EDIT: Sorry I'm having some issues with my servers now since lots of people are using it! Hoping to fix it soon!
Hey HN! I've been working on this project for a few months now and I thought this would be a good time to release a beta version. DJ3D will keep Youtube videos in sync with a group of up to 30 people, and each person gets a fun little avatar in a 3D world to mess around with. All you have to do is create a room and share the URL!
Tech stack:
- Agones + nengi for the multiplayer
- three.js for rendering
- Firestore for video syncing
Coming Soon:
- Usernames
- Chat
- Video queuing
- More expressive features (dances, emotes, etc.)
Sorry if you encounter any issues, it's still a work in progress. Feel free to report bugs or give feature suggestions at our Discord!
Could you have the room creator limit what features are available? I could see this being a valuable tool for education when the feature set is minimal but very fun for social situations when the feature set is fully activated.
Definitely. I already added the option for the room creator to limit who can change the video. Will keep the education use-case in mind for future things like this! Thanks for the feedback
About 10 years ago, Lorne Lanning made something like this, even tried to build a company around it. It did not succeed, but was a lot of fun. Happy to see the idea again.
Just added the username feature! It appears above your head... Working on adding chat next. Technically you could use your username for a super janky chat haha
This is very exciting. I have been browsing /shownew lately here and this is another project that is very inspiring.
I have a hard time staying focused when watching programming tutorials, or any educational content really. I felt so much more relaxed and focused having the ability to let my character jump around while watching the content.
Plus this will be a great tool with the social distancing measures being taken.
EDIT: You could develop this into a full-blown virtual movie theater experience. Add a snack bar and rows of seats. Maybe you could even sell virtual popcorn to people.
I love this! I would be perfect is the little guy can jump in the cubes like in a platformer, it's amazing that you have all this space to run, but it's a litte boring if you can't climb thins or hit/interact with other users. But lovely idea, cheers. (sorry for my english)
The biggest problem IME is that VR headsets are not very high resolution, since the screen needs to cover a wide FOV but your eyes look for sharp detail in the center of what you're looking at. So you'll see a slight screen-door effect or aliasing. The VR cinema feels nice and big but you won't see the same level of detail as in real life.
Motion sickness is not usually an issue with apps made for VR because they've usually implemented move-by-teleporting. I've tested VR with multiple people who get motion sick playing regular first-person games like Minecraft, but they don't get motion sick in VR.
It'd be cool to have the option to feed my webcam to the face of the character, and for the head to point in the direction of the mouse cursor like Minecraft.
The grass is a cool feature showing how well three.js works,
maybe add a small world building tool with different terrains. Not sure how much more load it would add.
A chat would be nicer for all the other people watching, although a room setting would be a good compromise. People suggesting features left and right just shows how nice this is.
62 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 60.7 ms ] threadHey HN! I've been working on this project for a few months now and I thought this would be a good time to release a beta version. DJ3D will keep Youtube videos in sync with a group of up to 30 people, and each person gets a fun little avatar in a 3D world to mess around with. All you have to do is create a room and share the URL!
Tech stack:
- Agones + nengi for the multiplayer
- three.js for rendering
- Firestore for video syncing
Coming Soon:
- Usernames
- Chat
- Video queuing
- More expressive features (dances, emotes, etc.)
Sorry if you encounter any issues, it's still a work in progress. Feel free to report bugs or give feature suggestions at our Discord!
https://discord.gg/Wpmz55T
More of my projects:
https://neelmango.com/
-Dark mode or minimal light
-fading control options if not using for long time
With the way things have been going lately, I’d pay for this service.
- It would be great if you could use your webcam as your face, in addition to the emojis.
- Ability to send messages in the room and have them appear above your head would be a nice feature.
- Being able to set your username would be nice so you know who is who.
- It would be cool if there was multiple room types, and the creator of the room can pick one (A theatre, a grassy field, a living room, etc.).
I have a hard time staying focused when watching programming tutorials, or any educational content really. I felt so much more relaxed and focused having the ability to let my character jump around while watching the content.
Plus this will be a great tool with the social distancing measures being taken.
Thank you for sharing!
One weird thing, it seems like jumping makes the video restart
EDIT: Okay it seemed to stop doing that after I enabled and disabled my cursor again
EDIT: You could develop this into a full-blown virtual movie theater experience. Add a snack bar and rows of seats. Maybe you could even sell virtual popcorn to people.
Complete with keyboard and mouse. Why ever leave the game?
I'd love to be able to use my mouse as a mouse instead of just being locked to the camera.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/Bigscreen_Beta/
Edit: not affiliated
Motion sickness is not usually an issue with apps made for VR because they've usually implemented move-by-teleporting. I've tested VR with multiple people who get motion sick playing regular first-person games like Minecraft, but they don't get motion sick in VR.
You're almost at a point where this can be made into a browser extension, to include sites like Netflix, Hulu etc..
Also, please make it more like an actual movie theater were we could sit down and talk (audio chat).
Please add text chating, just please...............
This remind me reminiscent of drive-in movie theater...