[HN Gopher] Show HN: Pop.com - Video Calls, in 3D
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Show HN: Pop.com - Video Calls, in 3D
Author : jsherwani
Score : 123 points
Date : 2020-12-21 18:24 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pop.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pop.com)
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Ok I got to know: how much did you spend to get pop.com?
| michaelpb wrote:
| Yeah, I'm incredibly curious as well! I think it's a very cool
| project, but ball-parking development costs, my guess is the
| domain probably cost more than the product itself, assuming
| they didn't go down NIH-type rabbit holes.
|
| Edit: And to be clear, I'm not even necessarily knocking that
| decision. Maybe an expensive TLD could make life easier for a
| project like this, since it could promote trust / buy-in,
| increasing usage at an early stage. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| holler wrote:
| also very curious! that domain has to be worth a lot, 3
| characters, two letters, easy to remember...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Yes, I'm also wildly jealous of that domain name...
| jsherwani wrote:
| Since our company is personally bootstrapped by me, answering
| this will divulge more of my personal financial situation than
| I would like to share.
|
| However, I can say that I worked with
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ted0 who was AMAZING at
| helping find and acquire the domain. I can strongly recommend
| him as an amazing person to work with for anyone interested in
| buying a high-value domain.
| harper wrote:
| can also vouch for Teddy. super helpful for getting
| modest.com back from pypl
| uses wrote:
| Yeah, I'm pretty curious because it must've cost in $10k-100k
| range right? Isn't this the type of vanity purchase that
| usually happens after you validate your idea with 10,000
| customers and you got a round of investment to go big? I would
| expect a newly launched startup to use getpopapp.info, or used
| a made-up company name with an acquirable domain.
| 1f60c wrote:
| I think it's closer to $1M, if not more.
| ad31mar wrote:
| Easily $1M.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| My experience is from 5+ years ago (when google counted
| keywords in domains), but a 3 letter domain would go for at
| least 6 figures, possibly up into 7.
| michaelpb wrote:
| And pop.com would be in the high end of that would be my
| guess, given it's better that most 3 letter domains as it
| spells a very marketing-friendly word
| tyingq wrote:
| I believe you're off by at least one digit in your range.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| I can't get it working. I've tried in vanilla (no content/script
| blocking) Firefox and Chrome. I've accepted the microphone
| permission, but it seems there's a hard requirement on having a
| camera attached? I'm getting:
|
| "DOMException: The object can not be found here." - FF
|
| and
|
| "DOMException: Requested device not found" - Chrome
|
| Since you state you can turn both the camera and microphone off,
| I think it'd be much better UX to not force camera and mic access
| up front.
|
| Also, Firefox asked for permission before I clicked on the
| "Request Permissions" button.
|
| Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/BKY5bcE
| scraft wrote:
| This feels like a fun lightweight version of one of our products,
| vTime XR https://vtime.net/vtimexr which lets you chat with
| people both in VR and on mobile. It is amazing how much better
| chat is when you can face people and speak to them. When you
| throw in VR it gets pretty exciting too. Thanks for sharing.
| disgrunt wrote:
| I have a 2020 MBP (x86) and it wails on my CPU in Safari. Is
| there anything I can do to keep this in check?
|
| Otherwise very cool.
| corobo wrote:
| Did this used to be an ad/tracking domain? It was listed in one
| of the adblock lists I use
|
| If anyone has an issue visiting the site double check your
| adblock.
| aphit wrote:
| Yeah, this is blocked by our Cisco filter at work.
| jsherwani wrote:
| We bought this domain a few months ago, and you're probably
| right, since Gmail seems to mark our outgoing emails as spam.
| I'm not very well-versed in how to undo the reputation the
| previous owners seem to have created for the domain, so if you
| have any recommendations, please let me know!
| tomcooks wrote:
| look into DMARC ASAP to fix your email
|
| make sure you get taken off freely available spamlists that
| adblockers sync with
|
| then if I were you I'd talk to a Google exec to speed up the
| domain reputation cleansing process a bit (get some articles
| up in your blog asap)
| sbarre wrote:
| Your homepage doesn't explain anything about what I should do
| when I land on it.
|
| What's a space? What's going to happen if I create or join one?
|
| Why would I want to do this?
|
| Or is this intentional and you're soft-launching or just doing
| some testing?
|
| edit: I clicked create a space and you immediately ask for access
| to my camera.. but there's no explanation of why you're asking
| for it, or what I'm getting out of it.
|
| I feel like there are huge assumptions about users understanding
| what's about to happen..
|
| And before I grant access to a remote site to my camera, I want a
| better idea of why I'm doing it, and what you're doing with the
| feed.
| jsherwani wrote:
| That's a fair point, here's a little more information:
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pop-9
| andy_ppp wrote:
| As alway text and an intro video will help people understand
| how your product is different from Zoom etc.
| andybak wrote:
| As long as it's a micro video (a few seconds with no audio
| or introduction)
|
| I won't watch a longer video just to understand what random
| product does.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| I think most people are comfortable with a soft cap at 60
| seconds?
|
| A simple animation, a voice over, and maybe some video
| captures of the software would be great.
| 6510 wrote:
| Yes, a basic melee demo and an overview of the weapons.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I think you mean, as long as it explains why, what and
| how in the shortest possible number of words it's a good
| video. Spending time trying to be funny or not actually
| explaining would be bad, if it takes a while to explain
| more thought and structure may be needed.
| myoffe wrote:
| Your criticism is fair, except the camera access. It's a video
| chat tool, of course it's going to ask you to use your camera.
| What do you expect?
| ezekg wrote:
| Your landing page says no such thing.
| ibdf wrote:
| Is it a trend to provide your visitors absolutely no information
| and expect them to click around?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Here's a screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/VVt0zCU.jpg
|
| In short, you move around in the virtual space and your avatar's
| head is your webcam feed. There is also positional audio, so your
| position changes who you hear. User can also apparently spawn
| screen share windows in the sky.
|
| Give it a try, it works and feel better than it looks. It is very
| similar to what you'd find in a VR chat application but it works
| surprisingly well from the browser with just the mouse.
|
| (Completely unaffiliated, simply gave the demo a spin.)
| foxbarrington wrote:
| Love that these types of apps are getting more popular.
| https://rambly.app (which is similar, but 2D) completely saved
| https://js.la .
| veddox wrote:
| We held our office Christmas party on gather.town. Really
| neat - a 2D 90s computer game meets Zoom. Haven't tried them
| for productivity yet, but as a social experience they are
| significantly better than conventional video chats.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| We did our office Halloween party on https://topia.io/
| which is very similar. You get to build your environment
| using "flash"-like components.
| telesilla wrote:
| We used https://highfidelity.com, 3d audio in a 2d space.
| Amazingly effective for lots of people to have quiet
| conversations.
| 1f60c wrote:
| I think the site got hugged: ping -c 4 pop.com
| PING pop.com (0.0.0.0): 56 data bytes ping: sendto: Socket
| is not connected ping: sendto: Socket is not connected
| Request timeout for icmp_seq 0 ping: sendto: Socket is not
| connected Request timeout for icmp_seq 1 ping:
| sendto: Socket is not connected Request timeout for
| icmp_seq 2 --- pop.com ping statistics --- 4
| packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
| cbhl wrote:
| It would be great if you could add an audio/video camera picker
| before joining the call, for folks who have multiple (e.g. USB
| sound bar, bluetooth headset, wired mic, OBS virtual cam) and
| want to make sure they look presentable before joining the call.
| (I saw that there were options to pick once you were joined.)
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| NextDNS "Threat Intelligence Feeds" blocks this domain.
|
| It's also on a bunch of domain blocking lists (don't have a
| complete list). I've submitted pop.com as a false-positive on
| OISD.
| jsherwani wrote:
| Thank you! I really appreciate it.
|
| I wrote this elsewhere:
|
| We bought this domain a few months ago, and you're probably
| right, since Gmail seems to mark our outgoing emails as spam.
| I'm not very well-versed in how to undo the reputation the
| previous owners seem to have created for the domain, so if you
| have any recommendations, please let me know!
| adventured wrote:
| That's a long-term manual process. You need to go around to
| every spam list you can find and open up direct communication
| with the person/s that control it or go through their removal
| process (some offer a simple process, some are obnoxious, as
| you'd expect).
|
| That said, I checked your site against blacklists. It appears
| clear -
|
| https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
| mritchie712 wrote:
| How much for the domain?
| hackerloom wrote:
| CONGRATS and KUDOS for domain
| chrisseaton wrote:
| How on earth did you get the domain?
| izolate wrote:
| He founded a company that was acquired by Slack. I imagine his
| financial situation (not to mention his network) is slightly
| above the HN average.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| Nice idea.
|
| I had a bunch of "phantom" avatars for some reason
| (https://imgur.com/a/ixBGuK8)
|
| Some thoughts:
|
| - the idea someone just mentioned in the "launch party" about
| having a visualisation of an avatars audio "range" (how far they
| project sound) would be useful
|
| - a visualisation that someone is speaking could also be useful
| (little speaker next to their name)
|
| - definitely need some kind of password protection for joining,
| gate crashing would be pretty easy (unless of course you rate
| limit attempting to join a space to stop people brute forcing the
| space ID)
|
| - ability to mute someone would also be useful in a more public
| setting (and the mutee should probably get a visualisation that
| an avatar cannot hear them)
|
| - being able to agree with another person to go into a completely
| new space would also be useful way to take a conversation private
| gfodor wrote:
| Cool! I think this kind of avatar embodiment is the future. I'm
| working on one that doesn't use the camera, but audio lip syncing
| to provide a good experience. https://jel.app
|
| Also if you want an OSS alternative to any of these commercial
| tools, check out https://hubs.mozilla.com
| m4lvin wrote:
| +1 for hubs, I only found it recently and was positively
| surprised when trying it out the first time. It is missing the
| webcam-video-on-avatar function though, or it is well hidden?!
| jsherwani wrote:
| Pop founder here. We're a team of 5, and folks from our team have
| built products like Screenhero, Slack Calls, and most recently,
| Screen.so.
|
| Pop lets you have a video call in 3D, with positional audio. It
| works in a browser, without any download. The experience is
| surprisingly fresh, and the social dynamics are quite fun.
|
| You can feel like you're part of a group, you can see who's
| looking at you, you can go to the side with someone and have a
| separate conversation, without interrupting the current
| conversation. You can share a screen that floats in space (and
| always faces the viewer). You can even bow to say hello!
|
| We use Mediasoup for the WebRTC backend, Ionic/Angular for the
| frontend, and BabylonJS as our 3D framework.
|
| Also, as an experiment, we're hosting a virtual launch party at
| https://pop.com/j/866-719-882. A few of us will be around for the
| next couple of hours, so feel free to pop in to try it out and
| even say hello! :)
|
| Happy to answer any questions here too, of course!
|
| Edit: there are more screenshots here:
| https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pop-9
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Have you done any measurements of capture-to-display latency?
|
| I've been interested in why Discord feels more natural than Zoom
| and so far I think it comes down to latency. As far as I know
| Zoom targets 150 ms, but audio-only platforms can get closer to
| 25-50, which can make the difference between what feels like
| using walkie talkies versus a real face-to-face conversation.
|
| Any plans on how you will monetize this if it takes off?
| [deleted]
| jsherwani wrote:
| We haven't yet measured audio latency, but our main product
| (https://screen.so) is all about low latency screen sharing, so
| we're very interested in reducing lag of all sorts. Performance
| is something we'll focus on in 2021 in a big way.
|
| Monetization: very similar to what everyone else in this space
| does. Free for social users, paid for business users, and
| finding a good way to segment the two.
