Vivox/Voice off?

[Carla Kincaid-Yoshikawa]

While for some people, voice is not a big deal, for me it's a deal breaker. I'd like to hear that this is also a priority for Kitely, and that Ilan and others are NOT thinking we can rely on Discord or some other external voice app to manage. Getting companies to be willing to do training in 3D worlds is hard enough as it is, and dealing with trainees who have little to no experience in 3D environments is already a large barrier to success. Adding on the need to download, install and deal with another application (e.g., Discord) is a kind of straw that breaks the camels back.

Please tell us what the possibilities and timeline are for moving forward with reliable voice in Kitely.

Thanks

[Crash McCloud]

According to Firestorm:

"
The Vivox voice service (what we know as SLVoice) is being removed from Second Life. It seems quite likely that once Linden Lab have released their new voice solution (known as webRTC), the providers of Vivox (Unity) will disable the existing system forever. It is my intention to get a Firestorm viewer with webRTC released as soon as is practical. This will doubtless mean a “warts and all” release. If you want to help us and Linden Lab make webRTC as robust as it can be, then please join our preview group as we will soon have the beta there.
"

Native viewer support for voice in OpenSim is dependent on viewer support and, currently, on Vivox providing some OpenSim grids with access to their voice servers. SL is switching away from Vivox which means that viewers will switch away from it as well. In other words, it's just a matter of time until Vivox no longer works with any OpenSim grid, even if Vivox itself (now owned by Unity) agree to continue providing us access to it. For that to change we'd need to be able to create an alternative for SLVoice (a viewer component) and have viewer developers agree to include it with their viewer.

An alternative course of action is having OpenSim adopt the same webRTC solution that SL is switching to or use some mumble-based solution (an open source voice solution that would need to be integrated into OpenSim to work). Echo Voice worked on trying to develop a mumble-based alternative to SLVoice but AFAIK never released their results.

Creating an OpenSim replacement for SLVoice is an OpenSim-wide problem and requires an OpenSim-wide solution. Until one exists, workarounds will rely on using external programs such as Discord.

[Cooper Swizzle]

Ilan, thank you for the information. Now how do we join the test? I'm sure we all want to assist in this endeavor.

Cooper/ Bruce

[Carla Kincaid-Yoshikawa]

I'm happy to join the preview group. Let me know when/how to join.

Thanks for the response. As I said, voice is crucial for me.

[Crash McCloud]

The viewer developer was discussing the process of switching the viewer's Vivox support with the SL webRTC alternative. I'm not privy to the current development status of Firestorm. If you want to help viewer development then I suggest you contact the Firestorm developers and offer to help in their testing. Note, however, that this new viewer will only work in SL, until OpenSim adds the required backend service that is required to enable it to work.

[Story Link]

Thank you for battling the giants for us Ilan!

[Crash McCloud]

The viewer developer was discussing the process of switching the viewer's Vivox support with the SL webRTC alternative. I'm not privy to the current development status of Firestorm. If you want to help viewer development then I suggest you contact the Firestorm developers and offer to help in their testing. Note, however, that this new viewer will only work in SL, until OpenSim adds the required backend service that is required to enable it to work.

Wow, Ilan, you are a very busy man! I'm not usually a "forum" person (which includes Discord) because being autistic means I tend to get misunderstood a lot and sucked into unintended flame wars based on something I didn't say but someone presumed I was implying (when, in fact, being autistic tends to make us just blurt out exactly what we mean with no hidden meanings or agendas--which, on the positive side, for the larger non-autistic society at least--means we're pathologically honest, "too honest" for our own good, as my mother once told me I was before I even knew I was autistic; in fact, I could provide you with entire videos on the "positive" aspects of autism!), so maybe you spend this much time on the forum in addition to responding to all these problems very quickly every day & I don't realize it. I definitely appreciate it.

Anyway, this is very sad news indeed for me too, @Carla. And for my husband, who can't type in IM/local because of hand injuries, and "speech-to-text" programs still leave a lot to be desired ... although back when we first met in SL "Classic" eons ago, we "online dated" inworld by running Skype in the background, which seems like the simplest solution to me. We've been married for over a decade now, though, so it's also been over a decade since he's been an active virtual-worlds user, so he's forgotten how to use the more basic, Singularity-like viewers we had back then, and, although he has a Kitely avatar, I struggle to talk him into joining me here even to attend "passive" events like Shandon's storytelling sessions (although he does enjoy them once he gets there). And that's on Singularity, which is more like SL's legacy "Version 1" viewer that--after they redesigned the whole thing with no resident input --LL were surprised & very unhappy to find out that a year later, over 80% of residents were still using Viewer 1 because V2 was way too complex! In fact, I always recommend that VW newbies start out with Singularity because--although, as of the last version I have installed on my laptop that could run both SL and Open Sim and even the few post-InWorldz Halcyon grids that remain, you could still choose to use the "legacy" layout. I just find the original SL viewer far more intuitive to use, especially for someone who's completely new to VWs.

