Open Source/Viewer2.1 Features Preview

Transcript of a meeting held at the Hippotropolis Theater Friday 2010-06-11 to discuss the release of Voice Morphing and other features of Viewer 2.1 to open source (simultaneously with the beta release of the Linden 2.1 viewer).

• Oz Linden:The goal of this get-together is to talk about some of the 2.1 features
• Oz Linden:and how you can support them in open source viewers
• Oz Linden:We've got Taka here to talk about Voice Morphing from the product perspective
• Taka Linden:hi guys
• Taka Linden:sorry I'm late
• Oz Linden:Q to talk about the code,
• Latif Khalifa:hey Taka
• Draconis Neurocam:hello
• Jacek Antonelli:Hey Taka
• Taka Linden:Thank you for coming
• Taka Linden:are we in text only today?
• Taka Linden:or voice, too?
• Techwolf Lupindo:Is the voice morph client or server side?
• Oz Linden:And me just to do this intro
• Oz Linden:We've had a request that we post a transcrpt,
• Q Linden:voice morph is server side - the client does no audio processing
• Oz Linden:so it would be good to capture the essence in text
• Taka Linden:ok
• Oz Linden:but use of voice is by no means outlawed
• Merov Linden:/me wonders if voice morphing morphs also keyboard's clickety-clack....
• Latif Khalifa:lol
• Oz Linden:So let's get started.... Taka ...
• Jessica Lyon:lol Merov, Real life typing sounds Morphing
• Techwolf Lupindo:I use the IBM Modle M, I have the clicky keyboard. Need to expermite with that...lol
• Latif Khalifa:tap, tap, is this thing on? ;)
• Fractured Crystal:indubitably
• Techwolf Lupindo:/me sniffs Taka to see if Taka is alive....
• Taka Linden:so thanks again for coming
• Taka Linden:ironic to text about voice
• Taka Linden::-)
• Q Linden:we could dance about architecture if you prefer
• Jessica Lyon:I was just thinking that
• Taka Linden::-)
• McCabe Maxsted:hehe :)
• Taka Linden:so in a nutshell, Voice Morphing is now live
• Fractured Crystal:/me suggested dancing externally but nobody wanted to
• Taka Linden:it's a server-side feature powered by Vivox
• Taka Linden:so every viewer can hear the morphs
• Techwolf Lupindo:Need to find a good trascribtor so voice meetings can be recorded then later transcribe into text for the one that was unable to attend.
• Taka Linden:what's needed on the client side it the UI to select a morph
• Latif Khalifa:presumably viewer gets the info on what morphs are available
• Taka Linden:so we would like Residents to be able enjoy the service in whichever veiwer they prever
• Taka Linden:prefer
• Jacek Antonelli:Cool
• Taka Linden:today (and next week, and after that)
• Taka Linden:we're here to help you do that
• Taka Linden:I'll defer to Q on code-specific implementation issues, but I can help on UI and other questions
• Taka Linden:depending on how simple it is for you to port the open source code to your builds, you may or may not want to take our reference UI as-is
• Taka Linden:since our UI is first-gen as well, I could suggest several improvements that we're looking at
• Taka Linden:perhaps your teams could even implement them before us
• Taka Linden:that's your choice
• Taka Linden:but I'm here to help if you'd like it
• Taka Linden:or answer any questions about the service
• Q Linden:So I'm not the dev who did the implementation, but she's out of the office today, so I'll help where I can, and find out what I don't know.
• Taka Linden:any questions for me now, or shall Q and Oz continue with the tech overview?
• Q Linden:The source to 2.1 beta 0 was merged to our public internal branch this morning, and maybe merov can tell us what the export status is?
• Merov Linden:I pulled this morning
• Merov Linden:building locally before exporting to viewer-external
• Merov Linden:knocking on wood, the code should be available early this afternoon
• Merov Linden:the time for it to build on all parabuilds machine and get exported
• Q Linden:/me knocks on a plywood texture
• Techwolf Lupindo:I just checked, I don't think the morph code been dropped yet on svn. So we have no idea how the UI was done. I hope it was done in seperate .cpp files, that would make porting somewhat easer.
