[HN Gopher] Mozilla Hubs
___________________________________________________________________
Mozilla Hubs
Author : amar-laksh
Score : 262 points
Date : 2022-03-01 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hubs.mozilla.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hubs.mozilla.com)
| spcebar wrote:
| My initial reaction is "wow this is incredibly stupid," but my
| second take is, wouldn't it be nice to be able to walk around
| with someone on a video call? I think a 3D space like this will
| always suffer as when compared to a video game, and it might also
| suffer when compared to productivity software, ie, Zoom, but I
| think as a new avenue this could have some kind of utility.
| Certainly, compared to World of Warcraft this is very boring, and
| compared to a Google Meet you're probably not going to be as
| productive on a work call, but maybe there's something to a
| format that's not just an uninterrupted view of someone's face
| for an hour while you catch up.
|
| The meta here however, which is Mozilla focusing on yet another
| random product, is alarming, and I think a lot of people in the
| comments are responding to that, probably fairly.
| davidkunz wrote:
| I honestly have no idea why so many software products try to
| mimic the real world instead of focusing on the advantages of
| the digital medium.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| but my second take is, wouldn't it be nice to be able
| to walk around with someone on a video call?
|
| Why?
|
| I've played plenty of FPS games online in my life, and I "get"
| the power of doing things in a shared 3D world together. Also
| talked to a lot of people online, over IM style messengers and
| IRC/Slack/etc.
|
| I just don't think the idea of strolling around a virtual world
| enhances the idea of messaging, _at all._
|
| It's needless skeuomorphism; the naive and terrible kind I
| thought maybe we'd finally ditched in the past. In what way
| does this enhance the concept of communication?
| spcebar wrote:
| Messaging, no, voice chat, maybe. I haven't actually tried it
| so I'm just theorizing here, but to me personally, I could
| see being in a simulated physical space with someone as
| enhancing the experience of a long call.
|
| I also want to make the distinction between spending time
| with friends in a game vs spending time with friends in a
| voice call. I don't think a game and this kind of utility are
| a good comparison because, while they're both in virtual
| spaces, they have very different goals. If you look at this
| as a game with all the gameplay taken out, yes, it's
| undeniably lame. If you look at this as, say, a Skype call
| where I can take a stroll with someone, then I do think
| there's a value add here.
| udbhavs wrote:
| The real utility comes in when you can pin random media like
| images and videos to virtual objects. It's much more
| intuitive to work with stuff when you have everything laid
| out physically. It's literally a digital mind palace
| brimble wrote:
| I've had to use a tool very similar to this (but maybe
| broader in scope and more capable) in a business context. I
| can absolutely confirm that the entire thing is a solution in
| search of a problem. Meetings, presentations, collaboration,
| everything, was much worse in one of these than common,
| existing alternatives. It adds cruft for _zero_ benefit.
| [deleted]
| isodev wrote:
| Okay but it doesn't work on my phone... I guess I need to check
| it on a desktop.
| krono wrote:
| Zillaverse, the free and open web's last bastion. Now in 3d!
|
| What am I overlooking, how is this going to help Mozilla and the
| web?
| alangibson wrote:
| This is brutal. Firefox is still second rate on mobile and this
| is what they spend money on.
|
| Fine, I give up. I'm off to install Brave.
| recursive wrote:
| I've been using FF mobile for more than a year. Honestly, I
| don't see any problems. What's wrong with it?
| simcop2387 wrote:
| Main annoyance I have with it is that the extensions are
| still whitelisted and limited. Not a huge issue for me either
| and I still use it over all other mobile browsers but it's
| the most common issue I run into with it.
| pl0x wrote:
| Out of all the things Mozilla can be working on, they really
| choose this meta knock off crap?
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Mozilla Hubs has been first released in 2018...
| detaro wrote:
| what meta thing were they copying when they made this?
| cdevroe wrote:
| Does not work at all in the Brave browser. Should I be using
| Brave? I feel like there are no great browser choices these days.
| cdevroe wrote:
| As an aside, I think these are great. As a photographer, I'd
| _love_ to use something like this to show my photos "in a
| space" virtually with my photos on the wall, etc. I tried to do
| that in Hubs but I found the UI a bit infuriating. Couldn't
| figure it out. But I'm hopeful because Mozilla team is great.
| goodcjw2 wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: Mozilla has some unique advantage to win the
| 3D Web.
|
| 1/ Hubs and spoke (https://hubs.mozilla.com/spoke) are trying to
| solve the problem of how to composite and deliver 3D assets over
| web protocol.
|
| 1.1/ Unlike jpegs that can be passively embedded into web pages,
| 3D assets requires active interactions with other objects.
|
| 1.2/ Traditionally, we need a 3D game engine to pack all the
| assets into one big binary, then build and ship the binary over
| cartridge, DVD, or recently Steam.
|
| 1.3/ Spoke + Hubs is the new web-based 3D engine, which can
| potentially revolutionize how we create and access 3D content.
|
| 2/ Being a popular, open source, and independent browser company
| gives Mozilla the position of leading the effort to standardize
| the convention of the 3D Web.
|
| 3/ This is low level tech and worth investing in. Also Mozilla
| makes decent money (> $500M each year) and this is something they
| can comfortably afford.
|
| 4/ Virtual meeting space is just one use case. Admittedly Hubs'
| implementation is less than super well polished, but I don't know
| whether they want to be the 3D Zoom in the long run. But I will
| say it's pretty neat if we treat it like a tech demo for their
| Web-based 3D engine.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| Considering Mozilla had to lay off a significant amount of the
| company, including almost all of the developers on the rust
| teams, not too long ago I'm not so sure how comfortably they
| can afford it.
| a2800276 wrote:
| Once they start charging for [MDN
| Plus](https://www.ghacks.net/2022/02/21/mdn-plus-mozilla-
| plans-to-...) they'll not only be able to afford it, but also
| give their board well deserved raises. After all, user
| surveys keep indicating that what Mozilla users want more
| than anything else is to pay for User generated MDN content.
