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Show HN: Pop.com – Video Calls, in 3D
- jsherwani 6y agoPop founder here. We’re a team of 5, and folks from our team have built products like Screenhero, Slack Calls, and most recently, Screen.so. Pop lets you have a video call in 3D, with positional audio. It works in a browser, without any download. The experience is surprisingly fresh, and the social dynamics are quite fun. You can feel like you’re part of a group, you can see who’s looking at you, you can go to the side with someone and have a separate conversation, without interrupting the current conversation. You can share a screen that floats in space (and always faces the viewer). You can even bow to say hello! We use Mediasoup for the WebRTC backend, Ionic/Angular for the frontend, and BabylonJS as our 3D framework. Also, as an experiment, we’re hosting a virtual launch party at [EDIT: 6 hours later, and we're done! Thanks to everyone who came by!]. Happy to answer any questions here too, of course! Edit: there are more screenshots here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pop-9 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pop-9
- sbarre 6y agoYour homepage doesn't explain anything about what I should do when I land on it. What's a space? What's going to happen if I create or join one? Why would I want to do this? Or is this intentional and you're soft-launching or just doing some testing? edit: I clicked create a space and you immediately ask for access to my camera.. but there's no explanation of why you're asking for it, or what I'm getting out of it. I feel like there are huge assumptions about users understanding what's about to happen.. And before I grant access to a remote site to my camera, I want a better idea of why I'm doing it, and what you're doing with the feed.
- jsherwani 6y agoThat's a fair point, here's a little more information: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pop-9 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pop-9
- andy_ppp 6y agoAs alway text and an intro video will help people understand how your product is different from Zoom etc.
- andybak 6y agoAs long as it's a micro video (a few seconds with no audio or introduction) I won't watch a longer video just to understand what random product does.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoI think most people are comfortable with a soft cap at 60 seconds? A simple animation, a voice over, and maybe some video captures of the software would be great.
- 6510 6y agoYes, a basic melee demo and an overview of the weapons.
- phist_mcgee 6y agoOr.... that!
- andy_ppp 6y agoI think you mean, as long as it explains why, what and how in the shortest possible number of words it’s a good video. Spending time trying to be funny or not actually explaining would be bad, if it takes a while to explain more thought and structure may be needed.
- andybak 6y agoNo. I mean exactly what I said. Audio is unnecessary and means I have to stop everything else I'm doing. And so does anyone else in the same room unless I can find headphones. And 3 or 4 seconds is ample time to demonstrate that specific aspect that is hard to demonstrate with the written word.
- myoffe 6y agoYour criticism is fair, except the camera access. It's a video chat tool, of course it's going to ask you to use your camera. What do you expect?
- ezekg 6y agoYour landing page says no such thing.
- lotaezenwa 6y agoThere is nothing to expect because the landing page has no useful information, as the parent comment stated.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoIf you check out the text of the link at the top of the page, it has some helpful context. Specifically, that the linked website is for "video calls, in 3D"
- EvilPaticus 6y agoBut in any other context you'll likely not know what it is. Even with the title, I have very very little idea of what it means. Video calls with one other person? Multiple? Are they recorded? Define "3D". There needs to be at least some high level explanation on the page (or a link to one).
- nomel 6y ago> It's a video chat tool, of course it's going to ask you to use your camera. You only know this because you saw the HN headline.
- invalidusernam3 6y agoYou know it's a video chat tool only because of the HN thread. How would you know if you randomly stumbled on to the landing page?
- vincentmarle 6y agoI gave access to my camera and everything, but I didn't understand what this product does until I saw this screenshot in another thread: https://i.imgur.com/VVt0zCU.jpg https://i.imgur.com/VVt0zCU.jpg I think it would be really helpful if you could see your own avatar.
- bmcahren 6y agoThis is a great point. Connection process should be an array of the founder's faces with chat blurbs welcoming them to connect their camera with your avatar in the middle with a preview of your camera!
