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Sturmer's avatar

Not all digital assistants are created equal; it really depends on the specific one and the tasks you're asking of it. For example, the last time I checked the OpenAI Assistant builder, it was using the 3.5 API version. A tip: begin your interactions with specific thematic prompts, such as "Let's discuss Kantor's philosophy and infinite numbers".

Lanah Tyra's avatar

I was asking Microsoft Copilot if a certain feature is available in a software. It said "Certainly, there are multiple ways to go about it" Gave me one workaround and 2 other options completely unrelated to the function I was asking about. Real answer: no, the function I needed is not available yet.

Sturmer's avatar

Can share your prompt? Maybe i can help =)

Lanah Tyra's avatar

This was the prompt: Can I use my webcam in Parsec?

And this was the answer.

And it pissed me off that it's talking about OBS and virtual display driver when those have nothing to do with what I wanted to know.

But even if I ask it more directly as "is webcam passthrough available in parsec?" it does say that that's not supported but then goes on about 3 paragraphs of unrelated bs. I didn't ask any of them, just give me a straight answer damn it and cut out the nonsense XD

It's not any more clever than what posts would come up if I would have just googled it and went through all the reddit discussion results or clickbait articles titled "how to use your webcam in Parsec!"

Would have saved myself some time if I just told my boss hey are you sure this function is out yet because I can't find it anywhere? But I thought I would try and use this tool maybe I'm dumb and it will find me something but nope.

Sturmer's avatar

Just to ensure we’re on the same page:

  1. You're using a remote machine accessed via PARSEC from a local machine for gaming or similar activities.

  2. You have a webcam connected to your local machine.

  3. Are you looking to simultaneously stream the webcam feed from your local machine and the content from PARSEC.

Correct?

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Accessing remote machine via Parsec, with webcam connected to the local machine.

Want to run Teams or Discord on the remote machine and use the local webcam for it. It work with the mic now since they have the microphone passthrough as experimental feature but there's no solution for the webcam yet.

Sturmer's avatar

It sounds like using OBS is the right approach for your setup. I've had a similar experience, but with a different remote app and three local web cameras, which the video operator would switch between as needed.

Simply combine the two sources — the Parsec app and your webcam — and then broadcast the combined feed using OBS/Streamlabs. This is a pretty standard workflow in streaming, for a steam app it does not matter if is it game.exe or parsec.exe. Streaming from a remote machine is not advisable due to additional lag on your video feed.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

This is completely unrelated to streaming. Simply need to run Teams on a remote machine as the local machine can't handle a meeting with lots of people in. But would need the user still to join with camera, and can't do that since Parsec doesn't support the webcam passthrough yet.

Sturmer's avatar

oh, that's a different case. Anyway, copilot said the right thing. Parsec itself doesn't offer native webcam forwarding (and he mentioned that). So you are down to 2 workarounds (3 if you have a HDMI capture card and a camera with native HDMI).

  1. Virtual Webcam Software: Concept - use a virtual webcam software that tricks the video conferencing application on the remote machine into thinking your local webcam is a virtual camera.

  2. Third-party Streaming Software: Concept - use software designed to stream your webcam feed to a virtual channel, then access that stream on the remote machine and use it as the video source for conferencing.

You can also try Gemini if copilot is not your thing. My general recommendation is to use more explicit prompts and focus on a problem, not a solution. Your query should not look like a search request, more like:

Currently, there isn't a native feature in Parsec to directly transmit webcam video from my local machine to a remote one. However, I'm exploring ways to broadcast my local webcam feed to the remote machine via Parsec. My aim is to enable video conferencing on the remote machine using the hardware webcam from my local setup.

Lanah Tyra's avatar

Tried it with a different issue, with a more specific and longer prompt. Copilot is still just basically quoting the independent advisor's rubbish from the Microsoft Forum like try switching it off and on...

Gemini for the same prompt gave a less generic answer and offered some detailed explanation on what could be the cause of the issue.

EveOnlineTutorials's avatar

It's more the way they are coded to respond to certain words or questions, it is VERY frustrating. Especially when you simply want a simple answer lol.

Dave's avatar

They aren't great when they are given access to the web, especially copilot as all it does it search on bing then output a summarised version of the first result or two. If you are using copilot the best thing to do is not use the windows desktop version, instead, use the sidebar one built into edge. click on this button in the top right:

it opens up a plugins list. untick the search slider and anything else that is on. Now try asking it again and it will use its actual dataset and knowledge instead of just rewording some bing results. It makes this free one massively better and more useful.

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