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Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

gather.town

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Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#71

Post by eatonphil »

revalo wrote: post #68
eatonphil wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I run a completely free service https://firemeet.io Though I think gather's UX is actually very friendly to non-technical people!

That's cool! How is it funded?

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#72

Post by jimkleiber »

munfred wrote: post #66
eambutu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have a suggestion to make on this regard, not related to body language. In scientific conferences, typically at the end of the day (e.g. after dinner, with drinks) you have "poster presentations". These presentations look pretty much like these images from Google [0]. Everyone goes to a big room, and the presenters stand in front of their posters which are ~90x120cm. People walk around looking at the poster titles…

Yes. This, this, and more this. Basically, having a way to see someone's table or booth could work for scientific conferences or trade shows or many different conferences, and also for informal conversations as well. I would love this feature.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#73

Post by eambutu »

rollinDyno wrote: post #56
eambutu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many more such interactions coming soon!

P.S. this is an awesome space on of our users made: https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception . This one blew my mind!!

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#74

Post by jimkleiber »

eambutu wrote: post #73
rollinDyno wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Many more such interactions coming soon! P.S. this is an awesome space on of our users made: https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception . This one blew my mind!!

I like this, as it keeps the background the same and only moves the person. I find it less dizzying as such.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#76

Post by moron4hire »

woah wrote: post #44
moron4hire wrote: post #43

Earlier 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?

The half-dozen that I had researched that all came out around the same time:

  - https://calla.chat (my own, though I don't run it as a service, it's a component of my project at work)
  - https://mixaba.com
  - https://sococo.com
  - https://spatial.chat (which looks like a 2D version of Spatial.IO)
  - https://highfidelity.com (a 2D pivot for what was originally a VR project from one of the founders of Second Life)
  - https://hubs.mozilla.com
I'm missing one or two as I noticed that the main variation in total features could be covered with only a few of the ones I've listed and just stopped updating my notes doc).

Add in another half-dozen mentioned elsewhere in this thread (though I've not looked too deeply at most of them)

  - https://www.movement.fm/spaces
  - https://makespace.fun/
  - https://grouproom.io/
  - https://rambly.app/
  - https://www.huddlehq.io/
  - https://branch.gg/
These are just the ones that run in the browser. There are several more built specifically for VR (AltspaceVR, VR Chat, Spatial.IO, RecRoom, etc.), as well as some very long-running native desktop apps. 3D and spatial chat is a pretty long-running market.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#78

Post by ModernTabulator »

I see you guys are using p2p webrtc, and it looks like there is there no media router? Because webrtc can't do a 3-way handshake, traffic will be N^2 as more people join a conversation. Why didn't you guys use a server-side Selective Forwarding Unit or Multipoint Conferencing Unit architecture?

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#79

Post by andrenotgiant »

knowtheworld wrote: post #77

This super cool!! And very similar to the ideal online meetings should be for me. I even made a video to describe this online interaction problem. https://youtu.be/q6zM1wn0dTs Good to see someone solving this hard problem!

I've never seen someone publish something that way, (in a video with storyboard art visuals) I think it was a really effective way to demonstrate the issue and your idea.

Re: Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) – Spatial video chat for remote teams

#80

Post by KMnO4 »

jrpt wrote: post #75
raziel2p wrote: post #15

For remote teams, I literally just want Slack but with named voice channels visible to everyone in the sidebar for discoverability.

Try https://tandem.chat/

Used Tandem, it sucked. The app is 250mb of Electron and it shows. I’ve never used something so simple with such a sluggish interface.

It was also really bad for privacy. You have to opt out of “automatically share window titles with everyone”, and Do-Not-Disturb still pops up notifications when people ignore the badge.

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