- hairofadog 6y agoI still don’t understand, actually. What’s 3D about that? What are the paper-cup-like things under the avatars?
- systemvoltage 6y agoDid Google tell people in a landing page what it was back 20 years ago like we expect startups to do? This is not some universal rule that cannot be broken. For most startups, landing page is useful. But not always. I like the simplicity of Pop's page.
- itsovermyhead 6y ago"Search the web using Google" https://i.imgur.com/9XDWpVk.png https://i.imgur.com/9XDWpVk.png or an even earlier version of Google, "Search Stanford" "Search the Web" https://i.imgur.com/EKiQnJX.png https://i.imgur.com/EKiQnJX.png They both provide more information than Pop does.
- systemvoltage 6y agoWow, what a blast from the past. Thanks for digging these out. :-)
- Raphmedia 6y agoHere's a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/VVt0zCU.jpg https://i.imgur.com/VVt0zCU.jpg In short, you move around in the virtual space and your avatar's head is your webcam feed. There is also positional audio, so your position changes who you hear. User can also apparently spawn screen share windows in the sky. Give it a try, it works and feel better than it looks. It is very similar to what you'd find in a VR chat application but it works surprisingly well from the browser with just the mouse. (Completely unaffiliated, simply gave the demo a spin.)
- foxbarrington 6y agoLove that these types of apps are getting more popular. https://rambly.app https://rambly.app (which is similar, but 2D) completely saved https://js.la https://js.la .
- veddox 6y agoWe held our office Christmas party on gather.town. Really neat - a 2D 90s computer game meets Zoom. Haven‘t tried them for productivity yet, but as a social experience they are significantly better than conventional video chats.
- Raphmedia 6y agoWe did our office Halloween party on https://topia.io/ https://topia.io/ which is very similar. You get to build your environment using "flash"-like components.
- telesilla 6y agoWe used https://highfidelity.com https://highfidelity.com, 3d audio in a 2d space. Amazingly effective for lots of people to have quiet conversations.
- ketamine__ 6y agoI want to feel more of a connection with my coworkers too. This isn't it. This looks like something from 1990.
- ghostpepper 6y agoHave you done any measurements of capture-to-display latency? I've been interested in why Discord feels more natural than Zoom and so far I think it comes down to latency. As far as I know Zoom targets 150 ms, but audio-only platforms can get closer to 25-50, which can make the difference between what feels like using walkie talkies versus a real face-to-face conversation. Any plans on how you will monetize this if it takes off?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jsherwani 6y agoWe haven't yet measured audio latency, but our main product (https://screen.so https://screen.so) is all about low latency screen sharing, so we're very interested in reducing lag of all sorts. Performance is something we'll focus on in 2021 in a big way. Monetization: very similar to what everyone else in this space does. Free for social users, paid for business users, and finding a good way to segment the two.
- y10003 6y agohttps://www.getmibo.com https://www.getmibo.com does something very similar.
- stevewodil 6y agoThis is one of the coolest things I've seen for video chats / social hangouts online. It's like VR Chat but so much more accessible. Love it
- hectormalot 6y agoI’ve used Mibo for a bunch of department meetings at it was very well received! One of the great things is that it allows you to have serendipitous meetings with people you haven’t spoken to for a while just by running into them on the island. Great team as well! They helped us set it up in a way that also worked for the corporate firewall. I believe they use Jitsi as their backend, combined with some cool engineering to make it all work on k8s.
- pojntfx 6y agoThis is awesome! Tried with a friend just now and the 3D audio is really something else.
- jsherwani 6y agoGlad you liked it! Please keep the feedback coming.
- chickenpotpie 6y agoOk I got to know: how much did you spend to get pop.com?
- andy_ppp 6y agoYes, I’m also wildly jealous of that domain name...
- uses 6y agoYeah, I'm pretty curious because it must've cost in $10k-100k range right? Isn't this the type of vanity purchase that usually happens after you validate your idea with 10,000 customers and you got a round of investment to go big? I would expect a newly launched startup to use getpopapp.info, or used a made-up company name with an acquirable domain.