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Page only loads for me in incognito mode, normal mode just throws
| this error: https://imgur.com/a/JlEeyZj
|
| I disabled both privacy blocker extension, but no luck.
| y10003 wrote:
| https://www.getmibo.com does something very similar.
| stevewodil wrote:
| This is one of the coolest things I've seen for video chats /
| social hangouts online. It's like VR Chat but so much more
| accessible.
|
| Love it
| hartator wrote:
| Does that mean that screen.so is dead?
| jsherwani wrote:
| Not at all! We'd originally bought pop.com to be the new home
| for screen.so, but once we made this new product, we wanted to
| launch it asap.
|
| Our plan is to merge the two in the near future, and work on
| the intersection between 2D and 3D calls.
| shafyy wrote:
| If you've ever tried social apps in VR, you'll know that the
| "social presence" is what sets it apart from a 2D video call,
| even though you only see avatars of others and not their actual
| faces. It feels like you're in the same physical room as someone
| else.
|
| I think Pop is interesting as a bridging solution until VR
| becomes the main platform for social, because it gives you more
| of a social presence feel than pure 2D video calls.
|
| I'll for sure try it out in the future with calls and see how it
| goes. Best of luck with this!
|
| Edit: Typos, it's bed time :D
| mangoman wrote:
| Mozilla Hubs is awesome for this too, you can set up the room
| with objects like presentations, or just various tables and it
| also lets you have a little window for your webcam too. The audio
| is also spatially aware so you can have little groups of
| conversation too.
|
| https://hubs.mozilla.com/
| bradhe wrote:
| This is awesome. Reminds me of https://wonder.me quite a bit.
| obilgic wrote:
| No demo, and no explanation on the site before requesting mic and
| cam permissions
| oliv__ wrote:
| It's a cool idea but after trying it, I feel it needlessly
| incorporates all the constraints of the real world into the
| virtual world.
|
| Why should I waste time clicking my mouse to move to a certain
| point in virtual space when no-one is really there anyways? Isn't
| the whole point of virtual meetings that you don't have to
| physically be there to attend? Walking around in the void to hear
| others only makes my personal experience slower and less natural.
|
| I feel like maybe the solution here is just to have Zoom +
| private "rooms" for separate conversations.
|
| (Sorry if this sounds too negative, because I always enjoy seeing
| new ideas and there was obviously hard work put behind this but
| that's my 2c)
| antman wrote:
| I got in with my phone, I see the crowd but how do I move
| forward?
| joshuakelly wrote:
| This is really cool, I joined the launch chat and people were
| emulating in real life behaviors like standing in a circle and
| moving their focus to the speaker. I also noticed that multiple
| conversations were happening at the same time, without
| interference since the audio is spatially modified.
|
| Love the fact that it's entirely in the browser without an app
| too.
| blensor wrote:
| What you are describing sounds a lot like AltspaceVR
|
| I am visiting a weekly XR Meetup on Thursdays and it feels a
| bit like going to a conference. You have someone presenting
| their work, with displays and people gathering in groups
| chatting about things.
| jsherwani wrote:
| Glad you liked it! We have plans to make it easier to get into
| a circle (one person elects to start a circle, and others elect
| to join).
| andybak wrote:
| Firefox on Android. Avatar gives a black screen instead of
| (presumably) an image from the phone camera
| overcast wrote:
| The purchase price for that three letter domain must have cost
| you something serious. Pop.com was that old DotCom project from
| Dreamworks and Ron Howard that went belly up.
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Hey everyone - our team is also working on an interactive,
| browser-based virtual platform for people to connect. Like Zoom,
| but for 3D.
|
| Wanted to get some input on what some must have features would
| be?
| lksslr wrote:
| congratulations, looks cool! I'm one of the persons behind
| https://laptopsinspace.de and it would probably be interesting to
| share some experiences. Our tech stack is similar, yet different.
| We also use mediasoup for the video, Svelte for the frontend and
| ThreeJS as the 3D framework!
| pojntfx wrote:
| This is awesome! Tried with a friend just now and the 3D audio is
| really something else.
| jsherwani wrote:
| Glad you liked it! Please keep the feedback coming.
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(page generated 2020-12-21 23:00 UTC)