Sorry all for the signup issues. A fix is going to be deployed in a few minutes. Sendgrid was giving us errors and we mistakenly had them in a codepath that was called synchronously.
Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
61–70 of 103 posts
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#62One of authors here. As a kid, some of my most meaningful relationships and experiences were forged through online gaming (UO anyone?). A big part of this wasn’t necessarily the game itself, but was instead the sense of place and community afforded through the shared environment. As an adult, many of my most meaningful relationships have come from my work environment. When working remotely or in a distributed setting…
Curious of your thoughts on Topia, similar but geared for office work, community building, and commercial worlds. https://topia.io/
Check out https://topia.io/ycombinator
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#63One of authors here. As a kid, some of my most meaningful relationships and experiences were forged through online gaming (UO anyone?). A big part of this wasn’t necessarily the game itself, but was instead the sense of place and community afforded through the shared environment. As an adult, many of my most meaningful relationships have come from my work environment. When working remotely or in a distributed setting…
I spent my adolescence on Ultima Online and don’t regret a single day. I now recognize it was a problem.
I know it's probably just remembering things better than they were but UO was some kind of magic- it was one of the last times that mmos forced players with a wide variety of playstyles to interact with real consequences in the same world. Shortly thereafter things split into specialized PvP and PvE mmos and it was never the same.
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#64This reminds me of framevr.io Totally 3D with support for headsets and very expandable.
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#65The killer app here would be to license or safely mimic some classic office layouts: Mad Men, The Office, Silicon Valley, Parks and Rec. Or even the USS Enterprise.
Or, an “App Store” for interior designers and artists to sell office spaces and furnishings.
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#66Disclaimer: I've joined Spot as a strategic/product advisor and consultant, and I'm very excited about the space, product and roadmap.
Working from home since late 2008 myself, I've felt the drawbacks extensively. So when I discovered Spot for the first time, I felt that this truly addressed many of the challenges of working from home. Some of these are the dilution of corporate culture, the loss of rituals and ceremonies, and the loss of chance encounters and spontaneous conversations with coworkers. People working from home over long periods of time tend to feel increasingly more disconnected and unseen.
Location and presence can be powerful enablers and are great ways to communicate what's happening in a team, resulting in richer social interaction. I can imagine how nice it is for a team to see who's in the meeting room right now, or who is hanging out in the lounge area and likely up for some small talk. I can see how that would make me feel more connected than just staring at a bunch of channels or joining video calls.
I'm especially excited about the greater long-range potential of a powerful spatial interface to communication and collaboration. There are many things and nuances we are paying very close attention to in order to bridge the gaps and make it feel as natural as possible.
Another aspect I like a lot here is that the design of the space to which you invite people conveys something about who you are as a company and team. I remember getting invited to Dropbox HQ a few times and the space itself had a personality to it that I liked a lot. I can imagine inviting clients and letting them arrive in a virtual lobby with photos on the walls highlighting some really cool things about our product or so, and then picking them up to walk through our virtual space to the meeting room while telling them about the features our engineers are currently working on as we pass their desks.
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Account creation doesn't require clicking a link in the email, I just used 'buttmonkey' as the username and 'buttmonkey@mailinator.com' as the email. And now I am stuck in the tutorial because it wants me to zoom in and out with the mouse wheel or the track pad, and I am at my desk with my computer closed and plugged into my monitor and my Wacom tablet and it doesn't recognize using the touch ring set to 'scroll'. It…
I think they shut down Mailinator emails (tried Mailismagic and mailinator and both times I was "unauthorized")
Wow, that's some pretty disappointing behaviour if true. Since at leat one of the authors is here, would be good to get a comment from them on this?
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#68Got "Unauthorized" message when trying to sign up, switch to Chrome (was using Firefox) then said my email was in use. Tried to reset but nothing happens (console errors showing 401 errors). Just me or did Hackernews hug the site to death?
Same, reloaded the page after the error and got in.
Thanks, that worked, if I had not seen this message I might have forgotten about this and never returned.
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#69Feel free to call me cynical, but do low level employees want systems like this? I've seen a few spacial chat systems pass through HN in the past few months. From a pure social application standpoint both spot and other options seem to be reasonably well executed, though it seems at odds with the natural flow of workplace interactions. I guess it might be a perceived lack of privacy in conversations? When talking to…
That is my feeling as well. The whole point of having colleagues in your physical space is so that you are in the same physical space. Having a virtual space in a background window does nothing for me. I cannot see my teammates walking to the water cooler, I cannot see some teammates grouping up to discuss, I cannot give a sense of whether I'm interruptible or not. Because what we see are those avatars that do not re…
This is where it gets interesting, because many of the things you've mentioned are things that we're spending a lot of time on thinking through.
At the moment Spot has "headphones mode" which signals to others that you prefer not to be interrupted. It also temporarily mutes notifications and other things, just like putting on real headphones in real life would. We're very conscious of these things, and coming from UI/UX research I believe it's paying attention to these fine details that add up to a great product overall.
Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
#70Sorry all for the signup issues. A fix is going to be deployed in a few minutes. Sendgrid was giving us errors and we mistakenly had them in a codepath that was called synchronously.
Still signup issues. I got unauthorized, but then tried again, and said the email was taken.