Second Life gets voice chat

Author: Wil Harris
Published: 27th February 2007
Comments (19) Stumble
Second Life voice chat? Yes please.

Second Life voice chat? Yes please.

Linden Labs will begin the process of integrating voice chat into Second Life next week, the company has said.

Voice functionality will be provided by Vivox, which claims to have technology that enables '3D' audio - in other words, just using spacial distance and environmental effects to post-process the audio effects to simulate a conversation environment.

Whilst Linden Labs has been relatively cautious about any promises to introduce voice, the recent explosion of the game has seen the issue become more of a 'when' than an 'if'. Many SL residents have taken to using Skype to communicate with each other.

Of course, it's not all roses for the firm. Some residents have questioned the wisdom of introducing a bandwidth heavy feature into the game when the grid is already teetering on the edge of instability. A recent post to the official Second Life Blog tells gamers that the firm is "We understand it’s very tiring to see these Grid issues on an almost-daily basis, and scaling Second Life during so much growth continues to be of high importance."

Second Life is growing at a phenomenal rate, with more and more gamers experimenting with the virtual world. However, sceptics will certainly point out that the vast majority of growth is almost universally driven by the in-world 'adult' industry of strip joints and escort agencies. We suspect that those who will be amongst the first to get into voice chat in SL will be those making money from adult services.

We're also sure that many will get fed up of the vocal harrassment that should inevitably ensue. Thankfuly, land-owners will be able to turn off voice on their land, which should limit the amount of vocal aggro going around.

Are you psyched about getting voice in Second Life, or do you wish Linden Labs would fix everything that's wrong with it just at the moment? Let us know over in the forums.
Quote mclean007 27th February 2007, 16:19
What is the point of Second Life? It's like WoW without cool dragons and stuff. Personally, if I want to go around chatting to people and generally hanging about, I've got this revolutionary new idea. It has a photorealistic graphics engine with amazing weather and physics effects. It already has a perfect, zero latency voice chat system. It has six billion users, populating a three dimensional model of the globe, with full interactivity and tactile feedback. It never suffers from network problems and requires no expensive computer equipment to play. I'm going to call it First Life(TM), and you're all invited.

Seriously, I can *almost* understand the attraction of WoW or a similar MMORPG - the cooperative questing and levelling. But SL just seems pointless, and (though I haven't tried it so shouldn't criticise) I can't help but feel that the inhabitants of Sadville only spend time there because their real lives are so dull. Which doesn't really entice me to want to hang out with them.
Quote DarkLord7854 27th February 2007, 16:26
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
What is the point of Second Life? It's like WoW without cool dragons and stuff. Personally, if I want to go around chatting to people and generally hanging about, I've got this revolutionary new idea. It has a photorealistic graphics engine with amazing weather and physics effects. It already has a perfect, zero latency voice chat system. It has six billion users, populating a three dimensional model of the globe, with full interactivity and tactile feedback. It never suffers from network problems and requires no expensive computer equipment to play. I'm going to call it First Life(TM), and you're all invited.

How much is it for a premium account? :)


I tried SL, I tried scripting a big NPC thing to kill people, but it didn't work :(
Quote quack 27th February 2007, 16:55
Brilliant post mclean007! My thoughts exactly.
Quote Redbeaver 27th February 2007, 17:01
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
What is the point of Second Life? It's like WoW without cool dragons and stuff. Personally, if I want to go around chatting to people and generally hanging about, I've got this revolutionary new idea. It has a photorealistic graphics engine with amazing weather and physics effects. It already has a perfect, zero latency voice chat system. It has six billion users, populating a three dimensional model of the globe, with full interactivity and tactile feedback. It never suffers from network problems and requires no expensive computer equipment to play. I'm going to call it First Life(TM), and you're all invited.

Seriously, I can *almost* understand the attraction of WoW or a similar MMORPG - the cooperative questing and levelling. But SL just seems pointless, and (though I haven't tried it so shouldn't criticise) I can't help but feel that the inhabitants of Sadville only spend time there because their real lives are so dull. Which doesn't really entice me to want to hang out with them.

