11 ms·

Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser

125 points by ghempton 5y ago

ghempton 5y ago
One of authors here. As a kid, some of my most meaningful relationships and experiences were forged through online gaming (UO anyone?). A big part of this wasn’t necessarily the game itself, but was instead the sense of place and community afforded through the shared environment. As an adult, many of my most meaningful relationships have come from my work environment. When working remotely or in a distributed setting, however, I find this not to be the case. Existing tools such as Slack and Zoom simply don’t cut it. Individual productivity may benefit, but the culture is fundamentally lacking. As a leader and someone who has founded and built a large company, I have experienced first-hand how critical it is to have a highly engaged team. This affects everything from communication to culture and company values. Moreover, there is a lack of innovation that spontaneous whiteboard sessions and more fluid communication styles afford. Spot is the culmination of a year of research and development to recreate a highly engaged workplace with smooth and natural interactions. (Not to mention, it is also a lot of fun!). Would appreciate some feedback from the HN community.
- marcind 5y ago
  I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the 3d virtual office. I find they often require a greater number of clicks to perform a task I'd otherwise complete "the old way". I'd be more likely to use an app that delivers "always on" virtual connections if they legitimately made my life easier. Maybe consider adding some desktop/keyboard shortcuts that are available when minimized/off? <a bit of a plug coming up> We've been working on solving similar problems but going about it differently. Rather than a shared virtual environment, we're looking for better ways to connect real, distributed environments. We created https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com because we simply didn't want to give up the whiteboard sessions. Reading here though I wonder if some kind of mashup wouldn't be interesting? A real whiteboard session could easily be displayed on the wall of your virtual office, allowing for serendipitous participation... Let me know if you're interested and we can discuss.
- technoplato 5y ago
  I surprisingly love using these kinds of environments and this one looks neat. What’s going to be the pricing model moving forward. Surely voice and such can’t be free in perpetuity. Nice work!
  - ghempton 5y ago
    Good question! Right now we are fortunate to have some AWS credits to subsidize some voice costs :P. At the moment our focus is on usage, but our goal is to have a freemium model based on the size of the space, premium assets, etc.
    - ilaksh 5y ago
      AWS will jack you, be careful. Those credits get used up, free/cheap quota used, services grind to a halt and somehow you owe $500 after a week. I mean.. you just have to pay attention. And maybe think about making a pricing page. Personally I love the idea, especially 3D and programmability.
    - fluential 5y ago
      If you want to be „close” to AWS but still save money, try spinning lightsail instances that act as media proxies, similarly with other more resource generous providers. You could shift majority of media traffic off AWS and keep the “signalling” just there.
- christkv 5y ago
  I'm definitively going to propose we try it to see if it makes interactions better for our case.
- petersonh 5y ago
  Love it :) Would try to get my team on board, but I work in gov where we can only use MS Teams. I feel like using this would add a lot of fun to the day.
- GordonS 5y ago
  I'd like to try this, but the "Try Now for Free!" button wants me to create an account - I don't want to create an account just to have a quick look. I'd much rather have a quick look, then maybe create an account later if I wanted to try it more meaningfully. If you're an HN regular, I guess you were expecting a comment like this - is there an open URL we can use just to get a feel for it?
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    Account creation doesn't require clicking a link in the email, I just used 'buttmonkey' as the username and 'buttmonkey@mailinator.com' as the email. And now I am stuck in the tutorial because it wants me to zoom in and out with the mouse wheel or the track pad, and I am at my desk with my computer closed and plugged into my monitor and my Wacom tablet and it doesn't recognize using the touch ring set to 'scroll'. It's sure not doing a good job of suppressing Safari's right-click menus when I hit the stylus button I have set to right-click to rotate the view, either.
    - zucked 5y ago
      I think they shut down Mailinator emails (tried Mailismagic and mailinator and both times I was "unauthorized")
      - GordonS 5y ago
        Wow, that's some pretty disappointing behaviour if true. Since at leat one of the authors is here, would be good to get a comment from them on this?
      - bobsmooth 5y ago
        Mailinator still works. The homepage doesn't suggest emails anymore but there's a box at the top of the page for whatever fake email you want to check.
      - whather 5y ago
        Sorry this was a sendgrid issue that has now been fixed
- boobsbr 5y ago
  Yes, UO. Catskills shard.
  - ghempton 5y ago
    Napa valley here.
    - codezero 5y ago
      Lake Superior
    - agrippanux 5y ago
      Great Lakes! I had a GM Tamer back in '97.
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    Sonoma!
- codezero 5y ago
  I was going to dismiss this as similar to a lot of other things I've seen, but hearing your POV helps a lot - as someone who has friends IRL that I met in UO, and a wife I met in EverQuest, your story really hits with me, thanks for this, I'm going to check it out. I guess my main curiosity is how we get people who don't believe virtual communication/living is the same as in-person or at least capable of being socially fulfilling. Does Spot do anything special to attract the people who go in with cynicism?
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Congrats on the launch. I have to ask though... how do you plan to differentiate? As I'm sure you are aware, there has been at least 25 (likely more) of these exact same web-based, 3D spaces platforms for remote work as an interactive alternative to Zoom. All launched since COVID, all offering pretty similar value propositions. Why should anyone use this over a competitor?
  - Uehreka 5y ago
