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Show HN: I built the antithesis of Zoom. Add GIFs, stickers, BGs. Talk like IRL
- remotelyyours 6y agoI built a video calling app which is the antithesis of Zoom. It's called Reslash. You can play with everything - backgrounds, gifs, stickers. You can recreate a bar lounge, classroom, office, 80s party and more. It also has spatial audio - just move closer to talk to people, like you do IRL. Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwXL7ZJra4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zwXL7ZJra4 You can sign up here: https://reslash.co https://reslash.co I would love to get your feedback on it :)
- djlewald 6y agoI'm surprised you didn't launch on producthunt. Definitely think that crowd would get a kick out of it Edit: I now see their producthunt page. It didn't pop up while searching /shrug
- FemmeAndroid 6y agoThey were the #1 product of the day on Product Hunt on December 23rd. They even have a Product Hunt '#1 product of the day' badge featured prominently on their landing page.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe actually were #1 on Product Hunt. We launched on it couple of weeks ago :)
- alpaca128 6y agoTwo points regarding the pricing table: Firstly it mixes different spellings("up to" and "upto"). And then there are the bullet points with strikethrough text that I just can't understand. Why do both variants have "unlimited spaces" crossed out? Why is "no unlimited guests allowed" crossed out, which in my head implies that unlimited guests are allowed.
- remotelyyours 6y agoGood observation. Pricing needs to be calibrated and communicated properly. On it!!
- neurotrace 6y agoI think this is a fantastic idea and will be trying it out with some friends later! The only issue for me is the pricing. The free tier is great for getting your feet wet but the $99 is too expensive for me to consider since I would only be hanging out with a few friends. For me, the ideal would be something in the $15-$30 range and would increase the call limit to 3-4 hours. I don't need unlimited meetings or more than 10 people. Best of luck!
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe'll definitely be bringing such a plan. Until then, please go ahead and use it as much as you want :) Feedback taken!
- avrionov 6y agoI really like that you are working on something original and different. Wish you luck. What is the tech stack behind the product? Do you use WebRTC? Something home-build.
- remotelyyours 6y agoThanks! You're right. It is webrtc and react.js.
- sli 6y agoThat video answers every question I had about why someone might choose Reslash over Discord, thanks. Reslash looks fun.
- remotelyyours 6y agoThanks!
- juliend2 6y agoFeedback: I just had a quick tour with you guys. Amazing tool. But at first I signed in as a guest, but now I want to sign up with the same email address but it says "Error occured: The email address is already in use by another account.". And I see no "Forgot password" link. EDIT: user email is now in my bio.
- remotelyyours 6y agofixing it!
- remotelyyours 6y agoHey, this is fixed. Can you try signing up again please? Let me know if it still doesn't work.
- juliend2 6y agoIt works! thanks!
- remotelyyours 6y agoYAY!
- ironmagma 6y agoLove it. It would be especially cool to be able to create filters, e.g. chroma keying on your video to integrate it into the space. Or just to make the colors go wonky and have fun with the image.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWow. Cool idea. We definitely need to look into this!
- dec0dedab0de 6y agoI like the idea of spatial audio, I think that is the main thing missing from virtual happy hours and whatnot. I cant try it out right now. Does it have a limit to how many people can occupy a space? can you control how far your voice projects? I am thinking of something like a work christmas party where everyone breaks into groups and then walks away and tries another group for a bit and talks to different people. Then someone gets everyones attention and talks loudly or into a microphone for a bit, then it goes back to normal. In any case, good luck, it sounds great, I cant wait to try it.
- remotelyyours 6y agoYou can have up to 100 people in a room. You have unlimited rooms. We're also building a broadcast feature so that you can talk/announce across rooms. We've not given flexibility on the spatial audio radius yet. It could be interesting!
- FalconSensei 6y agoRegarding pricing: I would see myself using that to play D&D once a week with my friends. So, less than 10 people, but 1 4-hour session a week. Unfortunately, free tier is not enough, but $99 for that is a bit too much.
- remotelyyours 6y agoHey! We have gotten a lot of feedback on pricing. We need to fix it. Please go ahead and start using it! We'll have an in-between pricing soon :)
- FalconSensei 6y agothanks for the reply! I'll give it a try with my friends :)
- snowisgone 6y agoSuper sick. I've used this with my friends. How long was development?
