[HN Gopher] Show HN: Pluto in-browser VR spatial video chat
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Pluto in-browser VR spatial video chat
Author : eladgil
Score : 76 points
Date : 2021-01-21 18:25 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pluto.video)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluto.video)
| nmb wrote:
| Pluto is great. It captures the serendipity (and awkwardness) of
| in-person events pretty well :)
| eladgil wrote:
| Thanks! We view awkwardness as a good sign - it means we are
| hopefully capturing a part of real social interactions :)
| nico_bst wrote:
| I 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!
| booyasf wrote:
| love all the different virtual worlds!
| eladgil wrote:
| Thanks! Let me know if any new requested spaces
| jayrosenkrantz wrote:
| King Kai's planet pls
| eladgil wrote:
| Excited 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 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.
|
| Pluto was partially inspired in part by new social experiments on
| the web like Clubhouse, Gatherly, Rally, Rambly, Sonar, Teamflow,
| Yorb and others....
| enazheng wrote:
| Amazing! Excited for the launch!
| eladgil wrote:
| Thanks! Let me know if you have any feedback.
| neartheplain wrote:
| _VR 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 wrote:
| No headset needed. It works best on a laptop or desktop with
| keyboard right now versus mobile
| neartheplain wrote:
| Does it work with a VR headset?
| drdaeman wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Also, 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 wrote:
| So this isn't Pluto VR? https://pluto.app/ -
| https://www.linkedin.com/company/pluto-vr
| lux wrote:
| I thought this was a pivot to WebXR for them or something at
| first.
| jmadler wrote:
| Brilliant 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.
| JohnExley wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Agreed. 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| istorical wrote:
| Tried the demo, very cool not-VR spatial video chat!
| t_smith wrote:
| I 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!
| mysterEFrank wrote:
| This is just commercialized Yorb
| myrtlejames wrote:
| it looks like a straight up clone
| eladgil wrote:
| Yorb was definitely one of the inspirations! Aidan is awesome
| and he attended one of the events we had.
| aejae wrote:
| This 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.
| Aurorsf wrote:
| Super exciting!!
| shinkim0914 wrote:
| Pluto is the only place I randomly bumped into someone in the
| last 12 months!
| mschonfeld wrote:
| 10/10 idea & execution. 1/10 logo seems a bit... too similar to
| Apollo GraphQL. Down to the font selection?
| interestica wrote:
| Cool 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 wrote:
| Just looking for something space related :)
| p92xy wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This same message was also posted by a dead account ... So it
| seems to be a fake one posted by the team
| [deleted]
| nfsiddiqui wrote:
| i love the burning man room! super cool. also try jumping and
| changing the sound radius
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-21 23:01 UTC)