    I see this question asked a lot on HN, and certainly with good reason: Every founder should be constantly asking themselves this question. However, I think it’s important to also play Devil’s Advocate and note that some products succeed not because they differentiated themselves against competitors, but simply because a large number of people learned about them before learning about their (possibly better, possibly cheaper) competitors, and then network effects start to take over from there.
  - crummy 5y ago
    I've tried a bunch of solutions like this and think the answer is that Spot.xyz is the richest (but still simple) experience. Here's my summary: * The world is easy to move around in and manipulate, which is rare for a 3d space (as opposed to Mozilla Hubs for example) * Video chat showing up on peoples heads is much nicer than in a separate section like Gather.town * Hear people per-room, rather than just volume attenuation is a better solution for larger meetings * The screen sharing on a wall is such a nice and intuitive way to glimpse content from afar but still be able to full screen it That said, my team is on Gather and we will stick, largely because we have team members on slow laptops and the 3d world of Spot makes the fans spin.
    - gfodor 5y ago
      Would love your thoughts on my attempt at this space, jel.app, if you have time! It’s 3D but is designed to run well on low end laptops. It incorporates UX patterns from Slack and Notion and has full world building (voxels) and friendly avatars with lip syncing based on voice. No webcam used, on purpose. It does presume some basic gaming literacy. (I started the Hubs team at Mozilla and Jel is a derivative work from Hubs)
- tunnuz 5y ago
  I spent my adolescence on Ultima Online and don’t regret a single day. I now recognize it was a problem.
  - idiotsecant 5y ago
    I know it's probably just remembering things better than they were but UO was some kind of magic- it was one of the last times that mmos forced players with a wide variety of playstyles to interact with real consequences in the same world. Shortly thereafter things split into specialized PvP and PvE mmos and it was never the same.
- frijole 5y ago
  Curious of your thoughts on Topia, similar but geared for office work, community building, and commercial worlds. https://topia.io/ https://topia.io/
  - dliebeskind 5y ago
    CEO of Topia here - hi! We're 100% focused on communities and human connection, not on office work or commercial tools :). But work employees can be a community as well and strengthening the bonds you have with your coworkers is a great use of Topia! Topia is all about creating real relationships built upon shared experiences and memories. We have tons of fun features to help world builders create unique, connective experiences.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      Wow, this person asked for information, and instead they got a fluff piece. Was this an automated post made to any mention of Topia?
      - motoxpro 5y ago
        What did you want them to say? CEO explained what the company does.
  - brianswichkow 5y ago
    Check out https://topia.io/ycombinator https://topia.io/ycombinator
- rypskar 5y ago
  I do some work with games in the browser, both 2D and 3D, and did try it out mostly because I was curious about the technical side. First, this looks like a cool idea and could be useful. But we are on Internet so going directly to the problems. In both Firefox and Chrome on windows 10 the fps was mostly around 30 fps when moving around, some times dropping down to 5 fps. Probably because of this I kept getting stuck in furniture. There was also something that did feel off when looking around using the mouse, not really sure what maybe it only was lag. On most demos on Babylon and Three, and on other games, I get solid 60 fps. I am sure the experience will be much better if you also manage to get close to 60 fps.
Fission 5y ago
There are a lot of virtual office tools out there (I'm not affiliated with any so I feel comfortable asking this question). What makes Spot compelling vs. the alternatives? And if the main difference is 3D, how have you leveraged that to create a differentiated experience?
- ghempton 5y ago
  1. 3D is definitely a differentiator, but we consider it more of an implementation detail. It does come with some really cool stuff like the ability to have a first-person view (really neat to be able to give a presentation in FP). A 3D interface affords a lot of really fun ways to interact with emotes and things and we have beta support for things like wearables. 2. We are investing a lot in asynchronous modes of communication. Our chat system is already pretty robust (easily drag drop files, reactions, etc.) but we also have some big plans here. 3. Customizable and programmability are first-class citizens. Everything is totally customizable in real-time within the same experience. We also envision this as a completely programmable world. Slack is really powerful because of its integrations, but we think having a spatial interface like this actually unlocks some super interesting things. (e.g. imagine updating having your CI build change the color of a light on a desk somewhere).
  - astlouis44 5y ago
    1. Many of them are 3D, that is not a differentiator in the slightest. 2. Again, these features are already prevalent or under active development by many of your competitors. 3.Also not novel.
    - brylie 5y ago
      In fairness, would you mind referencing some of the similar services?
      - Jommi 5y ago
        https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app
fundamental 5y ago
Feel free to call me cynical, but do low level employees want systems like this? I've seen a few spacial chat systems pass through HN in the past few months. From a pure social application standpoint both spot and other options seem to be reasonably well executed, though it seems at odds with the natural flow of workplace interactions. I guess it might be a perceived lack of privacy in conversations? When talking to another individual in an online case it's generally either fully public or fully private. Having unexpected intrusions in something with the base mentality of being private seems unpleasant. Personally given the corporate cultures I've been in using a spacial social chat environment feels like it would lead to rather forced interactions, unnatural intrusions, and micromanagement of execs seeing interactions as something to be mismanaged rather than an organic phenomena. When used in a purely social sense the tools seem great and plenty novel (due to lack of hierarchies and allowing multiple unrelated conversations to form and occur simultaneously), just not in the current application domain? Who knows, perhaps I just have been dealing with orgs with bad culture, but I struggle to see the concept adopted well. Great looking execution though despite my reservations.
