Inspiration
Realizing early on that the possibilities of Virtual Reality are beyond what any individual could pursue, we created a space for real time collaboration and world building that's online and social.
How it works
Janus VR allows a spatial walk through the internet, inspired by the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson who detailed a metaverse. The analogy is that webpages are rooms, and links connect rooms via portals (doorways which seamlessly connect rooms). We can create virtual displays of any size and resolution to display web pages and terminals, the tools of a programmer in a shared virtual space. We also have 360 video and photospheres that can be shared and easy uploading into the world via local and external services so people can upload objects and view modify them inside.
Challenges I ran into
The networking was a challenge in having the clients talk to the node js server. The openWRT router has to setup its own DHCP server and the nodejs server and clients must be connected to it for it to work. It was glorious to see another user in a private immersive 3D world that can be hosted from a tiny pocketable router / android / raspberry pi and I'm curious about the possibilities of mesh networking in the future. Getting 360 video from youtube was a challenge as well and took a bit of problem solving to get to work. Also finding a way for users to share tmux sessions on the linux tunnel inside VR without stepping over each other was tricky. It didn't provide multiple cursors like it does in google docs.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Tunneling into a Linux terminal from inside Virtual Reality, having a really sweet looking room, having 360 video streaming directly from youtube in a shared VR space, setting up a tiny openWRT router to serve up 3D immersive content for the oculus rift that's only accessible via to those who can connect to the wireless Access point. We can start a virtual reality corporation or business. It's accessible via github. We have it working off an android phone and showing early signs that we can run a janus server on android as well. We did the impossible.
What I learned
Hella blender and git and creating 3D worlds and Android and things that blow my mind about the possibilities.
What's next for Metaverse Hackerspace
A way to exit out in the physical world from inside Janus. Livestreaming into VR from Youtube and CCTV. Economy via cryptocurrency. Having an active VR hackerspace and setting up high performing linux servers. 3D scanning of rooms and 3D positional audio. Android meshnets. SO MUCH.
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