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[bvillersjr]

For those of you that have a headset-type microphone (USB versions start at $20 USD), I have put up a TeamSpeak server so that everyone can talk while racing. It can also be used to facilitate other critical communications amongst team members in other countries for free.

At some point I plan to add a shared white board to facilitate international meetings / discussions, but for now, it's just a voice server, and it's main purpose is to faciliate everyone getting to know each other while racing.

You can download the TeamSpeak client at http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=downloads. For those of you who speak German, they have a German version of their site available as well (flag in top right).

The setup is fairly simple. Remember to set your input and output devices in the team speak software to be those of your microphone, so you can communicate properly. Then use the QuickConnect option to connect to the server. You dont need a username or password. The servername is xsim.simxperience.com

EgoExpress: At some point I will integrate this via SDK into the SimUpdates software.

[egoexpress]

Hmm, Teamspeak. Just if you guys promise not to laugh about my german accent

Thanks alot, Bernard

Regards
Christian

[bvillersjr]

Yes, it does. I have been investigating it as well as some other peer-to-peer options.

http://www.teamspeak.com/?page=teamspeak3sdk

[bvillersjr]

?? TeamSpeak Server is FREE for non-commercial use.

This is a quote directly from their home page:

TeamSpeak is FREE of charge for non-commercial use and has low cost, flexible licensing options for commercial use.

[bvillersjr]

Yes The SDK (at least while in Beta) is not for non-commercial users. The server is FREE though for a community like X-Sim.

Non-Profit Organizations
If you host a TeamSpeak server strictly for non-profit AND you are not a commercial entity then you will not be subject to licensing fees. You must not exceed a total of 1000 slots on a maximum of 10 TeamSpeak servers within your organization. TeamSpeak servers are defined as ANY server upon which a connection is allowed - be it virtual or physical.

Examples of non-profit entities:
An individual hosting a single TeamSpeak server configured to allow up to 100 slots for their online gaming clan for non-profit.
An individual hosting 10 TeamSpeak servers with 100 slots each but does NOT ask for fees, does not advertise, or receive any sort of compensation or benefits for doing so.
An individual that rents a dedicated server from a hosting company but does NOT ask for fees from clan members AND does NOT rent or share space on their TeamSpeak server to others for profit.
A church or other non-profit organization hosting a free TeamSpeak server for online bible study discussions.
A school hosting one TeamSpeak server over 10 physical machines, each configured to allow no more than 100 slots and is completely free of charge to students, allowing them to receive help with homework for their classes online.

Unfortunately, we have no guarantees that they will allow non-profit organizations the ability to use the SDK once the beta is over.

And as you mentioned....the biggest issue of all with such an inefficient system is who will provide the bandwidth. I havent't been able to locate detail about whether or not TS3 will have peer-to-peer capability or if it will be server based like TS2.

[Raceray]

Hi guys,

there is a plugin for jabber, called jinngle. But i cannot find any voice chat client for it.

Also there is a opensource "teamspeak" solution
http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Main_Page

Some people think its better than Teamspeak

Nevertheless it´s a question of bandwith. Everyone knows how much traffic and cpu power a server needs for such a application. Maybe there is a provider out there who offers a server with traffic flat rate.

Maybe we can ask some provider if they want to sponsor our mumble server.

out whether or not TS3 will have peer-to-peer capability or if it will be server based like TS2.

A serverless voip mambo solution would be great

regards, René

[bvillersjr]

Were I living in the land of Linux, I would be looking at the Google Talk API. It is based on the same open standards that you mentioned but is capable of peer-to-peer video, voice and file transfer. Did I mention that it's free and well supported?

http://code.google.com/apis/talk/talk_developers_home.html

[Raceray]

Hi bernards,

what kind of programming skills you got? Martin and i, try to create a MUC multi-User chat for the x-sim software and are fighting with various thoughts and protocols. The voice chat integration is the logical continuation of it.

A summary of previous work:

We integrated the chat chat_min/ into the x-sim software. But realized that the traffic would be minimum 3TB (terrabytes) a month due to the secondly polling of the http keep-alive request. Switching to a flash based socket connection resolves the traffic problem for the first time, but some other errors occured due to the nesseccary flash plugin.

A genious idea of martin is a serverless decentral chat solution, that every client could be the server and client at once.b but that lacks on the changes everyone has to to do on their router to open the chat ports of UDP and TCP.
The bigges advantage would mean that we haven´t any traffic complication, because all data flows p2p. Our server would be only the connector between both clients.

A solution could be udp port holing with a stun server and client, but the implementation is horrible for me. I only have a few programming skills. I develop php/sql application and only have basic skills in c,c++ etc.

Our next step and thought is the integration of a jabber client into the software for testing purposes. Maybe that fit our needs and the protocol could be the future basis of a x-sim voice chat.

If you have any ideas, let us know.

regards
René

[bvillersjr]

Jabber has been replaced by XMPP.

libjingle is a collection of open-source C++ code and sample applications that enables you to build a peer-to-peer application. The code handles creating a network connection (through NAT and firewall devices, relay servers, and proxies), negotiating session details (codecs, formats, etc.), and exchanging data. It also provides helper tasks such as parsing XML, and handling network proxies. You could build the following programs with libjingle:

A multi-user voice chat application
A multi-user video conferencing application
A multi-user live music streaming application
A peer-to-peer file sharing application

I do not have extensive C or C++ skills either or I would be giving the combination of libjingle and XMPP serious consideration. I quit programming in C with the introduction of the .Net Framework. Contrary to popular belief, it is capable of producing applications that perform as well as C++ apps but in half of the development time.

Google has assembled alot of documentation and sample code here that would be helpful to Martin since he is proficient in and prefers C++: http://code.google.com/apis/talk/libjingle/index.html

I myself, because of my .Net background am considering a solution based on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

If you guys wind up using XMPP / Jingle, I will look into creating a .Net based implementation of it for the Commander project so that it would be compatible.

However, in order to implement any such tool, you will need some type of web service that performs authentication for whatever your chat client ends of being. When Martin and I initially attempted to discuss a chat project, we could not seem to agree that a webservice would be produced on your end for authentication. Therefore, I decided that if I could not authenticate users of the menu system to an X-Sim account, that I would need to create my own authentication mechanism that is web services based. This is mostly complete and has an extrememely robust role / membership model that I am pleased with.

In any case, before you give too much consideration to VOIP protocols, etc.. please consider how you will authenticate members to whatever this chat client winds up being.

If I can help in some way please let me know.