Of the thirteen people in the region I went into, four were logged into FreeNode, 31%. Obviously this isn’t going to work so well, but this is Alpha. The chat room was quite.
If you continue to read the comments the trend seems to be people would prefer that chat be in the Interface by default. Chris, of HF, replies at one point:
You can do whatever you want with chat. e.g. With one line of code:
var webviewer = new WebWindow(‘chat’, “http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=highfidelity&uio=d4”, 100, 100); webviewer.setVisible(true);
I can bring up an IRC chat channel in Interface. You could even tie that to your own personal key combo. Does that not seem like a much more powerful way to handle something like this?
…with just one line of code… Well this is an Alpha Release. Also remember that the HF people have referred to HF as analogous to a web server. If you have hosting and you want music on your blog or web site you are going to have to add it. For now we are in a similar scenario with HF. I suppose region/domain developers would handle the issue for those coming to their regions/domains.
You can learn more about setting up chat here. 5 minute video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DbR3ZBjv88
YouTube’s tawdrywriter doesn’t mention that there is a HighFidelity FreeNode group.
Of course this is not your only option for setting up chat. There are other choices; Skype, TeamSpeak, etc. But, you see people have lots of choices and will likely be selecting various services, which divides up the group. As it is no one can know which chat another player has elected to use. So, this will have to evolve to where regions/domain owners handle which chat server their region/domain is going to use.
By the 20th of March David, CtrlAltStudio, had posted another way to easily do chat. This makes more since as it logs one into chat for the region (domain = region, in HF-speak) you are in. You’ll find that information here: Chat.js – an interim local chat.
David points out in comments that this is an interim work-around. Also, he later points out a bug.
I’ve updated chat.js to better cope with one’s HiFi domain name not being fully resolved. However, there’s still an Interface bug where Windows.location.hostname gets stuck on being a blank string or an IP address which stops the script working properly. The effect is that you can type a message but not submit it, and you can’t see any other people’s messages. If this happens, teleport away and back again and it should reset Windows.location.hostname and get things working again.
I think that bug is fixed in the later releases from David.
HOW TO Install
OK, its is possible to add chat. But, specifically what are the steps? The HF people have explained that step here: High Fidelity Chat How To.
This is a good step-by-step and it is easy enough I think most non-geek SL’ers can do it. So, don’t let chat issues keep you out of High Fidelity’s virtual worlds.