[HN Gopher] Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
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Show HN: Free 3D virtual office in the browser
Author : ghempton
Score : 99 points
Date : 2021-06-03 17:52 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.spot.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.spot.xyz)
| remoquete wrote:
| For some reason, this made me remember VRML and all the
| excitement that surrounded it 25 years ago.
| have_faith wrote:
| I guess now you can literally sell "seats" in your licenses.
| egypturnash wrote:
| here is what purports to be an invite link to the area I built
| for Buttmonkeys, Inc
|
| 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
| jrmann100 wrote:
| 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
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| I feel like the team behind The Sims games have missed a huge
| opportunity here.
| butz wrote:
| "For the best Spot experience, we recommend using Google Chrome
| on a non-mobile device." And what do you recommend on mobile
| device?
| monkeynotes wrote:
| A mobile device is not recommended.
| yumraj wrote:
| Looks very similar to Sococo, no?
|
| 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.
| tmilard wrote:
| Quite nice Thierry
|
| We also do virtual visit but from photos https://free-
| visit.net/fr/demo01
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Imagine getting fired by your boss who has a cow for a head as
| his hat.
| waynecochran wrote:
| I notice the witch is in a room by herself.
| tossaway9000 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Same, reloaded the page after the error and got in.
| tossaway9000 wrote:
| Thanks, that worked, if I had not seen this message I might
| have forgotten about this and never returned.
| whather wrote:
| Sorry all - was an issue with Sendgrid, but we have it
| fixed now.
| ghempton wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Still signup issues. I got unauthorized, but then tried again,
| and said the email was taken.
| ghempton wrote:
| Just fixed this, your original signup actually went through
| if you try to login with it.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| 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.
| omreaderhn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Sorry this has been fixed. Your sign up most likely went
| through if you try and log back in with those same credentials.
| [deleted]
| Fission wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| In fairness, would you mind referencing some of the similar
| services?
| avsteele wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| vincentmarle wrote:
| Is this a different skin on the Sofya engine
| (https://sophya.world)?
| fundamental wrote:
| 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.
| tommoor wrote:
| > Feel free to call me cynical, but do low level employees want
| systems like this?
|
| I've spent a lot of time thinking about this - I previously
| founded an always-on video presence startup[1]. We were
| building for our own problem as founders, as is often the
| advice you get given! - However I think this is a case where
| founders are actually unique and what works for a group of 2-3
| founding folks really does not scale well to a broader team at
| all. This is also what we saw with our product, it worked well
| for small tight-knit groups but rarely did teams above 10 adopt
| in a meaningful way.
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/sqwiggle-makes-working-
| rem...
| remram wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kissgyorgy wrote:
| 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
|
| It even has a first person view, wow!
| ghempton wrote:
| 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.
| codezero wrote:
| 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?
| GordonS wrote:
| 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?
| kull wrote:
| ^ this. I was excited to try it out, but there is no wayI
| create an account just to take a quick look. I am 99% sure
| this will not work for me and my team, but I wanted to just
| check, maybe show it to my team. This needs no registration
| demo.
| egypturnash wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think they shut down Mailinator emails (tried Mailismagic
| and mailinator and both times I was "unauthorized")
| GordonS wrote:
| 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?
| smhenderson wrote:
| Seconded, I would like to have a look but I won't give out my
| email without researching who you are more thoroughly. And I
| can't "Try Now..." if I have to go spend time researching
| before I try it.
|
| And I don't think using a fake or alternative email is an
| option.
| technoplato wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| 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?
| crummy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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)
| Uehreka wrote:
| 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.
| christkv wrote:
| I'm definitively going to propose we try it to see if it makes
| interactions better for our case.
| frijole wrote:
| Curious of your thoughts on Topia, similar but geared for
| office work, community building, and commercial worlds.
|
| https://topia.io/
| dliebeskind wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Wow, this person asked for information, and instead they
| got a fluff piece.
|
| Was this an automated post made to any mention of Topia?
| brianswichkow wrote:
| Check out https://topia.io/ycombinator
| petersonh wrote:
| 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.
| boobsbr wrote:
| Yes, UO. Catskills shard.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Sonoma!
| ghempton wrote:
| Napa valley here.
| codezero wrote:
| Lake Superior
| agrippanux wrote:
| Great Lakes! I had a GM Tamer back in '97.
| tunnuz wrote:
| I spent my adolescence on Ultima Online and don't regret a
| single day. I now recognize it was a problem.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| 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.
| smoldesu wrote:
| 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?
| edejong wrote:
| This reminds me of framevr.io Totally 3D with support for
| headsets and very expandable.
| jfoucher wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. Any other details you feel ok sharing
| about how you signed up? Was this using oauth?
| jfoucher wrote:
| No, email signup, using both fake and real email addresses.
| jfoucher wrote:
| BTW sorry for the snark in my original comment, but I got
| slightly annoyed I have to admit.
| TheSkyHasEyes wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There is a video on how spot looks like available on this
| page https://www.spot.xyz/blog/introducing-spot/
| ghempton wrote:
| We just fixed this.
| haram_masala wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-06-03 23:01 UTC)