- edmundsauto 6y agoMy experience is from 5+ years ago (when google counted keywords in domains), but a 3 letter domain would go for at least 6 figures, possibly up into 7.
- michaelpb 6y agoAnd pop.com would be in the high end of that would be my guess, given it's better that most 3 letter domains as it spells a very marketing-friendly word
- egfx 6y agoYeah it’s nice but IMO I’m not sure that this is the product I would put on it. I mean how many more apps do I need that insist on turning on my camera? Zoom fatigue and privacy needs are real things. And now this apparently detects who I’m standing next to in virtual space. Why? Anyway I’m certain it feels awkward and uncomfortable and that’s not something you want with a new concept. I would put a bubble bobble clone on the domain. This is what the internet is lacking and perfect for pop.com a major tour de force of classic arcade game remakes!
- SparkyMcUnicorn 6y agoNextDNS "Threat Intelligence Feeds" blocks this domain. It's also on a bunch of domain blocking lists (don't have a complete list). I've submitted pop.com as a false-positive on OISD.
- jsherwani 6y agoThank you! I really appreciate it. I wrote this elsewhere: We bought this domain a few months ago, and you're probably right, since Gmail seems to mark our outgoing emails as spam. I'm not very well-versed in how to undo the reputation the previous owners seem to have created for the domain, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know!
- adventured 6y agoThat's a long-term manual process. You need to go around to every spam list you can find and open up direct communication with the person/s that control it or go through their removal process (some offer a simple process, some are obnoxious, as you'd expect). That said, I checked your site against blacklists. It appears clear - https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
- hunter2_ 6y agoOne trick for upping your reputation with Gmail is to have as many of those recipients as possible (who need to dig into their spam folder sometimes) click reply and write back to you naturally. Gmail considers that behavior to be highly indicative of "not spam" well beyond simply using the "not spam" button.
- chrisseaton 6y agoHow on earth did you get the domain?
- izolate 6y agoHe founded a company that was acquired by Slack. I imagine his financial situation (not to mention his network) is slightly above the HN average.
- gfodor 6y agoCool! I think this kind of avatar embodiment is the future. I'm working on one that doesn't use the camera, but audio lip syncing to provide a good experience. https://jel.app https://jel.app Also if you want an OSS alternative to any of these commercial tools, check out https://hubs.mozilla.com https://hubs.mozilla.com
- m4lvin 6y ago+1 for hubs, I only found it recently and was positively surprised when trying it out the first time. It is missing the webcam-video-on-avatar function though, or it is well hidden?!
- gfodor 6y agonope, never implemented it. you can share your camera but they are not avatar-attached. the theory being that we didn't want to implement that unless absolutely necessary, since it has a lot of tradeoffs.
- Vinnl 6y agoI asked about that, but apparently it was too resource intensive: https://twitter.com/MozillaHubs/status/1247599808271077376 https://twitter.com/MozillaHubs/status/1247599808271077376
- wolfpack_mick 6y agoCheck mibo, getmibo.com for the webcam on avatar. Desktop chrome only.
- hartator 6y agoDoes that mean that screen.so is dead?
- jsherwani 6y agoNot at all! We'd originally bought pop.com to be the new home for screen.so, but once we made this new product, we wanted to launch it asap. Our plan is to merge the two in the near future, and work on the intersection between 2D and 3D calls.
- overcast 6y agoThe purchase price for that three letter domain must have cost you something serious. Pop.com was that old DotCom project from Dreamworks and Ron Howard that went belly up.
- mangoman 6y agoMozilla Hubs is awesome for this too, you can set up the room with objects like presentations, or just various tables and it also lets you have a little window for your webcam too. The audio is also spatially aware so you can have little groups of conversation too. https://hubs.mozilla.com/ https://hubs.mozilla.com/
- astlouis44 6y agoHey everyone - our team is also working on an interactive, browser-based virtual platform for people to connect. Like Zoom, but for 3D. Wanted to get some input on what some must have features would be?
