[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) - Spatial video chat...
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Launch HN: Gather.Town (YC S19) - Spatial video chat for remote
teams
Author : eambutu
Score : 107 points
Date : 2020-11-09 20:17 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (gather.town)
(TXT) w3m dump (gather.town)
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I love the idea - in fact I expect all the big providers to
| follow you sometime - which is probably good and bad.
|
| But I love it.
| busrf wrote:
| Are all of your assets original? The avatars look very
| suspiciously like the overland trainer sprites from Pokemon
| Ruby/Sapphire. When I was a kid I made "custom" Pokemon trainer
| sprites for fun and these look like something I would have made;
| just take a sprite sheet from spriters resource and edit away...
| eambutu wrote:
| Hey HN!
|
| I'm Phillip, cofounder of Gather https://gather.town/?ref=hn. We
| are a video-chat platform that creates virtual spaces for
| offices, conferences, events, and social. You walk around on a 2D
| map, and see / hear the people near you.
|
| We started more a year and a half ago, on telepresence for your
| closest friends and family. We explored all sorts of technologies
| like custom wristwatches, tablet apps, tele-operated robots, and
| VR. We were in the middle of one of our VR experiments when COVID
| hit, and we decided to switch focuses on the pressing needs of
| people today.
|
| We had an idea for how people could gather better online,
| generally. Some of you may have seen our HN post launching Online
| Town half a year ago, and since then, we've hosted 1000+ paid
| spaces across conferences, offices, weddings, parties, magic
| conventions, universities, and much more!
|
| Many "real-life" interactions translate easily into Gather. For
| large gatherings, people will split off into separate groups to
| talk, and walk between the conversations by just moving their
| avatar around. For remote teams, you can walk up to a coworker's
| desk to ask them a quick question, or notice a group of people
| congregating at the water cooler and go join them.
|
| (Our own team works out of a Gather office--most of our team has
| actually never met each other in person)
|
| What's unique about us is how much you can customize your own
| space. Our tools let you design any layout or style that you
| want, so many of our users replicate their real life offices and
| community spaces. We also have embedded objects you can put in
| your space. For example, you can work at a whiteboard, watch
| Youtube/Twitch videos together, or play games with other people
| in your space.
|
| Right now, we're offering one month trials for office spaces, as
| well as setting up custom office layouts for teams, for free!
|
| Come check it out and meet us in the space we made for HN:
| https://gather.town/?ref=hn ! We'd love to hear your feedback.
| nxmnxm99 wrote:
| > (Our own team works out of a Gather office--most of our team
| has actually never met each other in person)
|
| Yikes. As someone who's worked remotely for over a decade, I
| can't imagine starting a company with people I've never had a
| beer with.
| alexlchen2019 wrote:
| Hey y'all, member of the engineering team here: I actually
| have become extremely close friends with a lot of our team
| members here at Gather, even though we haven't met in person
| -- something about dropping by my coworkers' desks really
| makes it feel like we're together. But yeah, you really do
| miss out on grabbing a beer, or, for instance, knowing how
| tall your teammates are haha
| grahamburger wrote:
| Times are a' changing! I started a job in August and haven't
| physically met any of my coworkers. With a culture of 'video
| on during calls by default' it's actually not that bad, imo.
| Much better than would have been possible 10 years ago.
| oceliker wrote:
| I really like the idea! Two small suggestions:
|
| - Have an option to start camera/mic turned off, and make it
| clear that your camera feed will be visible to people you
| approach. My own camera view and mic (and the option to turn
| them off) are also kind of easy to miss on my 27" screen.
|
| - If I press and hold, say, S and then tap D, the avatar starts
| moving right and doesn't stop moving right until I release S.
| I'd expect it to continue moving downward when I release D.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| What do you mean by 'virtual spaces for social'?
| roguesherlock wrote:
| This sounds really neat. Analoging the reality into a virtual
| one with higher fidelity. I'm thinking about coming over from
| the other end (like thinking from first principles). Like what
| it means to be remote workplace? Why do we hangout at a
| workplace ? Etc I'm sure you folks would have thought about it
| a lot. I would love to see your conclusions.
| moritonal wrote:
| You've got to implement smooth-movement. I used it for a few
| minutes and I'm nauseous.
|
| Just lerp from one-square to another over 120ms and ... scratch
| that, if I had implemented as nice a product as yours, I would
| just implement click-to-move. So your character smoothly moves
| to where you clicked (with a touch of A* path-finding).
|
| Only gamer's understand WASD, everyone understand's clicking.
| ticmasta wrote:
| Am I the only one who immediately thought of this episode of
| community (Digital Estate Planning)?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 1fgR7oeIXFA
| nultxt wrote:
| You are definitely not
| a_t48 wrote:
| We tried this out for a few social events. It worked pretty well,
| but the choppy world movement makes me a little sick. :( Any
| chance of a smooth camera/movement option?
