[sldev] VWR-10311 Enabling lip sync by default

[Moriz Gupte]

Hello Ann,
I think it's fair to understand this to be work in progress, I imagine most
folks will not expect high fidelity in the begining (have no data to back
this). In my case and that of my audience, they serve more as a mediating
cue as discussed earlier (this cue is nevertheless weakened by the fact that
the 3rd person view is the only 'usable' view in SL and when we stand the
lip motions are sometimes hard to catch). However, when we sit around a
table those cues are terribly effective. I run meetings every week in SL. In
the begining I had to implement a tiny HUD (worn on top) with 5 basic
functions (Wave, Yes, No, Clap, Away). People used to wave to manage turn
taking. With lipsync, they dont need to wave but feel more comfortable
interrupting. So even at this low level of fidelity, it helps. What about
the green indicator? well they don't seems as effective...we do use the
green indicators during voice troubleshooting...but during conversations
they are a visual encumbrance, obtrusive almost. At close range...around a
table, they are meaningless...takes some brain processing to find which
white dot belongs to whom. This destroys immersion, focuse moved from face
to dots above head. I am tempted to discuss about 'design of notifications
here, and the need to fine tune their degree of obtrusiveness) but that
would be labouring the point.

Having spent some time designing for autistic children,  am aware of face
processing training strategies involving games that start in the beginning
stages with facial cartoon expressions (just animated eye brows for .e.g.)
before  progressing to real human expressions. So this fidelity argument can
have many strands.... Keeping in mind the deaf might appear an inclusive
approach but not necessarily.

On a different note,
Has '"bad kung fu movie dubbing" evolved into an artistic medium, just
wondering. For those who have time for some levity http://tinyurl.com/ckrey5
And more generally,  at what point does the 'fidelity argument' 'uncanny
valley' arguments become relevant? Given the kind of CPU load that we are
expecting to achieve our fidelity goals, I cannot see a high fidelity SL in
the near year or the year after that (unless a carmack is born
somewhere...and finds a way to squeeze something out of existing hardware).
Alternative strategies: Would a mashup of video conferencing technology and
SL be useful without destroying the immersive nature of SL? I hope to see a
video conferencing technology company partner with SL in the same way that
vivox did.

Ramesh ( I think I have to use my rl name..SL has fragmented my
identity...too many alts...this is not entirely bad btw)

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Mike Monkowski <monkowsk at watson.ibm.com>wrote:

> Ann Otoole wrote:
> > RE: "lip sync" capabilities in Second Life
> >
> > Let me know when a deaf person can read the avatar lips and understand
> > what is being said through the microphone and I will fully support it
> > not only being on by default but no option to turn it off. Until then it
> > looks like a bad kung fu movie dubbing job.
>
> The technology exists to make lip sync good enough for lipreading, but
> until Vivox opens the source for SLVoice, giving access to the audio
> stream, this "bad kung fu movie dubbing" is all that is possible.  Also,
> lipreading-quality lip sync would require real CPU cycles.  It would,
> hovever, be possible to make it more realistic with very little CPU
> resource.
>
> Mike
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