YORB 2020 is a web application which allows people to communicate together using audio and video while navigating a 3D rendered environment. I started development of this project for the students of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program to provide an alternative to the many existing digital communications platforms they might expect to use daily: Discord, Facebook, Instagram, Slack, Zoom, SMS & messaging apps and email, to name just a few.
Why? Whereas most of these applications work quite well in certain domains (work environments, syncing communication across large teams, integrations with other applications or games, etc.), they almost universally fail to achieve anything close to an organic, in-person interaction. YORB 2020 attempts to provide a more natural interface for web-based communication.
YORB premiered as the digital residence of NYU ITP’s Spring Show as well as its sister “Interactive Media Arts” programs at NYU Shanghai and NYU Abu Dhabi and has since been used for many events and has an internal development team at ITP.
Technologies
- WebGL (three.js), WebRTC with Mediasoup Selective Forwarding Unit, Websockets (socket.io), Node.js, Digital Ocean Server