- corobo 6y agoDid this used to be an ad/tracking domain? It was listed in one of the adblock lists I use If anyone has an issue visiting the site double check your adblock.
- jsherwani 6y agoWe bought this domain a few months ago, and you're probably right, since Gmail seems to mark our outgoing emails as spam. I'm not very well-versed in how to undo the reputation the previous owners seem to have created for the domain, so if you have any recommendations, please let me know!
- tomcooks 6y agolook into DMARC ASAP to fix your email make sure you get taken off freely available spamlists that adblockers sync with then if I were you I'd talk to a Google exec to speed up the domain reputation cleansing process a bit (get some articles up in your blog asap)
- corobo 6y agoLooks like you already got it bud! Best of luck
- aphit 6y agoYeah, this is blocked by our Cisco filter at work.
- hackerloom 6y agoCONGRATS and KUDOS for domain
- oliv__ 6y agoIt's a cool idea but after trying it, I feel it needlessly incorporates all the constraints of the real world into the virtual world. Why should I waste time clicking my mouse to move to a certain point in virtual space when no-one is really there anyways? Isn't the whole point of virtual meetings that you don't have to physically be there to attend? Walking around in the void to hear others only makes my personal experience slower and less natural. I feel like maybe the solution here is just to have Zoom + private "rooms" for separate conversations. (Sorry if this sounds too negative, because I always enjoy seeing new ideas and there was obviously hard work put behind this but that's my 2c)
- Guest19023892 6y agoI agree that it doesn't seem like the most efficient way to have a conversation, so if that's the goal, I don't see it working. It also doesn't make much sense for having a group call with one or two people. However, I could see some value in making public chat rooms that people could join. This way 50 people join a room to talk about a particular subject and naturally split off into separate groups within the room. It would be sort of like a being at a party, where you could walk around and mingle and network with different groups of people. It would be a fun way to interact with new people, especially in current times when everyone is locked inside. So, I see it less as a business tool, and more like VRChat (although without all the crazy avatars and games) where strangers go to socialize.
- tdeck 6y agoI can see the appeal in being able to drift in and out of conversations. The private room dynamic is kinda rigid, I basically have to explicitly secede from one conversation to start another.
- ffhhj 6y agoThis got me thinking, what is most affordable way to create a videoconferencing website nowadays? Is there some cheap streaming service, or is it better to deploy your own server in the cloud?
- michaelmarkell 6y ago
- joshuakelly 6y agoThis is really cool, I joined the launch chat and people were emulating in real life behaviors like standing in a circle and moving their focus to the speaker. I also noticed that multiple conversations were happening at the same time, without interference since the audio is spatially modified. Love the fact that it's entirely in the browser without an app too.
- jsherwani 6y agoGlad you liked it! We have plans to make it easier to get into a circle (one person elects to start a circle, and others elect to join).
- blensor 6y agoWhat you are describing sounds a lot like AltspaceVR I am visiting a weekly XR Meetup on Thursdays and it feels a bit like going to a conference. You have someone presenting their work, with displays and people gathering in groups chatting about things.
- hundchenkatze 6y agoI can't get it working. I've tried in vanilla (no content/script blocking) Firefox and Chrome. I've accepted the microphone permission, but it seems there's a hard requirement on having a camera attached? I'm getting: "DOMException: The object can not be found here." - FF and "DOMException: Requested device not found" - Chrome Since you state you can turn both the camera and microphone off, I think it'd be much better UX to not force camera and mic access up front. Also, Firefox asked for permission before I clicked on the "Request Permissions" button. Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/BKY5bcE https://imgur.com/a/BKY5bcE
- jsherwani 6y agoSorry, this looks like a bug! We will try to fix it soon (likely after the holidays).
