Sure: honest constructive feedback is incredibly valuable.
Declaring that something still in an early beta is “not a very good experience” because it doesn’t interest you, and has a ton of incomplete features, isn’t especially useful – it’s mostly just demoralizing.
The incomplete features were not what I was criticizing- that’s to be expected from a site in beta. It was the concept behind the virtual theater as a whole that I had feedback about. I’m sorry if that was demoralizing to you, but I say again- I thought the whole point of this was to get feedback. Sometimes there’s no nice way to give negative feedback. That doesn’t mean it’s not constructive feedback. Contructive isnt the same thing as positive.
If you’re not really looking for honest feedback and just looking for cheerleaders… well, good luck with all of this, but I won’t be on board.
You realize you don’t have to use it right?
Well I feel kinda silly; didn’t realize that was Cambot up in the upper right corner. I’ve now been able to navigate around a lot better.
@ivan if you’d like some constructive feedback, one thing I noticed was that I was expecting to be able to navigate back to a place I was in (like back to the Lobby from the Kingadome) by clicking something on the screen rather than the back button on my browser. I think a feature like that would make the Gizmoplex more interactive and feel like you’re actually moving around in a theater as opposed to navigating a website. Also, adding more doors or rooms to move around in rather than clicking Cambot (who I completely missed; I honestly thought he was just a decorative flourish since he’s positioned right next to the word “BETA” and he’s also oriented on his side as opposed to being oriented right side up) might add to the experience that way as well.
My honest, constructive feedback is that after playing around with the virtual theater, I don’t think I can go back to the vanilla website. I’ve been exclusively watching in the half-zoomed “theater” mode, with the seats and the curtains showing. I love the window dressing, and it really adds to the experience.
Knowing that you guys could have just gone with the vanilla VHX site and called it a day, but you wanted to make something more robust and interactive – I’m glad you did. I’m looking forward to seeing how it continues to grow.
I think that more features like that are in the works – every level has escalators off to either side, which will eventually be functional links so that you can explore the building by going up and down a level at a time.
I think a lot of the confusion will clear up when they’re ready for the public launch. For now, they summarized a lot of the current features and imminent plans at the end of the Santo and the Treasure of Dracula livestream.
@Bob_Zygala, I get your point, and I don’t mean to give you a hard time, or suggest that we’re just looking for cheerleaders. I absolutely agree that constructive isn’t the same thing as positive.
But my reaction to your feedback wasn’t because it was negative. It’s because it seemed to reflect a desire to criticize without any desire to contribute to a better outcome.
By definition, constructive feedback involves giving actionable input to help make something better, and to help us fix things that could be better about what we’re doing.
If you look through this entire section of the forum, you’ll see hundreds of honest, constructive, critical comments about features that are confusing, could work better, would make the virtual theater more usable or efficient or fun. None of those comments are “cheerleading”, and none of them are “positive”… but all of them are voiced with the intention of helping the team create a better outcome for everyone.
When the feedback is simply that something “isn’t very good” and you don’t want or intend to use it, you’re not giving us any actionable feedback – unless your suggested action is for the team to give up on making the virtual theater that we’ve promised since the Kickstarter, because you don’t see the point in it, or want to use it.
You’re right: you can, and should, feel free to share whatever feedback you want – including critical and negative feedback. But the feedback we’ve asked for isn’t, “Do you think this entire endeavor is a misguided waste of time?” We’ve been pretty clear that we’re making this, that it’s not for everyone, that the other site will be available for people who don’t want it, and that we’re looking for feedback from people who do want to help shape it into something better than it would be without their feedback.
We’re not asking anyone to be uncritical.
We’re asking that the criticism be voiced from a desire to help create a better final product. If you’re “not on board” with that approach, that’s totally okay too. As I said in my initial response, no one is forcing you to use the virtual theater at all, especially if you prefer the basic site.
I think for the most part, people are very happy with the virtual theater, and are excited about its potential. Sure, it’s a work in progress, but the interface is super cool and user friendly. Those who disagree or simply don’t like it can always go to Gizmoplex.com or the app.
I honestly wish the Video Fridge from the VT could be ported to the Roku app. It’s a better way of viewing and searching the collection, and the part of the VT I use the most so far.
I just wanted to note I have been using the virtual theater successfully on Microsoft Edge browser.
Works fine in Firefox for me, as well.
Not surprising, I think Edge uses a Chromium backend these days. My assumption is the virtual theater will work with any of the main browsers, but it’s optimised for Chrome.
It is working fine for me in Opera as well.
The menu does not work in the New Moon browser. From Twitter since I can’t upload the pic directly here. Notice the menu on the top left.
Browser, New Moon 28.10.4a1 32 bit 2022-01-07 A build of Pale Moon for Windows XP.
The About:Config setting does not work.
general.useragent.override.gizmoplex.com - user set string -
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 9.1 rv:70.0) Firefox/70.0 Chrome/87.0 PaleMoon/28.10.4a0 Do I need to change this?
I’m kinda not surprised. I’ve used Pale Moon before, it’s rather “subset-y” of the core functionality. Running it on an obsolete OS means there is even less support for HTML5 technology.
If you want a stripped-down version of a capable browser, consider running Waterfox instead. Though I don’t know if you’ll find even that for XP. You might have better luck running a Linux VM in parallel on the hardware, which will give you better browser options.
I think the idea with the ticket booth, etc. being the first thing you see when you “walk through the door” is to make it feel like a real-life theater. I like to think of the Video Fridge as getting access to the film storage room because I know a guy who works at the theater. And once the Gizmoplex virtual theater is fully rolled out (early May, I believe) the escalators to right and left of the ticket booth will be functional, making navigation feel a little more intuitive. I believe it was only explained in an email or backer update that you needed to use the little Cambot in the upper right to navigate.
I’d also like those current feature and upcoming feature standees to be clickable, too. And maybe they will!
They are clickable; you just can’t do much with them unless they’re actually playing. Both take you to the Kingadome though.
Ah, wonderful. I sadly have not been able to make it for the live broadcasting of either of the two episodes so far, so I didn’t realize they actually took you somewhere.
I agree. This entire project feels like a “hat on a hat”. It’s cute, but unnecessary. The fact that it requires watching on a computer means I very likely won’t be using it. I strongly prefer watching on my large TV with the remote as a super simple input device. Yes, I could buy a laptop and connect it to my TV, but I’m not interested in that. Yes, I could probably stream from by desktop to my TV, but it would still require me sitting near my computer to control the interface.
I’m glad other people are enjoying this, but I would rather all this creative effort and time went into more episodes instead. Even a single new short would be more “valuable” to me than this new way of watching the subset of episodes I own that are available via this platform.
Tbh this thread feels really unnecessary. You’ll always have the basic VHX version to access your content from, so why bother complaining about something you’ll have to go out of your way to even experience???
Nobody is being forced to use the gizmoplex interactive site, and the amount spent on it was built into the beginning of the campaign, so acting like the “money could be spent differently” is just sour grapes that the thing they built isn’t what you wanted.
I just don’t understand- this isn’t an issue of functionality, accessibility, features or other actual PROBLEMS with the gizmoplex- just a place to whine about a piece of internet content that wasn’t tailored specifically for you.
So why bother saying anything at all???
(Sorry if this comes off angry, antagonistic or doesn’t fit with the overall vibe of the forum. I would say that would be just as easily applied to this thread as a whole, and the whole thing could just be scrapped.)