- remram 5y ago
  That is my feeling as well. The whole point of having colleagues in your physical space is so that you are in the same physical space. Having a virtual space in a background window does nothing for me. I cannot see my teammates walking to the water cooler, I cannot see some teammates grouping up to discuss, I cannot give a sense of whether I'm interruptible or not. Because what we see are those avatars that do not reflect our current state at all. 3D spaces are fun and I'm very fond of games where I can pretend to do work. However I do not actually exist or work in there, and the moment I start doing actual work I stop role-playing my character around the game.
  - frbr 5y ago
    This is where it gets interesting, because many of the things you've mentioned are things that we're spending a lot of time on thinking through. At the moment Spot has "headphones mode" which signals to others that you prefer not to be interrupted. It also temporarily mutes notifications and other things, just like putting on real headphones in real life would. We're very conscious of these things, and coming from UI/UX research I believe it's paying attention to these fine details that add up to a great product overall.
smoldesu 5y ago
The "Start now for free" button triggers my 'dubious payment schema' sense. How does this scale with more members? What does the pricing plan look like?
egypturnash 5y ago
here is what purports to be an invite link to the area I built for Buttmonkeys, Inc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ oh wait that's the url I tried to put in the video screen, the "copy invite" link isn't working for me on Safari, never mind
andrewmcwatters 5y ago
Imagine getting fired by your boss who has a cow for a head as his hat.
- waynecochran 5y ago
  I notice the witch is in a room by herself.
jrmann100 5y ago
Is this built with Slack's Block Kit[1]? The interface looks very similar, and it's a welcome sight. [1] https://api.slack.com/block-kit https://api.slack.com/block-kit
tmilard 5y ago
Quite nice Thierry We also do virtual visit but from photos https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01 https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01
stephc_int13 5y ago
I had a similar idea last year, at the beginning of the Covid situation. I envisioned something better looking, but it does not matter. It does not feel exactly right, something is missing, but I can't put a finger on it.
avsteele 5y ago
Use something similar to this (gather.town) just this week for a virtual conference. You can walk right up to people in the expo and start video chatting etc... Seems like a good use-case for this. Not quite like being there, but pretty fun.
- whather 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Yeah we have plans to add "nearby conversations" in larger rooms, built around furniture. So walking over to a couch in the room would start a nearby conversation that wouldn't disturb the rest of the room.
kissgyorgy 5y ago
This is insanely nice! Well done! I was thinking exactly something like this a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726331 It even has a first person view, wow!
jfoucher 5y ago
I tried signing up and I got a collection of most useless error messages, such as Unauthorized, Forbidden, Email is in use and so on. The Email is in use one does not seem so useless, but it really is if you get it when you try again with the same email address after getting one of the other messages...
- ghempton 5y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Any other details you feel ok sharing about how you signed up? Was this using oauth?
  - jfoucher 5y ago
    No, email signup, using both fake and real email addresses.
  - jfoucher 5y ago
    BTW sorry for the snark in my original comment, but I got slightly annoyed I have to admit.
  - TheSkyHasEyes 5y ago
    Hi, not who you asked but I didn't want to sign up. I'm replying because a video overview would go a long way to explaining/demonstrating your idea. Not everyone wants the ordeal of signup to see what it's gonna look like. Hope this helps.
    - seedie 5y ago
      There is a video on how spot looks like available on this page https://www.spot.xyz/blog/introducing-spot/ https://www.spot.xyz/blog/introducing-spot/
  - ghempton 5y ago
    We just fixed this.
remoquete 5y ago
For some reason, this made me remember VRML and all the excitement that surrounded it 25 years ago.
vincentmarle 5y ago
Is this a different skin on the Sofya engine (https://sophya.world https://sophya.world)?
have_faith 5y ago
I guess now you can literally sell "seats" in your licenses.
butz 5y ago
"For the best Spot experience, we recommend using Google Chrome on a non-mobile device." And what do you recommend on mobile device?
- monkeynotes 5y ago
  A mobile device is not recommended.
  - astlouis44 5y ago
    Vrland.io works on mobile devices via mobile web. Also works in VR.
yumraj 5y ago
Looks very similar to Sococo, no? https://www.sococo.com/ https://www.sococo.com/ Not trying to discourage you, but if they are indeed similar, I don't think Sococo has been much successful and they seem to have been trying this for more than 10-12 years if not more.
- risyachka 5y ago
  I've been following similar products for a while now and the main problem with them I find is that they all are made by people who are not related to game industry but try to create a gaming experience. As a result they all look very basic, with at best average UX and visuals. I am not trying being negative here, just my observations. I'd really love to see a take on such product from an experienced game dev team.
tossaway9000 5y ago
Got "Unauthorized" message when trying to sign up, switch to Chrome (was using Firefox) then said my email was in use. Tried to reset but nothing happens (console errors showing 401 errors). Just me or did Hackernews hug the site to death?
- kuroguro 5y ago
  Same, reloaded the page after the error and got in.
  - tossaway9000 5y ago
    Thanks, that worked, if I had not seen this message I might have forgotten about this and never returned.
    - whather 5y ago
      Sorry all - was an issue with Sendgrid, but we have it fixed now.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
omreaderhn 5y ago
This is super nice. I've been looking for something like this. When working remote I feel like we sometimes miss out on visual cues which help us figure out what we should expect in terms of a response time if we have a question for someone
