Life In 19x19

Nice to have a Go client/server with webcam, like this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRUH8SAqLkE

(Viswanathan Anand with a webcam chess client)

Of course, most chat clients already support webcams,
and EuroGoTV has a nice webcam broadcast.

But it'd be nice for IGS, KGS, etc. to have a webcam client,
so players and teachers can use it, as an option.

just my opinions but:

Being a teacher on KGS myself I don't think I would ever use this if it happens to be implemented.
The things I want to teach are on the Go board. They have nothing to do with how I, or my room, look like

It might be fun for casual chat, but we have loads of other software already available for that.

Another thing is that I doubt there will be enough bandwidth available if people start using this more often.

As for eurogotv and the likes. this might be the only useful usage of this system as it's nice to see the players and taste the atmosphere of the tournament.
But I don't think that this justifies implementing it into KGS or the likes. It works fine as is.

That youtube video you linked to would be just as instructive without a video(cam) of the guy who is teaching.
Maybe even more, because you don't get distracted from the chess board by the movement of the guy on the video .

It could be nice, but what should be done without too much effort for the KGS client would be : BETTER SOUND QUALITY !!!

Tryphon wrote:It could be nice, but what should be done without too much effort for the KGS client would be: BETTER SOUND QUALITY!!!

The bottleneck for that is most likely not KGS but the microphone.

I strongly doubt that all KGS teachers have worse microphones than mine, I paid around 5€

I use a crappy $6,00 headset with mic that i bought from an online shop in HongKong. I haven't had any complaints from people when I use is.

I don't think a webcam is too useful.
Built in bidirectional audio communication would be nice though. But using TS or some other VoIP software isn't that hard for simple teaching games(with one student only).
And KGS might profit from a software noise canceler. For example the Speex preprocessor can do that.

EdLee wrote:But it'd be nice for IGS, KGS, etc. to have a webcam client,
so players and teachers can use it, as an option.

The AGA has recently been requiring webcams for some online tournaments as a way to authenticate player ids (and to minimize cheating).

It has been one of the primary reasons online tournament games can't be submitted to AGA ratings database.

xed_over wrote:The AGA has recently been requiring webcams for some online tournaments as a way to authenticate player ids (and to minimize cheating).

It has been one of the primary reasons online tournament games can't be submitted to AGA ratings database.

I just had to think how many AGA tournaments I've been to that have checked photo ID. Zero?