SitePal not working on Windows Server

Michael -
Things I would look at first -
* Flash may not be installed
* The server may not have an audio card or audio drivers not configured (verify other audio plays)
Let me know if this ain't it
Regards
Gil

Flash is installed. That is true, so if the computer doesnt have sound, the flash wont speak or continue? How can I throw an error message in javascript to accomodate this?

Michael -
That's correct - if the computer has no sound, the SitePal avatar should load but cannot speak.
The attempt to speak will not complete. "talkended" callback will not be reached. "progress" callback will be called but will stay at zero.

if you wanted to you could detect this situation by monitoring the "progress" callback - if it continuously returns zero values - that is likely due to no audio support.

btw - this situation is extremely rare - web applications are not often run on computers without audio support.

Hope this helps,
Gil

The vh_audioProgress doesn't get hit. Is there another way around this. This is a super important user experience issue if we can show the user a message saying the sound card doesn't work.

Yes rare but if you have user impaired users that dont have sound cards that is a user who are forgetting about.

Michael -

You are right - theoretically.

But in practice we see no evidence of that.

With thousands of customers and millions of avatars delivered daily - we would know if this was an issue. It would seem that the percentage of end users without audio capability is miniscule.

Every desktop or laptop sold in the past 10 years and more comes with built-in audio capability. Whether connected to speakers or not - the machine itself has an audio card or chip - which is sufficient to ensure proper playback.
( Of course, without speakers users will not be able to hear - but there would be no error. )

Gil

So there is no other way to detect this so we can show an error message? Nothing from your technical team that can provider an answer? I made another post about an error callback which you would think would be necessary for an API.

Michael -
We tested this internally on a computer with the sound card disabled - and we do in fact see the "vh_audioProgress" callback called repeatedly with 0%.

Please try loading this page & let me know what you see -
http://www.oddcast.com/support/vh_sce...

Gil

Is this with dynamic text (sayText)? We arent using preloaded audio files.

Please go here and http://ppe.ara.pearsoncmg.com/Avatar/... and you can see that it doesn't work with sound cards disabled.

Or enabled for that matter, it never gets hit.

Have you tried this?

Michael - yes I tried, I don't see any indication whether callbacks are called or not. But in our example you can see it - we display the callbacks clearly.
So my question is - do you see the progress callback when loading this on your server?
Iif you do - does it display continuous 0 progress?
If so - you can use that fact to identify no audio card and show an alert.
No this example is not with TTS, but it works with TTS the exact same way.
Good luck!
Gil

If you put a breakpoint with Firebug on the vh_audioProgress it never gets hit. If you do that and confirm it doesnt work for you, then something is going on.

I dont see any kind of progress callback, not sure what you mean by that. The vh_audioProgress never gets hit returning any kind of percentage.

"progress callback" is my shorthand for vh_audioProgress
sorry for not being clear.

To clarify -
I tried your example page multiple times.
Your code does not call the vh_audioProgress callback regardless of whether audio capability is enabled on the computer.
This means the code on your page is not properly formulated. You need to fix it.

Again - look at our example at -
http://www.oddcast.com/support/vh_sce...

This demonstrates that the callback is called when properly setup.
Hope this helps.
Gil

Well I went to the code and saw, setStatus(0, 1) has to be set to make that get hit. Hopefully this helps someone else out.

Great
do you now see the callbacks with zero % value?
can you use this to identify the missing audio support?

Yes I can thanks.