Mozilla Hubs is Too Much Like Life

Mozilla Hubs Example

Greetings from the weekly ASCILITE MLSIG meeting, where we are trying out Mozilla Hubs. This is similar to Second Life (SL) with a Virtual Reality (VR) environment students can explore and interact in. It is easier to set up the SL and worked okay on my mobile phone. This included the augmented reality feature of allowing me to look around the virtual space by waving my phone around. However, the examples given are a little too literal, as was with Second Life (and perhaps lead to its demise, with deserted virtual campuses). A VR representation of a "real" library, with a card catalog, or a "real" courtroom, is not that useful, as at present real libraries are online (they have not had card catalogues for decades) and real courtrooms are online by video conference, without oak paneled benches. What might be more intesting would be something like CSIRO's project to control a real industrial robot with VR. 

Previously I thought Remo Conference had too crude a 2D representation of a conference room. However, by abstracting what is important and eliminating irrelevant details, this makes for a more useful interface than many VR implementations, which have too much irrelevant detail and reliance on the real world physics. 

Another problem is that Hubs would not work on my laptop. I was able to hear participants but not see the VR space. On my relatively new smart phone I could see the VR space, but not hear anyone. My low speed broadband was able to cope, but only just. I suggest that Hubs and similar applications, including Remo, build in low speed options which forgo the fancy interface for something which will work for more users.