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

311 points by eambutu 6y ago

eambutu 6y ago
Hey HN! I'm Phillip, cofounder of Gather https://gather.town/?ref=hn https://gather.town/?ref=hn. We are a video-chat platform that creates virtual spaces for offices, conferences, events, and social. You walk around on a 2D map, and see / hear the people near you. We started more a year and a half ago, on telepresence for your closest friends and family. We explored all sorts of technologies like custom wristwatches, tablet apps, tele-operated robots, and VR. We were in the middle of one of our VR experiments when COVID hit, and we decided to switch focuses on the pressing needs of people today. We had an idea for how people could gather better online, generally. Some of you may have seen our HN post launching Online Town half a year ago, and since then, we've hosted 1000+ paid spaces across conferences, offices, weddings, parties, magic conventions, universities, and much more! Many "real-life" interactions translate easily into Gather. For large gatherings, people will split off into separate groups to talk, and walk between the conversations by just moving their avatar around. For remote teams, you can walk up to a coworker's desk to ask them a quick question, or notice a group of people congregating at the water cooler and go join them. (Our own team works out of a Gather office--most of our team has actually never met each other in person) What's unique about us is how much you can customize your own space. Our tools let you design any layout or style that you want, so many of our users replicate their real life offices and community spaces. We also have embedded objects you can put in your space. For example, you can work at a whiteboard, watch Youtube/Twitch videos together, or play games with other people in your space. Right now, we're offering one month trials for office spaces, as well as setting up custom office layouts for teams, for free! Come check it out and meet us in the space we made for HN: https://gather.town/?ref=hn https://gather.town/?ref=hn ! We'd love to hear your feedback.
oceliker 6y ago
I really like the idea! Two small suggestions: - Have an option to start camera/mic turned off, and make it clear that your camera feed will be visible to people you approach. My own camera view and mic (and the option to turn them off) are also kind of easy to miss on my 27" screen. - If I press and hold, say, S and then tap D, the avatar starts moving right and doesn't stop moving right until I release S. I'd expect it to continue moving downward when I release D.
- eambutu 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback + bug report! I agree that we should do better on making the camera settings more clear.
dc3 6y ago
I tried this out a few months ago and enjoyed using it. I love the idea of bringing the experience of in-person interactions to an online platform. I hope we'll be seeing more of this in the future.
jstrieb 6y ago
Congratulations on the launch! Thoughts on competitors like Gatherly? https://www.gatherly.io/ https://www.gatherly.io/
- makk 6y ago
  And High Fidelity: https://www.highfidelity.com/ https://www.highfidelity.com/
  - jamessb 6y ago
    And Movement: https://www.movement.fm/spaces https://www.movement.fm/spaces And MakeSpace: https://makespace.fun/ https://makespace.fun/ And GroupRoom: https://grouproom.io/ https://grouproom.io/
    - foxbarrington 6y ago
      And Rambly: https://rambly.app https://rambly.app
      - apoorvagovind 6y ago
        I am super excited for https://www.huddlehq.io/ https://www.huddlehq.io/ Used it for a few 1:1s and sprint plannings. I love it!
    - masterspy7 6y ago
      Shameless plug for my own side project: https://dj3d.io/ https://dj3d.io/
      - TheRealNGenius 6y ago
        Wanted to say that out of all the alternatives, this seems most interesting. Is there an info or about page where I can read your approach?
        6y ago
AlphaWeaver 6y ago
So great to see Gather on HN! I've been following Cyrus, Philip, and Kumail for a while, and been really impressed by their work. I've tried Gather and a few of the other competitors out there - out of all of them Gather nails the UX the most. It's pretty simple, but it's also powerful. Most of the other competitors in this space have thrown together a sloppy "business" platform, but Gather just feels much more accessible, friendly, and easy to use.
- eambutu 6y ago
  Thanks! I remember you reaching out in the early days of Online Town, good to see you again here!
lifeisstillgood 6y ago
I love the idea - in fact I expect all the big providers to follow you sometime - which is probably good and bad. But I love it.
nxmnxm99 6y ago
> (Our own team works out of a Gather office--most of our team has actually never met each other in person) Yikes. As someone who's worked remotely for over a decade, I can't imagine starting a company with people I've never had a beer with.
- alexlchen2019 6y ago
  Hey y'all, member of the engineering team here: I actually have become extremely close friends with a lot of our team members here at Gather, even though we haven't met in person — something about dropping by my coworkers' desks really makes it feel like we're together. But yeah, you really do miss out on grabbing a beer, or, for instance, knowing how tall your teammates are haha
- grahamburger 6y ago
  Times are a' changing! I started a job in August and haven't physically met any of my coworkers. With a culture of 'video on during calls by default' it's actually not that bad, imo. Much better than would have been possible 10 years ago.
ztratar 6y ago
I'm cautiously bearish on this type of idea -- the virtualized "2D physical space." I think it could work in virtual reality with Facebooks' emotive expressions, face tracking, etc. But if I'm in the middle of a workday, moving a little 2d character around doesn't feel very useful. But perhaps I'm wrong! If this type of idea does actually get strong PM fit, the market size could be huge. So for VCs it seems like an interesting bet to make, even if the odds of success are low.
marwan-nwh 6y ago
I see that GopherCon is using your service this year. This should be fun. Best wishes.
hwbehrens 6y ago
I'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 person joins, and soon there are 5-10 people in a larger discussion. What it hasn't been able to resolve (at least for me) is the awkwardness of starting conversations with strangers. This is already awkward enough in person, where you kind of have to edge your way in to an existing conversation and wait for a lull to join in. Starting a cold 1-on-1 without reading body language is just not possible for me. Remotely, there's no way to get over the step function of "in the conversation" where your face just pops up. For me, that lack of a gradient makes it very difficult to break the ice when meeting new people. I think the physicality of Gather does help a bit, because (for example) you might sit at a "let's talk" table to indicate you're open to meeting new people, but that still basically translates to "extroverts go here". I'm not sure how to solve it long term, but I think tools like there are definitely a step in the right direction.
- eambutu 6y ago
  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?
  - munfred 6y ago
    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 figures, and when one of them catches their interest they stop to listen to the presenter (if they are already taking to a group) or ask him about it. The fact that you have these big posters at all ends up being just a cue so people can identify who is working on which kinds of subjects/projects, and go talk to them about it. My advisor had this really funny idea of having "microposters" at a conference, where he just taped an A4 paper with one figure and the project title and his name to his back, and that is all it took to start conferences. It worked super great, it was exactly what it took to "break the ice". In these conferences people will typically have read your papers, but they don't know your face, or even that you were in a paper (at most they will remember first author or last author, which is the professor). So just having a small cue "I'm Bob and I work on X" is already sufficient to break the ice. My suggestion would be two things: 1) For mimicking the poster presentation aspect of scientific, to allow people to upload an image which gets displayed on an area of the map. Then the presenter can stand there, and interested folks just gather around him to listen. 2) Allow some kind of mouseover view that shows additional information about the person, eg a bio, a description of the projects, or a picture/link to a description of the projects. I haven't yet seen a good virtual scientific conference, and it is exactly this aspect of the social interactions that is missing. In the end of the day, the primary reason why scientists move halfway around the globe to gather in a hotel for a few days is not to so much to listen to the speakers as it is to gather in small groups at breakfast/lunch/dinner/happy hour/breaks, and exchange ideas and get to know each other. Academic conferences allow people to put a face to the names they see in papers, and it really helps make science feel more humane and prompts you to exchange more. Thanks! [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20poster%20presentation%20pictures&tbm=isch&hl=en&tbs=rimg:CR-ifEMp6Vr-YZQUQn5BQKQv&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS874US874&sa=X&ved=0CAIQrnZqFwoTCNC21ebZ9uwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAQ&biw=1354&bih=1458 https://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20poster%20presen...
