For the Astronomical Society of Australia meeting this year, we at @futuremeetings built a virtual venue with 22 (I think..!) different spaces where you can chat, watch talks, examine epic video posters, or leap off asteroid Ryugu!
This was one hell of a lot of work, but I love how it's turned out! Attendees can drop into the space via a web browser, phone app, or VR headset, so there's a super low barrier for entry.
It's online conferencing, but not as you knew it 😀 (Too cheesy? Surely not!)
@grant_h No :-) Although you can walk off the edge of the virtual scene -- we didn't get round to putting up a barrier. But you respawn back on the rock after tumbling briefly away into space!
@elizabethtasker@futuremeetings Looks cool. But why do we still need wals/roof for the virtual room? Would be marvellous to have plenaries on the surface of Mars.
@minzastro I totally agree! We did have scenes that were different (such as the scene on asteroid Ryugu) but ultimately (and slightly reluctantly) opted for a scene that people would be familiar with, as most people at the meeting would not have tried a platform like this before and some were rather reluctant. Next time, maybe!
I want that now. How we people handled? Configurable avatars? Photo-something?
Having just come back from a Covid-infested hybrid meeting with Zoom webinar as the peak of immersiveness, and 400 ppl in person, I really REALLY want better alternatives.
@knud Configurable avatars! This was hosted on spatial.io, which integrates with 'Ready Player Me" avatars that offer a large range of choices.
And I totally agree about the problem with regular in-person or hybrid. Online opens the door to vastly more people, but we have to improve the experience over just a zoom connection.
Any chance to visit the Spatial space? Maybe even this week? I'd love to get a feel for this environment. And if we can just use it (or the approach) for other meetings.
@knud Unfortunately, it's in use for the Astronomical Society for Australia meeting, after which it will be used for two other conferences later this year. I'm not sure whether we'll make this open at any point, but I'll ask our team whether we might think about it for a short period in the future.
This is why my mastodon feed has been filled with different #Blender models these last few months! While we purchased the overall room layouts, many were not optimised for #VR, so we had to recreate and replace a lot of the assets and structures with low-poly equivalents!
@elizabethtasker That sounds like a LOT of work. I had to fix inverted normals and redo the texture atlases on half a virtual TV studio for VR use and it was a major pain. But that was only half the model, and yours look bigger. 😬