|
| Also:https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/03/a-new-year-a-new-mdn/
| rndgermandude wrote:
| >After all, user surveys keep indicating that what Mozilla
| users want more than anything else is to pay for User
| generated MDN content.
|
| This isn't what's planned. They will _not_ be charging for
| user-generated content including all content currently
| available on MDN. They will be charging for _additional_
| in-depth articles as well as some "premium" features when
| it comes to personalization and easier off-line use[0].
|
| [0] and of course nobody will prevent you from rolling our
| own such features or even a competing MDN-like site, as the
| content is available under CC-BY-SA-2.5 on github.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > the 3D Web.
|
| Wow, I haven't encountered such an obvious technological fad
| since 3D TV was a thing, and I'm quite sure the "3D web" such
| as it is will meet the same fate. It has all the same markers
| too:
|
| - a stalling industry desperately looking for a new revenue
| stream: check
|
| - heavily locked down content tied to expensive hardware: check
|
| - aggressively pushing an unwanted product that doesn't do
| anything anyone really needs: check
| benatkin wrote:
| They aren't really independent because a huge chunk of their
| money comes from Google. Their open source, not counting Rust
| because they divested that, is also mostly under their own
| copyleft license which discourages outside collaboration.
| [deleted]
| amar-laksh wrote:
| An aside:
|
| This is one of the most hopeful take I've seen on the promise of
| VR, from a highly technical person:
|
| [My Year in VRChat] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVWlgh8QP5s
| haxiomic wrote:
| Hey Amar, thank you for making this video, it mirrors my
| experience over the last year and I've been searching for way
| to express and explain this universe to others. You've done a
| wonderful job
|
| I hope to run into you some day!
| GNOMES wrote:
| Launched in 2018 https://blog.mozvr.com/introducing-hubs-a-new-
| way-to-get-tog...
| CarbonJ wrote:
| I've been working with Hubs for a couple of years now, and it's
| been really great for our particular needs. It's easy to setup
| and deploy your own virtual world on a custom domain, it's all
| open source so it's easy to re-skin / add features on top of, and
| the Hubs community discord is very active and helpful. We're
| using it in a couple of ways:
|
| 1) Building virtual venues for social organizations to meet and
| host workshops in. Youth groups etc. are having a very difficult
| time adapting to remote first environments, and having a space to
| gather and have a sense of identity has proven valuable to them.
| More info at [0] if you want to pop in and see it live.
|
| 2) Browser based live theatre is also something we've been
| exploring in our collaboration with On Board, a rotating
| anthology of short virtual performances by experimental creators.
| There's a show coming up next week if you want to check it out
| [1]!
|
| We could be doing the same thing on a 3rd party platform live VR
| Chat or Horizons, but the open source nature of Hubs means that
| we a lot more agency over user privacy & security, as well as the
| ability to add and modify the stack as needed.
|
| It's still early days for us, but we're building a business on
| top of Hubs and are getting really positive feedback from our
| customers.
|
| [0]https://activereplica.io/
|
| [1]https://www.eventbrite.com/e/onboardxr-4-port-of-registry-
| ti...
| fleddr wrote:
| Regardless of the discussion of what the actual point is, can VR
| designers finally understand that graphics CANNOT be this bad. It
| means instant dismissal.
|
| In their free time, people watch Pixar movies and play near-photo
| realistic games. And have been for 1-2 decades. You seriously
| cannot get away with this absolute garbage. It's late 1980s VR
| quality. It's below second life, which is ancient.
|
| Up the bar. Create a world where people actually want to be or
| this will never work.
| kixiQu wrote:
| In their free time, a huge number of people -- and especially
| the next generation -- play Minecraft.
| [deleted]
| nine_k wrote:
| To my mind, graphics here are _good_.
|
| Not too busy, not slow to render on low-end hardware, not
| blocky, and importantly not trying too hard to be photo-
| realistic. Enough spatial cues to see this as a 3D environment,
| though.
|
| A world where I'd like to be is _not_ necessarily photo-
| realistic at all. Some conscious suspension of disbelief is
| actually helpful.
| perihelions wrote:
| I wonder if one could build a compelling 2D pixel-art
| collaboration place. The startup barriers would be so much
| lower, you could try and fail with lots of ideas.
| jpindar wrote:
| Low poly != garbage
| corobo wrote:
| If there's a game loop attached to it, sure
| nairoz wrote:
| For people asking, it's actually useful for virtual poster
| sessions.
| deweywsu wrote:
| boarnoah wrote:
| Still annoyed at what they did with WebThings
| (https://iot.mozilla.org/).
|
| Seeing the similarity between this and their previous efforts
| like WebThings, in terms of providing more open alternatives to
| upcoming proprietary trends. It's unfortunate they lack follow
| through and commitment.
| CharlesW wrote:
| "The Path To Mozilla Hubs": https://gfodor.medium.com/the-path-
| to-mozilla-hubs-2697e6354...
| rsync wrote:
| Perhaps rename to "the path away from Firefox" ...
| gfodor wrote:
| I wrote this, and if you read it, you'd understand that it
| isn't about Mozilla.
| udbhavs wrote:
| Just chiming in to add some positivity. I love the idea, having a
| tangible space to play around in can make conversations with
| friends much more fun and dynamic than a boring old Discord voice
| channel. I understand where the hate is coming from given how
| tied stuff like this has become to the "Metaverse" but this seems
| like a harmless little experiment. Sad to see everyone trashing
| it
| [deleted]
| jdlyga wrote:
| I like all these Mozilla experiments, but I wish they would
| invest in keeping the good ones around like Firefox Send.
| torbTurret wrote:
| This 3D space trend is so weird. Nobody wants this. Kids fresh
| out of college think it's super cringe, and anyone older won't
| bother wasting their time.
|
| Talk about throwing their money away.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Runs with OK framerates in a browser on an old imac from 2014.
| Some obvious UX issues with very fiddly controls. Teleport barely
| works for example. Nice as a proof of concept; probably useless
| for anything else.