binbag 5y ago
I tried to sign up using my real name, real work email, and a strong password suggested by Edge, and I got red error text simply saying "Unauthorized". What does this mean?
- ghempton 5y ago
  Sorry this has been fixed. Your sign up most likely went through if you try and log back in with those same credentials.
drivingmenuts 5y ago
I feel like the team behind The Sims games have missed a huge opportunity here.
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Check out vrland.io
ghempton 5y ago
Sorry all for the signup issues. A fix is going to be deployed in a few minutes. Sendgrid was giving us errors and we mistakenly had them in a codepath that was called synchronously.
- iamwil 5y ago
  Still signup issues. I got unauthorized, but then tried again, and said the email was taken.
  - ghempton 5y ago
    Just fixed this, your original signup actually went through if you try to login with it.
edejong 5y ago
This reminds me of framevr.io Totally 3D with support for headsets and very expandable.
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Vrland.io is like this too, supports VR and mobile. Best solution out there by far for 3D collaboration and virtual remote work.
haram_masala 5y ago
The killer app here would be to license or safely mimic some classic office layouts: Mad Men, The Office, Silicon Valley, Parks and Rec. Or even the USS Enterprise. Or, an “App Store” for interior designers and artists to sell office spaces and furnishings.
frbr 5y ago
Disclaimer: I've joined Spot as a strategic/product advisor and consultant, and I'm very excited about the space, product and roadmap. Working from home since late 2008 myself, I've felt the drawbacks extensively. So when I discovered Spot for the first time, I felt that this truly addressed many of the challenges of working from home. Some of these are the dilution of corporate culture, the loss of rituals and ceremonies, and the loss of chance encounters and spontaneous conversations with coworkers. People working from home over long periods of time tend to feel increasingly more disconnected and unseen. Location and presence can be powerful enablers and are great ways to communicate what's happening in a team, resulting in richer social interaction. I can imagine how nice it is for a team to see who's in the meeting room right now, or who is hanging out in the lounge area and likely up for some small talk. I can see how that would make me feel more connected than just staring at a bunch of channels or joining video calls. I'm especially excited about the greater long-range potential of a powerful spatial interface to communication and collaboration. There are many things and nuances we are paying very close attention to in order to bridge the gaps and make it feel as natural as possible. Another aspect I like a lot here is that the design of the space to which you invite people conveys something about who you are as a company and team. I remember getting invited to Dropbox HQ a few times and the space itself had a personality to it that I liked a lot. I can imagine inviting clients and letting them arrive in a virtual lobby with photos on the walls highlighting some really cool things about our product or so, and then picking them up to walk through our virtual space to the meeting room while telling them about the features our engineers are currently working on as we pass their desks.
azinman2 5y ago
I understand the appeal of emulating physical space in terms of people's ability to understand it, but what I don't get is: 1. Couldn't everything be expressed more easily in 2D 2. Would living in this for long time feel like a simulacrum that gets depressing after a while? There are so many videos out there mocking the WFH experience and the loneliness and dehumanizing elements that literally making your entire work experience from a virtual physical world further and further distance ourselves to being overly siloed and non-social creatures? Even if features make remote work better (I haven't actually used it), it seems to me to be missing the point when going in this direction at all.
bobsmooth 5y ago
Neat that you can share your desktop natively in the browser.
Jommi 5y ago
One more to add to the list: https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app Who will win?
photojosh 5y ago
Seems like a good spot to comment that I've been tossing around a similar idea, but related to creating personal spaces instead. Context: we moved into a much smaller house a few years back and I miss having a room dedicated to shelves, both for books and for music. But most of my reading and listening has moved to digital anyway, so there's really no need for such a space anyway. But it would be amazing to have a digital rendition of such a space, particularly if it could be done in VR. Ideally would tie in with APIs such as Goodreads or Spotify, so you could visualise your digital library in a physical space. And like with haram_masala's comment [0] about having some "classic office layouts", this would do the same but with classic libraries or record stores. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27387881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27387881
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Check out vrland.io, we’re working on this!
  - photojosh 5y ago
    Nice. Do you have any more info online on where you're trying to head with it? My initial reaction is that it's aimed at social interaction first, and modelling the space 2nd, whereas I was thinking of the other way around.
xsmasher 5y ago
Hire some game devs! The camera movement in particular could use some polish.
threshold 5y ago
You can't insist on a signup for a demo of your product. 3/4 of your visitors will just click back. Myself included. There's no way I'm receiving junk mail for 50 years.
verytrivial 5y ago
I can't seem to find the 'Delete Account' function. Where is it hiding?
bradknowles 5y ago
I’ve tried this sort of thing at a previous employer. In short, this is skeuomorphism raised to … some large power. Focusing on the looks of whether or not we’re in the right virtual space unfortunately detracts from the actual communications themselves. We don’t need to rebuild a full 3d virtual office where everyone has a personal avatar to wander around the space, in order to communicate with our office mates. If you want that, just go build your office in Second Life. But keep in mind that there’s a reason why Second Life doesn’t have a population of hundreds of millions of people — that concept doesn’t scale, and there are many of us who actively avoid 3D MMOs.