terpimost 6y ago
Great idea. We used that in our company for a while but. Bad ux of sharing screen (some objects are on top of the screen) and stability issues made is live in Zoom.
- eambutu 6y ago
  We have changed some UI issues with screenshare, and worked a ton on stability, so it might be worth another try! Thanks for the feedback too--it's very helpful for us to know where we might be losing people.
alixanderwang 6y ago
This is awesome! Love the idea of builder mode being integrated with regular game mode, like Minecraft. I'm not sure what you guys are using for the engine, but the primary feedback I have is that it feels too sluggish. For a second-home virtual space, it'd need to feel really good moving around in it. Right now on my 2019 Macbook, in a one person blank room, I have frame rate drops moving around where my character will skip spaces. And in the HN room going to a different place (e.g. to swimming pool), I was walking around in darkness for 5 seconds about to exit thinking there was a bug before it finally rendered. Would recommend you guys really nail constant FPS as a priority.
- eambutu 6y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Do you have a sense for if this could be network related vs. CPU related? (was your computer fan going off, or is your internet connection spotty?). I agree this is a huge hit to user experience.
  - kasbah 6y ago
    I've only briefly tried out gather.town vs rambly.app and I can say that I am partial to the later because it feels much more snappy.
raziel2p 6y ago
For remote teams, I literally just want Slack but with named voice channels visible to everyone in the sidebar for discoverability.
- jessmartin 6y ago
  It sounds like you want Discord.
  - breakfastduck 6y ago
    It is quite staggering how Discord don't have a business plan yet. Makes me think there must be something up with their security, I can't think of any other reason why they wouldn't give private paid plans for businesses. There are a LOT of people who would jump over from slack.
    - jrwr 6y ago
      Well.. They kinda do With Nitro and a properly configured server, it makes a damn fine slack replacement
  - raziel2p 6y ago
    If Discord had the possibility of Slack's channel system (everyone can create one, you choose which ones to join) then it'd be perfect. For a very small remote organization, Discord would definitely be my go-to choice to start with, but privacy concerns and the fact that it stops working well with more people involved would eventually be a blocker.
    - xzhao254 6y ago
      Hey, my team and I were inspired by this exact use case and have been building something on our own. If you're interested please shoot me an email at xzhao254[at]gmail I would love to get your thoughts on it and maybe have you try it out.
- jrpt 6y ago
tgb 6y ago
My boss got excited about this a few weeks back, but none of the rest of the office wanted to really use it (and we had some issues with video/audio feeds). I don't really get the idea: what problem does this solve that Slack/Zoom/etc don't? The whiteboard seems OK but no software can solve the problem that drawing with a touchpad sucks. Am I going to have to schedule meeting rooms again? Forget finding the right Zoom link, I now have to find the right room too? Stand around the water cooler when I'm on a break, except that then I won't be at my computer and so I can't actually use that? It's easy to talk to coworkers, but Slack is even easier. It's easy to start a meeting, but Zoom is no harder - and easier for people outside your organization. "How's the cafeteria?" is what one of my coworkers asked, jokingly, but I think that captures my feeling of it. Sure it's got a cafeteria, but that cafeteria doesn't solve any of the problems that a real cafeteria solves. Then again, I'm also of the opinion that video calls provide little value beyond phone calls, so maybe I'm just a grump.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  Look at the pricing model, this doesn't look like it's trying to replace any of those things. It looks like you'd rent it out for an event or such. I can see that it would be a bit of a fun - if we're all on video / phone chats all day & we need to do a 'virtual offsite' it would be good to change the environment a little. I can see this being useful for the occasional planning day etc.
  - armagon 6y ago
    I have no idea why they highlight the $2/user/8 hours when they also offer $7/user/month. The latter makes it clear that you could use this all day, every day.
    - eambutu 6y ago
      Ah, good point. This is an artifact of the 8-hour block pricing being the first pricing we ever offered, but monthly is definitely more what we're focusing on.
- 6y ago
etxm 6y ago
More like Gimmick.town, amirite?
- Shared404 6y ago
  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.
a_t48 6y ago
We tried this out for a few social events. It worked pretty well, but the choppy world movement makes me a little sick. :( Any chance of a smooth camera/movement option?
- alexlchen2019 6y ago
  We're actively working on this — I actually have a prototype running on my dev server at the moment: https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Central%20Station https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra... ^^no guarantees on the stability of this server btw, I use it just to test random stuff so it might go down at any moment!
  - a_t48 6y ago
    Thank you, that's so much better.
tmabraham 6y ago
I have used gather.town briefly while attending a symposium. While some of the mechanics are complicated and take time getting used to, it was definitely an interesting experience and unique experience for attending posters in a symposium. However, I am not so sure if it provides much extra benefit than a traditional conference website with posters and social events hosted on Zoom (ex: ICML2020 was nicely set up). Facebook is hosting a networking event for PyTorch Developer Day through gather.town so I am interested to see how that goes. Maybe I will see if gather.town is indeed significantly better for a social event vs. attending posters.
- BadInformatics 6y ago
  It's funny you mention ICML. After attending a smaller conference that used Gather.Town extensively for their poster session, I strongly believe ICML 2020 made the wrong decision in not trying it (outside of the sparsely populated social area/games room they had). More specifically: 1. First off, the other conference took advantage of Gather.Town's full functionality! This included not only proper poster displays, but also sponsor screens with video embeds, virtual booths with actual humans milling about and an easy-to-navigate floorplan reminiscent of a real poster hall (numbers and all). At ICML, most of us were juggling multiple Zoom links and often forgot to or neglected viewing certain presentations because it took much effort to keep up. 2. In the same vein, ICML's poster session had none of the discoverability or ease of browsing of a physical poster gallery. You couldn't just walk past a poster, notice a crowd asking questions and pop by to listen in for a bit. The somewhat non-deterministic sorting/filtering functionality on the talks list page didn't help either. I saw a number of presenters awkwardly asking idle attendees if they had any questions, as well as folks waiting for a no-show presenter that had probably logged on for 10 minutes, seen an empty room and left the call. Gather.Town mitigates these phenomena by replicating some of the physical signals/affordances of a physical space with actual interested people around and thus makes the whole business of interacting around a poster feel more natural. 3. Post-conference, I saw many comments on Reddit and elsewhere from presenters frustrated by the lack of audience interaction and apparent appreciation/meaningful discussion for their work. It's crazy that some posters at a top-tier conference like ICML didn't get a single visitor. I think that's indicative of how poor the UX (discoverability, spatial cues, ease of browsing, etc.) was for that poster session. A platform like Gather.Town doesn't solve all of those issues, but man does it help.
