WorkAdventure 1.28.0 – Recording, video quality and more
We are thrilled to announce that WorkAdventure 1.28.0 is now available! Again, this release is a big one. Recording, fast‑pass onboarding, better video quality… you name it! Let’s dive into the details.
New features
Recording!
It is now possible to record any meeting (inside a meeting room or in a bubble) directly from WorkAdventure! Just click the “record” button in the action bar and the recording will start.
Previously, recording was limited to Jitsi meetings. Now, you can record any conversation.
People in the meeting will be notified that the recording has started.
The recording is visible in the “Recordings” section of the action bar. For privacy reasons, only the recorder is able to see or download the recording.
Recording is currently limited to users having the “admin” tag.
In case you do not want any recordings in your world, you can completely disable the feature using in the world settings.
In the future, we will keep improving the recording feature. As we gather more feedback, we will probably open the recording to more users (and not only the “admins”). We might also work on what is being recorded (currently, only the webcams and screensharing, not the map itself). We are waiting for your feedback on what to improve!
Fast‑pass onboarding (Guest Access Mode)
A long awaited feature: we have new configuration parameters to enable a “fast‑pass” onboarding experience.
Until now, the process of entering a WorkAdventure world for the first time was immutable: users had to pick their name, then select their avatar and finally select their camera/microphone settings before entering the world.
This process was necessary for most use cases, but some scenarios required a faster onboarding experience. For instance, if you want to use WorkAdventure as a website to present your company or your product, you don’t want visitors to have to go through all those steps before entering your world. There is a risk they will exit the page before even seeing your world!
Today, you can configure your world to completely skip those steps and directly enter the world. If you skip the name selection step, you can even choose between generating a random name or using a fixed name for all visitors. Configuration happens in the world settings in your dashboard:
A big thanks to @ThomasPerez91 who contributed this feature!
Improved speaker experience on a podium
Being on a podium and talking to an audience could be a lonely experience. While the audience can see and hear the speaker, the speaker could not see the audience in return. Until now.
A brand-new option “See attendees” has been added to the podium settings. When enabled, the speaker can have a video feedback of the attendees (should they enable their webcam, of course). Beware, you can see the attendees, but you cannot hear them! If you want to hear questions from the audience, you should invite the participants to join you on stage to ask their questions (just like in a real-life conference).
If you prefer using the megaphone than a podium (to talk to anyone on a map), don’t worry, the megaphone also benefits from the same option (called “Auditorium mode” in the megaphone settings panel).
Improved video quality and bandwidth usage
Huge efforts have been made to improve the video quality, especially if you are on a slow or not so stable network.
New video codec: VP9
Until now, WorkAdventure used the VP8 video codec for video streams. VP8 is a good codec, but there are more efficient codecs available nowadays. Since VP9 is now supported in all browsers supported by WorkAdventure, we have switched to VP9 as the default codec.
In theory, you should see a 20-30% bandwidth reduction for the same video quality, with an increase in CPU usage.
The results may vary depending on your hardware and network conditions, but in our tests, we have not observed increased CPU usage. What we observed however is a much smoother video experience, with way less video freezes than what we had with VP8.
Adaptive streaming in P2P mode
In P2P mode (up to 4 participants in a meeting/bubble), WorkAdventure now uses adaptive streaming. This feature was already available in Livekit mode and has been backported to P2P mode. Adaptative streaming will adapt the size of the video streams depending on the display size of the remote participant. So if you are talking to someone that sees you in a small window, your video stream will be sent at a lower resolution, saving bandwidth!
As part of those changes, the “low / recommended / unlimited” quality options have been revamped and replaced by quality presets (low, medium, high). There is no need to send a 5MB/s stream for a small video window so “unlimited” has been replaced with “high” quality preset. Those quality presets are valid for both the sender and the receiver.
So if you set the video quality to “low”, you will both send and receive low quality streams (helping you save bandwidth).
Video statistics widget
In the “Settings” panel, click on the “Display video quality statistics” checkbox to enable the video statistics widget at the bottom-right of your videos. This widget displays real-time information about the video quality of the stream, including frame rate, resolution, codec, bitrate and network transport used.
This can be really handy to debug video issues. In particular, you can know if your stream is using UDP (good), or TCP (not so good), if it is relayed via a TURN server (not so good) or directly P2P (good), etc…
Improvements
Better notifications
A new “in-game” notification system has been added to WorkAdventure. If your chat panel is closed and you receive a new message, a small notification bubble will appear at the bottom-left of the screen to notify you of the new message.
A notification sound is played when someone enters or leaves a meeting room (up to 5 participants). The sound is automatically disabled for large meetings (more than 5 participants) to avoid interrupting the participants too often if people keep joining/leaving the meeting.
New “Walk to my desk” button
Click the Tools > Walk to my desk button to instantly walk back to your personal desk. Did I say walk? It’s more like running at full speed! Your Woka will dash back to your desk in no time.
You can also use the “Ctrl + D” (or “Cmd + D” on Mac) keyboard shortcut.
Pretty useful at the end of a meeting!
Redesigned the virtual background selection panel
The virtual background selection panel has been completely redesigned and is now fully embedded in the “Cam/Mic” settings panel.
New “picture-in-picture” button
Previously, the “Picture-in-Picture” mode would trigger when you switched tabs while in a bubble/meeting, but there was no button to trigger the Picture-in-Picture mode manually. This is now fixed: a new “Picture-in-Picture” button has been added to the video controls.
Click to follow player
Clicking a user in the user list will now center the camera on that user.
Individual volume controls
Each stream volume can now be adjusted individually from the video box.
No more evil twins!
When a network disconnect happens, you don’t always get a clean “disconnected” message. For instance, if your Wifi network suddenly stops working, your browser will not be able to notify WorkAdventure that you are disconnected. WorkAdventure handles this case with a timeout: if no message is received from the client within 100 seconds, the server considers the client disconnected and the Woka is removed from the map.
But if the network comes back quickly, the user would end up reconnected while his previous Woka was still present on the map. For ~100 seconds, you would have what we called the “evil twin” effect: two Wokas with the same name on the map!
We now have a fix for that! When a user connects, a unique “tab” ID is generated and sent to the server. If the user reconnects in the same browser tab, the same “tab” ID is sent to the server. The server now knows that only one user with the same “tab” ID can be connected at the same time. If a reconnection happens with the same “tab” ID, the previous Woka is removed from the map before adding the new one. Result: no more evil twins!
Bug fixes
Amongst the dozen of bug fixes this release contains, we would like to showcase 2 special bugs that have been plaguing our users. Good riddance 🙂
Fixing map editor getting locked
A nasty bug that was causing the map editor to rarely stop propagating / saving changes was fixed.
Support for nested podium / attendee zones
Until now, podium zones and attendee zones could not overlap. This limitation made it impossible to create more complex meeting room setups (for instance, a podium at the middle of an audience area).
This limitation has been lifted: you can now create nested podium/attendee zones, and switching from one zone to the other will behave as expected.
Want to see the full change log? See the Github release page