125 points by ghempton 5y ago

One of authors here. As a kid, some of my most meaningful relationships and experiences were forged through online gaming (UO anyone?). A big part of this wasn’t necessarily the game itself, but was instead the sense of place and community afforded through the shared environment. As an adult, many of my most meaningful relationships have come from my work environment. When working remotely or in a distributed setting, however, I find this not to be the case. Existing tools such as Slack and Zoom simply don’t cut it. Individual productivity may benefit, but the culture is fundamentally lacking. As a leader and someone who has founded and built a large company, I have experienced first-hand how critical it is to have a highly engaged team. This affects everything from communication to culture and company values. Moreover, there is a lack of innovation that spontaneous whiteboard sessions and more fluid communication styles afford. Spot is the culmination of a year of research and development to recreate a highly engaged workplace with smooth and natural interactions. (Not to mention, it is also a lot of fun!). Would appreciate some feedback from the HN community.

marcind 5y ago
I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the 3d virtual office. I find they often require a greater number of clicks to perform a task I'd otherwise complete "the old way". I'd be more likely to use an app that delivers "always on" virtual connections if they legitimately made my life easier. Maybe consider adding some desktop/keyboard shortcuts that are available when minimized/off? <a bit of a plug coming up> We've been working on solving similar problems but going about it differently. Rather than a shared virtual environment, we're looking for better ways to connect real, distributed environments. We created https://sharetheboard.com https://sharetheboard.com because we simply didn't want to give up the whiteboard sessions. Reading here though I wonder if some kind of mashup wouldn't be interesting? A real whiteboard session could easily be displayed on the wall of your virtual office, allowing for serendipitous participation... Let me know if you're interested and we can discuss.
technoplato 5y ago
I surprisingly love using these kinds of environments and this one looks neat. What’s going to be the pricing model moving forward. Surely voice and such can’t be free in perpetuity. Nice work!
- ghempton 5y ago
  Good question! Right now we are fortunate to have some AWS credits to subsidize some voice costs :P. At the moment our focus is on usage, but our goal is to have a freemium model based on the size of the space, premium assets, etc.
  - ilaksh 5y ago
    AWS will jack you, be careful. Those credits get used up, free/cheap quota used, services grind to a halt and somehow you owe $500 after a week. I mean.. you just have to pay attention. And maybe think about making a pricing page. Personally I love the idea, especially 3D and programmability.
  - fluential 5y ago
    If you want to be „close” to AWS but still save money, try spinning lightsail instances that act as media proxies, similarly with other more resource generous providers. You could shift majority of media traffic off AWS and keep the “signalling” just there.
christkv 5y ago
I'm definitively going to propose we try it to see if it makes interactions better for our case.
petersonh 5y ago
Love it :) Would try to get my team on board, but I work in gov where we can only use MS Teams. I feel like using this would add a lot of fun to the day.
GordonS 5y ago
I'd like to try this, but the "Try Now for Free!" button wants me to create an account - I don't want to create an account just to have a quick look. I'd much rather have a quick look, then maybe create an account later if I wanted to try it more meaningfully. If you're an HN regular, I guess you were expecting a comment like this - is there an open URL we can use just to get a feel for it?
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Account creation doesn't require clicking a link in the email, I just used 'buttmonkey' as the username and 'buttmonkey@mailinator.com' as the email. And now I am stuck in the tutorial because it wants me to zoom in and out with the mouse wheel or the track pad, and I am at my desk with my computer closed and plugged into my monitor and my Wacom tablet and it doesn't recognize using the touch ring set to 'scroll'. It's sure not doing a good job of suppressing Safari's right-click menus when I hit the stylus button I have set to right-click to rotate the view, either.
  - zucked 5y ago
    I think they shut down Mailinator emails (tried Mailismagic and mailinator and both times I was "unauthorized")
    - GordonS 5y ago
      Wow, that's some pretty disappointing behaviour if true. Since at leat one of the authors is here, would be good to get a comment from them on this?
    - bobsmooth 5y ago
      Mailinator still works. The homepage doesn't suggest emails anymore but there's a box at the top of the page for whatever fake email you want to check.
    - whather 5y ago
      Sorry this was a sendgrid issue that has now been fixed
boobsbr 5y ago
Yes, UO. Catskills shard.
- ghempton 5y ago
  Napa valley here.
  - codezero 5y ago
    Lake Superior
  - agrippanux 5y ago
    Great Lakes! I had a GM Tamer back in '97.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  Sonoma!
codezero 5y ago
I was going to dismiss this as similar to a lot of other things I've seen, but hearing your POV helps a lot - as someone who has friends IRL that I met in UO, and a wife I met in EverQuest, your story really hits with me, thanks for this, I'm going to check it out. I guess my main curiosity is how we get people who don't believe virtual communication/living is the same as in-person or at least capable of being socially fulfilling. Does Spot do anything special to attract the people who go in with cynicism?
astlouis44 5y ago
Congrats on the launch. I have to ask though... how do you plan to differentiate? As I'm sure you are aware, there has been at least 25 (likely more) of these exact same web-based, 3D spaces platforms for remote work as an interactive alternative to Zoom. All launched since COVID, all offering pretty similar value propositions. Why should anyone use this over a competitor?
- Uehreka 5y ago
  I see this question asked a lot on HN, and certainly with good reason: Every founder should be constantly asking themselves this question. However, I think it’s important to also play Devil’s Advocate and note that some products succeed not because they differentiated themselves against competitors, but simply because a large number of people learned about them before learning about their (possibly better, possibly cheaper) competitors, and then network effects start to take over from there.
- crummy 5y ago
  I've tried a bunch of solutions like this and think the answer is that Spot.xyz is the richest (but still simple) experience. Here's my summary: * The world is easy to move around in and manipulate, which is rare for a 3d space (as opposed to Mozilla Hubs for example) * Video chat showing up on peoples heads is much nicer than in a separate section like Gather.town * Hear people per-room, rather than just volume attenuation is a better solution for larger meetings * The screen sharing on a wall is such a nice and intuitive way to glimpse content from afar but still be able to full screen it That said, my team is on Gather and we will stick, largely because we have team members on slow laptops and the 3d world of Spot makes the fans spin.
  - gfodor 5y ago
    Would love your thoughts on my attempt at this space, jel.app, if you have time! It’s 3D but is designed to run well on low end laptops. It incorporates UX patterns from Slack and Notion and has full world building (voxels) and friendly avatars with lip syncing based on voice. No webcam used, on purpose. It does presume some basic gaming literacy. (I started the Hubs team at Mozilla and Jel is a derivative work from Hubs)
tunnuz 5y ago
I spent my adolescence on Ultima Online and don’t regret a single day. I now recognize it was a problem.
- idiotsecant 5y ago
  I know it's probably just remembering things better than they were but UO was some kind of magic- it was one of the last times that mmos forced players with a wide variety of playstyles to interact with real consequences in the same world. Shortly thereafter things split into specialized PvP and PvE mmos and it was never the same.
frijole 5y ago
Curious of your thoughts on Topia, similar but geared for office work, community building, and commercial worlds. https://topia.io/ https://topia.io/
- dliebeskind 5y ago
  CEO of Topia here - hi! We're 100% focused on communities and human connection, not on office work or commercial tools :). But work employees can be a community as well and strengthening the bonds you have with your coworkers is a great use of Topia! Topia is all about creating real relationships built upon shared experiences and memories. We have tons of fun features to help world builders create unique, connective experiences.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    Wow, this person asked for information, and instead they got a fluff piece. Was this an automated post made to any mention of Topia?
    - motoxpro 5y ago
      What did you want them to say? CEO explained what the company does.
- brianswichkow 5y ago
  Check out https://topia.io/ycombinator https://topia.io/ycombinator
rypskar 5y ago
I do some work with games in the browser, both 2D and 3D, and did try it out mostly because I was curious about the technical side. First, this looks like a cool idea and could be useful. But we are on Internet so going directly to the problems. In both Firefox and Chrome on windows 10 the fps was mostly around 30 fps when moving around, some times dropping down to 5 fps. Probably because of this I kept getting stuck in furniture. There was also something that did feel off when looking around using the mouse, not really sure what maybe it only was lag. On most demos on Babylon and Three, and on other games, I get solid 60 fps. I am sure the experience will be much better if you also manage to get close to 60 fps.

