Voice

Voice is a feature that made its debut on its own grid and beta viewer in March of 2007[1].

Recent developments

It was recently (May 2007) rolled in to the main beta grid, and Linden Labs has put out June 13 as the day that the main viewer with voice will be completed. Whether this means that voice will be added to the main grid is unclear.

System-wide Rollout

Voice will be available free for landowners during the beta. Owners of mainland and island properties will be able to use the new feature for free[2]. However, owners of older islands who pay fees lower than the current $US295 per month may have to upgrade to be able to use voice.

Controversy

While many believe that voice in SL will be beneficial, some users are against the addition of voice to the main grid.

Groups

The Voice Mentors group and Voice in SL: A Community Forum are advocacy and help groups for users having problems adjusting to the new system.

Technical

Voice in Second Life uses Vivox technology that is based on RTP (using the oRTP library), SIP, OpenAL, and OpenSSL for the transmission of voice data. The positional 3D audio is achieved with technology from DiamondWare. These technologies are contained in external daemon software that is started and stopped by the Second Life client.

• SLVoice

- Imports vivoxsdk
- Launched when voice is enabled in SL

• SLVoiceAgent

- Actually called the DiamondWare Thin Voice Client
- Unclear how this fits in the communication chain

• vivoxsdk

- Imports OpenAL, oRTP
- Contains all the communications code including a full SIP implementation