How to Enable In-Game Voice Chat on a Cloud Server
At Flickstiq, we are fans of Cloud Gaming. We like that Cloud Gaming frees you from financial side of Video Game Hardware. The freedom that Cloud Gaming provides can be very liberating, but not everything is perfect. Most Cloud Gaming Services don’t allow you to use your Microphone at home to chat with your friends in-game. Let’s fix that.
There are several steps and Apps that are involved in enabling In-Game Voice Chat on a Cloud Server. You can use a few programs to create a link between the Microphone on your home computer and the Voice Output on your Cloud Server.
Step 1: Install Discord on your Home Computer
The first piece of software used to transmit your voice audio is Discord. Discord is already well known for it’s voice chatting abilities outside of games. For this tutorial, we will be using them to pipe our Microphone Audio to our games.
Install Discord on your home computer and sign into it with a Discord Account (create a new account if you don’t already have one). Open Discord and go to Discord Settings. Under the “Voice & Video” section on the left side of Settings, make sure that your “Input Device” is set to your Gaming Microphone.
Join a Server in Discord that has an empty Voice Channel (if you aren’t already a member of any servers, click the “+” on the left side of the Discord window to create your own). Join the Voice Channel for your Server (or create a voice channel and join it if you just created your own server). Leave Discord open on your home computer during the following steps.
Step 2: Boot up your Cloud Server and install Virtual Audio Cable
Boot up your Cloud Server and log in to it. From the Cloud Server Desktop, open your web browser. Download “Virtual Audio Cable”. Extract the archive that you just downloaded to a place that’s easy to find (we added it to a folder on our desktop). Run the VBCABLE_Setup_64.exe file in the folder that you just extracted to. This will open the Virtual Audio Cable installer. Click “Install Driver” to install Virtual Audio Cable. This installation shouldn’t take long, and you are welcome to close any open windows when it’s finished.
Step 3: Install Discord on your Cloud Server
Step 3 is very similar to Step 1. You need to download and install Discord on your Cloud Server. It is very important that you log into Discord with a different account than the one that you are using on your home computer. Let me emphasize that last point. Do not log into Discord on the Cloud Server with the same account that you used on your home computer.
Join the same Server and Voice Channel that you logged into with your original account. Now both of your accounts should be visible in the same voice channel.
Step 4: Link your Virtual Audio Cable to Discord on the Cloud Server
On the Cloud Server, open up the Windows Control Panel. From the Control Panel open “Sound”. On the Sound Window, click the “Recording” Tab at the top of the Window. This will list all recording devices on the Cloud Server. Select the Virtual Audio Cable in this list and click the button at the bottom of the Sound Window to set it as Default.
In Discord on the Cloud Server, open up Settings. Navigate to “Voice & Video”. Select your Virtual Audio Cable from the “Output” Dropdown Menu. That’s it! You can minimize Discord on the Cloud Server and start playing your game. In-Game Voice Chat should now be linked to your Microphone on your home computer.
Steps that need to be repeated
You don’t have to go through this entire setup every time that you want to use In-Game Voice on your Cloud Server. Simply open up Discord on your home computer and join an empty voice chat channel. Join that same voice channel in Discord on your Cloud Server. Make sure that you leave Discord running on both the home computer and the Cloud Server (minimizing them is fine). That’s all that you need to do to get In-Game voice chat working for you.
If you’d like to see visual examples of setting up this system, take a look at the video below. We go through the entire setup on a LiquidSky Cloud Server.
Originally published at Flickstiq.