Fission 5y ago

There are a lot of virtual office tools out there (I'm not affiliated with any so I feel comfortable asking this question). What makes Spot compelling vs. the alternatives? And if the main difference is 3D, how have you leveraged that to create a differentiated experience?

ghempton 5y ago
1. 3D is definitely a differentiator, but we consider it more of an implementation detail. It does come with some really cool stuff like the ability to have a first-person view (really neat to be able to give a presentation in FP). A 3D interface affords a lot of really fun ways to interact with emotes and things and we have beta support for things like wearables. 2. We are investing a lot in asynchronous modes of communication. Our chat system is already pretty robust (easily drag drop files, reactions, etc.) but we also have some big plans here. 3. Customizable and programmability are first-class citizens. Everything is totally customizable in real-time within the same experience. We also envision this as a completely programmable world. Slack is really powerful because of its integrations, but we think having a spatial interface like this actually unlocks some super interesting things. (e.g. imagine updating having your CI build change the color of a light on a desk somewhere).
- astlouis44 5y ago
  1. Many of them are 3D, that is not a differentiator in the slightest. 2. Again, these features are already prevalent or under active development by many of your competitors. 3.Also not novel.
  - brylie 5y ago
    In fairness, would you mind referencing some of the similar services?
    - Jommi 5y ago
      https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app

fundamental 5y ago

Feel free to call me cynical, but do low level employees want systems like this? I've seen a few spacial chat systems pass through HN in the past few months. From a pure social application standpoint both spot and other options seem to be reasonably well executed, though it seems at odds with the natural flow of workplace interactions. I guess it might be a perceived lack of privacy in conversations? When talking to another individual in an online case it's generally either fully public or fully private. Having unexpected intrusions in something with the base mentality of being private seems unpleasant. Personally given the corporate cultures I've been in using a spacial social chat environment feels like it would lead to rather forced interactions, unnatural intrusions, and micromanagement of execs seeing interactions as something to be mismanaged rather than an organic phenomena. When used in a purely social sense the tools seem great and plenty novel (due to lack of hierarchies and allowing multiple unrelated conversations to form and occur simultaneously), just not in the current application domain? Who knows, perhaps I just have been dealing with orgs with bad culture, but I struggle to see the concept adopted well. Great looking execution though despite my reservations.

