Visual Interface

Today's demonstration of the visual interface went well.

Z-Buffer

Virtools' Z-buffer (example of usage) may improve the visual context.

Call Volume

Several providers restrict the number of incoming calls. Going ahead, this means that 3 callers maximum should be on the system.

.avi

This is a rendering of the particles that must disappear altogether in favour of a more literal representation that works, i.e. a cube in space.

21.6 MB .avi - Win. only

Herewith a cube; it may work better.

Bad Demo

Everything that could possibly go wrong in the second demo did:

-Poor call routing and timeout
-Difficulty seeing particle systems
-Bad music
-VXML interface problems
-Recognition errors
-Camera motion objectionable

There were some good suggestions:

-Place all movement in a grid so that there is context
-Give the user the chance to select music
-Get rid of extraneous animation and graphics
-Add to initial voice menu
-For future, record user's voice input to display later in VIRTOOLS

I have exactly two weeks to iron out some of these very important issues. As suggested, it's best to trim and focus instead of increasing the scope at this point.

Web Playback

Neither the .vmo nor the .cmo render on a web page. This could be because I've overloaded on particles and there is just too much going on in the .cmo. Here's a screenshot - for web playback, I need to think of something else.

Design Problem

This doesn't look right and the particles get lost. It also doesn't quite go with the egalitarian theme I had in mind. Maybe I can change to opacity on the central figure and scale it somehow so that it isn't as distracting.

Final Design

I've been sketching what the project is going to finally look like. Here is a link to a QuickTime movie of the circles that will contain the particles. Each ring will be the parent of a system of generic particles that frame the particle actors. I think I'll remove the NURBS terrain and restrict it just to particles - the challenge is going to be how to make them stand out...Also this weekend, I have to address sound and how it will move according to the camera.Here is a link to the path camera version I will try to approximate in VIRTOOLS

User Testing II

I demonstrated the .vmo in SciViz and it went well, for the most part. It worked!

Comments:

-Terrain and environment need to improve, cameras, colors, perhaps even people at the bottom
-It is unclear which particle system represents whom - they need to be tagged visually and in the VoiceXML menu
-Navigation doesn't work properly, especially with a rotating camera and a move left or right command
-The effect is painterly, this could be improved with a background or better proximity to the particles

Server Issues III

I need to readjust the link delay.

Scaling/Shaders

The calls are working, there seems to be some kind of Internet lag or server-side caching. I'm not sure.

Regarding scaling - this piece has to scale for larger audiences. Imposing a limit of 10 is difficult to defend from an aesthetic and theoretical perspective. The reason why I chose 10 was that it would be manageable and an easy modulus value. Hard-coding 10 users has an unfortunate effect of inefficient coding - to many ifs, too many redundant server calls. I'm not pleased with this, but need to spend more time on the look of the environment.

There is a phenomenal shader example in the class .cmos. It looks extremely complex, but I'd really like to add liquids or a body of water to the environment.

Telephony problems

2 things:

The provider's "home" URL, or all three of them, are cached for a brief time

My local numbers are not working. There could be several reasons for this - badly formated and cached VXML, or some other limitation with the numbers. I'll wait before trying the number that is now just linked to a "hello word" as opposed to
a page that's mostly PHP

VXML Bug II

The bugs were all VXML syntax-related. One extra tab, or single quote and the whole page breaks. As far as the busy number, I can't say for 100% sure that the bug caused that.

I need to test the phone number for volume. Also, wrt redundancy, this is really the ideal set-up:

myServer - provider 1
stage - provider 2
myServer - provider 1
stage -provider 2

For presentation purposes, I need to consolidate the four phone numbers I have into two, otherwise it could be a mess. The key thing over the next three weeks is user testing.

VXML Bug

I'm getting busy signals on my two development phone numbers - either this is a bug in the code or a telephony thing.
Redundancy for the project will be as follows:

my server + provider 1
stage + provider 2

Starting the terrain

A terrain helps put the particles in context. For the camera, I think I'm going to get rid of the transition and rotate it on the x-axis. For the user movement, I'm playing on using either Yaw pitch and roll or some combination with up, down, left, and right. The thing is, the movement has to be different from my earlier 2D work. These VXML options really should be more inventive than something hard coded, as criticized before in class.

Scaled for 10 callers

I have a basic switching mechanism in place. How would this scale for more than 10 users - like 100 or so? My next step is to figure out how to have each move independently of each other while still pulling VXML from the same page.

Database

This database screenshot conveys what I'm trying to do wrt switching telephone calls programmatically. Here is the flow:

Initialize cells from VIRTOOLS
For each page view (i.e. phone call) of menu page, write a database value according to a modulus of the ID

Interface for Scalable Environment

I need to redesign the interface so that users can see their particle system when they call in. The current implementation transitions from the one particle to the other. It's going to be interesting to see in tomorrow's demonstration if the users can make the system work, or if it breaks altogether.

Call Switching from the web back end

I'm trying to use PHPMyAdmin and the modulo operator in PHP to switch calls. When the .vmo boots up, it sends a flag to the server to initialize the particle instances.

Qualitative Comments

As is, the particles look to similar and don't give the user a sense that they differ significantly. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll build and refine a NURBS terrain to house them in and give some sense of perspective.

Session Management in VoiceXML/PHP

I'm trying to figure out how session management will work in the final application. Setting up x amount of phone numbers with the provider is _not_ an intelligent solution to this problem. Essentially, I need to route callers so that their input can write to different database tables in turn pulled in by the Web Get Data building block in VIRTOOLS. Having an exclusive feed into
VIRTOOLS gives better interactivity so that the particle systems are autonomous for movement and camera transition. In an ideal world, the number of users could scale up, but there is probably no time for this feature, so I'll set this value at 15 or something.

Here are the remaining technical steps I have till May:

-Find a way to have a unique voice session on one phone number
-Design a new voice interface (the existing hard-coded one was met with disapproval - it basically consists of users saying their names)
-Create new database tables
-Create new web feeds into VIRTOOLS