Friday, May 11, 2007

Voice on the Beta Grid

Sweetie's Dragon Avatar Getting Spray Painted
Experimenting with Voice on the Beta Grid
Written 9 May, 2007

Voice on the Beta Grid

Sweetie and I went to the beta grid (our first trip there) on Saturday.

Straightaway, Sweetie was griefed by a paint-spraying idiot (perhaps because Sweetie was in her dragon alt) and I filed two grievance reports—one for the assault, and another when I was cursed and deliberately bumped after telling said idiot I’d filed the first report.

And then I got an IM from my friend Patrice, asking if she could teleport me to another beta sim to give her some feedback on voice. Sure, I said.

Sweetie came along, and so did our friend Aldo, whose computer is solid on the main grid, but who kept crashing in beta.

And we spoke.

All I can say is—it works.

And I think it will be a problem, technically, until everyone sorts things out.

Some of the half-dozen avs spoke loudly and clearly; the voice of others was low in volume and difficult to hear. My own voice, or so everyone told me, was low in volume until I turned on microphone amplification in the Sound menu.

I’m not yet certain about the location of voices in three-dimensional space or how much might be lost if you’re not looking directly at the av who is speaking or are too far away from her, but it seemed sounds faded abruptly with distance.

And I should say I got a precursor of some of the things about voice that trouble so many people.

First, one of my friends didn’t sound at all as I had imagined. I’ll leave it at that.

And second, the one av who wasn’t speaking was soon feeling marginalized. There are going to be a lot of instant second-class citizens when voice finds its way to the main grid.

No comments: