🎤Voice Module

This module provide various Microphone Artifacts

Why Microphones

Almost every workshop requires the trainer of the facilitator to speak in a way that everyone hears them. Large events like All-Hands elevate that need even further, while also requiring giving similar capabilities to other participants who are asking questions.

Seemingly different, workshops with break rooms require a space for private conversations that can’t be overheard by other participants.

And finally, sometimes it is needed to record a particular session or a conversation, transcribe it and share beyond the workshop itself. This scenario also implies some sort of a consent that should be given by participants to record them.

Instead of implementing ‘amplify voice’ and ‘record session’ controls in the UI (and creating sophisticated UIs to manage ‘guest speakers’ and ‘break rooms’) we chose to create a set of Artifacts that capture audio input and manipulate it to solve for all those needs.

Different Kinds of Microphones

Handheld Mic

This microphone is a grabbable Artifact that can be held in hands.

It activates when the person who holds it moves it close to head. Activated microphone has a light circle around its head, green — for the person whose voice is amplified, white — for anybody else.

When a Handheld Mic is held and activated, the voice of the person is removed from spatial channel, amplified and put into 2D broadcast channel.

Ampilifed voice is heard by all users in the whole Place, across different Worlds of it.

Conference Mic

The verson of Handheld Mic that, when activated by someone, dampens voices of anybody else. Thus the microphone helps the conference lead to crowd control while still not muting everyone forcibly.

Wearable Mic

This microphone looks like a ball and can be attached to the upper part of an avatar’s torso or in the space around an avatar’s head. Microphone can be attached only by the person who is holding it.

Instead of automatic activation, Wearable Mic can be turned on and off by clicking it while holding. The status is hinted in the same way as for the Handheld Mic.