@ville: we have enabled meetings for your account.
We are moving forward with audio/video tests and would like to first see how reliable and usable such streaming will be in a browser and what are the limits for the number of participants.
@jan Thanks! Sure thing, take your time. The virtual fair scope sure must be challenging. What I learned from the first one last month is that it might be better to separate each exhibition booth as itās own model and just have a general āhallway modelā for the full expo from where you could enter the booth models. That way the traffic should be lower for each meeting and could maybe be controlled some way.
Really excited about this feature. Iāll test this with my team and let you know our thoughts.
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Hey ShapeSpark Team,
Firstly thanks for giving me early access to this feature, I had a pitch with a client today and this feature went down really well.
I know this is only in Beta and only works for tours that are hosted on the SS platform.
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Are there any plans for charging for this feature, or will it just be included in the Plus plan for example?
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Will this chat feature be available for self hosted tours as well? I notice that our Plus plan can only have 50 online slots. I have 2 customers coming on board that would more than likely take all 50 slots between them. So it would be great to have these hosted on our own server with the chat feature still being an option, even if it required some sort of install on our server to make this feature function.
Iām really loving all of the new features over the last 6 months, it feels like ShapeSpark has grown so much. Weāre slowly adjusting our service offering to make ShapeSpark a big part of what we do, so itās all very exciting. 
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Thank you.
- Are there any plans for charging for this feature, or will it just be included in the Plus plan for example?
We donāt have pricing figured out yet. We still need to see more usage patterns and run some calculations how much streaming will cost. Plus plan rather for sure will allow to create meetings, perhaps with some limits on the number of participants and time. If we manage to support larger events, such as trade shows, there likely will be a separate payment for such an event, not something included in one of the plans.
- Will this chat feature be available for self hosted tours as well? I notice that our Plus plan can only have 50 online slots. I have 2 customers coming on board that would more than likely take all 50 slots between them. So it would be great to have these hosted on our own server with the chat feature still being an option, even if it required some sort of install on our server to make this feature function.
If you need more hosting slots, contact us and we will prepare a custom offer, perhaps it will be a better option for you than hosting on own server. We wonāt support self hosting for meetings. Normal scenes are just a collection of static files that any HTTP server should be able to serve without any sophisticated configuration, meetings require custom code to be run on the server. We consider supporting self hosted scenes to join the meetings by communicating with the Shapespark server.
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Could this be used in conjunction with a zoom meeting, for audio from all members, plus share screening so everyone can revert back to the zoom meeting?
I can present a meeting, and stay in control of it. I can demonstrate how the others can use the UI, and them they can use it as they like after the meeting.
Sure, you could start a meeting by sharing a Zoom link, and then in the Zoom chat share a link to a Shapespark meeting. Or you can start by sharing a link to a Shapespark meeting, and in the Shapespark scene share a link to Zoom. The first option can be better, as most people are already familiar with Zoom.
Thanks Jan,
Can you set me up with meetings? I would like to try that out. (i did go to your example - felt a bit lonely;)
@James_Craig Iāve enabled it for your account.
Ta.
How do i use it?
this post explains how to create meetings: Preview: meetings in Shapespark scenes - #12 by jan
Hello,
Is it possible to change or customize the Avatar currently being used ? I understand this is a Beta version, however I would request such a feature to be available to everyone when you plan to release it. Also, Audio intergration would make this feature feel complete.
Thank you.
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Hello Team Shapespark,
Could you give us a hint about the timeline you have planned for integrating audio streaming services with meetings? A lot of our customers are waiting for such kind of feature.
Would be a great addon to the meetings feature.
We aim to release it this quarter, perhaps even late August/early September.
just chipping in with my own experience.
I found that in the meeting, different users have different inputs. Those of us in the design industry have one hand over the keyboard and one hand on a mouse. Most of my clients looking at their screens are not so adapt as moving through the space as I (as the meeting leader) would wish. Would there be a way to take control of their view as well? ie lets all click on a selected view, then you follow my view?
I found that, whilst in zoom meetings, I simply ask everyone to click on the view, then as i back up, or look right and left i instruct them to do the same. This was ok, but eventually everyone was happier to sit back and let me share my screen, so that they could see every little subtle thing that i am talking about and focusing in on. They could then go back to their own view of the models in their own time.
So, for what its worth, I would like to propose something like the meeting leader to have a āmasterā view, so that everyone can see what that leader is looking at.
Yes, this is a feedback which we have also received from a lot of our clients. If this is implemented, I am sure itāll give a boost to the user experience altogether.
Thanks for your feedback. We have something like this in mind, most likely what @James_Craig suggests: the ability to bind oneās position to somebody elseās position. I am not sure if we manage to implement it in the first version, though.
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Haha the checkboxes in the meetings window must have been the best teaser ever. Good news on their way, eh?
It is not my intention to rush your important development but just a quick question: we are working on one event starting October 15th and the clients of course would love to have all the gizmos. Regarding this chat feature, should I tell them to hold their horses or can I make any vague estimations on when it might be operational?
Audio/video will most likely be available sooner than mid October, but we canāt yet declare how many simultaneous participants will be handled smoothly, so I wouldnāt yet make promises to clients. Also, while Standard and Plus subscription plans will have some audio/video meeting cabilities available within the subscription plan payment, there will be some limits and larger or frequent meetings will require additional payment, keep this in mind while discussing with clients (the limits and prices are still not yet finalized).
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Hello Jan, we combined shapespark output with our content management system to generate overlays. So we need the scene to be loaded from our server (php+mysql). if the scene ist self-hosted, it could nevertheless connect to your meetingserver via XHR - would that be possible?
At this moment the scene needs to be uploaded to Shapespark server to create a meeting and connect to it. We are still thinking if and how to handle meetings for self-hosted scenes. We would like to launch audio/video meetings first.
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