
Show HN: Online Town – A better way to gather online - liamuk
https://hn.town.siempre.io/
======
liamuk
Hi HN!

One of the creators here.

It's a cross between Zoom x Pokemon. You only get audio and video from people
you're standing next to, and as you walk away from them, the video fades away
and the audio drops off.

With current video chat apps, you lose many of the dynamics of real life
meetups. In particular, you lose the ability to have multiple people in the
same shared space having multiple conversations.

In real life events, you can talk to a few people at a time while still being
able to quickly go from one conversation to the next. With video chat, you
have to talk to everyone at the same time.

Online Town is meant to fix this.

The way it works is, when you're near someone you get their audio and video,
when you walk away from them their video drops off, and their audio fades out.

So you can have multiple conversations within a single virtual space.

Join me in the public room! Would love to get your all thoughts on it :)

~~~
pgt
Hi Liamuk! You won't believe this but I was working on this _exact idea_ all
of yesterday and shipped a basic version with proximal audio and a 2D canvas
to display players. It's not ready for HN traffic yet, but I joined Online
Town and ran into Cyrus.

We had a great ~10 minute video chat in the middle of the street about the
possibilities of virtual realms. I've just popped him an email and sent some
techno recommendations :).

Good luck with Online Town! I think we'll see a whole spate of similar ideas
focusing on a variety of niches.

~~~
jvm___
I'll see if I can lookup the post here about almost exactly what your talking
about.

[https://meet.primrosevr.com/#FromGithub](https://meet.primrosevr.com/#FromGithub)

------
Fiveplus
Sounds like a new concept. Has anyone ever tried this approach of a virtual
real-life emulating community with video calls?

A lot of community building questions still apply though and I'd love to see
them answered. How do you plan to deal with nefarious characters or just
general sexually motivated trolls (if any)? Is there moderation of some kind?
Community rules in general? Sign up integration in the future? I couldn't find
it on the home page (though I may be thinking too much about it - the whole
purpose of this might be a 'real' virtual world with sign-ups being a
redundancy)

Either way, do not, in any way take my comment to be nit picky or leaning
towards the critic side - I'm a genuinely interested user. Just an inquisitive
one :) All the best.

~~~
donpark
> Has anyone ever tried this approach of a virtual real-life emulating
> community with video calls?

Yes, in stealth mode around 5yrs ago but couldn't get funding for launch. It
was too early and too general. High battery drain didn't help either.

------
tcoff91
Another take on this idea of having positional audio is Mozilla Hubs. It’s
kind of like a simplified VRChat that runs in the browser. Also has mobile
support on iOS and Android.

[https://hubs.mozilla.com/](https://hubs.mozilla.com/)

~~~
a3_nm
But it does not seem possible to have your webcam as your avatar (you can only
put it out there as an object in space, which is not as useful).

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jimmySixDOF
Sounds similar to a product called iSee out of Australia used in school
systems there.

"iSee is just like being in the real world, where your voice fades out with
distance and you walk around to talk to others and look at what interests
you."

[1] [https://www.iseevc.com.au](https://www.iseevc.com.au)

------
sdrothrock
I've spent the last 2-3 hours in here and have talked to maybe half a dozen
people about all kinds of things. This is just such a fun way to get together
and have a conversation, and there are so many possibilities.

Thanks a TON to Cyrus for being such an engaging host and sharing his thoughts
about what's going on and how people are thinking about the service!

~~~
akkartik
Good chatting with you, Scott.

~~~
sdrothrock
Great chatting with you, too!

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ksj2114
Really cool idea. I've been thinking a lot about how to have a party online
(zoom parties are inevitably terrible), and this seems like a great step
towards recreating real-world social experiences

~~~
tcoff91
Also try out Mozilla Hubs:

[https://hubs.mozilla.com/](https://hubs.mozilla.com/)

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capableweb
Heh, it's cute.

Something I noticed is that you can collide with other characters, so if you
have three other friends, you can effectively isolated people by collaborating
and standing around them, and there is no escape but to reload the page.

~~~
thmt
If you get surrounded by four people, a textbox appears saying that you can
press <space> to teleport out. A larger group of people could form a ring to
entrap people, but that's harder to coordinate.