catchmeifyoucan 6y ago
I've used online.town before, and it's awesome to see that it's productized now with a lot of the features I wished. We used if for company gatherings and played games like hide and seek, and as a way to network with new people. The fact that things like podiums can now project voices, games are included, really make this so much more appealing. It's just a fun way to connect with people. Including random people. And you don't need many conversation starters, other than "cool platform right, want to go checkout the ...". So excited for this!
- eambutu 6y ago
  Thanks! We've been working very hard, and it's come a long way since then :)
wh-uws 6y ago
Love this! The last thing you guys need is a mobile app so people can jump in even on a phone.
- eambutu 6y ago
  You can join Gather spaces from the phone browser, though it is missing features (most notably, you can't share your own video for performance reasons)
roguesherlock 6y ago
This sounds really neat. Analoging the reality into a virtual one with higher fidelity. I’m thinking about coming over from the other end (like thinking from first principles). Like what it means to be remote workplace? Why do we hangout at a workplace ? Etc I’m sure you folks would have thought about it a lot. I would love to see your conclusions.
- eambutu 6y ago
  Oh interesting, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Right now I'd say we're still in this "skewmorphic transition," where we gain a lot from just replicating more aspects of real life, and since it analogizes very easily people know what to do with it. As things become more mature and people become situated with it, we'll definitely be asking how we can break physical constraints and if there's a fundamentally better arrangement.
  - roguesherlock 6y ago
    I actually haven’t thought deeply about this topic yet. I think it’s a tricky to judge whether re-inventing the wheel is important and would yield better results or one should just stick with the norms. And I genuinely believe that we definitely need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workplaces. Trying to translate a physical workplace to a digital one seems logical but doesn’t feel right. And more importantly, if you come from that side, it surely makes the transition easier for people, but makes it very hard to re-invent the wheel because your lens (how you look at the problem) is now biased. But then how do you re-invent the wheel? I think one way is to just question everything and see if the past conclusions still hold true in this new reality. Once you have enough conclusions, you can maybe begin to think about how to model a solution with those conclusions in mind. Makes sense ?
    - eambutu 6y ago
      I see! I think another angle, is to first create a virtual analog of a workplace, but then since it's virtual, it's super flexible and easy to experiment with. I think there's only so far you can get with these questions, off reasoning alone. Another example of a project I worked on, which was similar, was this VR office: https://siemprecollective.com/vr.html https://siemprecollective.com/vr.html . We basically made a one-to-one mapping of our physical office in VR, and the idea was after we had that, we could play around and tweak things very easily. And actually being able to TRY these new experiments was the whole point.
ticmasta 6y ago
Am I the only one who immediately thought of this episode of community (Digital Estate Planning)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 1fgR7oeIXFA
- nultxt 6y ago
  You are definitely not
- eambutu 6y ago
  HAHA this looks very relevant! I gotta give it a watch sometime soon.
godot 6y ago
I 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 arrow in one direction that's still okay, but if I move by quickly changing directions (e.g. moving diagonally) it almost hurts my head to look at the screen while my avatar is walking.
- eambutu 6y ago
  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%20Central%20Station https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...
paladin314159 6y ago
We've used Gather for a few company events and it's been super helpful for recreating as much of an in-person interaction style as possible. It outshines Zoom when you have more than 10 people in the same meeting and in more casual settings. Especially for office cultures that were heavily in-person like ours, it helps bolster the sense of team and collaboration that isn't the same over Slack/Zoom.
busrf 6y ago
Are all of your assets original? The avatars look very suspiciously like the overland trainer sprites from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. When I was a kid I made “custom” Pokemon trainer sprites for fun and these look like something I would have made; just take a sprite sheet from spriters resource and edit away...
- eambutu 6y ago
  All the avatars and assets are original, though I concede that there is an avatar that looks like the pokemon trainer (and you're not the only one who's pointed this out :P)
CyberDildonics 6y ago
What do you mean by 'virtual spaces for social'?
- eambutu 6y ago
  People use our spaces just to hang out with each other! I've seen people recreate their own apartments and host parties, or recreate their old college dorms.
moritonal 6y ago
You'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.
- eambutu 6y ago
  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%20Central%20Station https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...
  - rollinDyno 6y ago
    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.
    - eambutu 6y ago
      Many more such interactions coming soon! P.S. this is an awesome space on of our users made: https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception . This one blew my mind!!
      - emayljames 6y ago
        Opened the link in Firefox and got a message "...use chrome". I find that not only unacceptable, but also bad practice.
        alexlchen2019 6y ago
        Are you on android? Android phones don't allow WebRTC video chat to work on any browser except chrome, so it's unfortunately out of our control :( we support FF on web though!
screye 6y ago
Aww man, I've been ideating around this exact idea for MSFT teams for a while now. (not like I had any time or buy-in for it) BRILLIANT. There is always a faint sense of jealousy and vindication when I see an idea being executed so close to what a person has been pushing for. Congrats ! I think you're onto something. I would readily pay for this if I could get my entire team to adopt it. (which I'd say is nearly impossible) I might sound like making a deal with the devil, but if you could integrate your service into MSFT teams, you might be able to get a huge user-base quite fast.
- moron4hire 6y ago
  I'm curious what you mean by this. Does Teams provide an API for building WebRTC apps?
- eambutu 6y ago
  Thanks so much! Curious why you think it would be nearly impossible to get your team on it?
  - screye 6y ago
    partly because I work for a large company that is deeply integrated with MSFT teams. Also, at that size, we don't usually have such team level autonomy. Lastly, they don't want us routing any information through a 3rd party. Confidentiality and security is critical. In general, mature teams do not adopt entirely new communication styles just because they are better. It usually takes something that is either revolutionary (eg: when Slack first got popular as a move away from email). Or, it is a seamless addition to what they already have and doesn't rock the ship.
lovetocode 6y ago
Isn’t this a knockoff of something posted earlier this year?
- moron4hire 6y ago
  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.
  - woah 6y ago
    Can you post a list of them?
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      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.
      - liamuk 6y ago
        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.
    - moron4hire 6y ago
      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.
tmhrtly 6y ago
I 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.
- eambutu 6y ago
  Was there a reason that, in this case, you couldn't all walk closer to each other? We additionally have "private spaces" you can set up so that everyone in that area can see/hear each other: https://gather.town/features#feature-private-spaces https://gather.town/features#feature-private-spaces . People often use this so that they can sit down on chairs and talk to only the other people at the table.
