Oct 09, 2020 08:00:00

'Calla' review where you can enjoy conversation in a pseudo space as if you were 'talking next to you' even though it was remote

Online video conferencing tools such as Zoom have made great

strides with the spread of remote work, but it is also inconvenient when compared to face-to-face conversations. For example, in a video conference, participants' voices are heard at the same volume, so it is difficult to realize the actions that are performed in a real conference, such as 'consulting with the person sitting next to you.' The open source video conferencing system ' Calla ' solves the unfortunate points of such video conferencing in a novel way.

Welcome --Calla
https://www.calla.chat/

GitHub --capnmidnight / Calla: Virtual Meetups through Jitsi
https://github.com/capnmidnight/Calla

Calla displays avatars on the screen and controls the volume of the voices of video conference participants according to the positional relationship between the avatars, thereby making the 'direction' and 'distance' between speakers pseudo-realistic. Is approaching. Adjust the volume output from the left and right speakers, such as the voice of the speaker using the avatar located on the left side of your avatar is output from the left speaker, and the voice from the avatar located on the right side is output from the right speaker. The positional relationship between avatars is reproduced with.

Regarding 'distance', the voice of the speaker who corresponds to the nearby avatar is loud, and the voice of the speaker who corresponds to the distant avatar is output small.

You can actually try out Calla by visiting the Calla page and clicking 'Try it out!'.

Enter your user name, select a chat room and click 'Connect'. In addition to English characters, hiragana, katakana, and kanji can be used for the user name.

A screen like an RPG field was displayed. You can see your own avatar and the avatars of users who are already connected to the chat room.

For example, if you want to talk to a user named 'Test3', click near Test3 and move your avatar.

By bringing the avatars closer to each other like the screen, the volume of each other's voice becomes louder, and you can talk as if you were close to each other.

If you want to talk to a user named 'Test2' in secret, you can leave Test2. With a traditional video conferencing system, you can basically hear all the audio of users connected to the same chat room, but with Calla you can only talk to a specific user by keeping the distance between avatars. I can do it.

You can move the map by moving the cursor while clicking the map.

The type of avatar can be changed from the setting screen.

To leave, click 'Leave' on the upper right.

When I tried using Calla, I was able to communicate with each other as if I were talking in a real space. The avatar's operability is not good, but it is certainly software that allows you to enjoy unusual video conferencing. In addition, Calla is based on the open source video conferencing system ' Jitsi Meet ', and it is possible to host it by yourself. At the time of writing the article, it didn't work because there was no script to execute when the container was started, but it may be possible to use it if you modify it yourself.