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Comment by oliv__ | Hacker News Reader

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)

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I agree that it doesn't seem like the most efficient way to have a conversation, so if that's the goal, I don't see it working. It also doesn't make much sense for having a group call with one or two people.

However, I could see some value in making public chat rooms that people could join. This way 50 people join a room to talk about a particular subject and naturally split off into separate groups within the room. It would be sort of like a being at a party, where you could walk around and mingle and network with different groups of people. It would be a fun way to interact with new people, especially in current times when everyone is locked inside.

So, I see it less as a business tool, and more like VRChat (although without all the crazy avatars and games) where strangers go to socialize.

I can see the appeal in being able to drift in and out of conversations. The private room dynamic is kinda rigid, I basically have to explicitly secede from one conversation to start another.

This got me thinking, what is most affordable way to create a videoconferencing website nowadays? Is there some cheap streaming service, or is it better to deploy your own server in the cloud?

If you want to support < 5 person calls without things like hd screensharing, you can just do peer to peer webrtc connections.

Once you get above that, there’s a variety of FOSS you can self host, like jitsi and mediasoup (what pop.com uses.) There’s also some relatively cheap paid APIs like twilio and opentok.

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