oh, wow. we have 3D Tile support in https://thirdroom.io but had only ever found NASA’s Mars dataset as a good set of tiles to point it at. This could effectively turn Third Room into a FOSS, decentralised, E2EE multiplayer Google Earth running over Matrix!
As much as I like the third room concept (I like it, but didn't actually try it), I am wondering how much of a distraction it is for Matrix developers?
As a datapoint, a good chunk of my social circles use Matrix, but they seem to incessantly complain about Element. Though very nice improvements have been made lately, I can say from what I've seen and experienced that a lot of improvements can still be made:
- experience was night and day when I switched from my resource-constrained Galaxy S4 with LineageOS 18.1 to a FP4. The phone and most apps were fine, but Element was oh so sluggish compared to the others. I thought it was just the app, but it works much better on this new phone. It now takes seconds to sync after opening instead of multiple minutes.
- my SO experiences constant glitching with Element on Chrome on Macos. The web app fights with the browser to draw over the URL and tab bar. It might be a chrome bug, I'll report this. Additionally, the UI appears to be rendered at single-digit framerates.
- I've seen multiple serious bugs that end up clearing the local DB, triggering an initial sync that lasts for more than 10 minutes.
- I only recently discovered that Android could handle conversation-level notification granularity, and don't have anything similar on my other devices. I don't wish to have the same level of intrusiveness from all chats: for some, I want to see the notifications, for others I want to hear them, etc. Some space-based device-specific controls would be nice to have.
A lot of the issues can be improved by the upcoming sliding sync, and I know vector.im isn't in a brilliant financial situation. I can't really direct you to spend energy on some topics vs others, but it seems to me that there are more (potential or current) Matrix users with old hardware than VR gear. And since messaging is so reliant on networking effects, I would concentrate on being able to reach the largest possible audience.
Now, I really don't want you to get the wrong idea, I love most projects at Matrix/vector, but I can't help but feeling uncomfortable when third room is talked up, while basic chat features leave a lot to be desired.
On this specific point, you are right, and seeing such integration would be awesome. Just don't get addicted to Google-provided data :)
Funnily enough, they address this question on the linked website:
> Whenever we work on metaverse or VR for Matrix (e.g. 3D video calling, or our original Matrix + WebVR demo) we always get a some grumpy feedback along the lines of “why are you wasting time doing VR when Element still doesn’t have multi-account?!” or whatever your favourite pet Matrix or Element deficiency is.
> The fact is that Third Room has been put together by a tiny team of just Robert (project lead, formerly of Mozilla Hubs & AltspaceVR), Nate (of bitECS fame) and Ajay (of Cinny fame) - with a bit of input from Rian and Jordan (Design), Bruno (Hydrogen) and Hugh (OIDC). On the Matrix side it’s been absolutely invaluable in driving Hydrogen SDK (which also powers things like Chatterbox and of course Hydrogen itself) - as well as helping drive native Matrix VoIP and MSC3401 implementation work, and critically being our poster-child guinea pig experiment for the first ever native OpenID Connect Matrix client! In terms of “why do this rather than improve Element” - the ___domain-specific expertise at play here simply isn’t that applicable to mainstream Element - instead there are tonnes of other people focused on improving Matrix (and Element). For instance we shipped a massive update to Element’s UI the other week.
Thanks for replying with this. I know it's not my place to comment on what people spend their time on, but somehow couldn't resist commenting this time. I thought sharing my instinctive reaction may be invaluable, but it's true they probably get it a lot.
Oh well, I have a bit more time these days, I should finish up and submit the Matrix Spec Change I started drafting almost a year ago... Everything takes time.
Would it be worth having a conversation about thirdroom and Open Brush integration? Our community is always looking to find ways to get their creations onto a social platform and we have a three.js add-on that should make it pretty easy to add our custom shaders to thirdroom.