• Merov Linden:not yet, that's what I;m saying Tech
• Q Linden:in general, each "floater" or UI panel gets its own source file.
• Q Linden:so yes, most of the interaction with the API will be in separate files.
• Taka Linden:I'd be interested to know the general interest level among your users for voice morphing
• Oz Linden:The UI in 2.1 is simple - a new menu in the Nearby Voice box allows the user to select from the morphs they have loaded.
• Latif Khalifa:xui in 2.1 is significantly different, so i guess people porting the feature to 1.x based viewers will have to redo it anyway
• Q Linden:yes
• Oz Linden:A clarification - the actual morphing is being done in the client voice library - the server provides the parameters that control the transformation and manages which morphs the user is entitled to use
• Latif Khalifa:so slvoice daemon and the associated libs would have to be used
• Latif Khalifa:(from 2.1 i mean)
• Oz Linden:I believe that's correct
• Techwolf Lupindo:The general public don't have the service yet, it was only announced yesterday...havn't check if LL relised some biaries out there. There have been software morthing out there for users to use for a few years. I can see this service being used by those that couldn't afford the $$$ for the software or didn't want to load another trialware(spyware) on there computer.
• McCabe Maxsted:/me hasn't heard of anyone requesting that feature before beyond a few friends who wanted to make their voice sound like their furry avatar, to be honest, taka
• Jessica Lyon:We wouldn't really know the interest level until it's announced that voice morphing is possible. I suspect it will be popular among some sl communities, like tiny's, furrys etc
• Q Linden:agreed.
• Techwolf Lupindo:I'me intested in voice morphing, but there isn't a clean turnkey soluction for Linux. But I did managed to hack in a really simple one using the ALSA dmix plugin.
• Latif Khalifa:i think it's a cool feature, not sure about the policy of making it for pay service. imho LL was looking for incentives for premium membership and this wouldv'e been the obvious one
• Taka Linden:the goal of our implementation was to make it as seamless for Residents as possible
• Taka Linden:if it proves popular, we could someday add it to premiums
• Taka Linden:or not
• Techwolf Lupindo:I agree with Latif, this voice morphing would have been a perfect Preimioun only feature.
• McCabe Maxsted:/me nods
• Taka Linden:depending on how folks like to manage it
• Taka Linden:it's certainly an option we'll consider
• Taka Linden:thanks for the suggestion
• Latif Khalifa:Taka, youd'd want most people to start using it in the beginning i think, not make it more available later
• Latif Khalifa:policy aside, is there any documentation on the chatter between the viewer and the voice daemon?
• Q Linden:as far as I know, we can't share it because it's part of our license agreement with vivox
• Latif Khalifa:even what viewer sends to slvoice? i didn't mean slvoice <-> vivox
• Q Linden:ah
• Q Linden:sorry
• Q Linden:sec, looking
• Oz Linden:I believe that's correct - we can/will provide the updates to the voice API, but what's behind it is not open
• Techwolf Lupindo:I saw docs on communcating with the voice demion. Before the SL client got fix, there was a few manula voice starting doc to manulay start voice then the sl client to get voice working on some systems.
• Latif Khalifa:for Radegast (text based) it would be neat to add full voice support. Since one of our core users are the blind community of SLers
• Latif Khalifa:we can talk to slvoice over local tcp, but find it difficult to figure out what's going on
• Taka Linden:definitely
• Q Linden:one more moment
• Q Linden:oh, cool, aimee's here
• Q Linden:check out llvoicevivox.h and .cpp -- the interface is the documentation, basically.
• Aimee Linden:kinda, just ran in the door from the airport :)
• McCabe Maxsted::)
• Latif Khalifa:heya Aimee
• Jessica Lyon:/me Waves at Aimee
• Aimee Linden:hi :)
• Techwolf Lupindo:/me facepaws "Use the source luke.....gah....souce code is not documation."