|
| I was listening to Lex Friedman's interview with Mark Zuckerberg
| a few days ago. Like most people I have my reservations about
| Facebook and their strategy with Meta but it was insightful
| nonetheless. For me a few key takeaway was that a VR environment
| might be useful because zoom/meets/etc. calls actually kind of
| suck.
|
| Zoom calls have a lot of issues and limitation. Only 1 person can
| speak at the time. You kind of have a lot of people looking in
| random directions so there isn't really any eye contact and it's
| actually hard to interact with people non verbally. Can they see
| you? If so, are they even looking at you?. Also, it doesn't
| really scale to large groups of people; for that it basically
| reduces to a live video feed that has zero interaction (most
| online conferences are like that). And when people share their
| screen to show a presentation or whatever, they kind of
| necessarily are looking at whatever they are presenting rather
| than the video of other people.
|
| What Zuckerberg talked about were actually kind of neat features.
|
| - you can have side conversations elsewhere in the space and
| "vote with your feet"
|
| - your avatar is primitive but has enough interactivity that it
| could show your hands, which might be good enough to give you
| some notion of physical presence that you simply don't have with
| a zoom call.
|
| - there's a notion of standing around something and talking about
| that thing. That might be an image, an object, a video, or
| whatever but it's different from sharing your screen and then
| promptly not being able to see the audience anymore. You can
| point at things, draw attention, etc.
|
| - spatial audio helps people figure out where sound comes from
| and who is trying to say something.
|
| - you have a notion of looking at someone or something and
| standing close to them.
|
| So, I can see how that would be an improvement over a zoom call.
| Yet I don't think vr meetings are a very compelling use case
| though that will get a lot of people excited. Fundamentally, it's
| overkill for having a meeting and you always have people with bad
| connections, or joining on a phone or simply doing other stuff
| while they listen in. I guess it would be nice to have the
| option. But it would have to be opt-in and multi modal.
| Additionally, many meetings are quite serious and have topics
| that just aren't even meant to be fun, and involve people that
| are quite stressed or even angry. Having them appear as some
| silly avatar in some silly environment is probably not going to
| help improve these people's mood. Imagine having a performance
| review with your boss parading around as Donald Duck not giving
| you a raise. Probably would be a bit tone deaf. Great material
| for Ricky Gervais to do something with though.
|
| I think the main issue is that VR/AR are cool and all and as soon
| as we call it a game it becomes actually compelling because then
| there is something to actually do and be busy with that people
| actually choose to do. However, having meetings and looking at
| somebody droning on about some spreadsheet or presentation while
| hopping around as a duck avatar in some hellscape virtual office
| type environment that you can't escape from is probably not that
| compelling/engaging/exciting. Nice the first time, but gets old
| pretty quickly. Video off, mute on is a popular setting with a
| lot of zoom calls for a good reason. Kind of frees you up to do
| more interesting things. Some would consider that an upgrade over
| sitting for hours in some stuffy meeting room having to listen
| people talk about all sorts of really boring shit. Haven't done
| that in years and I don't miss it.
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Well I have defended Mozillas decisions in the past and still
| thought they where the good guys, then they came out with this
| trash. Waste of money. If they can eventually monetize it then
| great, but personally, I don't think it will generate any revenue
| and just be a money-sink.
|
| Guess it might be time to switch browser soon ): Google have won.
| sciurus wrote:
| You can pay for it today via https://hubs.mozilla.com/cloud
| NazakiAid wrote:
| Oh didn't see that. Page was refusing to load at first.
|
| Well this restores a bit of confidence if they actually
| manage to get customers. Though, I still think they won't
| make their initial investment back and then they will kill
| the product. Hopefully I am wrong.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I'm really excited to try this at work.
|
| Something about calls is far too formal and intrusive. I really
| need to be able to _approach_ someone in a way that's much more
| granular than HELLO I AM CALLING YOU NOW and I hope tools like
| this will help.
|
| This might sound a bit weird but I also feel like sharing my
| display. Making it openly available for anyone else to connect to
| and see. Like a kind of work Twitch, I guess.
|
| (Maybe one particular workspace mind you. One that has my non-
| private stuff on it -- terminal and internal tools websites that
| I'm using -- and not my company email or IM.)
| [deleted]
| swalls wrote:
| This coming less than a month after they killed their (actually
| useful) VR browser - Firefox Reality - is rather depressing.
| andybak wrote:
| It's not new.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Seems a little less cringe than _Horizon Worlds._ Yet I am
| skeptical of the "alternate space" application of VR, I am much
| more excited to see VR applications that tell a story the way
| theme park rides do.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Looks like VR is going through the skeuomorphism phase that
| mobile did when smartphones came out. The knee-jerk reaction is
| always "let's take things we know in real life, and represent it
| in this new medium!" Hopefully over time we'll learn what we can
| and can't do without, and create better VR interfaces.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| who is exploring non skeuomorphic vr
| phailhaus wrote:
| Honestly, I don't know right now. I just got my VR headset
| recently and I've been trying to find as many different
| interfaces as possible. Very excited by WebXR since it makes
| it 100x easier to iterate and experiment with different
| techniques, but most apps I've seen out there today are
| either skeuomorphic or attempting to bring screens into VR.
| Screens in VR can be jarring since it is difficult to gauge
| distance, and when pop-ups appear in front of your face it's
| very disorienting. It feels like we need design philosophies
| like material design, but for VR.
|
| Plockle [1] shows a bit of promise; it's a block-puzzler that
| lets you orient blocks in space. Since it's a physics-less
| system, it works especially well in VR.
|
| [1] https://plockle.com
| mdoms wrote:
| Why do all these metaverse projects look like games from 1998?
| We've had way better graphics than this for a long time.
| gfodor wrote:
| HN commenters may be surprised to learn Hubs has been around for
| ~5 years and was built in part to front-run the push for
| centralized metaverse projects, which may soon mediate much
| interpersonal interaction. It also can be deployed to AWS and
| generates revenue for Mozilla.