remram 5y ago
That is my feeling as well. The whole point of having colleagues in your physical space is so that you are in the same physical space. Having a virtual space in a background window does nothing for me. I cannot see my teammates walking to the water cooler, I cannot see some teammates grouping up to discuss, I cannot give a sense of whether I'm interruptible or not. Because what we see are those avatars that do not reflect our current state at all. 3D spaces are fun and I'm very fond of games where I can pretend to do work. However I do not actually exist or work in there, and the moment I start doing actual work I stop role-playing my character around the game.
- frbr 5y ago
  This is where it gets interesting, because many of the things you've mentioned are things that we're spending a lot of time on thinking through. At the moment Spot has "headphones mode" which signals to others that you prefer not to be interrupted. It also temporarily mutes notifications and other things, just like putting on real headphones in real life would. We're very conscious of these things, and coming from UI/UX research I believe it's paying attention to these fine details that add up to a great product overall.

smoldesu 5y ago

The "Start now for free" button triggers my 'dubious payment schema' sense. How does this scale with more members? What does the pricing plan look like?

egypturnash 5y ago

here is what purports to be an invite link to the area I built for Buttmonkeys, Inc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ oh wait that's the url I tried to put in the video screen, the "copy invite" link isn't working for me on Safari, never mind

andrewmcwatters 5y ago

Imagine getting fired by your boss who has a cow for a head as his hat.

waynecochran 5y ago
I notice the witch is in a room by herself.

jrmann100 5y ago

Is this built with Slack's Block Kit[1]? The interface looks very similar, and it's a welcome sight. [1] https://api.slack.com/block-kit https://api.slack.com/block-kit

tmilard 5y ago

Quite nice Thierry We also do virtual visit but from photos https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01 https://free-visit.net/fr/demo01

stephc_int13 5y ago

I had a similar idea last year, at the beginning of the Covid situation. I envisioned something better looking, but it does not matter. It does not feel exactly right, something is missing, but I can't put a finger on it.

avsteele 5y ago

Use something similar to this (gather.town) just this week for a virtual conference. You can walk right up to people in the expo and start video chatting etc... Seems like a good use-case for this. Not quite like being there, but pretty fun.

whather 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah we have plans to add "nearby conversations" in larger rooms, built around furniture. So walking over to a couch in the room would start a nearby conversation that wouldn't disturb the rest of the room.

kissgyorgy 5y ago

This is insanely nice! Well done! I was thinking exactly something like this a couple of months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25726331 It even has a first person view, wow!

jfoucher 5y ago

I tried signing up and I got a collection of most useless error messages, such as Unauthorized, Forbidden, Email is in use and so on. The Email is in use one does not seem so useless, but it really is if you get it when you try again with the same email address after getting one of the other messages...

ghempton 5y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Any other details you feel ok sharing about how you signed up? Was this using oauth?
- jfoucher 5y ago
  No, email signup, using both fake and real email addresses.
- jfoucher 5y ago
  BTW sorry for the snark in my original comment, but I got slightly annoyed I have to admit.
- TheSkyHasEyes 5y ago
  Hi, not who you asked but I didn't want to sign up. I'm replying because a video overview would go a long way to explaining/demonstrating your idea. Not everyone wants the ordeal of signup to see what it's gonna look like. Hope this helps.
  - seedie 5y ago
    There is a video on how spot looks like available on this page https://www.spot.xyz/blog/introducing-spot/ https://www.spot.xyz/blog/introducing-spot/
- ghempton 5y ago
  We just fixed this.

remoquete 5y ago

For some reason, this made me remember VRML and all the excitement that surrounded it 25 years ago.

vincentmarle 5y ago

Is this a different skin on the Sofya engine (https://sophya.world https://sophya.world)?

have_faith 5y ago

I guess now you can literally sell "seats" in your licenses.

butz 5y ago

"For the best Spot experience, we recommend using Google Chrome on a non-mobile device." And what do you recommend on mobile device?

monkeynotes 5y ago
A mobile device is not recommended.
- astlouis44 5y ago
  Vrland.io works on mobile devices via mobile web. Also works in VR.

yumraj 5y ago

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

risyachka 5y ago
I've been following similar products for a while now and the main problem with them I find is that they all are made by people who are not related to game industry but try to create a gaming experience. As a result they all look very basic, with at best average UX and visuals. I am not trying being negative here, just my observations. I'd really love to see a take on such product from an experienced game dev team.

tossaway9000 5y ago

Got "Unauthorized" message when trying to sign up, switch to Chrome (was using Firefox) then said my email was in use. Tried to reset but nothing happens (console errors showing 401 errors). Just me or did Hackernews hug the site to death?

kuroguro 5y ago
Same, reloaded the page after the error and got in.
- tossaway9000 5y ago
  Thanks, that worked, if I had not seen this message I might have forgotten about this and never returned.
  - whather 5y ago
    Sorry all - was an issue with Sendgrid, but we have it fixed now.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

omreaderhn 5y ago

This is super nice. I've been looking for something like this. When working remote I feel like we sometimes miss out on visual cues which help us figure out what we should expect in terms of a response time if we have a question for someone

binbag 5y ago

I tried to sign up using my real name, real work email, and a strong password suggested by Edge, and I got red error text simply saying "Unauthorized". What does this mean?

