Configuring Voice Chat
From Multiverse
| Voice Chat System |
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Voice Chat System • Multiverse Voice Server • Configuring Voice Chat • |
The Multiverse in-world Voice Chat system provides positional and non-positional voice communication for virtual worlds.
Configuration dialog box
To configure voice chat, press Ctrl-V or by clicking on the Settings button on the Action Bar to display the Voice Configuration dialog box:
In most virtual worlds, by default Voice Chat is enabled but the microphone is not enabled, which means that you can hear voice chat but your speech is not transmitted to other players.
To dismiss the Voice Configuration dialog, type Ctrl-V again. All settings other than Test Mode and Auto Join Party are saved whenever you dismiss the Voice Configuration dialog. The settings are world-specific, so you can have different settings for different worlds.
Below, each control in the Voice Configuration Dialog is labeled:
The controls on the left side of the dialog control the microphone. At the top is the Enable Microphone checkbox. When it and the Enable Voice checkboxes are checked, what you say will be heard by other players. Just below is the combobox that allows you to select which microphone device will be used for voice chat. Many systems have more than one microphone device. The microphone input level slider allows you to adjust the volume of the microphone. Finally, the the Voice Mode radio buttons determine how the Multiverse client determines that you are speaking. The default is voice activated, which means that the system automatically determines when you are speaking by analyzing the signals picked up by the microphone. Alternatively, you can click the Push To Talk radio button to explicitly control when the microphone is transmitting. When Push To Talk is selected, the microphone only transmits while you are holding down the backslash (\) key.
Finally, there is a Test Mode checkbox. When it is checked, and both the Enable Microphone and the Enable Voice checkboxes are checked, voice from your microphone that is sent to the server will be sent right back to you. It's a bit disconcerting, because there is a small delay between your speech and what you hear, but it provides a closed-loop test of voice functionality. If you hear yourself in Test Mode, you can be sure that other players will be able to hear you and you hear them.
On the right side of the dialog is a combobox to select the “playback” device: typically headphones or speakers, and a slider to set the volume at which the sound will be played back.
Below that is a checkbox labeled “Auto Join Party”. It is currently unused.
At the bottom of the right side of the dialog are two buttons, labeled Start Record and Start Playback. These buttons permit testing of the microphone and playback device configuration without connecting to the voice server. To use, click the Start Record button; it will change to say Stop Record, and anything you say will be recorded to a file. To end recording click the button again. To hear what you've recorded, click the Start Playback button, the button will change to Stop Playback and what you have recorded will be played back in an infinite loop. To stop playback, click the button again.
Configuring Windows Audio Devices
The most common reasons for failure of voice chat is problems with Windows configuration of the microphone and playback devices. To check configuration of the selected audio devices, double-click on the speaker icon
on the right side of the taskbar, to bring up the Volume Control dialog:
Make sure that the Wave volume isn't muted, and that both the Wave slider and the Volume Control slider near the middle of their ranges, since voice playback as well as other in-world sounds are played back as Wave data.
To check Windows configuration of the microphone device, click the Volume Control's Options menu button, and then the Properties menu button to bring up the dialog below:
Click the Recording radio button, and then OK, which will bring up the dialog below:
This dialog shows you the selected microphone device, and the volume for that device. The most common voice chat configuration problem is having the wrong microphone device selected, or setting the Windows volume too low on the selected microphone device. Make sure that the appropriate device is selected, and that the volume slider for that device is near the middle of the range.
