Simple Voice Chat: Voice Physics

A server plugin for Simple Voice Chat on Paper, Purpur, Folia and Spigot. Proximity voice chat gets realistic: voices are muffled behind walls (occlusion) for every player, sound zones change how far a voice carries, and game rules decide who hears whom.

Players don't need to install anything. Those who also install the Voice Physics mod on their client get the rest: distance curves, round corners, echo in caves, water and rain, a HUD and a monitor.

What it does

• Walls for everyone. Players without the mod hear voices muffled through walls. Load is capped: above 24 voices at once (adjustable) the rest pass unfiltered, and on any error the original audio is sent, so voice chat never goes silent.
• Sound zones: a stage heard twice as far, a quiet library, a soundproof room, a cathedral with echo. Draw a box in game with /vcd zone, use a whole world or a WorldGuard region. Everyone sees the zone's name above the hotbar on entering.
• Game rules: sneaking is quieter, the dead are silent, spectators talk only to each other, a goat horn works as a megaphone.
• One sound for everyone: offer or enforce the server's settings for players with the mod, for fair PvP and events.
• No seeing through walls: turn off the monitor and radar of players with the mod.
• Require the mod: send a download link, remind on every join, or kick.
• Player controls: /voice lets anyone talk quietly or shout (with permission), turn wall muffling off for themselves, set or ignore other players' volume, and show who is talking nearby above the hotbar. Clickable, with an inventory menu and undo.
• Realism for players without the mod (off by default, /vcd effects on): voices dull under water, far voices are covered in rain and thunder, and a speaker in a cave echoes.
• Mute: /vcd mute <player> [time] [reason] silences a voice for a time or until /vcd unmute; /vcd mutes lists them.
• Extras (off by default, not yet tried in a live game; /vcd extras lists the switches, and so does the mod's Server tab): a radio (/voice radio), loudspeakers (/vcd speaker), an eavesdrop item, a sculk reaction to shouts, doorway sound, and Towny, Lands, WorldGuard and LuckPerms integrations.
• PlaceholderAPI: %vcd_mode%, %vcd_talking%, %vcd_range%, %vcd_muted%, %vcd_zone% and more for scoreboards, tab lists and chat formats.
• Admin tools: clickable /vcd commands with undo, a log of who changed what, /vcd debug <player> to see whom a player hears and why not, /vcd report for a bug report to copy, and messages in each player's own language.

Install

1. Put voice-physics-bukkit-*.jar into plugins/. Simple Voice Chat must be installed.
2. Restart the server. Settings are in plugins/VoicePhysics/vc-audio-distance-server.properties and can all be changed in game with /vcd.

Minecraft 1.16.5 – 1.21.11 and 26.1 – 26.3, Java 8+ (17+ on 1.18 and newer). Each part of /vcd has its own permission (vcd.status, vcd.settings, vcd.zone, vcd.debug, vcd.mute, vcd.speaker, vcd.admin); operators have all of them.

The plugin sends anonymous usage numbers to bStats (no names, addresses or chat); metrics=false in the settings file turns it off.

Running Fabric, Forge or NeoForge? Install the mod on the server instead, it does all of this too.

All settings, commands and permissions → · Changelog · Questions and problems · Report a bug