Mozilla Launches Hubs Cloud

Mozilla’s Mixed Reality group launches a cloud version of Mozilla Hubs, their social space for virtual reality gatherings. 

With Hubs Cloud, organisations can now deploy and customize their own instance of Mozilla Hubs. It is available on the AWS Marketplace and manages all necessary AWS resources. There are two versions available: personal and enterprise. The difference between the two is that personal manages one server, and enterprise manages multiple servers and optionally a dedicated content streaming server. The benefits of managing your own Hubs Cloud are that you can customize the rooms for uptime and concurrency in case you are hosting a big event. It also allows you to keep sensitive data inside your company’s network. 
 

Mozilla Hubs allows people to meet in a 3D environment, where people can either join using a normal computer, or using a virtual reality device. It works with both the Chrome and Mozilla browser, and also works on virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Quest, Oculus Go, and Samsung Gear VR. For virtual reality platforms it’s possible to use Mozilla’s special Firefox Reality browser. 

Mozilla Hubs launched in April 2018. It represents people with an avatar which can walk around and talk to other avatars. It is also possible to spawn virtual objects to gather around, to hold video presentations, and to share your screen with your virtual peers. When you join with a virtual reality device with controllers you can also control your hands and fingers in a 3D space. It is possible to design your own virtual reality environment using Mozilla’s Spoke software. 

The benefit compared to a video call is that you are actually present in an environment, can walk around, high five each other, and point to things. At the moment many companies are working fully remotely, and employees conduct many meetings over Zoom, Skype, Teams, and other video conferencing solutions. However, not being present and embodied turns out to be exhausting. A solution such as Hubs gives meeting participants a spatial context to meet in, which can result in a higher productivity. 

Hubs is an open source project, available on GitHub. You can create your own free room on https://hubs.mozilla.com/.