
Show HN: Stand-Up/Meetings in VR for Remote Teams - kdzapp
https://portalspaces.com/
======
JonAtkinson
Your demo video completely undersells the potential here.

The hook for this product is an emotional one, a way to understand and better
connect with remote colleagues, and removing miscommunication anxiety -- so
where are they in the demo?

Apart from a brief glimpse of a meeting space, 80% of the time is spent
messing around with an awkward whiteboard implementation. The video needs to
show open collaboration with other humans in VR. I catch a quick glimpse of
another disembodied head in the demo but that's all.

~~~
ashhimself
This. I want to see a meeting in progress. How would a stand-up be run using
this? Show people :)

~~~
kdzapp
Yes!!! Will do.

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kdzapp
Hello Everyone! Just to give you some background I started Portal Spaces
because one of the worst parts of WFH for me was always collaborating. No
matter how good of an internet connection I had, Skype (that’s what we used at
MS ofc) would always lag. I also couldn’t present and see people at the same
time. I think the tech for this is really early but we want to focus on making
it accessible, that’s why we built for the Oculus Go. Thus, even including the
hardware, we are able to price it similar to other video conferencing
software. We strongly believe that once you can feel like you’re in a room
with someone else in VR, there will be nothing stopping you from becoming a
remote worker. That’ll allow for everyone to have a more flexible, enjoyable
lifestyle.

Let us know what you think! We are really excited to be released, though we
are in alpha, so we have lots of room for development and improvement!

~~~
slfnflctd
If you can make this a tolerable experience on the Oculus Go, it should only
get better from there. After using several VR setups (including the Go), I
think it might just hit the baseline sweet spot of affordability, ease of use
and performance-- with the latter obviously being the biggest concern.

You might want to consider throwing in a quick check on internet speed &
latency at the user's location, and simply not allow them to connect if it's
not up to a certain level (or gracefully degrade the experience to a lower-
bandwidth, more latency-tolerant secondary UI).

~~~
kdzapp
Will definitely consider this - and I totally agree. The Go isn't going to
offer the "BEST" end-all be-all solution, but as time progresses we will get
the experience of a Rift in a Go for the same price as a Go (the quest in 1-2
years). If we can get an acceptable experience on the Go, the sky is the limit
as the tech progresses!

~~~
slfnflctd
Determine the best stuff to compress without losing engagement and you've got
it.

As others have said, faces probably matter a lot. It would be nice to have
face tracking through a bluetooth device or something, but direction of gaze
with the right manual options (say, 5 gradients from smiling to frowning and a
few other emotes) might be enough to start.

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fareesh
Anecdotally one big reason why video calls are disliked is because of the
clunkiness caused by connectivity and hardware related issues.

* Someone suddenly is not audible

* Someone doesn't realize they are audible, and starts speaking to someone else in person

* Glitches and breaks in the conversation due to words or parts of words becoming cut off

I imagine the VR equivalents may be comical or frightening.

The other "big" issue (anecdotally) is lack of visual cues to know when it's
likely to be OK to start and stop talking

I'd bet big on anything that somehow managed to solve these problems.

~~~
Klathmon
It's really interesting that I have the same frustrations with video calls,
however I also play VR videogames and video chat with "remote friends" very
often, and almost NEVER have those issues.

I'm not sure if it's greater familiarity with the tools, or something else,
but I can be on a 4 person group video call with my friends WHILE playing a VR
game with them as well and everything runs smoothly and without lag for hours
on end, but like 40% of video calls for past jobs have had dropouts, lag,
difficulty hearing, and other issues.

One thing I think that really helps some of those issues is to get high
quality headsets for everyone and make sure they know how to use it, but the
lag I genuinely don't understand what makes it so common in work contexts.

~~~
jon-wood
Good hardware is essential to make frequent video calling work well. We have a
semi-distributed team, spread between two offices and a bunch of remote
workers.

The biggest difference to making it work was for everyone to be issued a
decent headset so that you're not battling people using Apple headphones which
pick up everyone else in the room, and setting up meeting rooms with decent
video conferencing hardware so that its possible to bring in groups from
different places.

If I had my way we'd have taken the much simpler approach of declaring that
for any meeting with one remote participant, everyone connects by video, but
that's a battle I lost long ago with management!

~~~
Klathmon
>If I had my way we'd have taken the much simpler approach of declaring that
for any meeting with one remote participant, everyone connects by video

I've tried that in the past, but sadly even good office networks often get
pretty choppy when you have 4 or 5 people all video calling from the same
connection independently.

