Show HN: I built a new version of my fun spatial 3D online meeting app
48 points by pawelwentpawel an hour ago | 28 comments
Hi HN!

flat.social is a fun spatial online meeting app for remote teams and communities. It's largely built like a web multiplayer game, and the 3D virtual spaces are highly customisable with elements and activities (I recently added surfing!).

Live demo to try it out: https://app.flat.social/f/demo-flat

Here's a quick demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeinBNqL23s

It's a solo, bootstrapped project built with Three.js, LiveKit and Rapier for physics. I built the first version during the pandemic and posted it here back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31833415

I had a couple of months off this year, so I locked myself in an (almost) jungle house in Brazil and rebuilt it into what I've always wanted it to be.

Would love to hear what you think!

  • zacharycohn an hour ago |
    This is super neat.
    • pawelwentpawel an hour ago |
      Thank you!
  • findthebug an hour ago |
    i call this the end game of social media
  • mtford an hour ago |
    Very impressive, well done!
  • dangond an hour ago |
    As someone who has seen and used (and disliked) many similar pieces of software, something about this feels much better and natural (I think it's that your avatar is just a circle with your video on it). Great job on nailing the feel of it!
    • pawelwentpawel an hour ago |
      Thank you! Getting the vibe right was definitely a challenging part, especially light and colours
  • jackb4040 an hour ago |
    Those videos of the actual webcam feeds are AI-generated, right? If I were you I would at least use the videos of real people from the original demo, if not try to have another live demo. Maybe not the highest priority but it does affect the first impression of the product and whether people assume it's a vibecoded mess under the hood or not.

    Anyways, is source available anywhere?

    • pawelwentpawel 41 minutes ago |
      Yep, the faces in the demo video are AI right now, mostly for speed. I built a little system to direct / record it but real faces coming soon too!
      • gus_massa 31 minutes ago |
        Real faces as in your friends or actors, or real faces as in unsuspecting users? (I guess the first.)
        • pawelwentpawel 22 minutes ago |
          Just friends!
      • jackb4040 23 minutes ago |
        Haha cool I figured that's all it was.
    • toader 31 minutes ago |
      Are developers still in denial about the capabilities of coding agents, "vibecoded mess under the hood or not"? If the application works, do you think most users are thinking about the code quality?
      • jackb4040 26 minutes ago |
        OP actually just answered my question with no problem, we're all good bro. We don't need pro-AI evangelists inserting themselves.
        • toader 24 minutes ago |
          Not being in denial about the capabilities of coding agents is a far cry from being an "pro-AI evangelists"... 'bro'.
  • micromacrofoot an hour ago |
    I would work on affordances for when people with 0 gaming experience need to join, maybe a flat or simplified mode that someone can opt in to.

    I have a lot of experience testing a defunct spatial conferencing app during the pandemic and gamers had fun with it but people with no gaming experience universally hated it and wanted nothing to do with it. There were no affordances or instructions that made a dent after months of trying.

  • prometheus1992 an hour ago |
    Okay, you got me on the first impressions. signed up. also, use a demo video which has real people doing those activities and smiling etc. A little bit of authenticity will go a long way here.
    • pawelwentpawel 44 minutes ago |
      Thanks! Yep totally agree on the demo faces, they were mostly AI now for the speed but more videos with humans coming soon.
  • KolmogorovComp 35 minutes ago |
    this is unbearably slow and unusable on Safari.
    • pawelwentpawel 20 minutes ago |
      Thanks for the feedback! Initial couple seconds when the map is loading are indeed slow, I'll be optimising this as my priority in the next days.
  • topper00_raptor 34 minutes ago |
    Really fun, reminds me of this app my company use to use during Covid https://workadventu.re/
    • pawelwentpawel 23 minutes ago |
      Thank you! Yep there was a bunch of those, a lot of them with a pixel style aesthetic.
  • kittikitti 33 minutes ago |
    This is really great and I hope it succeeds. I am waiting for a service that combines the virtual spaces concepts of Habbo Hotel into digital meeting spaces. I think Meta VR attempted this but it was too clunky (requires a headset). Mozilla Hubs attempted this too but it was too similar to Second Life and Roblox in the sense that things were not modular enough and it takes too long to do simple things.
  • xander_north 21 minutes ago |
    This is amazing!
    • pawelwentpawel 13 minutes ago |
      Thank you!
  • Vishal_Max 10 minutes ago |
    This is so cool, i am going to try this with my friends, i will let you know about the experience.
    • pawelwentpawel 9 minutes ago |
      Thank you! There is also a little support / feedback button on the bottom left. Whenever you have any comments, feel free to use it.
  • coldblues 7 minutes ago |
    Performance is poor with frequent stutters.

    I think we peaked at https://www.gather.town/

    The only on-par open source solution is https://workadventu.re/, but it is genuinely a ball of mud and impossible to self-host.

    • pawelwentpawel 4 minutes ago |
      Hey, thanks for the feedback! It might be the first map load that's a bit heavy (I'm working on this now) - later once everything is loaded it should be much faster. Was it just the first couple seconds that were problematic for you or you stayed longer?

      PS. there is also a bunch of graphic tiers which suit more older machines. If you click on the top right there is a menu which has a graphics tab. It should switch automatically after a while too.