LA 2nd Life - Comments

Corax Homewood: Is being mute better than a voice without freedom?

nospam@example.com (Corax Homewood) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 02:04:03 +1000

I can understand the reasons behind LL choosing the Vivox solution. It is uniquely well designed for the sort of environment you have in Second Life. What I do not understand is why this has been released without support for the Linux viewer. Is not Linden Labs in charge? Should they not make it clear to Vivox that their job is not done until the Linux client is fully supported, and withhold payment of real money until such support is provided, if necessary?

Andrew Linden: Is being mute better than a voice without freedom?

nospam@example.com (Andrew Linden) — Tue, 3 Jul 2007 00:19:39 +1000

I wasn't involved in the voice planning or development, however I think I can provide some answers to your main question.

The primary reason Vivox was chosen was because of its feature set:

audio quality is good enough to recognize people's distinct voices
multiple sound sources are composited into a single stream on the (Vivox) servers -- this allows for low bandwidth streaming despite having multiple sources
* spatial information of multiple sound sources is embedded into the compressed stream

That last item is important -- a requirement, shall we say, from the perspective of those LL employees who were championing the voice feature.

You mention that there are "numerous other open alternatives". I'm not familiar with the current state of open source audio streaming, so I can't corroborate that statement, however when I asked one of the voice project leaders why they didn't go with a more open system I was told they looked but didn't find any with all the features they needed.

If an open source Vivox equivalent exists, then I suspect it will eventually find its way into SL. I think the current SL-voice feature is free on the mainland (Linden Lab absorbs the cost for voice bandwidth there) but is an extra cost per region on private estates. Therefore, there is a financial incentive for estate owners to deploy an OS voice system (think of it as a different voice "channel" to which SL residents could subscribe). Such a system could be coordinated entirely between the SL clients and the 3rd party audio servers, requiring little or no LL support. (Nevertheless, such an OS voice endeavor would find some support within the LL developer pool.)

If an OS Vivox equivalent does not yet exist then one would hope that the need for one in SL would encourage its development to start soon.

Pia Waugh: Welcome to LA 2nd Life

nospam@example.com (Pia Waugh) — Sun, 1 Jul 2007 21:35:08 +1000

Hi! Thanks for setting this up. I am just getting into SL and this is a great resource. I'm keen to see how we can bring the community even closer using SL

It'd be great to have FOSS talks and events online so everyone can come along and have SL conferences. I'd be keen to help organise such events as I do a lot in FL

Cheers,
Pia

Anonymous: Is being mute better than a voice without freedom?

nospam@example.com () — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 08:24:37 +1000

Get a job, you hippy.

Chris Yeoh: Feeling creative but lazy? SL Wiki Video Tutorials for you!

nospam@example.com (Chris Yeoh) — Tue, 15 May 2007 13:13:52 +1000

I can highly recommend the videos done by Torley Linden - extremely funny if nothing else!

There are also lots of SL education videos on youtube, so its worth doing a search if there a specific topic you're interested in.

Yien Bin: Welcome to LA 2nd Life

nospam@example.com (Yien Bin) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 01:45:19 +1000

Include this in an article:
http://www.nixser.com/2006/12/08/second-life-linux-client-alpha-on-debian/