ghempton 5y ago
Sorry this has been fixed. Your sign up most likely went through if you try and log back in with those same credentials.

drivingmenuts 5y ago

I feel like the team behind The Sims games have missed a huge opportunity here.

astlouis44 5y ago
Check out vrland.io

ghempton 5y ago

Sorry all for the signup issues. A fix is going to be deployed in a few minutes. Sendgrid was giving us errors and we mistakenly had them in a codepath that was called synchronously.

iamwil 5y ago
Still signup issues. I got unauthorized, but then tried again, and said the email was taken.
- ghempton 5y ago
  Just fixed this, your original signup actually went through if you try to login with it.

edejong 5y ago

This reminds me of framevr.io Totally 3D with support for headsets and very expandable.

astlouis44 5y ago
Vrland.io is like this too, supports VR and mobile. Best solution out there by far for 3D collaboration and virtual remote work.

haram_masala 5y ago

The killer app here would be to license or safely mimic some classic office layouts: Mad Men, The Office, Silicon Valley, Parks and Rec. Or even the USS Enterprise. Or, an “App Store” for interior designers and artists to sell office spaces and furnishings.

frbr 5y ago

Disclaimer: I've joined Spot as a strategic/product advisor and consultant, and I'm very excited about the space, product and roadmap. Working from home since late 2008 myself, I've felt the drawbacks extensively. So when I discovered Spot for the first time, I felt that this truly addressed many of the challenges of working from home. Some of these are the dilution of corporate culture, the loss of rituals and ceremonies, and the loss of chance encounters and spontaneous conversations with coworkers. People working from home over long periods of time tend to feel increasingly more disconnected and unseen. Location and presence can be powerful enablers and are great ways to communicate what's happening in a team, resulting in richer social interaction. I can imagine how nice it is for a team to see who's in the meeting room right now, or who is hanging out in the lounge area and likely up for some small talk. I can see how that would make me feel more connected than just staring at a bunch of channels or joining video calls. I'm especially excited about the greater long-range potential of a powerful spatial interface to communication and collaboration. There are many things and nuances we are paying very close attention to in order to bridge the gaps and make it feel as natural as possible. Another aspect I like a lot here is that the design of the space to which you invite people conveys something about who you are as a company and team. I remember getting invited to Dropbox HQ a few times and the space itself had a personality to it that I liked a lot. I can imagine inviting clients and letting them arrive in a virtual lobby with photos on the walls highlighting some really cool things about our product or so, and then picking them up to walk through our virtual space to the meeting room while telling them about the features our engineers are currently working on as we pass their desks.

azinman2 5y ago

I understand the appeal of emulating physical space in terms of people's ability to understand it, but what I don't get is: 1. Couldn't everything be expressed more easily in 2D 2. Would living in this for long time feel like a simulacrum that gets depressing after a while? There are so many videos out there mocking the WFH experience and the loneliness and dehumanizing elements that literally making your entire work experience from a virtual physical world further and further distance ourselves to being overly siloed and non-social creatures? Even if features make remote work better (I haven't actually used it), it seems to me to be missing the point when going in this direction at all.

bobsmooth 5y ago

Neat that you can share your desktop natively in the browser.

Jommi 5y ago

One more to add to the list: https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app https://github.com/billmei/every-proximity-chat-app Who will win?

photojosh 5y ago

Seems like a good spot to comment that I've been tossing around a similar idea, but related to creating personal spaces instead. Context: we moved into a much smaller house a few years back and I miss having a room dedicated to shelves, both for books and for music. But most of my reading and listening has moved to digital anyway, so there's really no need for such a space anyway. But it would be amazing to have a digital rendition of such a space, particularly if it could be done in VR. Ideally would tie in with APIs such as Goodreads or Spotify, so you could visualise your digital library in a physical space. And like with haram_masala's comment [0] about having some "classic office layouts", this would do the same but with classic libraries or record stores. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27387881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27387881

astlouis44 5y ago
Check out vrland.io, we’re working on this!
- photojosh 5y ago
  Nice. Do you have any more info online on where you're trying to head with it? My initial reaction is that it's aimed at social interaction first, and modelling the space 2nd, whereas I was thinking of the other way around.

xsmasher 5y ago

Hire some game devs! The camera movement in particular could use some polish.

threshold 5y ago

You can't insist on a signup for a demo of your product. 3/4 of your visitors will just click back. Myself included. There's no way I'm receiving junk mail for 50 years.

verytrivial 5y ago

I can't seem to find the 'Delete Account' function. Where is it hiding?

bradknowles 5y ago

I’ve tried this sort of thing at a previous employer. In short, this is skeuomorphism raised to … some large power. Focusing on the looks of whether or not we’re in the right virtual space unfortunately detracts from the actual communications themselves. We don’t need to rebuild a full 3d virtual office where everyone has a personal avatar to wander around the space, in order to communicate with our office mates. If you want that, just go build your office in Second Life. But keep in mind that there’s a reason why Second Life doesn’t have a population of hundreds of millions of people — that concept doesn’t scale, and there are many of us who actively avoid 3D MMOs.