3 D Voice

Linden Lab announced early this morning that the Second Life client will soon include voice capabilities, allowing residents to speak to those in close proximity as well as in instant messages if they so choose. One thousand residents will test the program on a beta grid starting March 6, while a First Look viewer will be released at the end of the month.

In an exclusive telephone interview, Joe Miller, Vice President, Platform and Technology Development at Linden Lab, said that there will be three use cases for voice integration. In the first scenario, a resident will be able to simply walk up to another resident and begin speaking. The new addition to the SL client will provide visual cues to indicate when an avatar is speaking. The volume of speech will be modified according to the spatial relationship with other avatars, and up to 100 users can be present in the same audio channel at once