|
| Here's a talk I gave years ago laying out the reasons this is
| important work. Hopefully it can help reduce some of the reactive
| negativity - you may be convinced to stop thinking these changes
| aren't coming, and instead focus on making the best version of
| the future you can where they do.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_5w8xbeCc2Q
| _glass wrote:
| I love this product, and I don't get the negativity here. For
| NFTs it is perfect as a gallery that you can join with people to
| present your work. You can meet up. There is an editor where you
| can model spaces. Do I miss something? Is there something else
| with multiple user capacity and ease of development?
| https://hubs.mozilla.com/spoke
| recursive wrote:
| Is "NFT" used a synonym for "image" here? Is there something
| about NFT-ness that makes existing technology, like img tags,
| less suitable?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Another really good way to display images is a web page.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| Failing that, a hand-bound book.
|
| Or cave wall.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Mozilla Hubs - Private social VR in your web browser_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872589 - Oct 2020 (103
| comments)
| mikl wrote:
| Ah, yes, always good with a reminder about the priorities of
| Mozilla management.
|
| They fired the MDN team, most of the Rust and Servo teams, etc.,
| to prioritise funding pie-in-the-sky projects like these.
| moron4hire wrote:
| What's really weird is they also fired all of their browser
| developers working on VR support. So Hubs basically works best
| in browsers that aren't Firefox.
|
| It's been a while since I used Hubs. Are they still
| artificially blocking Chromium on desktop for starting a WebXR
| session? I know they allow it in Chromium for the Oculus Quest,
| because Firefox Reality is basically unusable. Pico Neo, HTC
| Vive Focus, and really any standalone VR device that isn't the
| Oculus Quest, there are no browsers available other than
| Firefox. So that means the only WebXR experience you have
| available to you is a broken one.
|
| Hopefully Igalia can move quickly with Wolvic.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| FWIW, I know of a group of language learners who have setup one
| of these rooms with the rule that conversations only take place
| in the foreign language. So far, it has been very effective in
| giving learners a place to practice and hone their language
| skills.
| rasz wrote:
| Iv used those since early 2000, it was called Voice Chat on
| FPS/MMO servers (TeamSpeak, later Vent, then Mumble).
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| The feedback so far is pretty negative, but I think folks that
| poo poo these virtual office environments fail to channel the PG
| heuristic of "what is this the [ancient tech version of something
| that is now ubiquitous] of?" when thinking about these spaces.
|
| As a substitute for the collaboration tools we now have, these
| are unquestionably terrible. But for those of you that can, I'd
| highly recommend checking out PokerStars VR before then diving
| into your opinion of virtual work environments.
|
| If you've ever played poker with friends, you'll quickly realize
| that there are many parts of IRL poker that... truly suck. Play
| is slower than what you would like, and, if you play "correctly",
| the ratio of hands you are playing to time you are waiting for
| shuffling,dealing,etc. is quite obnoxious. There are pain points,
| even though overall it is super fun to play poker with friends.
|
| Pokerstars, to my mind, did a masterful job in faithfully
| recreating poker in the virtual world, but then augmenting it by
| taking advantage of the VR tech. There's still a table, there's
| still a deck, the rules are the same, etc. But, because of the
| medium, the game goes... MUCH faster. Therefore, you get to play
| more hands, which is more fun. Also, yes, you might still wait
| around for hands, but now you get all sorts of virtual sidegames
| or dumb tchotchkis you can play with on your table, which is fun.
| Your environment can be any one of really incredible settings
| that help set the mood for a poker night, which is probably nicer
| than your mom's basement. Etc, etc, etc.
|
| My point is, poker is a pretty mundane game from an IRL
| perspective, yet I fundamentally believe that had I the option to
| invite 5 friends over to play poker in my house versus getting
| the same 5 friends to meet me in the VR room, that we'd have far
| more fun in the VR room. This before the fact that the friction
| of getting together physically is now erased, so chances are we
| might even get to play more often. This works, however, because
| it isn't a perfect analogy to the real world poker; rather,
| because its virtual, there are enough different things that help
| make it better to an extent that it beats its real world
| counterpart (at least for me).
|
| All of this stuff is pretty nascent and I agree that there's lots
| of crap there, but there will be something unquestionably
| brilliant about inhabiting virtual spaces with folks where you
| can bend some laws of physics to make mundane things (like
| meetings) work a little bit better than they do IRL.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| 1) I worked on this kind of stuff in the late 90s early 2000s,
| aside graphics fidelity and finally getting decent vr headsets
| and trackers this looks about the same in terms of features.
|
| 2) I lived through the transition to desktop os windowed
| environments, there was a lot of talk at the time about how
| we'd never use a commandline again, but things have boomeranged
| for many, many people still use the cli. I don't see this
| replacing video chat or even text chat.
|
| 3) I talked with a small company locally right after the htc
| vive came out, they were building tech like this (virtual
| meeting spaces) and I went to check it out, it was actually
| also the first time I had used the valve vr technology. The man
| interviewing me was in another room also on a vive rig. It is
| quite cool how eye contact works in a vr space. But at the end
| of the interview I left knowing that even if I got an offer I
| wouldn't take it but that also this technology was not going to
| break out in any meaningful way for a very long time. I'd been
| through this before and other simpler technologies just worked
| better.
| Miraste wrote:
| This is a good point. I don't agree that PokerStars VR is
| better than real life and won't be until the tech can replicate
| details like facial expressions, but the concept of eliminating
| unnecessary pain points is sound. It reminds me of the gradual
| removal of the old skeumorphic designs in iOS. However, Mozilla
| Hubs isn't doing any of that. I can't find a single advantage
| it has over any other collaboration software, frankly.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| Imo nothing beats IRL.
|
| Metaverse is okay but considering people are depressed and
| isolated being on social media today I don't see how adding
| even more layers between reality is going to help.
|
| I wish technology would make IRL better, instead of delegating
| all problems online.
| ghempton wrote:
| > All of this stuff is pretty nascent and I agree that there's
| lots of crap there, but there will be something unquestionably
| brilliant about inhabiting virtual spaces with folks where you
| can bend some laws of physics to make mundane things (like
| meetings) work a little bit better than they do IRL.