  - tmhrtly 6y ago
    We were already maxed out on closeness: X- XX was the arrangement if I recall. I think the spaces thing would work well but sounds like it could remove some of the fluidity of meeting anywhere, bumping into people in the 'hallway', etc.
sergiorojasa 6y ago
sdf
jhsu42 6y ago
Looks a lot like https://branch.gg/ https://branch.gg/ Has anyone here tried both? I personally like the style of Branch a lot more, and movement seemed a lot smoother.
currymj 6y ago
i like gather.town. a totally frivolous suggestion i would make is that it should be possible to pick up and eat the coffee and cookies. you could have a meaningless status effect of some kind.
- eambutu 6y ago
  We're thinking of doing something like this for our team, so people can drink virtual water next to the virtual water cooler. Or, you could go to the bar and buy a drink for a friend!
knowtheworld 6y ago
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 https://youtu.be/q6zM1wn0dTs Good to see someone solving this hard problem!
- andrenotgiant 6y ago
  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.
  - knowtheworld 6y ago
    Haha thanks! It took me some time to make that anime. I didn't get too much traction when publishing it. Good to know someone likes it!
    - aymeric 6y ago
      What's your background? Why are you interested in this problem space?
  - sundarurfriend 6y ago
    I think RSA Animate [1] is where I came across it first, and I agree it's a really neat way of explaining things. Looks like a lot of work too. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39BF9545D740ECFF https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39BF9545D740ECFF
ModernTabulator 6y ago
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?
- alexlchen2019 6y ago
  Hey there, thanks for checking us out! We actually are using an SFU architecture instead of P2P :)
  - ModernTabulator 6y ago
    Ok yeah that makes more sense, thanks for the reply. Btw here's the doc of yours that said it was p2p, I guess it's outdated. Might be good to remove or update it. It was publicly accessible within the demo instance linked in this thread, as an asset in the "sponsor" room. - Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR8RTTH8Dr1KwiWE_z8tiu4asvUkNWjYB6d6ztiIFdUAhuoCxBq1k99EYHpPUbJwwvXDpeCEh3V0OCi/pub https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR8RTTH8Dr1KwiWE... Under platform overview: "Stack Video is streamed peer-to-peer via WebRTC. Uses Firebase (Google cloud storage) for the database Works on Chrome / Firefox, and on any laptop or computer. Tablets and mobile not supported yet."
    - eambutu 6y ago
      Oh man, thanks for pointing this out. I feel like we got an email once every month asking about something p2p, and was always confused why people kept getting this impression.
pwncake 6y ago
How much funding have you raised? Would you consider crowdsourcing your next round versus just going through traditional VC?
- eambutu 6y ago
  Good question. We have made a particular point of not involving traditional VC, at least not at this current moment (and besides YC). We're currently growing off of revenue, and had raised a small amount of money from angels only.
nynx 6y ago
I love this idea, but I think that VR actually has a great opportunity here. Basically a professional (or less anime VRchat) would be great for remote conferences and workplaces once vr headsets come even further down in price.
svarlamov 6y ago
Great to see gather.town on HN -- I really love the entire UX of being in this type of 2D virtual environment. Wonder what kind of traction this could get with educators as a Zoom alternative to help students have more of an engaging "physical classroom" feel
rompic 6y ago
Had 3 bluescreens after starting this in Firefox today:(
woah 6y ago
What are the video streaming infrastructure costs to run something like this for, say, 25 people for an hour?
angry_octet 6y ago
I look forward to a port to Mines of Moria.
ROARosen 6y ago
Amazing! But you gotta add some bully protection! I just chased some hapless individual named 'hn' all around the place...
zkid18 6y ago
Hey Phillip, congrats on hitting the front page on HN. Been using Gather.town at RecSys conference, and that was very exiting. I love the mechanics and UX, it reminds me Pokémon FireRed on GameBoy. Just out of curiosity, how is your retention is doing? I understand, you probably has very heterogeneous users – some of them purchase one-time per-seat plan, some of them use it as an office replacement, but though. My concern is how this 8-bit mechanics works in the long-term.If you can shed some lights on that, would be cool.
abcxjeb284 6y ago
Phillip - would you be open to using your platform for a non-profit art project? We don’t have many funds (see: COVID), but we are REALLY excited by the possibilities of the space you designed and the game maker map!! :)
- eambutu 6y ago
  Yup! Feel free to email us at hello@gather.town , and provide these details, and we'll figure something out.
  - klunger 6y ago
    Hi! I am not the OP, but just emailed you about a free online event I am organizing (Flutter Vikings).
edelans 6y ago
Nice ! It looks like it's definitely not easy to engage conversation with strangers. I tried it for 20minutes and wanted to connect to random people, but noone seems like they wanted to talk ! they just walk away (and going after them looked like harassment ).
minikomi 6y ago
As soon as the furry/kink community gets a hold of this, it's going to be interesting for sure.
casi 6y ago
Ive been using this since your post way back at the start of the lockdowns. We have a small company, 5 people, and it works great for us to meet up. Itd be cool to have some slack-like features, maybe charater bots you or vhs/answerphone you coukd record messages too for people who join later. A forest where each tree is a repo in our github and we can indicate which branch we are on. Also being able to emote /dance etc and consumable status items would be cool. I guess find the balance of fun and productive ha
pbronez 6y ago
I hopped into the common space and was delighted to have a real, spontaneous conversation with an actual human! That's the first time that's happened to me ANYWHERE during COVID.
jimkleiber 6y ago
I notice I keep trying to zoom out. I see you have a mini-map feature and yet I find myself naturally trying to zoom out just a little each time. Do you have any plans to add a zoom feature?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
gregkerzhner 6y ago
(My opinion should be taken with a grain of salt because I am a grumpy, antisocial basement dweller) We tried something like this at my work. The few days it was happening were some of my least productive in a while. Doing work while having a live camera pointed at my face all day made me nervous and unable to have deep thoughts. On top of that, there was constant noise coming from my headphones of other people's conversations. My immediate response was to shut off my camera and drag my icon all the way to the corner of the screen so I can work alone. If the goal is to reproduce the distracting nature of the open office, I gotta say projects like this are a huge success. Also, streaming live video all day every day for no reason seems like a waste of resources on all parts. I can see how this would be a cool tool for normal social events like parties and conferences though! Just not every day work please.
4b11b4 6y ago
Any "teachers" / "educators" in here who have the flexibility to experiment: - What tools have you used successfully? For what number of people concurrently?
terrortrain 6y ago
I've been working on a competitor to this. http://tengable.com http://tengable.com Additionally, you may want to check out https://www.sococo.com/ https://www.sococo.com/ which is another competitor. I personally think this space is going to be big as people adapt to permanently remote or fully remote. I'm getting closer to an MVP, and am interested in finding a co-founder. I'd love to find people interested in this space!
felix12777 6y ago
This is fantastic! Good to see you're gaining traction here. I've 2 questions for you: 1/ What's your strategy to standout from the pool of virtual event tools? 2/ Are you keen on being interviewed on https://virtualmojito.com/ https://virtualmojito.com/ - It would be awesome to showcase your stories. I can be reached on Twitter. Let's chat!
jakswa 6y ago
If I could get better music support, that'd be a killer feature. A coworker and I immediately looked for a spotify or other music option and didn't find one. We resorted to placing TVs with really long youtube URLs, and synchronized so they auto-start when you're near.

