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Show HN: Pluto – In-browser spatial video chat
- eladgil 6y agoExcited to share a side project I have been working on with my friends at Fluxon (Erad and AJ (@lasersox)) and Katsuya Noguchi (@katsuyan). We got sick of all the Zoom happy hours, birthday parties, and company get togethers. In parallel, serendipity largely died - you could no longer run into a friend or co-worker or interesting new person given social distancing. So, we put together Pluto - built on webRTC with MediaSoup and webGL with THREE.js and many other technologies. Pluto is a browser-only VR space (no headsets needed) for spacial video chats and hangouts. You can move around in using first-person shooter-like controls. Sound decays with distance so different groups can break up and hang out. Just drop in a link, and you can attend an event over video (no headset, no nothing). Create a virtual world in just one click! Everything is represented in 3D which means people can randomly run into each other and serendipity can finally happen again. We have built out a number of worlds using Blender to construct 3D models of : -Burning Man -The Maldives -Admont Abbey Library -A room in old Austria. You can go to https://pluto.video https://pluto.video to try it in your own VR in-browser world. It is best tried out with friends but can also be fun to explore the virtual world solo. Come check it out and let us all know what you think! It is still early / janky but we wanted to get it out there and get some feedback :) We will be hanging out at an instance from 11am to 1:30pm PT at https://team.pluto.video https://team.pluto.video. Pluto was partially inspired in part by new social experiments on the web like Clubhouse, Gatherly, Rally, Rambly, Sonar, Teamflow, Yorb and others....
- enazheng 6y agoAmazing! Excited for the launch!
- eladgil 6y agoThanks! Let me know if you have any feedback.
- neartheplain 6y agoVR space (no headsets needed) I’m confused. Does it work with a headset? The mobile site isn’t clear on this. I have an Oculus Quest, and for a moment I got excited to see a browser-based VR chat app (the Firefox Reality browser has good VR plugin support). If it doesn’t work with headsets at all, then in my view VR is a misleading adjective.
- eladgil 6y agoNo headset needed. It works best on a laptop or desktop with keyboard right now versus mobile
- neartheplain 6y agoDoes it work with a VR headset?
- drdaeman 6y agoI believe it does not and "VR" is a misnomer here. It's all pancake stuff with just WebGL. From a quick glance there seem to be no WebVR/WebXR support in there (nothing checks for VR hardware and the minified JS doesn't seem to have any obvious API references).
- nomel 6y agoAlso, it couldn't really be true/personal video chat, unless an avatar, or a video stream of a person wearing an HMD, would be acceptable.
- Vermeulen 6y agoSo this isn't Pluto VR? https://pluto.app/ https://pluto.app/ - https://www.linkedin.com/company/pluto-vr https://www.linkedin.com/company/pluto-vr
- lux 6y agoI thought this was a pivot to WebXR for them or something at first.
- antman 6y agoIt looks pretty great, congrats. A way to ping my location so they can find me would be nice. Very smooth on my 4 year old mobile android
- littlestymaar 6y agoIs it just me, or there is no way to log in without a Google account?
- Aurorsf 6y agoSuper exciting!!
- shinkim0914 6y agoPluto is the only place I randomly bumped into someone in the last 12 months!
- booyasf 6y agolove all the different virtual worlds!
- eladgil 6y agoThanks! Let me know if any new requested spaces
- jayrosenkrantz 6y agoKing Kai's planet pls
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nmb 6y agoPluto is great. It captures the serendipity (and awkwardness) of in-person events pretty well :)
- eladgil 6y agoThanks! We view awkwardness as a good sign - it means we are hopefully capturing a part of real social interactions :)
- JohnExley 6y agoThe notion that you’re live on video with others in the virtual space (instead of say, representing yourself with an avatar) creates such a surprisingly special experience. In this way, I think Pluto subtly and beautifully mirrors what real world interaction actually feels like. Excited to see where this project goes!
