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Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

spot.xyz

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Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#91

Post by photojosh »

astlouis44 wrote: post #85
photojosh wrote: post #83

Seems like a good spot to comment that I've been tossing around a similar idea, but related to creating personal spaces instead. Context: we moved into a much smaller house a few years back and I miss having a room dedicated to shelves, both for books and for music. But most of my reading and listening has moved to digital anyway, so there's really no need for such a space anyway. But it would be amazing to have a di…

Check out vrland.io, we’re working on this!

Nice. Do you have any more info online on where you're trying to head with it? My initial reaction is that it's aimed at social interaction first, and modelling the space 2nd, whereas I was thinking of the other way around.

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#92

Post by remram »

frbr wrote: post #69
remram wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I have to step into that virtual space and put my headphones on/off it is probably not in sync most of the time. Most people won't consistently remember/spend time letting your app know what social clues to give to other people. This is the entire advantage of those clues.

And if I do spend the time, why not put me in the "available for chat" Discord room or similar? What's the advantage of turning those explicit status settings back into subtle social clues in a virtual 3D world, other than making things complicated for coworkers?

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#93

Post by motoxpro »

Aeolun wrote: post #71
dliebeskind wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEO of Topia here - hi! We're 100% focused on communities and human connection, not on office work or commercial tools :). But work employees can be a community as well and strengthening the bonds you have with your coworkers is a great use of Topia! Topia is all about creating real relationships built upon shared experiences and memories. We have tons of fun features to help world builders create unique, connective…

Wow, this person asked for information, and instead they got a fluff piece. Was this an automated post made to any mention of Topia?

What did you want them to say? CEO explained what the company does.

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#95

Post by fluential »

ghempton wrote: post #5
technoplato wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I surprisingly love using these kinds of environments and this one looks neat. What’s going to be the pricing model moving forward. Surely voice and such can’t be free in perpetuity. Nice work!

Good question! Right now we are fortunate to have some AWS credits to subsidize some voice costs :P. At the moment our focus is on usage, but our goal is to have a freemium model based on the size of the space, premium assets, etc.

If you want to be „close” to AWS but still save money, try spinning lightsail instances that act as media proxies, similarly with other more resource generous providers. You could shift majority of media traffic off AWS and keep the “signalling” just there.

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#96

Post by risyachka »

yumraj wrote: post #41

Looks very similar to Sococo, no? https://www.sococo.com/ Not trying to discourage you, but if they are indeed similar, I don't think Sococo has been much successful and they seem to have been trying this for more than 10-12 years if not more.

I've been following similar products for a while now and the main problem with them I find is that they all are made by people who are not related to game industry but try to create a gaming experience. As a result they all look very basic, with at best average UX and visuals. I am not trying being negative here, just my observations.

I'd really love to see a take on such product from an experienced game dev team.

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#98

Post by frbr »

remram wrote: post #92
frbr wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If I have to step into that virtual space and put my headphones on/off it is probably not in sync most of the time. Most people won't consistently remember/spend time letting your app know what social clues to give to other people. This is the entire advantage of those clues. And if I do spend the time, why not put me in the "available for chat" Discord room or similar? What's the advantage of turning those explicit…

An interesting hypothesis. Maybe the deeper question is, does the virtual world really need to reflect the physical world in a very accurate way, or does it suffice to represent a subset of that? And then, how accurate does it have to be? Does it map 1:1 or are there indirections that would work well to convey meaningful information and trigger actions that make sense?

I guess many important clues get provided implicitly. For some reason you want to mute notifications for a while, so you do that, and your avatar reflects it, but it may not be necessary to truly be in headphones mode whenever you happen to be wearing headphones, or vice-versa.

Our goal is to simplify things and avoid artificial complexity wherever possible.

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#99

Post by rypskar »

ghempton wrote: post #2

One 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 do some work with games in the browser, both 2D and 3D, and did try it out mostly because I was curious about the technical side.

First, this looks like a cool idea and could be useful. But we are on Internet so going directly to the problems.

In both Firefox and Chrome on windows 10 the fps was mostly around 30 fps when moving around, some times dropping down to 5 fps. Probably because of this I kept getting stuck in furniture. There was also something that did feel off when looking around using the mouse, not really sure what maybe it only was lag. On most demos on Babylon and Three, and on other games, I get solid 60 fps. I am sure the experience will be much better if you also manage to get close to 60 fps.

Re: Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

#100

Post by remram »

frbr wrote: post #98
remram wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have to step into that virtual space and put my headphones on/off it is probably not in sync most of the time. Most people won't consistently remember/spend time letting your app know what social clues to give to other people. This is the entire advantage of those clues. And if I do spend the time, why not put me in the "available for chat" Discord room or similar? What's the advantage of turning those explicit…

An interesting hypothesis. Maybe the deeper question is, does the virtual world really need to reflect the physical world in a very accurate way, or does it suffice to represent a subset of that? And then, how accurate does it have to be? Does it map 1:1 or are there indirections that would work well to convey meaningful information and trigger actions that make sense? I guess many important clues get provided implic…

Did you consider that a tree list that people call "rooms" might be a sufficient subset already?
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