311 points by eambutu 6y ago

Hey HN! I'm Phillip, cofounder of Gather https://gather.town/?ref=hn https://gather.town/?ref=hn. We are a video-chat platform that creates virtual spaces for offices, conferences, events, and social. You walk around on a 2D map, and see / hear the people near you. We started more a year and a half ago, on telepresence for your closest friends and family. We explored all sorts of technologies like custom wristwatches, tablet apps, tele-operated robots, and VR. We were in the middle of one of our VR experiments when COVID hit, and we decided to switch focuses on the pressing needs of people today. We had an idea for how people could gather better online, generally. Some of you may have seen our HN post launching Online Town half a year ago, and since then, we've hosted 1000+ paid spaces across conferences, offices, weddings, parties, magic conventions, universities, and much more! Many "real-life" interactions translate easily into Gather. For large gatherings, people will split off into separate groups to talk, and walk between the conversations by just moving their avatar around. For remote teams, you can walk up to a coworker's desk to ask them a quick question, or notice a group of people congregating at the water cooler and go join them. (Our own team works out of a Gather office--most of our team has actually never met each other in person) What's unique about us is how much you can customize your own space. Our tools let you design any layout or style that you want, so many of our users replicate their real life offices and community spaces. We also have embedded objects you can put in your space. For example, you can work at a whiteboard, watch Youtube/Twitch videos together, or play games with other people in your space. Right now, we're offering one month trials for office spaces, as well as setting up custom office layouts for teams, for free! Come check it out and meet us in the space we made for HN: https://gather.town/?ref=hn https://gather.town/?ref=hn ! We'd love to hear your feedback.

oceliker 6y ago

I really like the idea! Two small suggestions: - Have an option to start camera/mic turned off, and make it clear that your camera feed will be visible to people you approach. My own camera view and mic (and the option to turn them off) are also kind of easy to miss on my 27" screen. - If I press and hold, say, S and then tap D, the avatar starts moving right and doesn't stop moving right until I release S. I'd expect it to continue moving downward when I release D.

eambutu 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback + bug report! I agree that we should do better on making the camera settings more clear.

dc3 6y ago

I tried this out a few months ago and enjoyed using it. I love the idea of bringing the experience of in-person interactions to an online platform. I hope we'll be seeing more of this in the future.

jstrieb 6y ago

Congratulations on the launch! Thoughts on competitors like Gatherly? https://www.gatherly.io/ https://www.gatherly.io/

makk 6y ago
And High Fidelity: https://www.highfidelity.com/ https://www.highfidelity.com/
- jamessb 6y ago
  And Movement: https://www.movement.fm/spaces https://www.movement.fm/spaces And MakeSpace: https://makespace.fun/ https://makespace.fun/ And GroupRoom: https://grouproom.io/ https://grouproom.io/
  - foxbarrington 6y ago
    And Rambly: https://rambly.app https://rambly.app
    - apoorvagovind 6y ago
      I am super excited for https://www.huddlehq.io/ https://www.huddlehq.io/ Used it for a few 1:1s and sprint plannings. I love it!
  - masterspy7 6y ago
    Shameless plug for my own side project: https://dj3d.io/ https://dj3d.io/
    - TheRealNGenius 6y ago
      Wanted to say that out of all the alternatives, this seems most interesting. Is there an info or about page where I can read your approach?
      - 6y ago

AlphaWeaver 6y ago

So great to see Gather on HN! I've been following Cyrus, Philip, and Kumail for a while, and been really impressed by their work. I've tried Gather and a few of the other competitors out there - out of all of them Gather nails the UX the most. It's pretty simple, but it's also powerful. Most of the other competitors in this space have thrown together a sloppy "business" platform, but Gather just feels much more accessible, friendly, and easy to use.

eambutu 6y ago
Thanks! I remember you reaching out in the early days of Online Town, good to see you again here!

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

I love the idea - in fact I expect all the big providers to follow you sometime - which is probably good and bad. But I love it.

nxmnxm99 6y ago

> (Our own team works out of a Gather office--most of our team has actually never met each other in person) Yikes. As someone who's worked remotely for over a decade, I can't imagine starting a company with people I've never had a beer with.

alexlchen2019 6y ago
Hey y'all, member of the engineering team here: I actually have become extremely close friends with a lot of our team members here at Gather, even though we haven't met in person — something about dropping by my coworkers' desks really makes it feel like we're together. But yeah, you really do miss out on grabbing a beer, or, for instance, knowing how tall your teammates are haha
grahamburger 6y ago
Times are a' changing! I started a job in August and haven't physically met any of my coworkers. With a culture of 'video on during calls by default' it's actually not that bad, imo. Much better than would have been possible 10 years ago.

ztratar 6y ago

I'm cautiously bearish on this type of idea -- the virtualized "2D physical space." I think it could work in virtual reality with Facebooks' emotive expressions, face tracking, etc. But if I'm in the middle of a workday, moving a little 2d character around doesn't feel very useful. But perhaps I'm wrong! If this type of idea does actually get strong PM fit, the market size could be huge. So for VCs it seems like an interesting bet to make, even if the odds of success are low.

marwan-nwh 6y ago

I see that GopherCon is using your service this year. This should be fun. Best wishes.

hwbehrens 6y ago

I'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 person joins, and soon there are 5-10 people in a larger discussion. What it hasn't been able to resolve (at least for me) is the awkwardness of starting conversations with strangers. This is already awkward enough in person, where you kind of have to edge your way in to an existing conversation and wait for a lull to join in. Starting a cold 1-on-1 without reading body language is just not possible for me. Remotely, there's no way to get over the step function of "in the conversation" where your face just pops up. For me, that lack of a gradient makes it very difficult to break the ice when meeting new people. I think the physicality of Gather does help a bit, because (for example) you might sit at a "let's talk" table to indicate you're open to meeting new people, but that still basically translates to "extroverts go here". I'm not sure how to solve it long term, but I think tools like there are definitely a step in the right direction.

eambutu 6y ago
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?
- munfred 6y ago
  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 figures, and when one of them catches their interest they stop to listen to the presenter (if they are already taking to a group) or ask him about it. The fact that you have these big posters at all ends up being just a cue so people can identify who is working on which kinds of subjects/projects, and go talk to them about it. My advisor had this really funny idea of having "microposters" at a conference, where he just taped an A4 paper with one figure and the project title and his name to his back, and that is all it took to start conferences. It worked super great, it was exactly what it took to "break the ice". In these conferences people will typically have read your papers, but they don't know your face, or even that you were in a paper (at most they will remember first author or last author, which is the professor). So just having a small cue "I'm Bob and I work on X" is already sufficient to break the ice. My suggestion would be two things: 1) For mimicking the poster presentation aspect of scientific, to allow people to upload an image which gets displayed on an area of the map. Then the presenter can stand there, and interested folks just gather around him to listen. 2) Allow some kind of mouseover view that shows additional information about the person, eg a bio, a description of the projects, or a picture/link to a description of the projects. I haven't yet seen a good virtual scientific conference, and it is exactly this aspect of the social interactions that is missing. In the end of the day, the primary reason why scientists move halfway around the globe to gather in a hotel for a few days is not to so much to listen to the speakers as it is to gather in small groups at breakfast/lunch/dinner/happy hour/breaks, and exchange ideas and get to know each other. Academic conferences allow people to put a face to the names they see in papers, and it really helps make science feel more humane and prompts you to exchange more. Thanks! [0]https://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20poster%20presentation%20pictures&tbm=isch&hl=en&tbs=rimg:CR-ifEMp6Vr-YZQUQn5BQKQv&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS874US874&sa=X&ved=0CAIQrnZqFwoTCNC21ebZ9uwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAQ&biw=1354&bih=1458 https://www.google.com/search?q=scientific%20poster%20presen...