- richrichardsson 6y agoNice idea. I had a bunch of "phantom" avatars for some reason (https://imgur.com/a/ixBGuK8 https://imgur.com/a/ixBGuK8) Some thoughts: - the idea someone just mentioned in the "launch party" about having a visualisation of an avatars audio "range" (how far they project sound) would be useful - a visualisation that someone is speaking could also be useful (little speaker next to their name) - definitely need some kind of password protection for joining, gate crashing would be pretty easy (unless of course you rate limit attempting to join a space to stop people brute forcing the space ID) - ability to mute someone would also be useful in a more public setting (and the mutee should probably get a visualisation that an avatar cannot hear them) - being able to agree with another person to go into a completely new space would also be useful way to take a conversation private
- bradhe 6y agoThis is awesome. Reminds me of https://wonder.me https://wonder.me quite a bit.
- obilgic 6y agoNo demo, and no explanation on the site before requesting mic and cam permissions
- antman 6y agoI got in with my phone, I see the crowd but how do I move forward?
- lksslr 6y agocongratulations, looks cool! I'm one of the persons behind https://laptopsinspace.de https://laptopsinspace.de and it would probably be interesting to share some experiences. Our tech stack is similar, yet different. We also use mediasoup for the video, Svelte for the frontend and ThreeJS as the 3D framework!
- scraft 6y agoThis feels like a fun lightweight version of one of our products, vTime XR https://vtime.net/vtimexr https://vtime.net/vtimexr which lets you chat with people both in VR and on mobile. It is amazing how much better chat is when you can face people and speak to them. When you throw in VR it gets pretty exciting too. Thanks for sharing.
- 1f60c 6y agoI think the site got hugged: ping -c 4 pop.com PING pop.com (0.0.0.0): 56 data bytes ping: sendto: Socket is not connected ping: sendto: Socket is not connected Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ping: sendto: Socket is not connected Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 ping: sendto: Socket is not connected Request timeout for icmp_seq 2 --- pop.com ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
- andybak 6y agoFirefox on Android. Avatar gives a black screen instead of (presumably) an image from the phone camera
- tiborsaas 6y agoPage only loads for me in incognito mode, normal mode just throws this error: https://imgur.com/a/JlEeyZj https://imgur.com/a/JlEeyZj I disabled both privacy blocker extension, but no luck.
- shafyy 6y agoIf you've ever tried social apps in VR, you'll know that the "social presence" is what sets it apart from a 2D video call, even though you only see avatars of others and not their actual faces. It feels like you're in the same physical room as someone else. I think Pop is interesting as a bridging solution until VR becomes the main platform for social, because it gives you more of a social presence feel than pure 2D video calls. I'll for sure try it out in the future with calls and see how it goes. Best of luck with this! Edit: Typos, it's bed time :D
- cbhl 6y agoIt would be great if you could add an audio/video camera picker before joining the call, for folks who have multiple (e.g. USB sound bar, bluetooth headset, wired mic, OBS virtual cam) and want to make sure they look presentable before joining the call. (I saw that there were options to pick once you were joined.)
- ibdf 6y agoIs it a trend to provide your visitors absolutely no information and expect them to click around?
- system2 6y agoMaybe reverse psych. By doing it they force the user click the buttons...
- mritchie712 6y agoHow much for the domain?
- disgrunt 6y agoI have a 2020 MBP (x86) and it wails on my CPU in Safari. Is there anything I can do to keep this in check? Otherwise very cool.
- stevenpetryk 6y agoJust FYI—the title of the HTML page is still "Screen" :)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mariocesar 6y agoJust jump in, and someone was screen sharing a picture of Hitler :D You need a report button! :D Anyway, great idea! Congrats!
- kevsim 6y agoThis is why we can't have nice things
- edumucelli 6y agoI'd add a video demo in the front page. Without a demo or something in the front page is hard to figure out what it does. Maybe you guys (the team) know it well and the assumptions around it because you are working on it everyday but most people here have no idea.