------
severak_cz
Similar idea to which I contributed. This one is built on top of Jitsi.

[https://github.com/capnmidnight/lozya](https://github.com/capnmidnight/lozya)

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tetrahedr0n
2d proto-"Ready Player One"

This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time; brilliant.

Is this open source? If so, I would love to contribute.

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jtokoph
We used this for a remote company “happy hour” today. This was the most fun
I’ve had with online video in a long time. We had a few “pods” that gradually
merged and split throughout the event.

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bdr
Tried this with a group of friends today and it was a lot of fun. The fading
is a great touch. Main thing we wanted was a minimap, or some way for new
arrivals to find us. Nice work!

~~~
sdrothrock
> Main thing we wanted was a minimap, or some way for new arrivals to find us.

I was thinking a minimap would be nice, or maybe a dash option so I could get
around a little faster.

For helping people find each other faster, it seems like just having maps with
more landmarks might help too!

It would be cool if I could upload my own PNG or something to use as a town
backdrop.

It would also be neat if I could click people and find where they are on the
map, or maybe just jump to them.

------
noelwelsh
Sococo has a similar idea. I've tried it in a few places and for some reason
it never really sticks. Maybe we're doing it wrong.

I understand the map is supposed to be NYC. I would use something more people
friendly (you don't need car-centric roads when there are no cars!) with more
greenery. Right now the map feels a bit odd to me, a bit like a post-
apocalyptic world. Maybe that's appropriate for the current time.

~~~
411111111111111
Put it into a fantasy setting!

...Skyrim meetings confirmed?

------
fileyfood500
Made it to hacker news!! Congrats all!!

I wonder if you would consider open sourcing the map creation component? I’d
love to contribute

I tried this for a passover and unfortunately the servers were really laggy at
that time so we stuck with zoom/Jitsi and gave up the fadeout

For primoserver, it’s similar but definitely needs a larger map, appeared to
have lag issues on calls.

------
atiredturte
This was a fantastic experience! Probably the first time I've felt that online
catchups could be like group ones. Had a good chat with Cyrus and some others.
I could really imagine myself hanging out on here more often (despite never
really being one for chatrooms).

Thank you for making this! I had a blast. (Guy - Australia)

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katlin
Ah this is super cute! Literally sending this to everyone i know.

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armagon
This is so awesome. So neat to see lots of people here. I totally want to use
this -- especially if there is a plan individuals can afford (ex. for board
game nights).

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arjinium
This is definitely interesting. It reminds me of the bulletin boards slash
chat rooms built by the fictional company Mutiny in the series Halt and Catch
Fire.

A suggestion, I can basically create multiple 'people' by opening the app in
multiple tabs, though it does seem to know me because the nickname seems to
remain the same, maybe you should look at a way of allowing a single persona
at a given time, if that is possible?

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shtack
I've been looking for something like this for the past couple of weeks, so I'm
super excited to try it.

Another thing I think would be great would be shared virtual backgrounds
depending on where on the map you are. My team has tried to hack this together
manually (standups taking place with everyone having a background photo of our
abandoned office space,etc) but an automated zoom plugin or similar would be
great.

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thereyougo
Please keep the graphic in this quality.

It gives an easy-going/fun vibe to the game.

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elk235
Thank you. This is so great. I am curious how one can implement these multi-
channels and always-on communication. Are they via WebRTC? Don't they get
prohibitively expensive?

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tekchip
PlayStation Home RIP wasnt video calls but avatars in a virtual space.
Something you have to have for folks not willing or able to do video so the
same thing in essence.

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genki_af
I love this so much. Completely new paradigm of online chat.

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anticsapp
That is so cool. For the first few minutes everyone ran away from me :( But
then I was welcomed into a convo.

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rollinDyno
I think the concept is cool but after walking a few steps the game just
freezes for me. Will try again later.

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caditinpiscinam
Used this for the past hour hanging out with friends remotely - super fun!

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simzor
2D VR-Chat with a cam! Really cool stuff :)

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atum47
really cool, met two very nice Canadians there. I hope this catches on. People
will have a blast using it.

