Apart from the vibe-coded stuff (though I guess that was due to it being a test run rather than something solid) this is pretty neat! I don’t think anyone will really use it for competitive games (since you can’t edit the levels), but I see how that would make it much easier to do virtual walkthroughs. It’s cheap, relatively easy and uses a lot less resources, I imagine, than using classic rendering techniques. The environment itself reminds me a bit of the levels in SteamVR, where Valve digitised some locations for you to visit on your own.

I think another big problem that hampers the computer age in many places is bureaucracy and clinging to old structures.

For many companies there are checks that are enforced, simply because there is no trust in a new system, or the processes to be automated requires a major reorganisation that spans departments, and those departments might oppose such a restructuring, may it be for fear of their jobs, simply clinging to old processes or not having the capacity to carry out bigger projects.

I find that move extremely funny, since it’s purely made for sensationalism and nothing else. I mean, if you hate how systems implemented age verification, then why don’t you remove its identity verification too, i.e. also optional fields for stuff like your address an e-mail that most users don’t even fill out.

There is no mechanism verifying what birth date you type in - you can type whatever date you want and systems doesn’t care.

I’d say no matter where you stand with age verification, this is the best solution to handle the situation. After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways. There is no real knowing how other systems are checking ages, and there is AFAIK no real government mandated rules on how it is verified. They could make you scan your ID’s front, back, nuclear composition and dietary preferences and give you a result that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a proper age verification procedure.

If the government wants to introduce age verification, they have to do it themselves - build an API that handles the age verification, similar to how the digital ID in Germany works, as an example. If they want proper age verification, they also have to take the blame themselves if things go wrong.