- remotelyyours 6y agoAwesome! How was the experience like? We've tried multiple products. This is third pivot. Took two months to build this.
- Folcon 6y agoCool product =)... Just out of curiosity, are you using distance from avatars to lower sound? So more distant conversations in say a party setting could be audible, but quieter? That would be a key distinction between discord and this in my mind.
- remotelyyours 6y agoYou're right!
- Folcon 6y agoReally neat then =)... Is that an area you've had to spend a lot of time in? Getting that multiple groups conversing where you can overhear / swap conversations or widen the conversation as well has have short sub-conversations is a really great dynamic that's sorely missing in this medium.
- ianceicys 6y agoVery cool to see this. Just tried it out. It's a great visualization.
- remotelyyours 6y agoThanks!
- gjvc 6y agoThis is very good. :-) The zooming user interface is a nice touch. It would work well for meetups where you can see lots of people and move from group to group by dragging the mouse.
- remotelyyours 6y agoThank you! How do you think you can potentially use this?
- remotelyyours 6y agoMakes a lot of sense!
- lrossi 6y agoVery nice! Has a chess game too! If you could add some lighter board games or 2d pool I might spend some time on it! What can you tell us about security and privacy? Can you create locked rooms? Zoom had a lot of problems with this in the beginning.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe'll be adding a lot more games to it. The calls are all end-to-end encrypted. We'll be adding more security features like passwords, locked rooms and gatekeeping to get this aspect right.
- fooddood 6y agoReally cool but why is there no text chat? Edit: I communicate with my friends IRL primarily through text so having to use audio only is definitely a detractor for me.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe'll have to reimagine chat a bit for the platform. It's under works!
- hliyan 6y agoI went in expecting to hate it, but I ended up actually liking the idea. Since I'm looking at this from a work perspective, a whiteboard would be nice!
- remotelyyours 6y agoDefinitely! We're bringing whiteboard pretty soon !
- vyrotek 6y agoNice work. It looks like a fun new take of The Palace Chat!
- Minor49er 6y agoI was thinking this too, but couldn't remember the name. Thank you! Also reminds me of Well of Souls by Synthetic Reality with all of the avatars floating around and the randomly-styled images that pop up. I dig it.
- saberience 6y agoIt really does
- karmelapple 6y agoNow there's a name I haven't heard too recently - except for a handful of us who were part of a group many years ago. Did you have a favorite Palace server you logged into regularly back in the day?
- ThalesX 6y agoOh man I can't believe I'm seeing this out in the wild in 2021. I used to love The Palace back in the days; would go around an awesome Harry Potter themed server (or room, can't recall the exact structure) and kinda play around in Hogwarts.
- remotelyyours 6y agoSomeone told me about this today!! We need to build a tribute to The Palace within the product. On it.
- jccalhoun 6y agoMy first though too
- serf 6y agoit's just missing the Dollz and DBZ characters blasting scripted macros everywhere to ruin the experience of others through audiovisual spam. man I loved The Palace. I wrote a ton of IPTSCRAE as a youth for it -- both server side and client side. The Palace quickly taught one why it was a bad idea to allow clients to draw programmatically. Many a rooms ruined by script kiddies that got taught how to ruin every bodies day with an array of seizure inducing redraws. That said : Man, we're moving backwards in a lot of ways on software. The Palace didn't have rich media embedding and webcams, sure -- but the server software was free for anyone to run , with many large broadcasting groups hosting many hundreds of people at once. I understand the need for a marketing plan and idea -- but it feels weird when a brand new pay offering can handle less traffic for more money than a solution from the 90s.
- smoyer 6y agoThis is a cool idea and I like that you've left space "at the top" for an enterprise plan. Of course, I don't know anyone with an account and don't use other social media, so how would I get started? Is there an interest in having an HN space? ... And how is that done fairly with a limit of 100 people?
- remotelyyours 6y agoYou can have multiple rooms. This means you can unlimited people in the space. We're also building a broadcast feature so that you can present to all the rooms at the same time. So, the crowd can still talk to each other while listening to a presentation.
