Comment by Arathorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Arathorn | Hacker News Reader

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I can speak to Third Room, although haven’t dug enough into the current incarnation of Croquet to do a side by side comparison. I’ve called out the bits which I’d guess are more unique about TR.

TR is/was:

* Open decentralised platform for spatial 3D collaboration, end-to-end encrypted by default thanks to being built on top of Matrix

* Web native built on WebGL/WebXR; no proprietary Unity or similar. glTF native for content.

* Apps written in WASM (compiled down from C, JS, and in theory Rust or Zig), using WebSG (our proposed web standard API for manipulating glTF content)

* Triple-buffered engine that can get 120fps on typical hw, including full immersive VR and XR on Quest Pro

* Direct manipulation in-world editing and inspector (“web style”), exposing the same model used by WASM apps.

* Networking is full mesh (so limited to 20-30 players per room), but these days could scale much higher by using the Element Call SFU (or by tiling the world)

Unfortunately, despite the Creator Update kicking ass in June (https://matrix.org/blog/2023/06/07/introducing-third-room-tp...) we failed to lock down long-term funding for Third Room and the team disbanded in July. The code and servers prevail though, and hopefully some day it may live again.

The original Croquet was a major inspiration for TR, and it’s cool to see the name live on. Hope they have more success than we did with TR.

Damn, this is a huge shame. What were this sticking points for investors if you don't mind me asking? What is the value proposition? I mean, I am really interested in potentially using this in the AEC industry as an open source product. But where would the revenue come from?

The biggest sticking points were:

a) metaverse hype collapse causing blowback oversteer against any kind of virtual world platform

b) the team wasn't interested in running it standalone as a for-profit startup outside of the Matrix Foundation, and Matrix doesn't have enough $ to fund core Matrix, let alone Third Room

c) big organisations who claimed they were interested in funding it within Matrix entirely failed to follow through (which probably maps to metaverse hype collapse). My favourite example is Rolls Royce, who ran a fullblown innovation challenge in May, saying they were specifically focusing on interoperable 3D collaboration: https://iuk.ktn-uk.org/opportunities/rolls-royce-sme-innovat.... We invested significant effort in applying, and never even heard back from them at all. As far as I know, they silently ditched the innovation challenge without telling anyone who'd applied to it. You can see our showreel for it at https://youtu.be/cFKJ-IuGaKA.

In terms of business models: selling SaaS hosting and proprietary apps & DLC on top of the open platform is the way to go, imo. https://thirdroom.io/preview#what-can-you-use-it-for has ideas for problem domains.

If anyone reading this happens to have $500K-$1M/y available to fund core dev, there's a small but finite chance of finding a way to get the project back on the road. But the core Third Room team has disbanded, and as per https://matrix.org/blog/2023/12/25/the-matrix-holiday-update... the focus of the remaining Matrix core team is currently monomaniacally on core Matrix foundations rather than future-facing stuff like Third Room.

Needless to say, I feel incredibly frustrated that we funded TR so far, and then had to stop before it got to escape velocity: simultaneously helping the open metaverse while setting it back too.

Thank you for outlining the challenges. I think the whole metaverse angle has been a mistake. There are many legitimate use-cases like work collaboration, or multiplayer games. The marketing of the metaverse just leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

If one were to create a MVP for a collaboration platform. Would it be possible to do that with the current state of Third Room in your opinion?

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