Big updates coming to voice services in Second Life (original) (raw)

Voice services in Second Life are getting a big upgrade and we are excited to share an update on our progress with you! We are introducing a modern protocol - WebRTC and will be transitioning away from our current voice services (Vivox) shortly thereafter. You can try out WebRTC Voice right now and enjoy the higher quality audio, stereo audio, noise reduction, automatic gain control, echo cancellation and improved security. Here’s our previous blog post from April for reference.

The Second Life WebRTC Voice viewer (now Atlasaurus+WebRTC) has been a Release Candidate viewer for some time and is on the cusp of becoming the default viewer! Download

We expanded the Second Life WebRTC Voice channel “Pop Rocks” to 4 regions:
WebRTC Voice 1
WebRTC Voice 2
WebRTC Voice 3
WebRTC Voice 4

Any WebRTC Voice-enabled viewer can also be used for voice on non-WebRTC, voice-enabled regions. Our Second Life mobile client (now in Beta for Premium and Premium Plus subscribers) also has integrated WebRTC voice support!

There are some known issues, however, that we want you to be aware of:

• Conference/Group/P2P in WebRTC is not yet available on the WebRTC Voice regions.
• An occasional popup regarding voice server incompatibility can appear. Restart voice if you see this. To restart voice in the viewer:
  • Hover over the speaker icon in the upper right corner of the viewer.
  • Wait for the dialogue to appear.
  • Uncheck the voice checkbox and wait a few seconds.
  • Recheck the voice checkbox.
• Voice morphing is not available in WebRTC-Voice enabled regions.
• Selecting another voice device while in a group, conference, or peer-to-peer call may drop the call.

If you are using the WebRTC Voice RC Viewer during this period of time when most regions support Vivox Voice while only a few regions support WebRTC Voice, be aware that Vivox Voice Morphing is not supported in either WebRTC Voice regions or Vivox regions. If voice morphing had been enabled via an older viewer, you will see a dialog to let you know the implications of using voice:

• OK - Acknowledges that voice morphing does not work in the WebRTC viewer and using voice will transmit unmodified audio.

Because voice morphs are tied to Vivox, the third-party voice service that's supported voice in Second Life for many years, they do not work on the new WebRTC protocol. While we're sorry for this inconvenience, there are many excellent alternatives for voice morphing that have become available to the general public as technology has developed. For questions about WebRTC and Voice Morphing we have an FAQ to help.

For Third Party Viewer developers, please check out this branch:
https://github.com/secondlife/viewer

We’re excited to bring WebRTC Voice to the entire grid. Please share your feedback or any issues found in our feedback portal. We’ll continue to deploy updates to the WebRTC Voice regions during this time.