- mediaman 6y agoAgreed. I really dislike avatar-only interaction. Tried it recently with a Quest and it's hard to read who you're talking with, or recognize a face you've met in person. Combining video of the face mapped onto a virtual space really seems like the winning combo - there are a few groups doing this and it's the only thing I want to nudge my professional contacts to try out.
- nomel 6y ago> it's hard to read who you're talking with Take that as a small glimpse of what it's like to be on the autism spectrum.
- t_smith 6y agoI really like the idea of this. If we could have some decent customisation I'd love to bring my team over to this when it launches. Awesome!
- interestica 6y agoCool project. Looking forward to trying it out with more people. Why the name Pluto? I feel like I've run into quite a few projects sharing the name. Are you going for something related to the underworld?
- eladgil 6y agoJust looking for something space related :)
- interestica 6y agoHa well the use of 'portals' to warp between spaces (eg, burning man!) definitely felt like "entering the underworld". This definitely had a second-life-in-a-browser vibe. I know a few artists that would love to hold virtual gallery tours in a set up like this. (also, pluto+video made me think of pluto.tv - a live tv app)
- p92xy 6y agoI have spent my evening on Pluto. It's a great product! I run a 80 people startup and I have been looking for ways to restore serendipity. I tried several products notably Altspace VR, Mozilla Hubs, Teamflow and Decentraland Reasons I prefer Pluto to other products - Easy to sign-in - Faster to load - Doesn't lag - See my friends' face (killer feature versus an avatar) - Spacial video chat Good job guys!
- js4ever 6y agoThis same message was also posted by a dead account ... So it seems to be a fake one posted by the team
- nico_bst 6y agoI have spent my evening on Pluto. It's a great product! I run a 80 people startup and I have been looking for ways to restore serendipity. I tried several products notably Altspace VR, Mozilla Hubs, Teamflow and Decentraland. Reasons I prefer Pluto to other products - Easy to sign-in - Faster to load - Doesn't lag - See my friends' face (killer feature versus an avatar) - Spacial video chat Good job guys!
- aejae 6y agoThis was a really fun experience. If you're organizing a 16+ person happy hour it's a great way to organically let the group split into smaller conversations.
- mysterEFrank 6y agoThis is just commercialized Yorb
- myrtlejames 6y agoit looks like a straight up clone
- eladgil 6y agoYorb was definitely one of the inspirations! Aidan is awesome and he attended one of the events we had.
- nfsiddiqui 6y agoi love the burning man room! super cool. also try jumping and changing the sound radius
- mschonfeld 6y ago10/10 idea & execution. 1/10 logo seems a bit... too similar to Apollo GraphQL. Down to the font selection?
- eladgil 6y agoYeah we changed names a week or two ago and the logo has not caught up yet :)
- asiachick 6y agoTIL the Pluto is a company that lies. Their product is not VR by any common definition. So basically they've taught my they're a scammy company Note: I get that by some mental gymnastics you can say it's VR but by that argument, all services you use to communicate with are VR as is nearly every video game. VR has a meaning. This usage of it is not that.
- eladgil 6y agoHmm, I did not mean to abuse the term "VR". The original usage is much broader than just "put on a headset" immersive VR. For example, text-only MUDs & MUSHes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_reality and https://www.howtogeek.com/661428/text-based-vr-explore-the-pioneering-world-of-mushes/ https://www.howtogeek.com/661428/text-based-vr-explore-the-p... However, given how strongly people feel about the term, happy to use something different in the future to avoid ambiguity. E.g. "Virtual spaces" or "Spatial video". Really the intention was to simulate aspects of the real world and in particular to virtualize human interactions in an online space. Thanks for pointing this out.
- dang 6y agoThis is easily fixed - the title doesn't need "VR" in it and in fact reads better without it, so I just took it out. (Submitted title was 'Show HN: Pluto in-browser VR spatial video chat'.)
- eladgil 6y agoThanks for the fix! I also changed the title of my blog to remove "VR". Too bad Twitter still doesnt have editable tweets :/
- dang 6y agoIt's fine to make an objection to what you feel is an accurate claim, but going straight to "lies" and "scammy company" is way too aggressive for a case like this. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
- istorical 6y agoTried the demo, very cool not-VR spatial video chat!
