NMC Campus Observer

NMC Campus is Voice Enabled!

CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine) : Jul 12, 2007 12:08am

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the capability of voice communication here on NMC Campus, going back to March when we did some beta tests with an early version on the beta grid. As many know, our typical communication in SL is text based chat/IM, and any audio communication has required use of outside software with honestly un-even results.

The new voice capability is built into the SL client, so you can just talk using your computer’s microphone, and you can hear other avatars through your speakers. We’ve had more than one opportunity to demo this and it makes a huge impact on the experience.

Over the last few weeks, Second Life has been enabling this across many sims, apparently in order of dates they came on line. By the end of this week, just about every one of NMC Campus sims, the rental islands, and many of our academic neighbors will have the voice light turned on.

Now here is the catch– the interface is not yet built into the primary SL client. To experience the voice features, you need to download the special First Look client, something that is in between the beta grid and the main grid, in that the First Look contains new features, but it interacts with everything on the main grid. So the first step is to download the current First Look application. It’s pretty much the same software, with some different looking buttons, and everything you have inventory wise is there.

The next step on logging in, is to select Preferences under the Edit menu, and there is a new tab for “voice chat”. By default, this options is not set, so you should check the top box to enable voice:

The other options allow you to set the voice to be either on all the time, or only when you press a button. I like just talking when I feel like talking, so I don’t use Push to Talk mode. but that might be handy when you dont want all noices around you being transmitted to Second Life (like the yelling in the background, “Are you still playing that GAME????”)

You can tell if you are on land where voice is enabled (sim owners can turn this on or off according to their whims), by looking for the small blue icon on the top menubar:

Or you can see which Second Life regions are enabled via the Voice Map.

When you talk, or when others talk, an audio presence is indicated by green “squiggles” — audio waveforms over an avatar’s head. If your audio is too loud, they will be big and red, and if it is to faint, there will only by perhaps a single small squiggle:

So above, I am talking, though no one is around tonight to talk back. There is some moral in this situation.

As you experience audio, like real sound, the volume is proportional to the distance form the source. So if your avatar is far away, your voice will be low in volume, and will increase in volume as we come closer. Interestingly, the alt/option zoom tool used to move your camera view also works to amplify voice from far away (so I could listen in on conversations from a distance??). Sound is also stereo, so voices to your right will be louder in the right speaker.

The new features are wrapped into the IM and Friends tools as well, not as a “Communicate” button in the bottom. You can do an audio IM, like a person to person phone call. A new “Talk” button in the interface will also show you who is nearby who has voice capability.

It likely will not be long until voice capability is part of the main SL client, and a whole new raft of possibilities (and issues) crop up for a new mode of communication. We are eager here at NMC to see how the education community probes the use of voice– for language learning? virtual theater? communication activities? maybe stand up comics?

Story filed under: Resources & Information, Second Life News

See all stories by CDB Barkley (aka Alan Levine)