the show - so when you see a big crowd following a character, it doesn't instantly feel at odds with the setting the way I imagine seeing a 5 year old in a Pokemon t shirt on the Starcruiser would.

The way to make something that’s fun is to try to make something that’s fun over and over again until you’ve got it down. It’s not by obsessively reading what investors or people who are essentially glorified influencers say.

Also, I’m sorry dude, but your blog sounds exactly like every metaverse pitch I’ve ever seen. Down to the “ROBLOX, MINECRAFT, ETC” highlight at the end. This doesn’t make me feel like I’m reading something written by someone that cares about games - it makes me think the author reads a lot of VC substacks and played League of Legends for a while.

Even mentioning “GTM strategy” and “ideal customer profile” tells me you’re drinking a lot of Kool aid. Stop watching YC videos aimed at B2B SaaS founders and reading a16z blogposts and work a lot harder on this stuff if you ever want to show it publicly.

Also keep in mind, there’s probably literally 100 other companies with the same pitch, vibe, and idea that you have.

If I were you, I’d think deeply about whether this is actually something you’re passionate about working on or if you just want to start a tech startup and chase trends. If the former is true, I’d close this down and work on it for a lot longer before ever showing it publicly. If it’s the latter I’d pivot to an LLM B2B SaaS company like everyone else like you and try your luck at that.