terpimost 6y ago

Great idea. We used that in our company for a while but. Bad ux of sharing screen (some objects are on top of the screen) and stability issues made is live in Zoom.

eambutu 6y ago
We have changed some UI issues with screenshare, and worked a ton on stability, so it might be worth another try! Thanks for the feedback too--it's very helpful for us to know where we might be losing people.

alixanderwang 6y ago

This is awesome! Love the idea of builder mode being integrated with regular game mode, like Minecraft. I'm not sure what you guys are using for the engine, but the primary feedback I have is that it feels too sluggish. For a second-home virtual space, it'd need to feel really good moving around in it. Right now on my 2019 Macbook, in a one person blank room, I have frame rate drops moving around where my character will skip spaces. And in the HN room going to a different place (e.g. to swimming pool), I was walking around in darkness for 5 seconds about to exit thinking there was a bug before it finally rendered. Would recommend you guys really nail constant FPS as a priority.

eambutu 6y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Do you have a sense for if this could be network related vs. CPU related? (was your computer fan going off, or is your internet connection spotty?). I agree this is a huge hit to user experience.
- kasbah 6y ago
  I've only briefly tried out gather.town vs rambly.app and I can say that I am partial to the later because it feels much more snappy.

raziel2p 6y ago

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

jessmartin 6y ago
It sounds like you want Discord.
- breakfastduck 6y ago
  It is quite staggering how Discord don't have a business plan yet. Makes me think there must be something up with their security, I can't think of any other reason why they wouldn't give private paid plans for businesses. There are a LOT of people who would jump over from slack.
  - jrwr 6y ago
    Well.. They kinda do With Nitro and a properly configured server, it makes a damn fine slack replacement
- raziel2p 6y ago
  If Discord had the possibility of Slack's channel system (everyone can create one, you choose which ones to join) then it'd be perfect. For a very small remote organization, Discord would definitely be my go-to choice to start with, but privacy concerns and the fact that it stops working well with more people involved would eventually be a blocker.
  - xzhao254 6y ago
    Hey, my team and I were inspired by this exact use case and have been building something on our own. If you're interested please shoot me an email at xzhao254[at]gmail I would love to get your thoughts on it and maybe have you try it out.
jrpt 6y ago

tgb 6y ago

My boss got excited about this a few weeks back, but none of the rest of the office wanted to really use it (and we had some issues with video/audio feeds). I don't really get the idea: what problem does this solve that Slack/Zoom/etc don't? The whiteboard seems OK but no software can solve the problem that drawing with a touchpad sucks. Am I going to have to schedule meeting rooms again? Forget finding the right Zoom link, I now have to find the right room too? Stand around the water cooler when I'm on a break, except that then I won't be at my computer and so I can't actually use that? It's easy to talk to coworkers, but Slack is even easier. It's easy to start a meeting, but Zoom is no harder - and easier for people outside your organization. "How's the cafeteria?" is what one of my coworkers asked, jokingly, but I think that captures my feeling of it. Sure it's got a cafeteria, but that cafeteria doesn't solve any of the problems that a real cafeteria solves. Then again, I'm also of the opinion that video calls provide little value beyond phone calls, so maybe I'm just a grump.

breakfastduck 6y ago
Look at the pricing model, this doesn't look like it's trying to replace any of those things. It looks like you'd rent it out for an event or such. I can see that it would be a bit of a fun - if we're all on video / phone chats all day & we need to do a 'virtual offsite' it would be good to change the environment a little. I can see this being useful for the occasional planning day etc.
- armagon 6y ago
  I have no idea why they highlight the $2/user/8 hours when they also offer $7/user/month. The latter makes it clear that you could use this all day, every day.
  - eambutu 6y ago
    Ah, good point. This is an artifact of the 8-hour block pricing being the first pricing we ever offered, but monthly is definitely more what we're focusing on.
6y ago

etxm 6y ago

More like Gimmick.town, amirite?

Shared404 6y ago
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.

a_t48 6y ago

We tried this out for a few social events. It worked pretty well, but the choppy world movement makes me a little sick. :( Any chance of a smooth camera/movement option?

alexlchen2019 6y ago
We're actively working on this — I actually have a prototype running on my dev server at the moment: https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Central%20Station https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra... ^^no guarantees on the stability of this server btw, I use it just to test random stuff so it might go down at any moment!
- a_t48 6y ago
  Thank you, that's so much better.

tmabraham 6y ago

I have used gather.town briefly while attending a symposium. While some of the mechanics are complicated and take time getting used to, it was definitely an interesting experience and unique experience for attending posters in a symposium. However, I am not so sure if it provides much extra benefit than a traditional conference website with posters and social events hosted on Zoom (ex: ICML2020 was nicely set up). Facebook is hosting a networking event for PyTorch Developer Day through gather.town so I am interested to see how that goes. Maybe I will see if gather.town is indeed significantly better for a social event vs. attending posters.

BadInformatics 6y ago
It's funny you mention ICML. After attending a smaller conference that used Gather.Town extensively for their poster session, I strongly believe ICML 2020 made the wrong decision in not trying it (outside of the sparsely populated social area/games room they had). More specifically: 1. First off, the other conference took advantage of Gather.Town's full functionality! This included not only proper poster displays, but also sponsor screens with video embeds, virtual booths with actual humans milling about and an easy-to-navigate floorplan reminiscent of a real poster hall (numbers and all). At ICML, most of us were juggling multiple Zoom links and often forgot to or neglected viewing certain presentations because it took much effort to keep up. 2. In the same vein, ICML's poster session had none of the discoverability or ease of browsing of a physical poster gallery. You couldn't just walk past a poster, notice a crowd asking questions and pop by to listen in for a bit. The somewhat non-deterministic sorting/filtering functionality on the talks list page didn't help either. I saw a number of presenters awkwardly asking idle attendees if they had any questions, as well as folks waiting for a no-show presenter that had probably logged on for 10 minutes, seen an empty room and left the call. Gather.Town mitigates these phenomena by replicating some of the physical signals/affordances of a physical space with actual interested people around and thus makes the whole business of interacting around a poster feel more natural. 3. Post-conference, I saw many comments on Reddit and elsewhere from presenters frustrated by the lack of audience interaction and apparent appreciation/meaningful discussion for their work. It's crazy that some posters at a top-tier conference like ICML didn't get a single visitor. I think that's indicative of how poor the UX (discoverability, spatial cues, ease of browsing, etc.) was for that poster session. A platform like Gather.Town doesn't solve all of those issues, but man does it help.

