State of voice comms?

I note that many games advertised still use skype/google for voice. I haven't tried the built-in voice comms in a long time. How do they work? Functional? Do people use them? Or is there a good reason people still use skype/google?

We use Skype - it works. Never bothered learning or trying the in-built one since there was no reason to.

Didn't work for me, we use Skype.

Not very good, I tried using it for cameras and some of them(mine included) literally turned off or changed their place on their screen for no reason. You have skype/google hangouts and a thousand other programs, i suggest sticking to those. Regardless, you can't really blame the roll20 guys for having shitty voice com when a whole team down at Microsoft isn't able to simply maintain an already functioning program dedicated to voice communication.

If folks haven't tried the video/voice since December, I'd highly recommend checking it out. The improvements TokBox (our voice and video provider) made really are a huge step forward-- in my personal experience, more reliable than Skype.

I half agree with Nolan. I find that the updated system actually is more reliable than Skype, but not for everyone. Like with Skype, everyone seems to function at 90%, but with Roll20, everyone but one person functions at 100%, and that one person is at like 50%. So we just stick with skype. But when I run my one-shots, I use the Roll20 comms and if there are people unfunctionable... I just tell them sorry.

I have a teamspeak server I use, more reliable than in game voice and skype, because instead of being Peer to Peer based, it's server based. If anyone else wants to use it during a time that I don't, you're welcome to. Send me a PM if you're interested.

@ jarret, I'm pretty sure that the biggest update to the voice chat,(the december update referenced by nolan) was to go to a server based infrastructure instead of peer to peer...that way everyone doesnt have to send all the data to everyone else....you send to the server and the server sends it to everyone else in combination with every other stream it needs to send them. I noticed a huge improvement in reliability. At least once we realized that firefox was disabling java periodically when new versions came out.

Can we get a dev clarification on this? Is it server based or P2P based? Even after the december update I found the voice to be very unreliable still.

WebRTC is normally peer to peer but by going through TokBox it becomes server based. The advantage is that it saves on your bandwidth.

I stand corrected, but I still prefer Teamspeak, lol.

After messing with the onboard voice too many times, and not getting it to work, we rented a teamspeak server.

I'll throw in my 2 shillings - the roll20 voice works great for me and all but 1 group member. For that person - nada. I think it was a config setting on his end. But ... we use skype most times and google hangouts when skype gets crappy. BUT... I have used and really love the native roll20 voice. And I've used in with Chrome and Firefox on Mac and Linux systems.

After the update we cancelled our teamspeak and do not regret it

We tried it in January, two players could not communicate, we used Skype since then. Even with the Skype buzz it at least works for everybody. I believe the problem is with their computers, but flying over to solve the problems is unrealistic. One used Safari on Mac, the other a PC using Internet Exploder.

My group happily uses the roll20 webRTC with Chrome or Firefox and has experienced no problems for anybody, even the two fellows in Germany (the rest of us are in California).

Roll20 recommends using Google Chrome browser, or Mozilla Firefox browser. Switching browser might reduce technical problems for your IE player, al. See Wiki, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Video_and_Voice_Chat" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Video_and_Voice_Chat</a> al e. said: One used Safari on Mac, the other a PC using Internet Exploder.

One thing I noticed when using Roll20 voice vs Skype. Skype seems to ignore it's own sound. What that means is this: Player A says something and it comes out of my speakers. My microphone picks it up, because that's what microphones do. Skype now seems to notice "Hey wait a second, that's the stuff I just told the speaker to play. I'm not gonna send that back to everyone else". At least I think that's what's happening, because when using Skype I can use my speakers without issue and nobody hears an echo. When using Roll20 even when I got the volume really low, and somebody else is speaking, it echoes back to the others, so I'm forced to use a headset.

Quatar, I agree, I have found that Skype has good Echo Cancellation, automatically.

Nolan T. J. said: If folks haven't tried the video/voice since December, I'd highly recommend checking it out. The improvements TokBox (our voice and video provider) made really are a huge step forward-- in my personal experience, more reliable than Skype. except when it decides that one player's mic does not exist no matter what you do :/ Hangouts for me.

Gauss said: WebRTC is normally peer to peer but by going through TokBox it becomes server based. The advantage is that it saves on your bandwidth. How does one do this and by this I mean make it go through TokBox? We tried the new improved integrated VoIP and for everyone else except one person it was clearly better than Skype but that one person can't get it to work on Chrome at all and only very inconsistently on FireFox so we had to go back to Skype.

Another data point here -- We've found that since the update, the built-in comms tool is perfectly usable --- most of the time. It occasionally has fits of uselessness. It is tough to say if the problem is bandwidth related or inherent to the software itself. Our standard practice now is for everyone to send/receive voice only. Trying to use video seems to cause more instability. But, with that as our baseline, it generally works fine.

The one issue we had that moved us over to Mumble was that there wasn't a push-to-talk option. We had a lot of echoing and chaos as a result. Is there push-to-talk now? I didn't see it in the list as an option.

Hey I am new to using Roll 20 and was wondering if I could get some help with the voice audio. I don't have a camera at the moment so I have the settings in roll 20 set for voice only broadcast. Now what I can't figure out is whether I am actually transmitting. I don't have a player on to test this, and i noticed there is no test functionality for any of the voice or audio. There is no mic icon lighting up or anything happening. Is there a hot key for the audio comms or is it voice activated? How do you tell besides if players can hear you, whether the voice option is working? I'd like to use the voice integration with the VTT if I could, not all my friends use TS3 or anything like that. I suppose I could try Google+ hangouts, but I have no experimented with that yet pre-game. Goes Google hangouts have audio and video and still allow you to use the VTT aspect of roll 20? Thanks for help in advance for my newb questions.

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So far everytime i play with my group at least one person always has a sound issue or it just doesn't work! It's impossible to play roll20 without voice chat! My vote would be to make this bulletproof so nobody has issues with the program as it is without having to use a third party program or a hangout!