http://www.voip-news.com/feature/voip-boosts-second-life-052009/
For companies coping with a grim economy, one of the best ways to save money is to cut back on face-to-face meetings. Travel is expensive in terms of both transportation costs and employee time. But the cheapest and easiest alternative to travel — conference calling — is a poor substitute. Telepresence is the best solution, but is incredibly expensive.
Linden Lab, creator of the Second Life virtual world, has been pushing virtual meetings as a practical alternative to the real thing. Its latest announcement reveals that VoIP is an essential component in improving the quality and usability of this technology.
Since August 2007, Linden Lab has provided VoIP communication that lets Second Life users, or "residents," speak to each other through the avatars that represent them. It has carried 15 billion VoIP minutes since that launch, and is currently carrying 1 billion minutes per month. It uses a unique three-dimensional VoIP technology, co-developed with Vivox Inc., that gives users with stereo headsets the sense that a voice is coming from the direction of the avatar whose user is speaking. Voices from distant avatars are fainter than those from nearby ones. Avatars more than 50 virtual meters away are inaudible. The VoIP connection also delivers a broader audio frequency range than traditional phone calls or even so-called HD voice links.
Such capabilities are helping make Second Life, which started six years ago as a consumer service, increasingly viable as a business tool. Companies as prominent as IBM have been using it to conduct serious corporate meetings, including some with hundreds of participants discussing sensitive technological information. And smaller companies can use it just as easily. Buying a private "island" for exclusive use costs a one-time setup fee of $1,600, plus $300 per month maintenance. Beyond that, companies can buy customized meeting facilities, various virtual objects and even custom avatars from commercial providers operating in Second Life. One such provider, River Run Red, offers Immersive Workspaces, a set of virtual tools for business collaboration. In addition, a comprehensive API allows companies to integrate Second Life with their Web sites. Doing so lets them, for example, register their employees as users through their own Web sites rather than having to use the Second Life consumer portal.
The new VoIP announcement introduces AvaLine, a beta service providing for inbound calling from the real world to Second Life residents. Callers on land line, cellular or even VoIP phones can dial a Second Life number and then a resident's extension. The resident hears and speaks through a headset as with in-world conversations. When AvaLine goes commercial, users will have to pay a monthly fee for the service.
A related announcement describes SLim, a beta messaging application that allows residents to communicate by voice and text without having the Second Life viewer open. That way they can stay in touch from their desks when they're doing other things, such as working. AvaLine will launch commercially in the third quarter of 2009, and SLim in early 2010.
AvaLine as it is, however, has significant limitations as a business tool. In particular, it doesn't allow the inbound calls from the real world to feed into multi-user 3D VoIP conversations. Thus companies will have trouble using Second Life to hold conference calls, which usually have a number of participants calling in from cellular or other phones. But integration of AvaLine and Second Life's 3D VoIP is in the works, according to Joe Miller, Linden Lab VP of platform and technology development. When it's available, people will be able to get just as bored in conference calls in the virtual world as in the real world.
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