Yeah everyone I know hates switching to G+ for group calls. We have to use Skype to guide people through the G+ interface and get them on a group call.
I too would be interested in knowing where you found that. It has a beautiful interface and solves my #1 annoyance with google hangouts which is: "Where do I go to start one?". Every time I try to use Hangouts I invite a friend but they never get the invite or the other way around and we spend 5min getting it setup when we could have used Skype and had zero issues. Trust me I am all for getting off Skype but hangouts has neither been easy or fast to get going in my experience.
You have always been able to just visit https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/ to directly open a new empty hangout. This is equivalent to clicking "New Video Hangout" in the G+ sidebar. Also, you can give anyone a direct link to any hangout (e.g. via email or text).
That is in theory a great link because I have the problem of trying to figure out how to actually start a hangout all the time with users. I say in theory because, oddly, if I sign in with one G+ account it takes me right into a Hangout after authentication and any other G+ accounts take me to the beautiful landing page which is completely broken (nothing happens after filling in the form).
