I had a good discussion today with Torley Linden (over at his office hours) about the role of music and sound in Second Life, and the possibilities of how it could be improved. Clearly Torley has some similar views about the possibilties of music and sound in Second Life. However my conversation with him revealed that Linden Lab currently have no developers specifically assigned to developing in world music and sound (aside from voice technology). But some of them want it !!

[2007/09/14 6:26] Dizzy Banjo: Torley, alot of development time seems to be going into the visual / physics / stability aspects of SL at the moment – do you think there will be any time put into expanding the platforms ability to deal with in world audio soon ?
[2007/09/14 6:27] Torley Linden: Dizzy: We currently don’t have any specific dev resources allocated to big audio projects (aside from Voice), but someday, I hope we do.
[2007/09/14 6:28] Torley Linden: I wish we could copy over parts of our internal “Who Does What” that aren’t private or anything.
[2007/09/14 6:43] Torley Linden: Yah, I wanna see new things brought to the table.
[2007/09/14 6:44] Torley Linden: I originally came to SL seeking cyberpunk stuff…
2007/09/14 6:44] Torley Linden: I’d love to see online worlds with emphasis on other senses, like better sound (online worlds in general have sound as sort of an afterthought), or even explorations into haptics (not likely to be widespread for years to come, tho)…
[2007/09/14 6:44] Dizzy Banjo: things like multiverse, ogoglio etc are going to be interesting
[2007/09/14 6:45] Torley Linden: So if we get more devs looking at rearchitecturing our sound, count on me to be onboard with that, muahha.
[2007/09/14 6:45] Dizzy Banjo: the soundscape of virtual worlds is very poor at the moment
[2007/09/14 6:45] Dizzy Banjo: however .. game worlds really get it
[2007/09/14 6:45] Torley Linden: I come from a background in audio engineering so I’m biased.
[2007/09/14 6:45] Torley Linden: Dizzy: What are some places you think “really get it” ?
[2007/09/14 6:46] Dizzy Banjo: well .. i hate to say it.. but even places like WoW get it really..
[2007/09/14 6:47] Dizzy Banjo: i think its the fact those environments are working within the realm of expectation of normal client side only games
[2007/09/14 6:47] Dizzy Banjo: music and sound is just so important to immersion..
[2007/09/14 6:47] Dizzy Banjo: to me.. SL is a silent movie at the moment
[2007/09/14 6:48] Torley Linden: Dizzy: I feel the same way!