|
| I totally agree with this sentiment and I don't think you even
| need VR/AR etc, to achieve it. This is a big reason why I
| helped build spotvirtual.com. As a kid, some of my most
| meaningful relationships and experiences were forged through
| online gaming (ever played UO?). A big part of this wasn't
| necessarily the gameplay, but just the shared experience of
| being part of a virtual space that had its own rules.
|
| There is definitely room to apply this same experience to a
| work setting, where mundane things can be transformed into
| something more meaningful and effective.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > there are many parts of IRL poker that... truly suck. Play is
| slower than what you would like, and, if you play "correctly",
| the ratio of hands you are playing to time you are waiting for
| shuffling,dealing,etc. is quite obnoxious.
|
| The point of poker with friends isn't to grind out hands with
| an optimal strategy as quickly as possible.
| josephg wrote:
| It depends on the friends group.
|
| I played Dominion with friends online a few times during the
| pandemic. And I adore how much faster it is. With all the
| counting, dealing, shuffling, VP calculations and so on taken
| care of, the game plays about twice as fast. And that really
| does enhance the experience for me and my friend group. It
| improves game feel. And game feel is so important.
| traverseda wrote:
| Tabltop simulator is great! The environment is intuitive enough
| that even my tech-illiterate family don't mind using it (one
| cousin actually suggested everyone bring their laptops to an
| in-person game night), and it works well on a traditional PC.
|
| More VR like tabletop simulator please!
| akavel wrote:
| That's interesting, because personally I seem to dislike
| Tabletop Simulator; I feel super slow and constrained by it,
| as if I was having my hands tied, and much prefer playing the
| same games live with friends (or solo!) and manipulating real
| physical objects. Additionally, I much prefer the fact that
| real board games give me one more reason to unglue myself
| from a computer screen. I'm really curious why mine and yours
| reception seem so different!
|
| Though I didn't have an opportunity to play it in VR using VR
| goggles - is this the aspect that is important here? Does
| your whole family play it with VR goggles?
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think it really depends on the game you're playing. Some
| are more scripted than others and games that require moving
| lots of pieces are really tedious even if there's some
| automation.
| traverseda wrote:
| Scripts taking away some of the more tedious parts, and no
| clean up, no setup. I mean we'd all still rather be in the
| same room sharing food and all that, but the advantages and
| the large game library really do help.
| disease wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised that VR hasn't been a bigger impact on
| board games. Besides the obvious fact that you can more
| easily get people together, software is great at handling the
| non-gameplay related "administration" that takes time away
| from the fun. Things that come to mind: shuffling decks,
| misdeals, misunderstood rule-sets (I'm looking at you D&D
| 3.5).
|
| I guess the downside is also pretty big: no face-to-face
| communication - which itself can be a detriment to gameplay
| in games like Poker or PvPvE games like Dead of Winter. Also
| the tactile-ness of board games is such a nice escape from
| everything being digitized these days.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| VR headsets are stuffy and uncomfortable, no-one wants to
| wear them for more than about an hour.
|
| Tabletop simulator in particular is problematic because of
| it's physics engine and the chaos that that always causes.
| brimble wrote:
| It's limited by how many people have VR rigs in the first
| place, and by the other things people might do instead if
| they've already decided they're going to play a multiplayer
| game on a computer or console, that _aren 't_ virtual board
| games.
|
| I'd rather hop into Minecraft or whatever with some
| friends, if that's what I'm doing, than card or board game
| simulator. I'd guess that's a common sentiment.
|
| Further, I'd rather play some very plain poker game (like
| the old Windows card games) with voice chat on than try to
| do some VR thing. Most of the benefits, and doesn't
| monopolize your attention. But that part may just be me.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _PG heuristic of "what is this the [ancient tech version of
| something that is now ubiquitous] of?"_
|
| For those out of loop: http://paulgraham.com/altair.html |
| https://archive.is/5HNc5
| spacechild1 wrote:
| PSA: Mozilla Hubs has been started in 2018, long before the
| current metaverse hype!
|
| IMO, Hubs has been quite avant-garde and deserves more respect.
| spennant wrote:
| That "Magic Link"/passwordless auth flow was pretty slick in that
| the verification link does not authenticate the browser that it
| opens from your email, but rather the browser that your email
| address was originally entered in gets refreshed and logged-in
| when the link is clicked.
|
| Is there a trusted Open Source package that does this?
| callahad wrote:
| Hubs itself is open-source; you should be able to find whatever
| library it's using if you dig in the relevant repos.
|
| > _the verification link does not authenticate the browser that
| it opens from your email, but rather the browser that your
| email address was originally entered in_
|
| That _is_ much slicker (and necessary in the case of Hubs,
| where you may not be able to access your email from within a VR
| environment), but it also carries risk: Naive implementations
| would open you up to attack if you accidentally clicked the
| link on an email sent in response to _someone else_ entering
| your email address in the app.
| spennant wrote:
| I dug... it doesn't seem to be a lib. And yeah... that attack
| vector is ripe for abuse.
| obeid wrote:
| What problem does this solve?
| bsg75 wrote:
| Needing new revenue sources, even if they appear to be a gamble
| unlikely to hit.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Mozilla has long been interested in adding AR/VR capabilities
| to the browser
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebXR_Devic...
|
| At a certain point you might not have enough third party devs
| to really exercise an API or drive adoption and developing a
| first party app is a good way to get the party started.
|
| Assuming all the action takes place in a confined room it is
| not a particularly difficult problem to solve compared to an
| OASIS or Sword Art Online-like virtual environment which would
| have the problems of an open world game to solve.
| juice_bus wrote:
| It makes it look like Mozilla is doing something while not
| actually doing anything meaningful.
| duxup wrote:
| Fun?