;)

i agree...

i tried SL before n found it frustratingly boring and pointless... thats JUST ME.... so i uninstalled it.....

my idea of having fun is doing all these stuff that i normally wouldnt be able to do in real life... such as killing dragons, shooting bad guys a la Matrix, racing Nascar, etc...
Quote randosome 27th February 2007, 17:28
lol i think i probably agree with mclean too
however i think that "I can't help but feel that the inhabitants of Sadville only spend time there because their real lives are so dull. Which doesn't really entice me to want to hang out with them." could quite possibly be talking about WoW players too i'm afraid
Some people just seem to use it as an escape from life, and Ive lost many friends (RL and Online) to WoW

Anyway, on the SL voice front, cant they just use some kind of P2P system for voice, instead of using the SL servers to transmit it ... like skype .... (except built in and well made ...)
Quote DarkLord7854 27th February 2007, 17:33
Quote:
Originally Posted by randosome
Some people just seem to use it as an escape from life, and Ive lost many friends (RL and Online) to WoW

Ain't it the truth..
Quote ou7blaze 27th February 2007, 18:01
I'm sorry but if you start losing friends from playing games maybe you need to reorganise your priorities.

I also tried SL myself and found it rather boring and pointless. It's basically a 3D chatroom. Most of the people I met on there seemed pretty depressing aswell and the game engine is nothing to rave on about, actually I think it's pretty crappy..
Quote randosome 27th February 2007, 18:06
Quote:
Originally Posted by ou7blaze
I'm sorry but if you start losing friends from playing games maybe you need to reorganise your priorities.
i think you missed what i was saying completely there ....
Quote Tyinsar 27th February 2007, 19:34
OMG, is teh gr8est evrr!!! YAY!, now I finally get to use this great Morph Vox Pro software, I really am a 8/14/18/21 year old hot chick!!! </Sarcasm Mode>
Quote DriftCarl 27th February 2007, 20:34
I have tried to play second life 3 times. First i just downloaded it and loaded it played for 5 minutes and uninstalled it. 2nd time i tried a little harder and read some manuals. 3rd time i did the tutorials and I was still confused. I just couldnt get into the game at all.

The reason I wanted to play it was to go visit all these new things that business are setting up. like the concerts, virtual museums in other countries. Tour of some egyption pyramids that aparently some people recreated. And it would of been amusing to go beat up an ingame pimp too. But the thing that stoppe dme was I just didnt "get" what to do at the start. If they made that easier and more fun then it might be a bigger hit with the social networking types.

In terms of the voice technology, I think it would be a nice experiement to have real conversation where you can hear people close to you, but also hear others around you chatting in their own conversations, but not as loudly. If they can get past that barrier then I am sure the technology would make its way into more fun MMO's
Quote DarkLord7854 27th February 2007, 20:37
Quote:
Originally Posted by ou7blaze
I also tried SL myself and found it rather boring and pointless. It's basically a 3D chatroom. Most of the people I met on there seemed pretty depressing aswell and the game engine is nothing to rave on about, actually I think it's pretty crappy..

And flying around like superman :)
Quote Zut 27th February 2007, 21:26
I understand the attraction of MMOs, but SL is absolute shite. Every feature of the 'game' is incredibly poorly implemented, and its main purpose is for idiots and ****s to pool their collective minds to probe the depths of pornography and gambling.

I challenge ANYONE to go into Second Life and stand in an area long enough for the whole scene to load and be displayed properly. You'd want to have something else to do for a few hours let me tell you!!
Quote Tyinsar 28th February 2007, 00:18
I tell you it's all a plot to make us forget what is REALLY happening (or did you take the blue pill :p)
Quote Aankhen 28th February 2007, 00:44
Quote:
Originally Posted by mclean007
I'm going to call it First Life(TM), and you're all invited.
Heh, that sounds familiar.
Quote r4tch3t 28th February 2007, 01:13
So is anyone on bit sad enough to actually play/use Second life?
Also great one mclean007 ;)
Quote Tyinsar 28th February 2007, 02:11
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aankhen
Heh, that sounds familiar.
:) ;)
Quote Brooxy 28th February 2007, 08:11
I tried it last night to see what all this was even about...it's gone now. Then I had to play a few hours of starcraft, just to cleanse myself...

I'll stick with first life...it's much better...
Quote traderonline 2nd March 2007, 19:51
I really enjoyed the game. I felt that i'm getting addicted and stopped playing it :D
Quote mclean007 5th March 2007, 10:29
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aankhen
Heh, that sounds familiar.
Figures. It's far too easy to take the **** out of Second Life for me to have been the first person to come up with it! :D
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