Earlier quoted context omitted.
And High Fidelity: https://www.highfidelity.com/
And Movement: https://www.movement.fm/spaces And MakeSpace: https://makespace.fun/ And GroupRoom: https://grouproom.io/
And Rambly: https://rambly.app
Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
51–60 of 163 posts
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#52I used gather as part of a social gathering with my university cohort and enjoyed it. Only oddity for me was one situation where a group of 3 of us had the person in the 'middle' hearing both, but the two on the outside could only hear or see the middle person. We tried expanding the 'circle range' thingy but then could hear the conversation happening across the room. I wish there was some way to make that whole process slightly more fluid.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#53I've used Gather for several conferences, and I've found it to be surprisingly effective at recreating some of the benefits of in-person gatherings. In particular, since there's no formalism around creating or scheduling meetings, it makes it extremely easy to walk up to people you know, chat for a few seconds, and then step away. Or for impromptu meetings to break out, where two people are chatting, and then another…
You bring up a really point here, and it's something we haven't spent nearly enough time on. What are the kinds of body language that you think are really important in real life, that make it easy to break into a conversation?
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#54I love the idea! When I tried the official demo, the thing that I immediately noticed is the jagged scrolling movement of the screen when I move around. I understand the pixel art style (I love it btw) and that the map is actually discrete pieces of tiles instead of fluid/pixels, but it's really visually jarring as I move around. If I move by pressing arrow keys once at a time that's fine, or if I even hold down arro…
Thanks for the feedback! This is actually something we're working on, you can see what it currently looks like on one of our development servers here: https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are about half a dozen different, similar apps that all came out around the same time (I have one as well). I've done a lot of research on all of them and none of them are copies of any of the others. They all have pretty unique implementations.
Can you post a list of them?
I don't think that's really fair to do in someone else's Launch HN. Hence I didn't even link to my own app.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#56You've got to implement smooth-movement. I used it for a few minutes and I'm nauseous. Just lerp from one-square to another over 120ms and ... scratch that, if I had implemented as nice a product as yours, I would just implement click-to-move. So your character smoothly moves to where you clicked (with a touch of A* path-finding). Only gamer's understand WASD, everyone understand's clicking.
We actually have that in development! Here is what it looks like, one one of our development branches: https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...
I managed to get to Gather's office and what blew my mind is that there are programmatic gates that allow people to go into private spaces if they have permission.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#57Congratulations on the launch! Thoughts on competitors like Gatherly? https://www.gatherly.io/
This and other links look great, and more natural/simpler than the 2d board.
But gatherly doesn't seem ready to serve my family and I if I have to request info (I can't just sign up).
What's the best, simple app like this that allows easy subconversations that my family, parents, other non-technical folks could easily join?
I don't mind paying to host but it has to be easy for them to log in and use.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#58More like Gimmick.town, amirite?
Nope.
This actually seems like a really good idea, taking both the sense of place/community that you get from games, and the productivity and environment that you get at work or a conference.
I like it.
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#59sdf
Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you post a list of them?
I don't think that's really fair to do in someone else's Launch HN. Hence I didn't even link to my own app.
Another cofounder of Gather here -- I'm totally okay with you posting your app here (Calla right?) or the whole list. I think the hackernews comment readers would benefit from seeing the wider space of takes on this idea.