I have now decided to use Photon’s suite of services to drive both Audio and Text chat. Photon provides both the server backend and Unity plugins for implementing voice and chat texts. The service is free for under 20 concurrent users, so there’s no problem there.

I think I will try to stick with the card UI language, but I may experiment with a 3D manifestation like this walkie-talkie I sketched up. It would be cool to have a physical (virtual) object that would have a 3D sound layer when you brought it up to your ear, more of like a binaural sound than just hearing it from a source in front of you, much like the phone in Job Simulator. I would imagine that the indicator light on the top would light up when you have a new message and putting it up to your ear would play the message. The trigger on the back would enable the player to record a message or directly talk back. The Vive and Oculus CV1 both have microphones by the face, so it would be quite easy to record the voice.

Concept for a walkie-talkie

I am currently in the process of setting up Photon and modeling the the walkie-talkie above to act as the point of interaction for the voice and am also trying to work out a way to adapt the custom emoji support in Photon to act as a quick way to send large emoji to another person.

First, I’d like to apologize for not posting more frequently. I’ve run into some architectural issues that I’m trying to figure out before I move forward and start coding.

When trying to create a solution that has to interact with multiple different frameworks and platforms, things can start to get complicated. Let’s break things down and look at the options that we have for each.

Backend Framework

Angular.js

Node.js

Game Engine

Unity Engine

Unreal Engine

Input Solution

Text-to-speech

Voice Messages

Sending emoji (pictures)

Thankfully, we can take one factor out of the equation right from the start. I will be implementing everything through the Unity gaming engine. I will also be targeting the HTC Vive because of it’s great resolution and natural controllers.

Originally, I had wanted to test a system that wanted to test a variety of chatting methods in a lightweight way in a virtual environment. I think that for the sake of time and scope over the semester, I will focus on sending emoji and other images, mostly because of the fact that emoji is an emerging form of communication and I think it’s effects in a VR setting might show to be quote interesting.

When I was researching what was possible with emoji and a lightweight, over the internet P2P solution, I ran into a couple of issues. Currently, Apple’s version of emoji are the most ubiquitous and up to date of all of the current Emoji typefaces. Emoji standards and definitions are set by a Unicode. Companies and organizations create the font based off of these standards. If I were to continue using Apple Color Emoji, my best option would be to use exported PNG versions instead, as otherwise it would look different on each computer. I could also use EmojiOne, an open-source Emoji font as well. It will come down to whether or not sending text over a chat library is easier than sending images. I could also simply send a code between the users and assign that code to a corresponding PNG version when it reaches the second user. All are viable options at this point.

This next week I will be building a web-based version to try to test these different methods.

Until next time,

Tyler

BACK-END DEVELOPMENT

We are continuing to structure the backend of our system and map out user (and data) flows and are starting to implement the services together as a cohesive, scalable system. We are looking to hire a student hourly to help the backend development move quickly.

FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT

We continue to brainstorm and implement different interfaces. We are now looking at these ideas under more scrutiny with certain UI/UX principles in mind. Development in Unity has been slowed down as we are transitioning from the IoT Lab to our new office at SoHE, but will pick up in the coming weeks.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

As we refine our high level product and go to market solutions, our first phase continues with advancing our efforts in connecting with developers. Through meetings and conferences we have established initial contact with a lot of the developers that we want to be a part of our ecosystem. The next step is to follow up with those initial contacts and continue expanding our network of developers. We’ve come up an email draft to initiate conference calls to keep the developers in our network up to speed on what we’re working on so they can quickly be brought into test our alpha and beta builds.