Voice in Second Life

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying out the new voice client for Second Life and despite a few remaining bugs with voice groupings it seems to work pretty well. It is sensitive to distance and location! If you turn around while someone is speaking to you, it really does sound like they are behind you etc.

It is possible to put groups / pairs of students (avatars) into different groups so that they can only hear the 'person' within their pair or group and for the 'teacher' to switch between groups to listen in on how each group is doing. (though this is still buggy at present)

This is really going to open up the potential for language teaching.

How to try it out

• If you want to try the voice client out. You will need to download a separate 'First look Viewer'. You can get this from: http://secondlife.com/community/firstlook.php
• It seems to run fine on both MAC and PC.
• If you can't get it to work, it could be that either your firewall or anti-virus is blocking it, so you may need to check your settings.
• You'll also need a reasonably good quality microphone and headset, preferably with USB connection.
• NOTE: Not all areas within SL are voice enabled
• To find voice enabled areas check out this map
  

I hope you enjoy this and by all means leave a comment to say how you got on.