- dandigangi 6y agoI'm afraid to ask how much money you burned on a premium domain like that...
- SergeAx 6y agoI cant help wondering how many great product features could be implemented with the budget spent for domain name.
- jamespitts 6y agoCongrats1 This was always a dream of mine to get to this with raptfm. Definitely consider creating a preset which positions the users around an object or in relation to each other when they first arrive, e.g. "conference meeting table" or "trailhead". Another one is carefully composing the physical constraints within a space, especially when others are present. In virtual, social boundaries no longer hamper us from flying around or other behavior which can alter how a shared space feels for everyone. It may be necessary to impose rules of movement to preserve the main premise of communication.
- pavlov 6y agoIs "Show HN" really the right venue for multi-million dollar product launches?
- airstrike 6y agoWhy not?
- rectalogic 6y agoI built something similar using Twilio’s video SDK https://github.com/rectalogic/spatia https://github.com/rectalogic/spatia
- issa 6y agoI love this. It is (or will be) "the street" from Snow Crash come to life.
- Merman_Mike 6y agoHi jsherwani - your site is being blocked by this (very popular) DNS blocklist that I use in my Pi-Hole: https://oisd.nl/ https://oisd.nl/ I'm guessing the domain might have previously been used for spam or something before you bought it. It looks like you can start the removal process here: https://oisd.nl/?p=fp https://oisd.nl/?p=fp
- jsherwani 6y agoThank you! Looking into this now...
- jsherwani 6y agoHmmm I got this response when I submitted the form: pop.com is not blocked by this blocklist Probable causes: - An other blocklist blocking it? - Regex? - An older version of this list contained it? > Make sure you are using the latest version. Not sure what happened!
- Merman_Mike 6y agoHey, it looks like it was actually removed. I ran "pihole -q -all pop.com" before commenting to see which list was blocking it and got: > Match found in https://hosts.oisd.nl/ https://hosts.oisd.nl/: > pop.com > pop.com.sg After reading your comment I updated my pi-hole's DNS lists, reran "pihole -q -all pop.com", and got just: > Match found in https://hosts.oisd.nl/ https://hosts.oisd.nl/: > pop.com.sg So either your request removed it or it was removed in the time since my last list update (~9 days).
- pclark 6y agohah! i was wondering why their site had been down all the time it was on the frontpage.
- ThomPete 6y agoFun fact pop.com used to be owned by Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks. Back in 2001 the company i worked at were involved in developing an identity for them for some tv platform. It never went anywhere.
- tomjacobs 6y agoGreat! Nothing like a pandemic to push tech forward. This would work well with a physical controllable positionable telepresence device as well: http://teleportconnect.com http://teleportconnect.com Move around in a shared real space together.
- Ninjinka 6y agoI tried it and got constant downward view drift, i.e. it kept panning down.
- thebravoman 6y agoWent to the site with an iPad. Click create. It said it needed permissions. I said ok. It said something will be shown in the browser for me to confirm. Nothing happened. I could not try it.
- x3c 6y agoiPad / Safari (and by extension, all apple mobile browsers) doesn’t support camera access from browser.
- strangus 6y agoI like it. It's the beginning of the metaverse
- valtism 6y agoI feel like this is the future of virtual conferences. The demo is super slick, and I love the simplicity. I worry that conferences adopting this would inaccessible, effectively be barring users who don't have the hardware to run it. Still, super nice demo. I'd be excited to try this out for Christmas to get family on in a big room to chat.
- spicyramen 6y agoAccess it, saw nothing. Will never use it again. Feedback I use to run a test tool for Telepresence, users were able to see each other and see statistics on screen. They knew what to expect
- asyrafql 6y agoNext feature: put a Live Chat !!!
- motoxpro 6y agoIs it just me or are all these apps just recreating video games without the "game" part. "Walk around your office" "Interact with your friends". Interesting.
- parisianka 6y agoNice domain btw