• Aimee Linden:the voice client source has been restructured in a more modular way recently
• Aimee Linden:so hopefull that will at least help some
• Aimee Linden:+y
• Q Linden:techwolf, yeah. we sort of grew up as a company where people believed that the only reliable documentation was the source, and that there was no point in trying to keep external docs current. But as we move more to a platform approach, we'll be generating more documentation.
• McCabe Maxsted:/me assumes the licensing is the same on the new voice binary with morph, and we can freely distribute it withour clients, yes? Just to be sure
• Latif Khalifa:yeah, Robin got that in writing from Vivox :)
• Q Linden:as far as I know, the licensing has not changed. But I won't attempt to interpret the meaning.
• McCabe Maxsted:remind me to thank her for that :)
• Latif Khalifa::)
• Latif Khalifa:Oh well, so it's the good old fashion proxy-and-sniff to figure out for me;)
• Merov Linden:/me local build completed...
• Techwolf Lupindo:/me listens to the wind noise....
• McCabe Maxsted:/me wonders who'd be interested in collaboration on getting a 1.x patch out that we can all use
• Q Linden:so I think you might find that most of the xui ports with minor deltas -- it might be mainly the dropdowns that need redesign in xui
• McCabe Maxsted:/me has no problem with playing with xui layouts :)
• Latif Khalifa:/me wonders how different is viewer <-> slvoice api ... folk might run into trouble other palces
• Q Linden:i guess the other part is the handlers -- the signals/callback model changed pretty significantly
• Latif Khalifa:i guess on could drop slvoice from 2.1 into 1.x and see how much it breaks ;)
• KirstenLee Cinquetti:it breaks
• Oz Linden:There are a number of other things in the 2.1 beta release... http://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2010/06/10/announcing-viewer-21-alpha-and-voice-morphing?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SecondLife+%28Official+Second+Life+Blogs+-+FEATURED%29 ...
• Techwolf Lupindo:I tried using the voice demon from 2.x on 1.x and failed.
• Latif Khalifa:Kirsten, so backporting morphing to 1.x would be non-trivial
• Techwolf Lupindo:So the TCP api changed somewhat.
• Skills Hak:oops almost missed it
• McCabe Maxsted:http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Release_Notes/Second_Life_Beta_Viewer/2.1.0 release notes ;)
• KirstenLee Cinquetti:correct its would be slightly akward
• Aimee Linden:you would need to back port the llvoiceclient.cpp/.h and llvoicevivox.cpp/.h to go with it
• Jessica Lyon:/me blinks
• Latif Khalifa:this is one of the quitest meetings i've been to recently :)
• McCabe Maxsted:haha, really
• Jessica Lyon:agreed
• Skills Hak:so what's going on?
• Katharine ModularSystems:Absolutely nothing, apparently.
• Jessica Lyon:Skills, it's nap time.. shhh
• Fractured Crystal:err
• Skills Hak:oh it's really early for you guys eh
• McCabe Maxsted:/me wonders if anyone's working on backporting multiwearables
• Oz Linden:If there are no more questions now, we can wrap up
• Skills Hak:/me shares some coffee
• Oz Linden:You are encouraged to bring any issues with porting this to the list
• Fractured Crystal:which one
• KirstenLee Cinquetti:easy peasy for moi ;)
• Jessica Lyon:may we contact you in world Taka if we have questions in the near future?
• Skills Hak:what did i miss, was there anything else apart from voice morphing?
• McCabe Maxsted:hehe
• KirstenLee Cinquetti:laters :)
• Techwolf Lupindo:"..to the list" what list?
• Jessica Lyon:Skills, just voice morphing yep
• McCabe Maxsted:see you KL
• Skills Hak:okee
• Latif Khalifa:Skills, in short if you want to backport voice morphing you'd have to port llvoiceclient.cpp/.h and llvoicevivox.cpp/.h from 2.1 and pull it's slvoice, and add some gui for picking morphs
• Oz Linden:I meant opensource-dev ...
