Mozilla Hubs
hubs.mozilla.com
hubs.mozilla.com
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.
[1]https://www.eventbrite.com/e/onboardxr-4-port-of-registry-ti...
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/
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.
More VR like tabletop simulator please!
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.
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.
Tabletop simulator in particular is problematic because of it's physics engine and the chaos that that always causes.
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?
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.
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.
The point of poker with friends isn't to grind out hands with an optimal strategy as quickly as possible.
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.
For those out of loop: http://paulgraham.com/altair.html | https://archive.is/5HNc5
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.
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.
Edit: Except for the guy that microwaved fish. Fuck that guy.
( 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.
And my goodness, didn't he luck out with RED and Moonrise Kingdom.
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.
There's really not all that much to do, but she liked knowing that she could walk around and goof around with me.
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
I hope to run into you some day!
It makes me wonder how it would feel to walk around a virtual museum like this in VR and experience it with friends. However because the avatars are so loud it would likely detract from the experience.
[Radiohead - KID A MNESIA Exhibition (PS5)] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qW_uHohQUpo
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.
but my second take is, wouldn't it be nice to be able
to walk around with someone on a video call?
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?
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.
Or cave wall.
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.
Also:https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/03/a-new-year-a-new-mdn/
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.
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
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.
Conference calls can be boring as hell too. I don't get why people stare directly into the camera, mug-shot style for the whole meeting. I place my camera on my second monitor off to the side, and glance over when I'm talking or need to make eye contact.
In normal office meetings, people sit around a table, you turn your head or glance around table to speak with people. But in a boring as hell Teams catch-up, everyone is mug-shot fronting each other. When the family cat wanders into the scene, everyone laughs and enjoys it because suddenly the monotone format gained some 3d life.
I'm not surprised virtual spaces are being explored. Hubs is at least browser based, and the scene editor too. Open source, self-hostable, easy to use. it ticks a lot of boxes. I was pleased it all worked well in slightly outdated Firefox 88 with adblocker and enhanced tracking on without issue.
Sharing images... well, perhaps an artist wants to share their intention for a real exhibition of photos. A virtual space allows the collection to be viewed in a similar manner to the intended real gallery space. Artists ideally like to exhibit bodies of work rather than drip-feeding single images spaced one click apart, each one covered in "share this" junk icons and prompts.
If they look slightly to the side, they see an awkward photograph of their own face, just a little bit too big.
A 3D space would make the conference calls more ineffective in practice since the focus shifts from the actual things you're discussing to something else. You'll also have to force people to join the 3D world and run around to receive the audio. Most certainly, if used in a corporate setting, a lot of the participants will have little to no interest in that 3D world. I picture a large company implementing this and there will be a few people excited while most will hate it. They will be forced to fake interest in order to receive a pay check.
I think gamifying work is a bad idea and forcing employees to be in a kindergarten kind of experience is very offensive because in reality this is probably the most likely scenario how 3D meeting spaces will be used in practice.
If you want me to game while at work, at least let me pick an actual game and we can talk work at the same time. I am not attacking the tech behind it since it is probably good and strong but the idea of 3D working spaces in a kindergarten experience is a horrible idea in my opinion.
For the gallery example, sure maybe it would work in a VR experience which is a lot more immersive but it also adds a lot of clutter from what you're trying to display. I get that there could be a place for it when visiting an IRL gallery is not a viable option.
It is all just my personal opinions of course, I recognize that other people may like the idea of living their lives online in a 3D world but personally I prefer the real world. I guess I am just afraid how 3D spaces will be used since I fear it will be forced upon people around the world just like most corporate things like soulless open offices, "voluntary" corporate cringe activities and so on.
At the same time you also have to recognize that they probably spent a lot of man hours and money on this rather than actually improving their browser which is lagging behind most others. To me Mozilla seems focused on everything except making their core product something I want to use and support and I am not alone you just need to look at the usage numbers which are so low Firefox is rapidly becoming irrelevant which is incredibly sad.
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).
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.
I would have prefered if Mozilla simply fixed Lockwise.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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."
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.
Is there a trusted Open Source package that does this?
> 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: Naïve 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.
Mozilla Hubs – Private social VR in your web browser - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24872589 - Oct 2020 (103 comments)
:-/
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.
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.
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?
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.)
Talk about throwing their money away.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Oddly I use the snap rotation when playing Echo VR because in VR I found the uncontrolled smooth rotation more annoying. YMMV.
IMO, Hubs has been quite avant-garde and deserves more respect.
https://hubs.mozilla.com/docs/img/CoastalCliffHouseShot1.jpg
Besides, you could make your own scene and increase texture detail and not worry about optimization. Add more detail around the hard edges, add furniture etc. That leaves indirect lighting, soft shadows, particle effects as the potential improvements. But those things I'm guessing would kill performance.
Guess it might be time to switch browser soon ): Google have won.
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.
Imagine if Google or the other tech silos did this. You'd need a phone-verified account for sure before permission to send even one single emoji is granted.
Each to their own, but I'm planning on making a work-themed scene and inviting our small team. The fun part will be arranging the scene with familiar products we sell (industrial machines) placed around the virtual workshop, and a few posters on wall etc.
What am I overlooking, how is this going to help Mozilla and the web?
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.
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.
Relevant, as this is exactly what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4VBqTViEx4
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.
I'm not being snarky: how is this different/better?
I think there is a distinction between technology experiments (which produce prototypes and proofs of concept) and product experiments (which produce MVPs).
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.
They fired the MDN team, most of the Rust and Servo teams, etc., to prioritise funding pie-in-the-sky projects like these.
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.
Fine, I give up. I'm off to install Brave.
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.