Video from/to everyone

Hello, this is not a bug per se  but more of an annoying problem we have. We are a bunch of 5 playing once a week, we are very diverse with respect what browser/os we are using, we have chrome on windows, chrome on mac, firefox on windows and firefox on linux. Everything works fine usually, we use discord for the voice but like to use roll20 for the video since then there is no need for having multiple windows tiled. Anyway, our problem is that usually one particular player can't see some of the other players, then we all begin clicking "reconnect" randomly until after a few (or more than a few) times everyone sees everyone, sometimes though we have to give up because it becomes impossible. As I said this is not a deal breaker since we use discord for voice but it is very annoying. It would be fantastic if WebRTC video/voice just worked as well as everything else.

I run into the same issues you described, to a tee. With that said, it works a lot better than it used to. The video-only option is pretty cool, right (for those that use Discord or other voice). One tip I can offer, DON'T everybody click Reconnect at once. Have only the person who sees no one, or sees the fewest, press their Reconnect in roll20 video box. Everyone else just stay sitting-pretty. I think a technical term in there is a "handshake", we need each computer to shake hands (safely with gloves) to talk to connect with each of the others, so just letting the worst connection take time (a minute?) to re-do its handshakes with all the others who stay stable, is the best chance of getting it, from what I've found.

I hadn't tried that Gold. We'll give that technique a shot next time.

keithcurtis said: I hadn't tried that Gold. We'll give that technique a shot next time. Another technical term that I have no business trying to say, but I think the handshake procedure has a retry timeout, and it's much longer than people think. It keeps trying for like 30 seconds, maybe longer maybe minutes. Just because it doesn't connect in 5 seconds, doesn't mean that it won't connect in half-a-minute later. So no one should "wail on" the Reconnect button repeatedly. Tap reconnect once on one person, wait minutes before trying something else again.

Well, I might give you the idea by my description that everyone is smashing the "Reconnect" button as crazy :) We have developed kind of a sense for it and it usually is the person who can see the least people who tries to reconnect and it is true that sometimes when we have already given up the faces just pop up. I admire the fact that roll20 is using webrtc trying to stick to its philosophy of "all you need to play is a web browser". In fact that very feature is what it has made possible for us to be able to play, because due to our technical "diversity" (mac, windows, linux) and being some of us not very technical people, another solution using client software installations etc would have been very difficult or impossible to implement. That being said, and without knowing the specifics of the protocol, I think it would be nice that Roll20 had some kind of central registry for helping the clients to negotiate the handshake between them, as in the video and audio streams might go peer to peer but since everyone is connected to a central server anyway, it could provide the endpoints. As I said I am not knowledgeable enough, but I feel that until this is not fixed you are preventing a whole type of player, the one that can't be bothered with discord or alternative means of communication, from experiencing the games.

Historically, as a Roll20 user since 2012, I can tell you the current Audio/Video is the 3rd major-major overhaul of the communications Roll20 offers. A couple years ago, some of Roll20 Dev Team spent a long time, lotta development cycles, on rebuilding it in-house. They fixed many bugs and improved it for a year steadily. In the end it still had some bugs that couldn't be overcome (and a lot of that was in the handshake procedures of trying to get every-single-player connected to every-other-player without any broken handshakes). They then hired an outside firm of some sort, I believe, or brought new developers, to rehaul it completely again. That launched what we have now, some months ago. There are archival thread topics and announcements about it. So it has seen a lot of work, a lot of consideration and planning, many improvements along the way, and is not considered to be perfect now, but is considered to be much more acceptable performance and generally works and has the reconnect method to work on problems. Xavier N. said: That being said, and without knowing the specifics of the protocol, I think it would be nice that Roll20 had some kind of central registry for helping the clients to negotiate the handshake between them, as in the video and audio streams might go peer to peer but since everyone is connected to a central server anyway, it could provide the endpoints. As I said I am not knowledgeable enough, but I feel..

Yes, as a developer I understand that is not unusual for software to have had more work into it that it meets the eye. And it has indeed become much better over time. Still, I think that Roll20's main selling point and what differentiates it from its competitors is the "browser only" experience. I myself am a developer and infrastructure engineer but in my group there are people that is not technical AT ALL. For these people to ask to install a couple of applications or even have discord and a roll application running at the same time tiling etc. it is a deal breaker. The fact that I can just point them to a web site and start playing makes it possible for us to play so indeed I see audio/video capabilities as a core feature in this case. In time I decided to invest some time on teaching the users to install discord on their phones and educate them to use it for voice communication because even if the one in site works pretty well, it kind of ruins the mood having people reconnect even if it is just a few times per game. We still use video in site and we do have to reconnect now and then to make it work but having an uninterrupted sound stream as discord gives continuity to the game because we can keep on interacting while one or some of us clicks "reconnect" in the background. The paradox here is that the very reason to choose WebRTC here, which is to make it possible to run in browser, it is detrimental to the general experience. Hopefully it will be fixed at some point.

Like you, I also use & recommend the method of offloading Discord to a smartphone or separate device. And using "Video Only" mode in Roll20. A feature that I asked and lobbied for, on here a few years ago. That is a powerful, versatile, relatively fail-safe configuration. Meaning even if one part is failing, the game and communication can continue in other areas of interface.