Sights and Sore Eyes

In virtual worlds, here's an experience that most of us can relate to. Well, it's a bunch of experiences but they all boil down to the same thing. 

You're at a party and you realize that, although you like the company, you're not enjoying the music. You go to a freebie sim, and the radio is awful. Or someone's in Voice, and it's annoying. Or the sim has ambient sounds that are getting on your nerves.  

What can you do? Well it's quite easy. The Viewer gives you a subjective, personalized experience.

You can mute your Viewer (top right) or open the Volume controls and mute the specific source of sound that is bothering you. The beauty of this is that, chances are, nobody will know you did it. You can even throw a few Applauses into Local Chat when everyone else does, and you'll seem to be in synch with the set. 

What, though, can you do if the thing that bothers you is visible, not audible? 

That's a bit more tricky, but yes! It may be possible for you to resolve the problem without you having to leave the party, and without you having to ask other people to modify what they're doing, thus interfering with their enjoyment of an event. Because nobody wants to be that person. 

Are You Ready to Mumble..?

Last week, on Inworld Review, we talked Murmur with two guests. Cyberglo Cyberstar, famous for his scripting prowess and many wonderful free items on his grid Cyberdatastorm, runs a Mumble server on his grid, and he told us a bit about it. Opensim veteran Snowbody Cortes shared some general information about how Mumble could revolutionize opensim, and here are the slides he showed us during the program.

Inworld Review Studio

Snowbody Cortes:  I first got interested in Mumble in 2009 but at the time I didn't really think about it in terms of an overall service for virtual worlds. Back then, Mumble was less evolved than it is today. I did some standalone experiments, and I created a Murmur server that I shared with some SL friends, just to be able to have a communication channel that didn't use the usual things like Skype or WhatsApp.

For a long time, it seemed like the voice element in opensim was covered by Vivox, so I didn't really dedicate any time to thinking about Mumble. I was aware that there were various projects that were aimed at integrating Mumble into opensim use, and of course over recent years, it is becoming clear that the vivox solution for opensim voice is not a long term and reliable thing, it could go away any time; and of course we are grateful to them that they have provided this service to us for free for so many years.

Snowbody Cortes: When I heard there was going to be an edition of Inworld Review talking about Mumble for Opensim, I began thinking about strategies for bringing Mumble into Opensim in a way that would be low tech and easy for users to figure out, maybe just as an independent tool to be used in parallel with the virtual world, which was the way I had used it all those years ago. The best solution would be if Mumble was integrated into the Viewer, of course, so that the user doesn't have to do anything. That seemed a big ask... 

Snowbody Cortes: So, going from what would be the most simple way right up to the most sophisticated way to bring Mumble into opensim, I came up with 4 possibilities. That is what these slides illustrate, just to demonstrate the possibilities and to invite people to think about ways it might be made to work.
I'm not saying these are the only solutions, but more like a set of ideas that can be useful. Opensim is not a monolith. the people have lots of different needs and their own ideas about how they want to run their grids. and for sure, people with more detailed knowledge of opensimulator code may have a lot to contribute in terms of coming up with a module... but let me explain the basics first.

Golyfeydd... and other views

George Equus: as far as Safari goes, pretty successful one today  ;}

Two destinations this week. HG Addresses at the end of the post as usual.
 First up a Welsh Paradise, devised by Susannah Avonside.

Susannah Avonside

            Views of welsh scenery, and views about the future of opensim were on the menu this week. Although it almost seemed like we were going nowhere, at first. Seemed like none of us were entirely present from the very beginning, some of us foggy, George's trousers had gone walkabout again, and a new friend Spax Orion was just hair and a sword, leading us to wonder if he had remembered to put his mesh avie in his My Suitcase folder.