Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 arthnek_the_boar_dup Nov 16, 2008 9:51:39	If you are looking for a fun and easy alternative to the virtual table top while you wait patiently for the official one to be ready, look no further than ooVoo. Yes...that is spelled ooVoo and is pronounced ooo vooo. ooVoo is a kickin cyberpunk feel virtual conference room where you can have a video and audio conference call with three or four of your friends all together at the same time. My group kicked off setting oovoo up...plan to spend your first session making characters and getting everyone to download the program and up and running...but after that its a snap. Here are the coolest of the cool features... 1. It just looks cool. The video conference room is made to have a very edgy sci-fi / cyberpunk look. Each caller has their own floating window set inside of a sort of virtual round table. Remember the old superman movie where you had the faces of the people trapped in those crystal prisons sort of floating in space....just like that. 2. Every caller has their own special options in an easy drop down menu mounted on the corner of their character portrait. You can give yourself a special background or upload your own. You can make animated animals...think familiars if you add them to your game...hopping around on people's shoulders. You can give someone a mullet...or elf ears...or a pirate hat...or a wizard's hat. You can plop down a foreground image like...a frothing mug of ale or an open spell book or something. The effect during a game with its usual cutting up and kidding around between scenes and combats is awesome. 3. Anyone can switch from their camera to a view either of their desktop or a file. This allows anyone to show off a map or even zoom in on a feature on a map. Imagine...DM saying "Ok...here's the map of the city and you guys are here...at the Inn." Player says, "Oh yea, hey I have a map of that from last time...our room is here right?" 4. As DM you can switch between two cameras...cameras are pretty cheap these days for something basic. Our plan for next session is for me to run two cameras...one for me as DM and one focused on a table where dungeon tiles and real miniatures are set up. Using the foreground image tool I can even overlay a numbered grid over the image of the map so players can say...I move my guy to square G3...I move my wizard to square H9....I sank your battleship! (sorry I couldn't resist) What ooVoo lacks... This does not have a virtual whiteboard so you will have to run one of your own if you want that sort of thing. We are using a camera on real mini's so we no longer need the virtual whiteboard but I can't see why you couldn't have one running as well. It does not have the super cool virtual mini board presented in the virtual table. For our group we may go with the virtual table when it comes out AND run ooVoo as our main video chat client as it is just so much cooler than just using voice chat. The last really cool thing about ooVoo is that it is -free- and you can use it for a ton of other things chatting and conferencing online, leaving voice messages for friends...making long distance video calls for free....so many other uses beyond gaming. Check it out!
#2 mudbunny Nov 16, 2008 20:14:40	I will be moving this thread to the Digital D&D forum.
#3 Haldrik Nov 16, 2008 21:58:23	Link?
#4 Mock Nov 16, 2008 22:10:14	As a quick note, while this looks very cool, this isn't quite a "virtual tabletop" but more of a videoconferencing app. Unless you do the "camera aimed at minis on the table" it doesn't look like you end up with a shared map/battlemat. That said, it looks like a neat app!
#5 Kentinal Nov 17, 2008 12:20:25	Link? It appears to be www.oovoo.com/ though I did not comfirm it.