- TotempaaltJ 6y agoSeems like this could work super well for personal use, especially if there was a mobile/tablet app with pinch-to-zoom. Could throw a party on this with my friends.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe've actually a lot of interest for virtual events, offices and classrooms :)
- rzodkiew 6y agoI feel like I'm out of touch with current western culture, I honestly feel like I'm becoming an old fart at the age of 30. Everything is becoming increasingly infantile. Everything has to be fun and cool. I'm wondering where is this trend coming from. Is this some sort of a social response to how terrible and bleak reality seems to be? Or maybe it's because we actually treat majority of people like little children. If one looks how the current enterprises work, the person within them have very limited decision making power and access to information. In a way that reminds me of a quote from interview with Erich Fromm[1]: "It is true that one has to think first and then to act -but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.". Any other ideas? Or maybe it's actually not happening at all, and it's only me who's not getting it. [1]: https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll90/id/64/ https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll... PS: OP, I don't mean that as criticism of your product, I think it correctly identifies and addresses the need. It's the why is it even a need part I'm curious about.
- victorevector 6y agoInfantile is a compliment. It suggests creativity and pushing the boundaries. Normally old curmudgeons think young things are empty and stupid because they don’t understand.
- rorykoehler 6y agoInfantile means you don’t have a developed prefrontal cortex and is definitely not a positive description. Creative and playful are not the same concept.
- victorevector 6y ago1. My point was to undermine the negative connotation associated with the word infantile. Since when did having an undeveloped prefrontal cortex become absolutely negative? 2. Creative and playful are highly correlated.
- inscionent 6y ago
- jtbayly 6y agoThat was cool, except I could never hear anybody talking. :( I could hear the videos, though.
- remotelyyours 6y agoOh, weird. Let me DM you and get that fixed for you.
- remotelyyours 6y agoHey! We fixed this.. Can you please try again?
- jtbayly 6y agoWell done!
- dkersten 6y agoIts cool, I especially like that presentation example. However, animated GIFs and stickers would drive me insane. I already can't stand animated stuff in slack as it is, so distracting.
- scythmic_waves 6y agoI also find that stuff distracting in slack, but I think that's because I'm trying to stay on top of "work stuff". I don't think it'd be so distracting if I was just hanging with friends or something.
- dkersten 6y agoI get that, but it still distracts from the actual conversations or people. I don't need stuff constantly moving. I guess the difference is that if its an in-person situation, then stuff moving around me is normal, but on screen it localizes everything to a small area: the screen. I also find animated stuff annoying in Discord channels and such, something I don't use for work, only for fun. I dunno. I haven't tried it. For me, when I'm in a social situation (virtual or in person), I'm there for the people and want to focus on them, not some animated emoji. I can do those on my own.
- tpxl 6y agoFWIW you can disable animated emojis
- remotelyyours 6y agoYou can turn it off! You can personalize the space to make it work for you. That's one of our key differentiators. We don't want to force you into a single format.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- evanb 6y agoWhen I talk IRL I don't use GIFs or stickers, and the only background is whatever is behind me. I like the idea of moving around to decide who you talk to; it is the premise behind jitsi-powered Work Adventure http://workadventu.re http://workadventu.re
- jMyles 6y ago> jitsi-powered Work Adventure http://workadventu.re http://workadventu.re Getting a 404 - "Could not load map."
- remotelyyours 6y agoThis seems interesting. I'll check it out!
- lukeschlather 6y ago> When I talk IRL I don't use GIFs or stickers, and the only background is whatever is behind me. There is no "background" you are surrounded by 3 dimensional space with a variety of objects you can point at or manipulate. Given that you can't share a 3 dimensional space gifs and stickers give you a way to communicate things that require more than 2 dimensions to express.
- jrockway 6y agoI think the idea is to add some sort of flair, like you would in real life. For example, people wear unusual socks, and you'd notice them in real life, but in a video call you'll never see someone's socks. So the video call takes away that dimension of being alive. I'm not sure GIFs are the answer, but I think that's what the attempt is.
- remram 6y agoI don't know if the spatial metaphor really brings anything. I think a few rooms, with proper tooling to signal activity and a way to preview (listen in before you decide to join, or better yet have it play a recent utterance from its beginning) would work wonders. Maybe the system could prompt participants to move to a separate room on sufficient activity, and remind participants to set a text subject once in a while during periods of activity. Spatialization gives you little, as it's still impossible to listen to multiple conversations at once, and discovering the mapping of location-to-topic is a problem. If you're setting up specific locations for specific topics in advance, what I want to know is who is there and how active they are, not where on a 2D canvas the admin has chosen to position it.