| hobofan wrote:
| I would guess from Mozilla's point of view: "Not leaving the
| Metaverse up to Meta"
| ape4 wrote:
| I think you'd need way more resources to bet Meta
| kmfrk wrote:
| It makes sense as a virtual space for remote classrooms etc when
| everyone's going nuts over relying on Zoom, but it seems like
| this is just a vague "metaverse" thing with no particular problem
| in mind. Instead of wanting to be excited, it looks like
| something that's going to get axed as a lot of Mozilla's
| experiments. Facebook: Meetings are fun, let's
| do them in VR! Mozilla: Meetings suck, let's try
| to make us tear our hair out less over it with virtual spaces.
|
| The last Twitch VOD is from two years ago, and YouTube one year
| ago, so it's basically dead. There's cool stuff to be done in
| virtual spaces, but if people don't know what they're trying to
| address, you get the next Google Glass.
| andybak wrote:
| This isn't a new experiment. It has been around for several
| years and survived the big Mozilla cull.
| recursiveturtle wrote:
| I like the part where I move my char over to another person's
| char so they can hear me.
| phkahler wrote:
| Don't like the snap rotation. Forward and back are smooth, but
| rotate left or right is a 45 degree snap. If you want finite
| rotation angles at least sweep smoothly between them, this is
| really jarring.
|
| Oddly I use the snap rotation when playing Echo VR because in VR
| I found the uncontrolled smooth rotation more annoying. YMMV.
| fullstop wrote:
| My daughter loved playing around in here, especially multiplayer.
|
| There's really not all that much to do, but she liked knowing
| that she could walk around and goof around with me.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's like an MMO with bad graphics embedded into a web browser,
| except there's no fun and you're not allowed to leave and the
| gameplay is Microsoft Office:
|
| https://uploads-prod.reticulum.io/files/70c74c3c-4727-42eb-8...
|
| This product is psychological abuse.
|
| (I did try the demo; I'm not judging solely from screenshots).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| You should probably save time for yourself in the future and
| keep this comment around somewhere for when the metaverse is
| released.
| perihelions wrote:
| I've already bookmarked this opinion column from the
| _Register_ for that. It expresses everything I think but _so_
| much more forcefully...
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/23/horizon_workrooms_pro.
| ..
|
| - _" We have invented godlike powers over space, time and
| perception, and we have earned our escape from the confines
| of corporate convention. It should be a turning point in
| society and economics, a jewelled pivot in human experience.
| And what does Facebook do with this defining moment of new
| potential? It reinvents the office meeting, the absolute
| epitome of everything we have paid with blood to leave."_
| ubertaco wrote:
| This is probably the best description I've seen of any sort of
| "metaverse for businesses" nonsense.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Probably better than Zoom though
| jaytaylor wrote:
| Hey Mozilla, please quit it with this nonsense and focus on
| Firefox. Sincerely.
| notriddle wrote:
| "Just focus on Firefox" will lead to stagnation and eventual
| death.
|
| The essential problem here is that a web browser is nothing
| without content, and much of the most popular content on the
| web is found through Google, a company who grows closer every
| day to locking down a vertical monopoly. Firefox would have
| to be ten times as good as Chrome to even be on equal
| footing, and while it does have some marginal advantages,
| nothing is enough of a deal breaker that I would _stop
| visiting YouTube_ just to avoid using Chrome [1]. Firefox
| really was that much better than IE6, but Firefox isn 't
| competing with abandonware this time around.
|
| Mozilla needs to stimulate the creation and viewing of
| content outside of Google-owned walled gardens. Pocket
| Recommendations were an obvious attempt at this; just make
| sure all the recommended articles actually open correctly in
| Firefox. This was probably also the biggest reason why they
| bent over so far backwards to accommodate NetFlix, who would
| have been happy to make sure Firefox worked correctly just to
| avoid being vertically integrated to death by Chrome and
| Google Play Movies/TV.
|
| The relationship between Steam and Linux comes to mind. Funny
| how Linux became a viable gaming platform right after
| Microsoft announced the Windows Store.
|
| [1]: This will, of course, change once uBlock Origin stops
| working.
| 1_player wrote:
| > The essential problem here is that a web browser is
| nothing without content
|
| While this makes _business_ sense, what kind of world are
| we creating where nothing is worth investing in if we can
| 't monetize the fuck out of it? Where KPI and user
| engagement is king?
|
| Thanks, I hate that. Mozilla is dying because they've
| forgotten their core product. We're here for the browser,
| not the content that makes us the product.
| notriddle wrote:
| > what kind of world are we creating where nothing is
| worth investing in if we can't monetize the fuck out of
| it?
|
| Where did that come from?!
|
| I never said anything about monetization. I said
| "content," and there's plenty of non-commercial and indie
| content that is only tested in Chrome. You can probably
| root-cause analyze it to monetization (indie website
| creators only test in Chrome because they only use
| Chrome, and they only use Chrome because they also happen
| to frequent YouTube which works best in Chrome, or maybe
| because their PC came with Chrome by default), but
| blaming Mozilla for the fact that most people don't
| exclusively use non-commercial websites seems a bit
| silly.
|
| > We're here for the browser, not the content that makes
| us the product.
|
| I really don't understand what you mean here. What do you
| even do with Firefox, if not open web pages in it?
| cies wrote:
| MDN is a breath of fresh air after the W3sScools abomination.
|
| Thunderbird is still very relevant (not everyone wants to use
| web based), but they've let go of it.
|
| I'm personally also quite happy they took a detour to promote
| and use (to some extend) Rust. IMHO a pity they've stopped
| the Servo project.
|
| Rust seems to have more uptake than FF lately.
| allenbina wrote:
| If not just Firefox, other related products. They seem to
| have the same issue as Google with starting and dropping
| strange products. I was actually considering using their
| password manager on iOS when they announced it would be
| discontinued.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Mozilla's "Fluent" internationalization software is some of
| the best out there. It is a real shame that they are not
| doing more with it and integrating it with other tools in
| this space.
| k_sze wrote:
| Lockwise has been absorbed into Firefox now. So if you
| don't mind installing Firefox on iOS, you can install
| Firefox to get the password manager, which integrates with
| iOS's password autofill, even to a better extent than the
| old Lockwise app. The old Lockwise app tended to not
| respond from iOS' autofill "trigger". Firefox doesn't have
| this problem.
