Second Life has had music, but has otherwise been rather mute. That’s all soon to change when Linden Lab rolls out a beta test for person-to-person speech. Like a lot of other in-game speech systems, you’ll need a headset, but Second Life will provide a different peer-to-peer chat experience than those World of Warcraft conversational gems.
The new system will mimic speech in the real world, adjusting the volume of voices relative to you based on the distance and direction of speaker. Like other products, voice will only be active on certain digital geographies, but private island owners will have the option to enable voice on their own land, depending on the terms of their subscription. Up to 100 people will be able to chat on the same connection at a time. If talking to everyone or just anyone is too much to handle, you can hold group conferences across geographical boundaries or talk one-to-one as well.
The whole system is powered by a technological collaboration between the voice chat technologies of Vivox and 3D voice tech from DiamondWare. The initial beta will be for 1,000 residents (apply by emailing 3dvoice@lindenlab.com), broader beta in March, with a formal launch virtual world wide scheduled for Q2, 2007.
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This is great and can change the user experience for the better. We have been talking to our nonprofit clients about using SecondLife and while it is very early to invest much effort there, I think it’s for real. The open source platform should make their efforts move that much faster as they are combined with third-parties who are extending the functionality.
When Bungie first introduced distance based in-game speech to Xbox Live user s via Halo 2, many users complained, and then realised how brilliant it was. So I’d expect the same with Second Life, especially if non-beta testers have to put up with the conversations. Ahlo 2 also included the ability to have a direct conversation with any other player (if they were on the same team) via a communication button. It will be interesting to see if Linden include this too, therefore facilitating a Skype-esque service as well as a human hearing simulation.
Cool, that idea sounds so obvious now. Well done
Sounds like a good idea. Great post Techcrunch.
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“The new system will mimic speech in the real world”
Then you can enable talking on your land.
Who plays this silly game? I read about it, but I don’t know anyone who has actually played.
Linden Labs originally experimented with voice chat back in April of 2006
http://www.ministryoftech.com/.....next-week/
Hopefully the technology is superior. I’m a huge fan of Second Life (and SIMS 2) so I’m really looking forward to seeing how this will affect behavior amongst avatars, and how businesses will apply it to their marketing and virtual offices.
Wow I didn’t know that SL didn’t have this. I guess I just assumed so.
Almost 3 years ago, for a short time I was a fan of There (there.com), which is similar to SL except there’s even less of a point. But they had voice chat, and this was 3 years ago. It worked fine, including taking distance into account. SL is just getting around to this? I really just am surprised for some reason.
Garth - shhhhhhhhh! Don’t bring that up. The crazies who play SL may start looking for you.
I need not fear those who spend their days on a server island in a virtual office.
holy shit, mike should read this:
http://www.garthvh.com/2007/02.....es-to.html
I think he just got bodyslammed.
its been so much buzz about this second life thingy maybe I will give it a try!
———————
http://www.dobizo.com
great, now people won’t need to keep any hands on the keyboard when they cyber in SL.
That is the only reason why anyone uses SL, isn’t it?
Just a minor point: WOW doesn’t have in-game voice chat. You run Ventrillo or Teamspeak in the background in order to do that. I suppose people playing SL in the past could have done that as well, but it would have been equally cumbersome.
Why did it take them so long to implement this? It seems so obvious that it would have been an enhancement.
About time. There has had speech for years.
Interesting!! I used Vivox Phone Booth before but it seemed like it cost a lot of $$$ to have one of your own, and a monthly fee. I wonder how its going to work when they work with SL.
http://www.vivox.com/millionmins.html Perhaps it was because it did ‘real’ calls as well?
There is Second Talk (http://www.secondtalk.com/) which is free and uses skype (free as well).
Both services require you to have a 3rd party program, which is annoying for people who doesn’t already have it. Having it built into the system will make it easier to start voice chats with no extra work. I wonder if there will be an application you could use without having to log into secondlife to talk to your secondlife contacts? That would be one of the nicer things about Skype if you wanted wanted to continue the conversation outside of skype.
I know its been a big big request from people who use Second Life for educational/training purposes. They want speech to go along with their presentation… isntead of long text chats.
Either way, should be interesting.
The new system will mimic speech in the real world”
Then you can enable talking on your land.
Who plays this silly game? I read about it, but I don’t know anyone who has actually played.
maruyasu-grape@world.odn.ne.jp
Huzzah! What an advancement for the internet
Now _Talking_ Flying Penises
sweet…ill use it
I love this forum because people so often ask the questions that I would. With this post, however, I actually agree that I’m not as worried about the revenue. So many companies these days play what I call the “YouTube Lottery.” Everyone knows about the crazy money YouTube got, but not much is written (even on TechCrunch) about the 100s of companies that made it nowhere, They didn’t win the lottery the way that YouTube did.http://www.bestmobiletools.com
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