- johnnyg 6y agoI joined and couldn't see my own face or bubble. I clicked around trying to figure that part out but didn't get it. I saw other people could easily publish content to the board and I think that part is a step forward. I could have clicked chess/gif and posted something but exited there. When I join, I'd like a clear "you are here" with my own face looking back at me.
- remotelyyours 6y agoFeedback taken! We'll improve upon this :)
- bndw 6y agoI stumbled into this same idea with OBS and their virtual cam. I used a window capture to plumb in my VC partner and built a "digital collage" with images, gifs, and browsers.
- remotelyyours 6y agoThat's cool! Try us out and let me know what you think?
- mwcampbell 6y agoThis reminds me of an old article by Jakob Nielsen, "Better than Reality" [1], about how the web shouldn't try to emulate reality. Of course, technology has advanced a lot since 1998. But I wonder if his core point is still right. For one thing, at its best, the web is still better than reality in that it can be much more accessible to people with disabilities. Products like this one still run the risk of negating that advantage. [1]: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-than-reality-a-fundamental-internet-principle/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-than-reality-a-funda...
- ravi-delia 6y agoI wonder if there's a good way of getting the best of both worlds. The 'killer app' here would seem to be that you can migrate between conversations and be aware of other people's conversations at the same time, taking advantage of the efforts of evolution to the fullest. Is there a better way that's more inclusive?
- JBorrow 6y agoSimilar products to this exist - wonder.me, and gather.town.
- remotelyyours 6y agoYou're right. Multiple startups trying to solve this problem. We want to stand out by making it incredibly easy for teams to build personalized spaces.
- rxsel 6y agoReminded me of the potential in proximity chat online outside the realm of video games where it’s most prevalent today.
- dorianmariefr 6y agoI love how the co-founder is doing tours in the online demo
- remotelyyours 6y agoThanks!
- Muralis 6y agoSeems to be knockoff of https://spatial.chat/ https://spatial.chat/ . How do you differentiate?
- remotelyyours 6y agoOur tech - we can handle twice the number of people in a room! We'll also be integrating work apps on to the platform.
- CivBase 6y agoSo it's basically Discord channels, but I change channels by moving around an avatar? That's neat, but I'm not sure it's really "the antithesis of Zoom". I don't even think Zoom is the right product to compare against. Why should I use this over Discord?
- remotelyyours 6y agoIt is so much more fun! If you use discord for gaming, then the experience would be similar. However, if you use it with crowds, it'll be much easier to have multiple, spontaneous conversations within the crowd without getting into multiple threads/rooms. It is also a lot more visual. So, you can customize the space and really set the mood with this.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe're thinking of adding Twitch integration which will let you have Twitch watch parties as well :) What do you think?
- woah 6y agoI was interested in building something like this when COVID-19 first hit. I think it's still a space with a lot of potential, but there are now a huge number of competitors. I made a spreadsheet and add to it each time I see one of these products come up on HN: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R5DXWtz4H7eIT5VbGYJEdY0fHasekDxL_x-FN84ItvE https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R5DXWtz4H7eIT5VbGYJE... There are currently at least 18 projects operating in this space. - The majority (maybe all?) of them are browser-based (probably because it's easy to throw something together with all the JS webrtc example projects out there). - Most of them seem to be trying to sell to enterprises or conference organizers. - I suspect that most of them are ghost towns. - None of them that I've seen actually try to originate events- i.e. the only way you would use them is if you try to organize an event or are invited to one through a different channel. - Most of them are top-down, although there are a few 3d ones. I still think that there's a lot of potential for someone to come in and take over this whole space with a product more polished than is possible in the browser, and with a social element that can drive usage of the platform (similar to Clubhouse). I suspect that the winning team will come from the ranks of game developers, not webdevs who cracked open a webrtc tutorial one weekend. For now though, it's probably best to sit back and let the majority of the 18 existing teams burn through their funding.