- jmadler 6y agoBrilliant innovation on the spatial audio. I love the barriers and proximity cliffs. A bit hard to find a specific someone. It's like a frictionless, lightweight second-life. Congrats. Now we can have true house parties online.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoLooks like a lot of people made new names or posted for the first time in years just to say how great this is and how excited they are. Some even posted the same message. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nico_bst https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nico_bst https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=t_smith https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=t_smith https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Aurorsf https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Aurorsf https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=enazheng https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=enazheng https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nfsiddiqui https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nfsiddiqui https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=p92xy https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=p92xy https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=booyasf https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=booyasf https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JohnExley https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=JohnExley https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nmb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=nmb https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=shinkim0914 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=shinkim0914 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jmadler https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=jmadler
- detaro 6y agoplease also email dang those links if you haven't already.
- chermanowicz 6y agoIs this surprising given who posted?
- aymeric 6y agoWho posted?
- tmotwu 6y agoThis is one of the best implementations I have seen thus far. The fact you can go "outside" reminds me of Second Life and its unfortunate most other ventures didn't capitalize on this.
- amiruci2 6y agoI gave it a shot and it was the closest I had felt to being at a party since covid. I usually bounce around at parties IRL and no other virtual experience had given me that ability so far.
- andybak 6y agoIt's really confusing to call this VR.
- eladgil 6y agoThanks for the feedback. We will move away from calling it VR in the future and more about "spatial reality" or "spatial video" most likely
- ofrzeta 6y agoLike calling 3d graphics "3d" when it's only displayed on a flat screen? :)
- andybak 6y agoWell yes but that ship has sailed. We have to add "stereoscopic" on to disambiguiate that one now.
- thekyle 6y agoI'm a big fan of spatial audio and I think this is really cool. I like that it doesn't make me use my mouse too much which makes it way easier to use on a laptop with trackpad. It would be nice if there were alternatives to login besides Google (like email?).
- purplecats 6y agoyeah can we not login with google
- 30minAdayHN 6y agoWe tried similar service in concept, called Teamflow. I manage a team of 12 people and thought it would be great to create serendipitous connections. It was fun the first couple of days. Lot of improptu conversations happened. Within 4 days, novelty effect wore off and I was all alone there. I think the main problem around adopting such tech is that, existing workflows and habit loops are pretty mature (though not ideal). Zoom / hangout meetings, chat on slack etc. Because of that, it's hard to 'remember' to login to such virtual office spaces that would enable those convos. I want to hear if there are teams that were able to adopt successfully and what level of early enforcement was required to create that habit loop (i personally hate such enforcement, but might not avoidable).
- purplecats 6y agoi would hate this for a workspace. i would have to actually "be" there. i would love this for use with my friends. we would get to "be" there.
- tgtweak 6y agoSomebody showHN'd pop.com a few weeks back and it had a similar vibe.
- jatins 6y agoIs there a library/service out there that makes it really easy to make these? I have seen like 50 or so such apps crop up recently
- littlestymaar 6y agoWebRTC itself makes videoconferencing platform incredibly easy to make (you can even just copy-past a working tutorial!). Three.js[1] makes the 3D-world part quite easy as well, then howler.js[1] does the spacial audio for you. Tada! you have your Pluto clone in a few days! (the open-source JavaScript ecosystem is pretty impressive) [1]https://threejs.org/ https://threejs.org/ [2]https://howlerjs.com/ https://howlerjs.com/
- zkid18 6y agoLooks pretty good! Request CS 1.6 dust map there =)
- alexrson 6y agoI had a lot of fun using this to catch up with some colleagues I haven't seen in a while. Very cool! I have some feedback: It would be cool to have some really interesting sculpture art to sort of seed groups of people talking in the museum level. I'm specifically requesting like a mutating 3d fractal sculpture that might invite people to gather. Or a campfire. I thought that having all the different worlds is cool but if everyone is in one location and you're in a different world it's easy to get isolated. Along the same lines, it would be cool if the size of the level sort of scaled with the size of the group in some way.