<story><title>Mozilla Hubs</title><url>https://hubs.mozilla.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChicagoBoy11</author><text>The feedback so far is pretty negative, but I think folks that poo poo these virtual office environments fail to channel the PG heuristic of &amp;quot;what is this the [ancient tech version of something that is now ubiquitous] of?&amp;quot; when thinking about these spaces.&lt;p&gt;As a substitute for the collaboration tools we now have, these are unquestionably terrible. But for those of you that can, I&amp;#x27;d highly recommend checking out PokerStars VR before then diving into your opinion of virtual work environments.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;ve ever played poker with friends, you&amp;#x27;ll quickly realize that there are many parts of IRL poker that... truly suck. Play is slower than what you would like, and, if you play &amp;quot;correctly&amp;quot;, the ratio of hands you are playing to time you are waiting for shuffling,dealing,etc. is quite obnoxious. There are pain points, even though overall it is super fun to play poker with friends.&lt;p&gt;Pokerstars, to my mind, did a masterful job in faithfully recreating poker in the virtual world, but then augmenting it by taking advantage of the VR tech. There&amp;#x27;s still a table, there&amp;#x27;s still a deck, the rules are the same, etc. But, because of the medium, the game goes... MUCH faster. Therefore, you get to play more hands, which is more fun. Also, yes, you might still wait around for hands, but now you get all sorts of virtual sidegames or dumb tchotchkis you can play with on your table, which is fun. Your environment can be any one of really incredible settings that help set the mood for a poker night, which is probably nicer than your mom&amp;#x27;s basement. Etc, etc, etc.&lt;p&gt;My point is, poker is a pretty mundane game from an IRL perspective, yet I fundamentally believe that had I the option to invite 5 friends over to play poker in my house versus getting the same 5 friends to meet me in the VR room, that we&amp;#x27;d have far more fun in the VR room. This before the fact that the friction of getting together physically is now erased, so chances are we might even get to play more often. This works, however, because it isn&amp;#x27;t a perfect analogy to the real world poker; rather, because its virtual, there are enough different things that help make it better to an extent that it beats its real world counterpart (at least for me).&lt;p&gt;All of this stuff is pretty nascent and I agree that there&amp;#x27;s lots of crap there, but there will be something unquestionably brilliant about inhabiting virtual spaces with folks where you can bend some laws of physics to make mundane things (like meetings) work a little bit better than they do IRL.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dehrmann</author><text>&amp;gt;  there are many parts of IRL poker that... truly suck. Play is slower than what you would like, and, if you play &amp;quot;correctly&amp;quot;, the ratio of hands you are playing to time you are waiting for shuffling,dealing,etc. is quite obnoxious.&lt;p&gt;The point of poker with friends isn&amp;#x27;t to grind out hands with an optimal strategy as quickly as possible.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mozilla Hubs</title><url>https://hubs.mozilla.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ChicagoBoy11</author><text>The feedback so far is pretty negative, but I think folks that poo poo these virtual office environments fail to channel the PG heuristic of &amp;quot;what is this the [ancient tech version of something that is now ubiquitous] of?&amp;quot; when thinking about these spaces.&lt;p&gt;As a substitute for the collaboration tools we now have, these are unquestionably terrible. But for those of you that can, I&amp;#x27;d highly recommend checking out PokerStars VR before then diving into your opinion of virtual work environments.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;ve ever played poker with friends, you&amp;#x27;ll quickly realize that there are many parts of IRL poker that... truly suck. Play is slower than what you would like, and, if you play &amp;quot;correctly&amp;quot;, the ratio of hands you are playing to time you are waiting for shuffling,dealing,etc. is quite obnoxious. There are pain points, even though overall it is super fun to play poker with friends.&lt;p&gt;Pokerstars, to my mind, did a masterful job in faithfully recreating poker in the virtual world, but then augmenting it by taking advantage of the VR tech. There&amp;#x27;s still a table, there&amp;#x27;s still a deck, the rules are the same, etc. But, because of the medium, the game goes... MUCH faster. Therefore, you get to play more hands, which is more fun. Also, yes, you might still wait around for hands, but now you get all sorts of virtual sidegames or dumb tchotchkis you can play with on your table, which is fun. Your environment can be any one of really incredible settings that help set the mood for a poker night, which is probably nicer than your mom&amp;#x27;s basement. Etc, etc, etc.&lt;p&gt;My point is, poker is a pretty mundane game from an IRL perspective, yet I fundamentally believe that had I the option to invite 5 friends over to play poker in my house versus getting the same 5 friends to meet me in the VR room, that we&amp;#x27;d have far more fun in the VR room. This before the fact that the friction of getting together physically is now erased, so chances are we might even get to play more often. This works, however, because it isn&amp;#x27;t a perfect analogy to the real world poker; rather, because its virtual, there are enough different things that help make it better to an extent that it beats its real world counterpart (at least for me).&lt;p&gt;All of this stuff is pretty nascent and I agree that there&amp;#x27;s lots of crap there, but there will be something unquestionably brilliant about inhabiting virtual spaces with folks where you can bend some laws of physics to make mundane things (like meetings) work a little bit better than they do IRL.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Miraste</author><text>This is a good point. I don&amp;#x27;t agree that PokerStars VR is better than real life and won&amp;#x27;t be until the tech can replicate details like facial expressions, but the concept of eliminating unnecessary pain points is sound. It reminds me of the gradual removal of the old skeumorphic designs in iOS. However, Mozilla Hubs isn&amp;#x27;t doing any of that. I can&amp;#x27;t find a single advantage it has over any other collaboration software, frankly.</text></comment>