After one year of development SL tested their new voice chat feature during a beta phase. All you need is a standard headphone with microphone – just as using VoIP services.

This technology comes up with some specials, i.e. it’s possible to detect via a 3D spatial positioning system who is speaking even if it’s a group of persons. Future avatar animations are planned depending on the intensity of speech. Current instabilities of the game and network lags will not worsen as this service will be provided on different servers. There will be an indicator telling other players if you are voice-enabled or not.

Voice ability is linked to land areas, except one-to-one communication where players share private conversations 😉

This is a big improvement for business and educational context, but what’s with the social context ?

Well, here the opinions highly differ between those who use SL as a fantasy world and those who use SL as first life extension.

Due to the possibility of VoIP gender-, age-, etc.- detection the mentality will change kind of:
“I won’t believe you are who you are until you talk…”
“Well there is VoIP support, why won’t you talk…”

Most interesting for sure is gender detection:
Think of a blonde super hostess / escort resident having a voice like Hulk…
When getting private with someone you can assure that the gender fits and have a more immersive way of interacting by using this voice feature, but the danger is that every woman with disabled voice will be banned as a man…

Judge for yourself what VoIP support generally means for you…

However, if you prefer to keep real life identity as anonymous as possible you can:
– continue using Instant Messaging and chat functionalities
– use third party software to modify your voice

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