catchmeifyoucan 6y ago

I've used online.town before, and it's awesome to see that it's productized now with a lot of the features I wished. We used if for company gatherings and played games like hide and seek, and as a way to network with new people. The fact that things like podiums can now project voices, games are included, really make this so much more appealing. It's just a fun way to connect with people. Including random people. And you don't need many conversation starters, other than "cool platform right, want to go checkout the ...". So excited for this!

eambutu 6y ago
Thanks! We've been working very hard, and it's come a long way since then :)

wh-uws 6y ago

Love this! The last thing you guys need is a mobile app so people can jump in even on a phone.

eambutu 6y ago
You can join Gather spaces from the phone browser, though it is missing features (most notably, you can't share your own video for performance reasons)

roguesherlock 6y ago

This sounds really neat. Analoging the reality into a virtual one with higher fidelity. I’m thinking about coming over from the other end (like thinking from first principles). Like what it means to be remote workplace? Why do we hangout at a workplace ? Etc I’m sure you folks would have thought about it a lot. I would love to see your conclusions.

eambutu 6y ago
Oh interesting, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Right now I'd say we're still in this "skewmorphic transition," where we gain a lot from just replicating more aspects of real life, and since it analogizes very easily people know what to do with it. As things become more mature and people become situated with it, we'll definitely be asking how we can break physical constraints and if there's a fundamentally better arrangement.
- roguesherlock 6y ago
  I actually haven’t thought deeply about this topic yet. I think it’s a tricky to judge whether re-inventing the wheel is important and would yield better results or one should just stick with the norms. And I genuinely believe that we definitely need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to workplaces. Trying to translate a physical workplace to a digital one seems logical but doesn’t feel right. And more importantly, if you come from that side, it surely makes the transition easier for people, but makes it very hard to re-invent the wheel because your lens (how you look at the problem) is now biased. But then how do you re-invent the wheel? I think one way is to just question everything and see if the past conclusions still hold true in this new reality. Once you have enough conclusions, you can maybe begin to think about how to model a solution with those conclusions in mind. Makes sense ?
  - eambutu 6y ago
    I see! I think another angle, is to first create a virtual analog of a workplace, but then since it's virtual, it's super flexible and easy to experiment with. I think there's only so far you can get with these questions, off reasoning alone. Another example of a project I worked on, which was similar, was this VR office: https://siemprecollective.com/vr.html https://siemprecollective.com/vr.html . We basically made a one-to-one mapping of our physical office in VR, and the idea was after we had that, we could play around and tweak things very easily. And actually being able to TRY these new experiments was the whole point.

ticmasta 6y ago

Am I the only one who immediately thought of this episode of community (Digital Estate Planning)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 1fgR7oeIXFA

nultxt 6y ago
You are definitely not
eambutu 6y ago
HAHA this looks very relevant! I gotta give it a watch sometime soon.

godot 6y ago

I 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 arrow in one direction that's still okay, but if I move by quickly changing directions (e.g. moving diagonally) it almost hurts my head to look at the screen while my avatar is walking.

eambutu 6y ago
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%20Central%20Station https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...

paladin314159 6y ago

We've used Gather for a few company events and it's been super helpful for recreating as much of an in-person interaction style as possible. It outshines Zoom when you have more than 10 people in the same meeting and in more casual settings. Especially for office cultures that were heavily in-person like ours, it helps bolster the sense of team and collaboration that isn't the same over Slack/Zoom.

busrf 6y ago

Are all of your assets original? The avatars look very suspiciously like the overland trainer sprites from Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire. When I was a kid I made “custom” Pokemon trainer sprites for fun and these look like something I would have made; just take a sprite sheet from spriters resource and edit away...

eambutu 6y ago
All the avatars and assets are original, though I concede that there is an avatar that looks like the pokemon trainer (and you're not the only one who's pointed this out :P)

CyberDildonics 6y ago

What do you mean by 'virtual spaces for social'?

eambutu 6y ago
People use our spaces just to hang out with each other! I've seen people recreate their own apartments and host parties, or recreate their old college dorms.

moritonal 6y ago

You'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.

eambutu 6y ago
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%20Central%20Station https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...
- rollinDyno 6y ago
  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.
  - eambutu 6y ago
    Many more such interactions coming soon! P.S. this is an awesome space on of our users made: https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception https://gather.town/app/qBA0zkP9HTQxpqpB/inception . This one blew my mind!!
    - emayljames 6y ago
      Opened the link in Firefox and got a message "...use chrome". I find that not only unacceptable, but also bad practice.
      - alexlchen2019 6y ago
        Are you on android? Android phones don't allow WebRTC video chat to work on any browser except chrome, so it's unfortunately out of our control :( we support FF on web though!

screye 6y ago

Aww man, I've been ideating around this exact idea for MSFT teams for a while now. (not like I had any time or buy-in for it) BRILLIANT. There is always a faint sense of jealousy and vindication when I see an idea being executed so close to what a person has been pushing for. Congrats ! I think you're onto something. I would readily pay for this if I could get my entire team to adopt it. (which I'd say is nearly impossible) I might sound like making a deal with the devil, but if you could integrate your service into MSFT teams, you might be able to get a huge user-base quite fast.

moron4hire 6y ago
I'm curious what you mean by this. Does Teams provide an API for building WebRTC apps?
eambutu 6y ago
Thanks so much! Curious why you think it would be nearly impossible to get your team on it?
- screye 6y ago
  partly because I work for a large company that is deeply integrated with MSFT teams. Also, at that size, we don't usually have such team level autonomy. Lastly, they don't want us routing any information through a 3rd party. Confidentiality and security is critical. In general, mature teams do not adopt entirely new communication styles just because they are better. It usually takes something that is either revolutionary (eg: when Slack first got popular as a move away from email). Or, it is a seamless addition to what they already have and doesn't rock the ship.

lovetocode 6y ago

Isn’t this a knockoff of something posted earlier this year?

moron4hire 6y ago
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.
- woah 6y ago
  Can you post a list of them?
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    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.
    - liamuk 6y ago
      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.
  - moron4hire 6y ago
    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.

tmhrtly 6y ago

I 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.

eambutu 6y ago
Was there a reason that, in this case, you couldn't all walk closer to each other? We additionally have "private spaces" you can set up so that everyone in that area can see/hear each other: https://gather.town/features#feature-private-spaces https://gather.town/features#feature-private-spaces . People often use this so that they can sit down on chairs and talk to only the other people at the table.
- tmhrtly 6y ago
  We were already maxed out on closeness: X- XX was the arrangement if I recall. I think the spaces thing would work well but sounds like it could remove some of the fluidity of meeting anywhere, bumping into people in the 'hallway', etc.