| notriddle wrote:
| This is a bit of a "well-actually." Yes, all the
| functionality of Lockwise is still there, but the
| situation is complicated enough that not everyone is
| going to get it. For every person you correct on HN
| regarding this, there are hundreds of other people who
| don't visit HN, never bringing it up in a context where
| someone can teach them how to use Firefox as a password
| manager on iOS.
|
| It's great if you know about it. But it still shake's
| people's confidence about the future of any new product
| announcements from Mozilla.
| [deleted]
| twic wrote:
| Maybe. But as the image shows, if your company has a staff of
| furries and the guy from the Yes Chad meme, this could be ideal
| for you!
| Krisando wrote:
| I doubt that furries are that interested in stuff that looks
| worse than years old Second life content (
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYWBjOk6Wsk ). Nevermind what
| they can have today in Neos VR.
| rasz wrote:
| But what if we added tradeable avatar NFTs?
| will-wow wrote:
| My company tried doing a VR standup in here last year. It was
| impressive that it worked at all - some people were on desktop,
| some on mobile, some in headsets. But while it was kind of a fun
| bonding event to see everyone walking around and chatting, it
| also took 3x as long as a zoom standup since people kept losing
| audio, dropping out, etc. We went back to zoom the next day.
| theluketowers wrote:
| I've seen this be used for providing a space to explore 3D scans
| of an abandoned mining town in California:
| https://poly.cam/cerro-gordo. I think there's definitely some
| cool applications along those lines of providing a way to
| interact with real physical locations virtually with other people
| at the same time.
| bicx wrote:
| That's really cool! I used to be really into Brent Underwood's
| videos of Cerro Gordo and his mine explorations.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| A lot of this stuff tends to be too game-like, you'd be surprised
| by how many people are unfamiliar with WASD controls combined
| with mouse movements to change the camera angle. There's a lot of
| coordination there that long-time gamers take for granted.
|
| I find these conventions incredibly limiting when showing this
| type of environment to someone that doesn't play video games. It
| almost gets dismissed immediately.
|
| I also wonder if a 3D environment over-complicates this type of
| experiment. This is essentially audio with an avatar, why not
| start with a 2D or isometric environment to reduce the
| complexity?
| JadoJodo wrote:
| I remember walking away from the 2009 film 'Surrogates' (starring
| Bruce Willis) and being _incredibly_ disturbed at the idea that
| he/his wife hadn't actually seen/heard/felt/etc. each other (or
| anyone) in years. I'm not against VR as a respite, but this and
| Facebook's "metaverse" push makes me want to spend LESS time with
| my devices, not more.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I remember walking away from that film thinking Bruce Willis
| would need something to rescue his career.
|
| And my goodness, didn't he luck out with _RED_ and _Moonrise
| Kingdom_.
| mattlondon wrote:
| VRML called, it wants it pointlessness back. /s
|
| I guess this is a "metaverse" play - I like the idea of it but
| having tried something similar a while ago (albeit with 2D
| spaces) it seemed kinda pointless. I don't think the vicinity
| aspects really added anything in a work environment - if anything
| it took away from modern communication (i.e. you can't just ping
| someone to chat to them there and then, you had to go and "find"
| them in the virtual space before you could talk, unlike e.g.
| slack or whatever)
|
| The only time I've seen it even get _close_ to working was for
| "work socials" where it was natural to wander around and mix with
| people or play games together in the space - i.e. where you are
| not actively trying to get something done.
| andybak wrote:
| It predates the recent metaverse hype by several years.
| [deleted]
| duxup wrote:
| This seems like a fun experiment to me.
|
| Honestly I'd give it a give it try because of the mozilla name
| ...
|
| This reminds me of the old internet when folks tried all sorts of
| weird stuff, maybe failed, but they were neat attempts. I still
| remember Microsoft Comic Chat.
|
| I'm really bummed out by all the negativity here on HN. Folks
| talk about simple web and seem to ... maybe like the idea of
| developers being adventurous (or maybe just founders...) but then
| on HN we see a volume of complaints if there isn't a clear use
| case / something isn't polished to high heaven.
| udbhavs wrote:
| I do feel like current conferencing apps like meet and zoom are
| probably not the endgame for digital communication and adding a
| 3D spacial element can make a lot of interactions intuitive,
| even if it feels silly at first. like spontaneously breaking
| out a conversation into small groups if there is proximity
| based audio chat. You don't have to buy into the "metaverse" to
| see the utility in a fun little tool like this.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I cannot imagine anything less they I would want to bring
| from the office back to working remotely than mid-meeting
| breakout groups, to be honest.
|
| Edit: Except for the guy that microwaved fish. Fuck that guy.
| [deleted]
| disease wrote:
| I got the same "old, weird internet" vibe that you did. Back in
| the 90's there seemed to be more moonshot ideas like VRML and
| The Palace Chat - things that were maybe a little silly and
| geeky but at least pointed the way to something that could
| eventually become more useful and developed.
| eterm wrote:
| Microsoft Comic Chat was literally IRC though, it was my first
| IRC client.
|
| ( I quickly learned about mIRC from other people on there of
| course ).
|
| It's a testament to open protocols that you could have
| something very functional like mIRC and something "fun" like
| microsoft comic chat interoperate.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| Strange to see all this negativity here. Media artists have
| organized some pretty cool VR events during Covid lockdown times
| :-) I think it has lots of potential.
| causi wrote:
| Ok give it to me straight: is this some Mozilla employee's plan
| to scam money out of their bosses or are managers at Mozilla
| really this stupid?
|
| FireFox Mobile is a mess that breaks if you toggle Desktop Mode
| and hit the Back button but _this_ is what Mozilla is spending
| man-hours on.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Management and sales completed their takeover of Mozilla over
| the last 5 years. The Mozilla we knew for decades is dead and
| gone, and now there's a zombie consumer tech company left in
| its place.