- tcoff91 6y agoMozilla Hubs is the best 3d browser-based spatial audio platform I've tried yet by far. I hosted a virtual party in the first lockdown back in April and it was pretty fun and far far better than a zoom call due to the spacial audio. Unfortunately it did become a bit unstable past 15-18 people and you'd have to rejoin the session frequently when it started to crap out under higher load. There already is a popular platform that fits what you are describing: VRChat.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe support up to 100 people in a room.
- sebular 6y ago
- darepublic 6y agoPeople get louder as you go near to them? Interesting.. I think I would end up hanging around a corner somewhere in the virtual space
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe'll come and find you haha
- econti 6y agoThis is a shameless copycat of here.fm. I've been using here.fm for several months and it is awesome. I'd highly recommend you check here.fm out before supporting a company that rips off other people's work.
- woah 6y agoThere are around 20 different startups doing something like this. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R5DXWtz4H7eIT5VbGYJEdY0fHasekDxL_x-FN84ItvE/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1R5DXWtz4H7eIT5VbGYJE...
- econti 6y agoCompare reslash's UI/UX to here's and you'll see it's more than just "similar". They literally copied the control bar at the bottom identically.
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe've similarities to here but our spatial audio is completely different. We can also handle upto 100 people in a room.
- remotelyyours 6y agoYou've not seen our product.. We may have gifs like here.fm but our spatial engine is completely different. Plus, we've built it to handle crowds. You can have up to 100 people in a room. Here has a limit of about 12. Btw, the real OG of this space is New Hive. It has been an inspiration of many such products.
- rorykoehler 6y agoConsider automatically bootstrapping user profiles for the live demo. Putting in E-Mail to see what it is all about is a straight up no for me. Too much friction.
- nickelcitymario 6y agoI'm digging the idea of spacial audio, but for my 2 cents I do not enjoy the interface. It seems to encourage a lot of loud geocities/MySpace-era visuals. I'd be interested in a top-down 2D space (like a million games, but just for example: Among Us) with spatial audio. That'd be pretty interesting. Judging by what my kids like to play, I could see a place in the market for a 2D virtual world with this kind of feature. Create your own spaces, "decorate" them, plus spatial audio. That sounds like a winning combo.
- brianjunyinchan 6y agoCheck out gather.town
- nickelcitymario 6y agoThat's more or else exactly what I was thinking. Thanks!
- remotelyyours 6y agoI get it. We wanted to have this to really help people customize the space the way they like. Gather has a different interpretation of it and more in line with what you are looking for.
- jccalhoun 6y agoInteresting. As others have noted, it is similar to the old palace chat. I have been thinking about how to give web conferencing more affordances than just a video window and a text box.
- remotelyyours 6y agoI need to check out Palace soon. Do give us a shot and let me know what you think :)
- theodpHN 6y agoNice job - demo video literally made me smile. Seems something like this might be neat for virtual attendees of Meetups and other conferences (e.g., for pre- and post-presentation discussions). Also seems like kids would enjoy the this-isn't-your-parents-WebEx/TEAMS-video-chat interface. Good luck!
- remotelyyours 6y agoThank you so much!
- elialbert 6y agoreally interested in a solution in this space that involves top down animated avatars and proximity _text_, not voice, chatting - anyone seen such a thing?
- remotelyyours 6y agoWe'll be building a proximity chat system soon!
- elialbert 6y agoawesome
- chadlavi 6y agoThis is cool, but you might want to adjust the feature lists in your pricing section! Since items are crossed out on the free plan, it would make a lot more sense for both lists to have the same features. It's confusing that it says "No additional guests" on the free plan, but then that is crossed out; you could misread this to mean "NOT no additional guests", which is kind of nonsense but might lead someone to believe that they _can_ have unlimited guests on free. Similarly, you have "Unlimited meeting minutes" listed and crossed out on free, but you don't even offer that on the paid plan, only a 240min max. You probably shouldn't tease unlimited meeting minutes like that.
- remotelyyours 6y agoValid feedback. Reworking this. Thank you!
- max_meethub 6y agoAnother one for he list. We are working on MeetHub which leverages Google Meet video. It's designed for organizations that use Google Workplace and allows you to see all the calls that are happening across your organization on a map and spontaneously drop in on calls. The idea is to bring back some of the Geospatial awareness of being co-located. All feedback welcome. https://meethub.io https://meethub.io