sergiorojasa 6y ago

sdf

jhsu42 6y ago

Looks a lot like https://branch.gg/ https://branch.gg/ Has anyone here tried both? I personally like the style of Branch a lot more, and movement seemed a lot smoother.

currymj 6y ago

i like gather.town. a totally frivolous suggestion i would make is that it should be possible to pick up and eat the coffee and cookies. you could have a meaningless status effect of some kind.

eambutu 6y ago
We're thinking of doing something like this for our team, so people can drink virtual water next to the virtual water cooler. Or, you could go to the bar and buy a drink for a friend!

knowtheworld 6y ago

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 https://youtu.be/q6zM1wn0dTs Good to see someone solving this hard problem!

andrenotgiant 6y ago
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.
- knowtheworld 6y ago
  Haha thanks! It took me some time to make that anime. I didn't get too much traction when publishing it. Good to know someone likes it!
  - aymeric 6y ago
    What's your background? Why are you interested in this problem space?
- sundarurfriend 6y ago
  I think RSA Animate [1] is where I came across it first, and I agree it's a really neat way of explaining things. Looks like a lot of work too. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39BF9545D740ECFF https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL39BF9545D740ECFF

ModernTabulator 6y ago

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?

alexlchen2019 6y ago
Hey there, thanks for checking us out! We actually are using an SFU architecture instead of P2P :)
- ModernTabulator 6y ago
  Ok yeah that makes more sense, thanks for the reply. Btw here's the doc of yours that said it was p2p, I guess it's outdated. Might be good to remove or update it. It was publicly accessible within the demo instance linked in this thread, as an asset in the "sponsor" room. - Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR8RTTH8Dr1KwiWE_z8tiu4asvUkNWjYB6d6ztiIFdUAhuoCxBq1k99EYHpPUbJwwvXDpeCEh3V0OCi/pub https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vR8RTTH8Dr1KwiWE... Under platform overview: "Stack Video is streamed peer-to-peer via WebRTC. Uses Firebase (Google cloud storage) for the database Works on Chrome / Firefox, and on any laptop or computer. Tablets and mobile not supported yet."
  - eambutu 6y ago
    Oh man, thanks for pointing this out. I feel like we got an email once every month asking about something p2p, and was always confused why people kept getting this impression.

pwncake 6y ago

How much funding have you raised? Would you consider crowdsourcing your next round versus just going through traditional VC?

eambutu 6y ago
Good question. We have made a particular point of not involving traditional VC, at least not at this current moment (and besides YC). We're currently growing off of revenue, and had raised a small amount of money from angels only.

nynx 6y ago

I love this idea, but I think that VR actually has a great opportunity here. Basically a professional (or less anime VRchat) would be great for remote conferences and workplaces once vr headsets come even further down in price.

svarlamov 6y ago

Great to see gather.town on HN -- I really love the entire UX of being in this type of 2D virtual environment. Wonder what kind of traction this could get with educators as a Zoom alternative to help students have more of an engaging "physical classroom" feel

rompic 6y ago

Had 3 bluescreens after starting this in Firefox today:(

woah 6y ago

What are the video streaming infrastructure costs to run something like this for, say, 25 people for an hour?

angry_octet 6y ago

I look forward to a port to Mines of Moria.

ROARosen 6y ago

Amazing! But you gotta add some bully protection! I just chased some hapless individual named 'hn' all around the place...

zkid18 6y ago

Hey Phillip, congrats on hitting the front page on HN. Been using Gather.town at RecSys conference, and that was very exiting. I love the mechanics and UX, it reminds me Pokémon FireRed on GameBoy. Just out of curiosity, how is your retention is doing? I understand, you probably has very heterogeneous users – some of them purchase one-time per-seat plan, some of them use it as an office replacement, but though. My concern is how this 8-bit mechanics works in the long-term.If you can shed some lights on that, would be cool.

abcxjeb284 6y ago

Phillip - would you be open to using your platform for a non-profit art project? We don’t have many funds (see: COVID), but we are REALLY excited by the possibilities of the space you designed and the game maker map!! :)

eambutu 6y ago
Yup! Feel free to email us at hello@gather.town , and provide these details, and we'll figure something out.
- klunger 6y ago
  Hi! I am not the OP, but just emailed you about a free online event I am organizing (Flutter Vikings).

edelans 6y ago

Nice ! It looks like it's definitely not easy to engage conversation with strangers. I tried it for 20minutes and wanted to connect to random people, but noone seems like they wanted to talk ! they just walk away (and going after them looked like harassment ).

minikomi 6y ago

As soon as the furry/kink community gets a hold of this, it's going to be interesting for sure.

casi 6y ago

Ive been using this since your post way back at the start of the lockdowns. We have a small company, 5 people, and it works great for us to meet up. Itd be cool to have some slack-like features, maybe charater bots you or vhs/answerphone you coukd record messages too for people who join later. A forest where each tree is a repo in our github and we can indicate which branch we are on. Also being able to emote /dance etc and consumable status items would be cool. I guess find the balance of fun and productive ha

pbronez 6y ago

I hopped into the common space and was delighted to have a real, spontaneous conversation with an actual human! That's the first time that's happened to me ANYWHERE during COVID.

jimkleiber 6y ago

I notice I keep trying to zoom out. I see you have a mini-map feature and yet I find myself naturally trying to zoom out just a little each time. Do you have any plans to add a zoom feature?

deleted 6y ago

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gregkerzhner 6y ago

(My opinion should be taken with a grain of salt because I am a grumpy, antisocial basement dweller) We tried something like this at my work. The few days it was happening were some of my least productive in a while. Doing work while having a live camera pointed at my face all day made me nervous and unable to have deep thoughts. On top of that, there was constant noise coming from my headphones of other people's conversations. My immediate response was to shut off my camera and drag my icon all the way to the corner of the screen so I can work alone. If the goal is to reproduce the distracting nature of the open office, I gotta say projects like this are a huge success. Also, streaming live video all day every day for no reason seems like a waste of resources on all parts. I can see how this would be a cool tool for normal social events like parties and conferences though! Just not every day work please.

4b11b4 6y ago

Any "teachers" / "educators" in here who have the flexibility to experiment: - What tools have you used successfully? For what number of people concurrently?

terrortrain 6y ago

I've been working on a competitor to this. http://tengable.com http://tengable.com Additionally, you may want to check out https://www.sococo.com/ https://www.sococo.com/ which is another competitor. I personally think this space is going to be big as people adapt to permanently remote or fully remote. I'm getting closer to an MVP, and am interested in finding a co-founder. I'd love to find people interested in this space!

felix12777 6y ago

This is fantastic! Good to see you're gaining traction here. I've 2 questions for you: 1/ What's your strategy to standout from the pool of virtual event tools? 2/ Are you keen on being interviewed on https://virtualmojito.com/ https://virtualmojito.com/ - It would be awesome to showcase your stories. I can be reached on Twitter. Let's chat!

jakswa 6y ago

If I could get better music support, that'd be a killer feature. A coworker and I immediately looked for a spotify or other music option and didn't find one. We resorted to placing TVs with really long youtube URLs, and synchronized so they auto-start when you're near.