(Another common autistic trait is hating change! It wasn't broke; stop "fixing" it! I still see the invention of mesh--and then switch to server-side baking--as part of LL's evil conspiracy to force everyone to stop using Viewer 1 or TPVs like Singularity that are based on it against our will! And to kill off the number of TPV options we have, as it's finally succeeded in doing, it seems. )

It's also sad news for me because, like the hubby, my disabilities prevent me from sitting up at a screen for long periods of time without flaring up a multi-day bout of debilitating pain, and I haven't yet made the last upgrade to Firestorm because the instructions are just too complicated & time-consuming for me to follow so I can ensure I don't lose any of my saved chat logs, some of which are still around somewhere on an XP laptop from when I was first introduced to my husband (among other conversations I sentimentally want to keep)!

So ... Question 1: is there anyone else other than "Captain BlackJack," me, and one of my very good creator friends here still using Singularity rather than Firestorm? Raise your hand if you do. Louder please, I can't hear you without Vivox! I don't imagine Singularity will be getting a voice upgrade like Firestorm, let along any further upgrades in the future. Unless there are other Singularity users here who know the developer and whether that person might be amenable to doing at least that one upgrade to it?

Question 2: Is it possible to upload .XML freebies that are still floating around on the web via Firestorm? And, if so, how?

Thanks in advance!

PS: In case you haven't noticed yet, I think/talk too much, which is another reason you all don't want me using forums or Discord either! <-subtle reference to my favorite Batman villain from the '60s (Hey, anybody want to hear about the latest "monotropism" theory of autism? :zippermouth emoji:)

[Crash McCloud]

Hi Crash,

Regarding your question 2, you can technically upload XML files in Firestorm using these instructions. However, note that many of the "Freebies" you find online are not shared legally. So please make sure to follow these rules when deciding what you can and can't upload into SL/OpenSim grids.

[Crash McCloud]

Regarding your question 2, you can technically upload XML files in Firestorm using these instructions. However, note that many of the "Freebies" you find online are not shared legally. So please make sure to follow these rules when deciding what you can and can't upload into SL/OpenSim grids.

Thanks so much, Ilan! BTW, most of the things I upload are very old Linda Kellie objects. I see by the (long) discussion there that most copybotted things these days (e.g., mesh-avatar skins) don't apply to me anyway with my commitment to my system avatar. I've always created my own shapes and can't understand why everybody doesn't when it's about the easiest and most fun thing to do in virtual worlds. (In fact, even the skin I'm still wearing after two years is by Linda Kellie!).

The other stuff I have stored from the web comes from Outworldz.com, and it's my understanding that those items were donated there by the creators, with the creator name proudly listed in the link unless you know otherwise? They even have old Linda Kellie objects and OARs there that you can't find anymore since the Zadaroo website closed! While Linda Kellie's rules explicitly stated that you can do anything you want with her work! And, as Koshari can tell you, I also recognize the work/style of my favorite SL creators from the pre-mesh days and, if I know them, I let them know when I see one of their creations under a different creator name so they can check it out too and file a DMCA if they so choose because content theft outrages me too.

I get most of my freebies on the HG from reputable shops in OSG that have been around with the same content forever (I created my first Open Sim avatar that I still use back in 2010!), for example, Hylee's and other "stores" at Wright Plaza, where even OSGrid has signs posted saying that if you didn't create the content you want to share there yourself, they don't want it! As well as Wickenshire, where Patch Ferber is a very prolific creator of free houses and furniture. Although she only relatively recently started creating things out of mesh, her and Lara Nguyen's freebie items are pretty high-prim, so not many people would even go to the trouble of copybotting them. And I recognize a lot of Patch's textures as having come from the very popular Twisted Thorn Textures, which, for a while, had a second store in InWorldz (until the person hosting the sim where Nighty located her store kept closing down the sim and reopening it somewhere else!), but when InWorldz and other Open Sim grids first starting gaining popularity, Nighty (Goodspeed, TTT's owner, whose textures are very recognizable to me) initially asked people who wanted to use her textures on another grid to buy a license, and I actually paid $37 for one after I'd accumulated more than US$37 worth of textures--and, with the closure of InWorldz, lost all the textures I'd bought on that grid!). But eventually, she changed her policy to allow people to buy her textures in SL and take them to any other grid without having to buy a license for them. I have seen modified/retextured versions of Linda Kellie knick-knacks at Patch's furniture store, but her other stuff has been there at least since 2017. And she's another creator whose style I recognize.

Anyway, the thread on how to tell if an item is copybotted is very helpful. I've bookmarked it so I can read the rest of it later. But I definitely care about protecting creators' intellectual property, especially if it's a creator I like so much I would even wish I could get their stuff on the HG, which is why there's at least one creator I plan to ask to add more of her SL creations to her Kitely MP store so I can buy them here! I'm always happy & eager to help my favorite creators get more business!

Eeps! It's almost Batman time; gotta shut up & run now! Thanks again.

[Tess Juel]

Update: Vivox issued us credentials for the Vivox server that they allocated to OpenSim grids (instead of the dedicated one that we have been using since 2012). All Kitely worlds now have Vivox voice enabled.