|
| Relevant, as this is exactly what happened:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
| lallysingh wrote:
| No, the nerds were killing the company:
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/endangered-firefox-the-
| state-o...
|
| They were taking in a half billion a year and decided to be a
| haven for at-best, moderately related technology development
| efforts. They were losing money.
|
| So, after enough bleeding, they stopped doing that and are
| now experimenting (this is an experiment, just like MDN plus
| and others) with other things to do. They look like they're
| still trying to evolve the web.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| So they've gone from technology experiments to... uh,
| technology experiments?
|
| I'm not being snarky: how is this different/better?
| lallysingh wrote:
| They're aiming for a bit of revenue and trying to aim
| more precisely at the web. In lieu of Rust, which is a
| wonderful language, but neither web nor revenue-
| producing.
| webmaven wrote:
| _> So they 've gone from technology experiments to... uh,
| technology experiments?_
|
| I think there is a distinction between technology
| experiments (which produce prototypes and proofs of
| concept) and product experiments (which produce MVPs).
| [deleted]
| toast0 wrote:
| > FireFox Mobile is a mess
|
| Hey, most of the hamburger menu is visible when you tap it now,
| and the part that isn't will scroll in. (I have the url bar at
| the bottom, so it's a little bit harder, I guess) So that's
| progress.
| MikusR wrote:
| All that is left to do is make it display actual website
| content. I can't login to hn in Firefox mobile on my android
| tablet. It shows white page.
| causi wrote:
| For a few weeks now I'm getting the error where if I exit
| and resume Firefox Mobile too quickly the active tab will
| be blank grey, and if I try to change tabs the second tab
| will display the page from the first tab but I can't
| interact with it. Any subsequent tab I switch to gets
| replaced with the first tab. It's infuriating.
| jshaughnessy wrote:
| I have been working on Hubs from the beginning (September 2017),
| and want to share a few observations/hypotheses behind the
| project.
|
| Natural conversations require space:
|
| - Space affords directed non-verbal communication. Unlike video
| calls (where gestures are broadcasted), space enables an implicit
| understanding of where people are directing their gestures and
| attention.
|
| - Space allows participants to navigate between simultaneous
| streams of conversation. This is especially important for events
| with many people. Contrast turn-taking in video calls with
| simultaneous talking around a picnic table.
|
| - Mixed media, social presence, and a shared spatial awareness
| combine into a utility as fundamentally useful (and important) as
| video, voice, or text-based communication.
|
| The web is well-positioned to be the go-to decentralized, media-
| rich "spatial conversation" medium.
|
| - This blog post [0] goes into more detail.
|
| The "minimum viable metaverse" enables permissionless innovation
| and participation.
|
| - No single organization (Mozilla included) will contribute more
| than a small fraction of the total utility of the so-called
| "metaverse".
|
| - Mozilla's goal isn't to "directly" compete with Meta or other
| "metaverse" platforms.
|
| - Mozilla's goal is to build enabling technology so that spatial
| conversation, online identity, avatar-based representation, etc
| remains open and accessible to all.
|
| By the way, we are looking to hire a lead front-end dev [1], with
| more positions to follow later this year.
|
| [0] https://gfodor.medium.com/the-secret-mozilla-hubs-master-
| pla...
|
| [1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/careers/position/gh/3745257/
| [deleted]
| brimble wrote:
| Tried "Create Room" to see what was up. Denied microphone
| permission because I just wanted to look around and it doesn't
| need it for that--there won't even be anyone else in the room,
| right? Even if there were, I wouldn't say anything. Tells me I
| can't get in without enabling microphone.
|
| :-/
|
| What's with the push to these virtual working spaces? I've had
| some exposure to earlier ones (which look basically identical to
| this new wave, looking over the very limited info on this landing
| page) and they're the _worst_. Awkward, and eat tons of system
| resources for no benefit over a text or video chat.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| The push is that someone imagined it, and therefore it must be.
| It really is as simple as that. It's a child's imagination.
| johnnyRose wrote:
| I was able to enter a room I created without allowing
| microphone access.
| brimble wrote:
| The site simply told me it refused to work without microphone
| access. Maybe it depends on the browser.
| [deleted]
| bobthechef wrote:
| fxbois wrote:
| Mozilla is the new Netscape. Their only focus should be to build
| the best browser in the world (like firefox at the origin, fast,
| simple, small, multiplatform). They have wasted so much money
| with ridiculous projects. Even sadder, they have weaken the only
| promising one : rust.
| jms703 wrote:
| So, is _this_ how the web becomes free and open?
| bastardoperator wrote:
| I want to support Mozilla but WTF is this? No thank you.
| st3ve445678 wrote:
| Wow, Mozilla is so lost. Time for new leadership. This is just
| bizarre.
| ecmascript wrote:
| I don't get the idea about this "metaverse" kind of thing. So
| it's not a game so there is no gameplay. You just run around in a
| 3d world which is boring as hell and post pictures on the walls
| or post some kind of lame animated emote both of which you can do
| in any messaging app without having the issue that it could not
| be seen.
|
| Some things are imo not suitable as a 3D experience, at least
| unless it is much, much better than you get with a normal
| conference call or stream. This is certainly proof of that.
|
| I love how this probably sounds like something super cool to
| executives with little to no technical experience or older office
| people who aren't into gaming but seriously if I worked for a
| company that would require me to join such a pointless thing I
| would most certainly resign from my position on the same day.
|
| Stop trying to gamify work, it's work and not a video game. On
| top of that, it's ridiculously close to look like a kindergarten
| and I have no understanding why some companies want to treat
| grown adults as small children.
|
| This idea is so bad that it must have come from some woke people
| that hear the metaverse and go all in on the hype not thinking of
| if that's actually something people want to do. People who are
| completely disconnected from the actual society and live in some
| tech bubble. I'd rather live in a shed in the forest than to run
| around in a 3D open office space.
|
| I am sorry to be so negative, but even if the actual demo could
| be something cool that could be used for games in the browser
| this idea deserves criticism.
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