Actually the new FreeSwitch siren14 codec has never been used with SLVoice! Everybody having voicechat with OpenSim is using PCMU without knowing it.

Actually I didn’t realize that at first either, but after he pointed this out, I started looking for a way to be able to use siren14. I haven’t really come up with a way to use the SLVoice.exe included with the SecondLife viewer, rather, I modified the voipforvw codes to support it. Voice quality is now way better than the stock PCMU.

In the near future, I intend to make a post on how to use voipforvw with FreeSWITCH.

To my great relief, Rob Smart from IBM has finally stepped up the game and provided a solution for FreeSWITCH, that works without this SLVoice replacement (I want to note though, that it is only working with the unmodified SLVoice.exe because of the changes in the viewer, and in all likeliness, the Asterisk solution would work just as well). I’ve been eyeing FreeSWITCH for quite a while and just when I finally have some spare time to play around with it, this new module comes out: and it’s really awesome! First of all, it works without jumping through ztdummy/dahdi hoops and mysql realtime configurations, or heaven forbid, RFC4028s.

Setup is very straightforward, and it works even on Windows. To set it up, you will need three components:

First, OpenSim itself. Because the new FreeSWITCH module is experimental, it is only found in trunk, and as usual, please note, that trunk is unstable it might have serious bugs, it can corrupt your data, or eat your children, especially if you do the unthinkable and try to install it in a production environment, which you should never do. Ever! No exceptions. If you are brave enough, you can proceed very carefully and try out the trunk.

Next, obviously, you will need FreeSWITCH. I tried the Windows binary snapshot from here: that works well. For the configuration instructions take a look at the OpenSim wiki page. Linux installation instructions are also included there.

Finally, SecondLife viewer. Only versions later than 1.22 are supported, so be sure to grab a newer version from Linden Labs.

After setting up FreeSWITCH and OpenSim, connecting to the grid and enabling voice chat, one surprising thing will happen by default: that is, nothing. Conference chat won’t work with the default estate settings, because the parcel voice is disabled. In the video, I’m setting “Use a private spatial channel”, but “Use the estate spatial channel” should work as well. Enable voice, and it will work now. After this, conference and private chat features will work. On my setup, I found that private chat is quite clear and easy to understand, but the spatial conferences are way too low quality, but that is probably a configuration issue on my environment.