| alexlchen2019 wrote:
| We're actively working on this -- I actually have a prototype
| running on my dev server at the moment:
|
| https://alex.gather.town/app/nO9uzqf6ZhzsXJ68/Grand%20Centra...
|
| ^^no guarantees on the stability of this server btw, I use it
| just to test random stuff so it might go down at any moment!
| a_t48 wrote:
| Thank you, that's so much better.
| ztratar wrote:
| I'm cautiously bearish on this type of idea -- the virtualized
| "2D physical space."
|
| I think it could work in virtual reality with Facebooks' emotive
| expressions, face tracking, etc. But if I'm in the middle of a
| workday, moving a little 2d character around doesn't feel very
| useful. But perhaps I'm wrong!
|
| If this type of idea does actually get strong PM fit, the market
| size could be huge. So for VCs it seems like an interesting bet
| to make, even if the odds of success are low.
| dc3 wrote:
| I tried this out a few months ago and enjoyed using it. I love
| the idea of bringing the experience of in-person interactions to
| an online platform. I hope we'll be seeing more of this in the
| future.
| tmabraham wrote:
| I have used gather.town briefly while attending a symposium.
| While some of the mechanics are complicated and take time getting
| used to, it was definitely an interesting experience and unique
| experience for attending posters in a symposium. However, I am
| not so sure if it provides much extra benefit than a traditional
| conference website with posters and social events hosted on Zoom
| (ex: ICML2020 was nicely set up).
|
| Facebook is hosting a networking event for PyTorch Developer Day
| through gather.town so I am interested to see how that goes.
| Maybe I will see if gather.town is indeed significantly better
| for a social event vs. attending posters.
| marwan-nwh wrote:
| I see that GopherCon is using your service this year. This should
| be fun. Best wishes.
| hwbehrens wrote:
| I've used Gather for several conferences, and I've found it to be
| surprisingly effective at recreating some of the benefits of in-
| person gatherings.
|
| In particular, since there's no formalism around creating or
| scheduling meetings, it makes it extremely easy to walk up to
| people you know, chat for a few seconds, and then step away. Or
| for impromptu meetings to break out, where two people are
| chatting, and then another person joins, and soon there are 5-10
| people in a larger discussion.
|
| What it hasn't been able to resolve (at least for me) is the
| awkwardness of starting conversations with strangers. This is
| already awkward enough in person, where you kind of have to edge
| your way in to an existing conversation and wait for a lull to
| join in. Starting a cold 1-on-1 without reading body language is
| just not possible for me.
|
| Remotely, there's no way to get over the step function of "in the
| conversation" where your face just pops up. For me, that lack of
| a gradient makes it very difficult to break the ice when meeting
| new people.
|
| I think the physicality of Gather does help a bit, because (for
| example) you might sit at a "let's talk" table to indicate you're
| open to meeting new people, but that still basically translates
| to "extroverts go here". I'm not sure how to solve it long term,
| but I think tools like there are definitely a step in the right
| direction.
| terpimost wrote:
| Great idea. We used that in our company for a while but. Bad ux
| of sharing screen (some objects are on top of the screen) and
| stability issues made is live in Zoom.
| alixanderwang wrote:
| This is awesome! Love the idea of builder mode being integrated
| with regular game mode, like Minecraft.
|
| I'm not sure what you guys are using for the engine, but the
| primary feedback I have is that it feels too sluggish. For a
| second-home virtual space, it'd need to feel really good moving
| around in it.
|
| Right now on my 2019 Macbook, in a one person blank room, I have
| frame rate drops moving around where my character will skip
| spaces. And in the HN room going to a different place (e.g. to
| swimming pool), I was walking around in darkness for 5 seconds
| about to exit thinking there was a bug before it finally
| rendered. Would recommend you guys really nail constant FPS as a
| priority.
| raziel2p wrote:
| For remote teams, I literally just want Slack but with named
| voice channels visible to everyone in the sidebar for
| discoverability.
| jessmartin wrote:
| It sounds like you want Discord.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| It is quite staggering how Discord don't have a business plan
| yet.
|
| Makes me think there must be something up with their
| security, I can't think of any other reason why they wouldn't
| give private paid plans for businesses.
|
| There are a LOT of people who would jump over from slack.
| screye wrote:
| Aww man, I've been ideating around this exact idea for MSFT teams
| for a while now. (not like I had any time or buy-in for it)
| BRILLIANT. There is always a faint sense of jealousy and
| vindication when I see an idea being executed so close to what a
| person has been pushing for.
|
| Congrats ! I think you're onto something.
|
| I would readily pay for this if I could get my entire team to
| adopt it. (which I'd say is nearly impossible)
|
| I might sound like making a deal with the devil, but if you could
| integrate your service into MSFT teams, you might be able to get
| a huge user-base quite fast.
