Hi, I have set up an experimental Voice server for SL using Team Speak. See the General Discussion thread. I do not know if anyone has tried this before. One suggestion I have is to have a gesture indicating voice comms. I have mapped the voice Push to Talk to F12. It would be nice to have a gesture mappable to the same F12 key that would include the lips moving.
This would be the voice analog to the typing gesture on chat.
I think an external and optional voice comm could greatly enhance the SL experience in certain condtions. such as in games like the ball game that was organized last nite by Ben Linden. In any team oriented game it would be very helpful to have the team members be able to coordinate on voice since they can not stop running, fighting, moving to do chat keying in the middle of a game. We have found Team Speak to be very effective in other MMOG's such as WWIIONLINE where I am the TS server adminstrator for my squad.
When we began using voice comms in our squad it COMPLETELY changed the game dynamics. This would be true in any team oriented actiivity such as I saw last nite in SL. We could not live without Team Speak after using it for almost a year.
In the game finding a covenient F Key is a problem since they are all mapped to dance moves and other gestures. I looked thru the dance moves and found F12 to be the most least likely used in my case so I deleted that gesture in game and mapped the Push to talk key on TS to F12. It would be really cool to have lip movement which would corespond to the F12 keydown condition to sync with the "talking" experience.
I would rate this as a "nice to have" enhancement at some time when you have nothing more urgent
Sturm Valen