The best solution I've found for that case is to invest in good video
conference hardware for meeting rooms. Get a couple of area mics, and a big TV
with a camera on it that can see the whole table.

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jackbrookes
Seems like an unfortunate name choice when used besides Facebook/Oculus
hardware.

"Portal" is the name of Facebook's home video call device.

"Spaces" is the name of Facebook's VR chat & hangout platform.

~~~
kdzapp
A bit unfortunate, yes, but we embrace our names meaning as a way to transport
you to any space you'd like. We actually came up with the name before facebook
released their portal platform, and weren't to excited when they released.

We also were using different hardware at the start, but as I'm sure you know,
the market takes you wherever the best fit is, and now we are on the Go

~~~
mLuby
I didn't think of either of those services FWIW. Name seems fine (if a bit
bland) to me.

~~~
kdzapp
good to know!

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rchalla769
This seems sick, I think you can really change the way lectures or other
massive talks are viewed! I'm looking forward to trying it out!

~~~
kdzapp
Thanks!!

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ardian_b
I as remote worker (with different work hour for each team member) doing
asynchronous communication. We don't video conference, just leaving notes for
other team member (email, Github issue, Slack, etc). But I think VR in the
workplace is the future and you have something good to start. Very cool
product anyway!

~~~
kdzapp
Awesome thanks for the input, I think it would be an interesting problem “how
to engage async workers in VR”

------
kdzapp
Hello everyone!!! Thanks for showing so much support thus far for Portal
Spaces. It means a lot to us. We just launched on product hunt! We encourage
you to check it out [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/portal-
spaces](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/portal-spaces)

Thanks!!

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dyeje
Interesting play to include the hardware. I can tell you put alot of work into
this, it's a shame that the demo video doesn't reflect that. Really need to
redo that with some compelling use cases (actually talking, sharing a video,
etc) instead of the MS Paint and 1 finger typing.

~~~
kdzapp
Definitely will work on a better video to display the full potential. But who
doesn't love MS Paint??

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shafyy
The space for remote work in VR is going to be HUUUUUUUGE. You're off to a
great start! My advice is not only copy/paste what we have today, but think
about how you can use VR's unique advantage to make remote collaboration even
better than in-person collaboration.

The best of luck!

~~~
kdzapp
Will do Shafyy I appreciate the comment!!!

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nooron
I’ve been using Portal Spaces a couple weeks. The shared whiteboard excites me
a lot. We’ve been able to cast Real Time Boards to it, to have focused
conversations during our engineering retrospectives and planning meetings.

~~~
kdzapp
thanks for the comment :)

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cma
Portlandia had a funny take on this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eGFeD0n6ao&t=20s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eGFeD0n6ao&t=20s)

~~~
kdzapp
Hahaha I’ll replace my demo video on the website with this, cool features

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karmakaze
This would work even better in AR if everyone's facial expressions and other
nonverbal cues could be included.

Also speech recognition or something should replace that pointer keyboard.

~~~
kdzapp
Thanks for the insight! We are working on adding speech to text, and AR is a
bit far away from being a reality. Avatars are getting more complex everyday,
though. I encourage you to check out this article:
[https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/02/facebook-photo-
realistic-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/02/facebook-photo-realistic-
avatars/)

~~~
karmakaze
Yes exactly the sort of thing I was wondering. Seems like you know what's
possible now, soon, and later. Looking forward to hearing about or
experiencing next achievements.

~~~
kdzapp
Thank you! I’ll keep the community updated for sure.

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debt
I think a more useful thing is simply asynchronous standup videos. There
should ideally be little reason to have a standup live in real time, as most
questions or collaboration should happen offline, not in the standup.

So virtualizing an already semi-broken part of scrum seems to address the
symptoms not the problem but idk.

However this obviously pretty sweet. Amazing work. This appears to be fairly
polished as well.

~~~
kdzapp
Thank you!! I get the differing opinions on scrum but like I said earlier I
think live meetings are important for team unity and collaboration beyond the
pragmatic actionable tasks/pending questions.

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xchaotic
I really appreciate any development / inroads that further improves remote
working. I also used to HTC Vive. I think VR for meetings /standups is as
disruptive to typical programmer 'flow' as a regular meeting, at least until
your coding is also done in VR. So I applaud the development, but I frankly
hope it won't widely adopted in this form.

~~~
kdzapp
We appreciate your thoughts, but we really think stand-ups are essential to
productive, effective team work. Solo coding doesn't get you far when you're
only working on a tiny piece of a huge puzzle. You need effective
communication to put everything together, we really think it's undervalued in
the coding world - meetings get an undeserved bad rap.

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m0zg
If you must have stand up meetings, why not have them over e.g. chat or Slack
or IRC or the like? That way you get a record of what's going on that people
can refer to. What's the added value of being in a virtual "room"? For
collaboration over documents just use Google Docs. Far more workable than
shaky drawing on a virtual whiteboard.

~~~
kdzapp
Hey! Thanks for the response. We've definitely heard this before but the
research continues to show that when people work remotely their top complaints
are collaboration and isolation. We are hoping we can hit both problems with
our product but bringing people in a room where they feel like they are
together.

It's not a fully optimized "pragmatic" approach, but humans are social
creatures and it shows in productivity and happiness when they are working
remotely.

[https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-
work-2018/](https://open.buffer.com/state-remote-work-2018/)

~~~
m0zg
It's great that you're not super gung-ho over the current approach, and still
searching. While not convinced currently, I'll keep you guys on my radar in
the future. I'm sure there is an application for VR/AR in this space, but I'm
also sure it'll take some time and a lot of elbow grease to figure out what it
is.

In the immediate future, I hope someone figures out a way to build a video
conferencing solution which lets me "raise a virtual hand" when I'd like to
speak, and for the person running the meeting to designate the current
speaker. I think the current solutions all suck because there's no way to do
it (so you have to talk over somebody else, fighting considerable audio lag),
and I think VR would only exacerbate this because the experience is more
visceral.

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robodale
Just a note on your video - I scrolled right past it without realizing the
embedded video was there. I scrolled all the way down to the bottom of the
page and thought "what...no video showing what this is?".

I suggest a little more contrast on the default video image, plus the "play"
icon in the center could be more pronounced.

~~~
kdzapp
Great suggestion - We will update this asap.

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joonzambia123
Didn't Facebook already make a similar feature for their Ocular series? Sorry,
big fan of the idea, just wondering what makes your specific product novel.

But still, awesome work!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2U9lXEnHns](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2U9lXEnHns)

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vvoyer
I like the idea of a remote vr standup. But, as a manager of a remote team our
main struggle right now is handling asynchronous communication and time zones
difference. Any tool already helping on that?

~~~
kdzapp
the meetings will have a transcript that is sent to the emails of the
participants (a feature we are currently focused on). You could easily forward
that transcript on to your remote employees who can't make it due to timezone
issues!!

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rittenbt
How many people can the platform support in one meeting? Would be very useful
for >2 teams (instead of having multiple screens, could have just one
environment with multiple people inside)

~~~
kdzapp
Yeah totally this is a primary benefit of working in an environment that is
akin reality. You can have around 20 people, we aim to have support for 50~ or
more coming soon!

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bluepirate
My team and I have been using the Go to hold meetings and other collaboration
efforts. What does this product offer that I can't already get from the free
apps?

~~~
kdzapp
That depends on the software you're using! Our VR smart whiteboard offers a
way to present and draw/save your notes. We are developing a transcript saving
functionality, that saves everything you talk about into notes and emails it
to you. We also will use that speech to text to allow you to use commands
(hopefully replacing most of the usage of the keyboard).

That being said, we are a very young start up! We will continue to add to and
advance our product in pursuit of creating optimal value for all of our users.

(Would love to hear more about what you like & dislike about your current
work/meeting flow in the Go if you want to email kyle@portalspaces.com)

------
oedenfield
Looks like
[https://www.dogheadsimulations.com](https://www.dogheadsimulations.com)

~~~
kdzapp
Definitely one of our competitors. We think the market is open enough for
multiple players in the VR collaboration space :) Hopefully we will drive each
other to build better products, with better pricing. That being said, we think
some features we are working on will be key differentiators.

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jierlich
Do you send the hardware or do we need our own headsets? How difficult is set
up if I want this for my team?

~~~
kdzapp
We provide you with everything you need. It's super simple to set up, just
turn on the VR headset we send you, launch portal spaces and start inviting
people to your VR space.

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hessproject
Any plans to include compatibility outside of Oculus Go?

~~~
kdzapp
Unfortunately we currently don't have plans for that. We think compatibility
is important, but are more focused on getting the product to a more stable
state before we expand to other headsets!

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sleepybrett
I played with a demo of a similar system awhile back. It's weird to say this,
but eye contact matters.

~~~
kdzapp
I agree! Facebook avatars will soon have eyes and facial expressions that
mimic your own.

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fuster
Are you required to have a Facebook account?

~~~
kdzapp
Nope! You can sign up with your email :)