| jstrieb wrote:
| Congratulations on the launch! Thoughts on competitors like
| Gatherly?
|
| https://www.gatherly.io/
| makk wrote:
| And High Fidelity: https://www.highfidelity.com/
| jamessb wrote:
| And Movement: https://www.movement.fm/spaces
|
| And MakeSpace: https://makespace.fun/
|
| And GroupRoom: https://grouproom.io/
| catchmeifyoucan wrote:
| I've used online.town before, and it's awesome to see that it's
| productized now with a lot of the features I wished. We used if
| for company gatherings and played games like hide and seek, and
| as a way to network with new people. The fact that things like
| podiums can now project voices, games are included, really make
| this so much more appealing. It's just a fun way to connect with
| people. Including random people. And you don't need many
| conversation starters, other than "cool platform right, want to
| go checkout the ...". So excited for this!
| lovetocode wrote:
| Isn't this a knockoff of something posted earlier this year?
| moron4hire wrote:
| There are about half a dozen different, similar apps that all
| came out around the same time (I have one as well). I've done a
| lot of research on all of them and none of them are copies of
| any of the others. They all have pretty unique implementations.
| tgb wrote:
| My boss got excited about this a few weeks back, but none of the
| rest of the office wanted to really use it (and we had some
| issues with video/audio feeds). I don't really get the idea: what
| problem does this solve that Slack/Zoom/etc don't? The whiteboard
| seems OK but no software can solve the problem that drawing with
| a touchpad sucks. Am I going to have to schedule meeting rooms
| again? Forget finding the right Zoom link, I now have to find the
| right room too? Stand around the water cooler when I'm on a
| break, except that then I won't be at my computer and so I can't
| actually use that? It's easy to talk to coworkers, but Slack is
| even easier. It's easy to start a meeting, but Zoom is no harder
| - and easier for people outside your organization. "How's the
| cafeteria?" is what one of my coworkers asked, jokingly, but I
| think that captures my feeling of it. Sure it's got a cafeteria,
| but that cafeteria doesn't solve any of the problems that a real
| cafeteria solves.
|
| Then again, I'm also of the opinion that video calls provide
| little value beyond phone calls, so maybe I'm just a grump.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Look at the pricing model, this doesn't look like it's trying
| to replace any of those things.
|
| It looks like you'd rent it out for an event or such. I can see
| that it would be a bit of a fun - if we're all on video / phone
| chats all day & we need to do a 'virtual offsite' it would be
| good to change the environment a little.
|
| I can see this being useful for the occasional planning day
| etc.
| samthecoy wrote:
| A big benefit, especially with more people, is that it's
| relatively painless and socially natural to break out into
| multiple small discussions (as might happen at say, a coffee
| meeting irl). The awkwardness of 12-person video calls is
| extremely painful in other software.
| nend wrote:
| If you read the founders comment, they mention a lot of other
| use cases in addition to offices/work.
|
| I would probably really dislike using this with coworkers or
| for "in the office." But I can imagine it being a good fit with
| some of the other, more social use cases.
| tgb wrote:
| Yeah other uses seem more plausible. My boss wanted to use it
| as a virtual office, where he sits at his desk and us at our
| cubicles, that kind of thing.
| godot wrote:
| I love the idea! When I tried the official demo, the thing that I
| immediately noticed is the jagged scrolling movement of the
| screen when I move around.
|
| I understand the pixel art style (I love it btw) and that the map
| is actually discrete pieces of tiles instead of fluid/pixels, but
| it's really visually jarring as I move around. If I move by
| pressing arrow keys once at a time that's fine, or if I even hold
| down arrow in one direction that's still okay, but if I move by
| quickly changing directions (e.g. moving diagonally) it almost
| hurts my head to look at the screen while my avatar is walking.
| paladin314159 wrote:
| We've used Gather for a few company events and it's been super
| helpful for recreating as much of an in-person interaction style
| as possible. It outshines Zoom when you have more than 10 people
| in the same meeting and in more casual settings. Especially for
| office cultures that were heavily in-person like ours, it helps
| bolster the sense of team and collaboration that isn't the same
| over Slack/Zoom.
| etxm wrote:
| More like Gimmick.town, amirite?
| wh-uws wrote:
| Love this! The last thing you guys need is a mobile app so people
| can jump in even on a phone.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| So great to see Gather on HN! I've been following Cyrus, Philip,
| and Kumail for a while, and been really impressed by their work.
|
| I've tried Gather and a few of the other competitors out there -
| out of all of them Gather nails the UX the most. It's pretty
| simple, but it's also powerful. Most of the other competitors in
| this space have thrown together a sloppy "business" platform, but
| Gather just feels much more accessible, friendly, and easy to
| use.
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