Launch HN: Scena360.com – Immersive gathering platform

Hey HN!

Danilo, Anshuman and Daekun here, co-founders of Scena 360 and Software Engineering students at the University of Waterloo. Scena 360 lets you host more natural and private meetups in shared 3D spaces. In Scena 360, you can turn towards the person that you're talking to and have separate conversations around campfires without having to break into awkwardly-moderated breakout rooms.

Having completed several remote internships and study terms online, we realized how much 2D calls suck, as do most users that we have spoken to. We personally felt anxious keeping our webcams turned on and staring at blank screens, joining "virtual work parties" and "virtual conferences" without being able to casually talk to people. On top of that, we got fed up with malicious video conferencing software.

Imagine that you're in a workshop: Seeing the speaker give a presentation at the front of the room, while you're having a side-discussion with the person next to you about an issue. Turning to the mentor walking by to ask a question. Walking over to another group to strike a chat with them. Talking to a person with their video turned on or a customizable avatar (similar to Bitmoji, Memojis) instead of a blank, muted rectangle. Knowing that your talks are protected with end-to-end encryption. These experiences are made possible with Scena 360.

On top of the above, we plan on expanding the room capacity to handle much more than *10 people/room*, potentially hundreds of people per room.

Scena 360 is built using A-Frame, ReactJS & WebRTC. We'd be happy to answer any questions about our tech or product (example: how we keep conversations private).

We would love to hear your feedback. What do you dislike about 2D video conferencing?