• Taka Linden:feel free to contact me inworld, or better yet at taka@lindenlab.com
• Fractured Crystal:kk
• Jessica Lyon:Thanks Taka, and thanks for hosting the meeting guys and Gal
• Q Linden:thanks for coming!
• Taka Linden:Thanks everyone
• Oz Linden:Thank you all very much for coming... I hope/expect to be doing more sessions on new developments
• Jessica Lyon:Awesome :)
• McCabe Maxsted::) good to hear
• Taka Linden:yup
• Oz Linden:Watch for invites on the tpvdir-announce list
• Kyle Linden:Thanks everyone.
• McCabe Maxsted:thanks for hosting
• Skills Hak:see you guys, have a nice day
• Jacek Antonelli:Thanks Oz et all. Nice to have you guys reaching out.
• Latif Khalifa:yeah, the wizard is having some effect apparently :)
• Fractured Crystal:o.o
• Latif Khalifa:Oz, are you talking to the server team as well? I think there are some ways things could be improved
• Oz Linden:There will be more
• Latif Khalifa:like having a viewer test region on aditi
• Latif Khalifa:stuff like http textures just get dumped on the grid
• Latif Khalifa:without viewer devs having chance to fix the bugs
• Latif Khalifa:it would be most helpful if there was a region on aditi with those features enabled
• Oz Linden:I've been mostly focused on viewer so far just due to time constraints
• Oz Linden:but clearly there's going to be a lot of interaction to make interop evolution smooth
• Skills Hak:\o/
• Oz Linden:That's a good thought, Latif
• McCabe Maxsted:so interop is still alive and well?
• Oz Linden:Without a deeper understanding of what you meant by 'interop', there's no way for me to answer that, McCabe
• Latif Khalifa:i could write up a list of things that would be nice to have on a region on aditi and send it to the list. talked to the server guys the other day, they said it wouldn't be a biggie to do, if the initiative came from you :)
• Oz Linden:Ok - do it. Latif
• McCabe Maxsted:/me isn't sure what you mean by 'interop', to be honest. A lot of us have been wondering about that
• Techwolf Lupindo:I think the reason this meeting was so quiet was.....text chat about a voice product. The souce code hasn't been relised, so tech details was non-existent and that was this meeting was supposed to be about, tech details....
• Skills Hak:i guess most people understand it as inter grid standard
• Jessica Lyon:What Tech said.
• McCabe Maxsted:/me nods
• Skills Hak:which is not what Oz meant i guess
• Fractured Crystal:/me thinks all meetings should be in voice o.o
• Jacek Antonelli:I can't use voice reliably, so I'd really rather not
• Fractured Crystal:dunno
• Katharine ModularSystems:/me thinks no meetings should be in voice, as they are impossible to follow, and spatial voice makes it impossible to hear everyone.
• Techwolf Lupindo:One devoloper can't use voice and its not due to her end. :-(
• McCabe Maxsted:let's all use the same morph so nobody can ever transcribe us! *cackles evilly*
• Oz Linden:/me will do more in voice if someone will help me find a way to record/archive them
• Fractured Crystal:BUT I LIKE BEING ON YOUTUBE
• Skills Hak:....
• Katharine ModularSystems:Do dramatic readings of the transcript and put them there.
• Jessica Lyon:dotdotdot
• Fractured Crystal:(im kidding)
• Jessica Lyon:lol
• Latif Khalifa:Fractured, you must love pharmville then :P
• Fractured Crystal:wat
• McCabe Maxsted:/me really does prefer text. It's easier to look back on and catch important details
• Techwolf Lupindo:Oz, get a voice recoder you see in Office Depo and set it next to the speaker.
• Taka Linden:<waiting for the shakespearan morph>
• Fractured Crystal:I am unfamiliar with this pharmville
• Jacek Antonelli:Lindens should all have the furry voice morph to make them seem more cuddly.