Voice Chat

I've been playing There (I know, I know) for about a week and a half now. One of the features that I really enjoy is voice chat. You just hold down Page Down on the keyboard and speak into the mike, and anyone closeby can hear you. It's quite cool, I'd really like to see something similar in SL.

YES YES YES YES YES

YES! (ive been playing hl with a crappy mic, if sl adds it i will, without a doubt, go and buy a new one

While it's great that you guys are so enthusiastic about voice chat, I note that this feature is *not* optimal at all for a) people who have hearing loss (or are deaf, like me), or b) people who have broken sound card setups (again, like me ).

James -- how popular is voice chat in There?

I'd say it's quite popular. About 85% of the people use voice chat regularly, the rest use bubbles.

For someone who has hearing loss, you'd just turn Voice Off so that people would text chat with you. It would be an optional feature. It's really the only thing There has that we don't at this point.

Another thing I was thinking of was allowing the voice to be integrated in the scripting language. Like, llSetVoiceVolume and stuff like that, so you could create objects to speak into rather than having it directly built into the client.

Blah I don't know why people like voice chat so much. You never know who is talking unless they say their name and if more than one person talks it goes to hell. Anyhow, I'm biased cause I mostly play games with no sound anyhow. My computer room is already pretty loud, and I want to be able to hear the kid or wife calling from the other room.

And I like having an avatar between the game me and the RL me. Using real voice in game crosses the line too much.

I find that voice chat really helps express what you're trying to say. The internet has this way of taking what you were trying to say and making it mean something else. With voice chat, the people on the other end can REALLY understand what you mean.

Also, in There, there is no problem with two people talking at once.

You can always use an outside option like TeamSpeak. Personally I dont want to hear others yapping away unless I need to or otherwise want to. With TS I log in and out when I want and it doesnt make a difference in my SL play. I want the OPTION to not listen to others without having to turn off my speakers.

That's true, however, it's much nicer to have it directly integrated. Most users I've spoken to in There refuse to switch simply because of the lack of integrated voice.

I hate to be snide (well, that's a lie, actually, I love to be snide, but I try not to... wait, I'll come in again).

I hate to be snide but: Good. If people don't want to switch to SL because there's no voice chat, who needs 'em?

I agree with all Madox's points, and Nergal rasies a good point too. It's Second Life, not As Much Like First Life As Possible. Let's say I had a thick non-english accent, and wanted to play an American, or I was girl who wanted to play a guy for a while, or I was an 18 yr old with a reall young voice who just didn't want to be blown off as "just a kid" solely on the basis of my voice, or heck, let's say I was a texan and didn't need people saying "y'all sound jest like de pre-ze-dent, hee-yuk" all the time.

TeamSpeak can be a good and useful thing, at times, with relatively small groups, of people who know each other and will behave, when you have some group task to accomplish. Adding voicechat to SL would be the opposite of that.

Also, it's no good to say "if you don't like it, just turn it off". Then you're just alone in the world with all these mute un-talking avatars standing around.

Also also, I heard that they had integrated voice chat for a while early in the alpha times, and it got dropped for technical reasons.

If you don't want people to hear you, don't speak. As proven in There, if you don't use voice, those around you wont. It would be nice to have, for those who WANT to use it, but, optional.

Well if SL is capable of eating up 300kbps bandwidth, I'd hat eto see what voice chat adds to that.





HAHAHA You kill me

One word: No.


I dont want this in SL. Whos to keep someone from mouthing off? Their voice chat cant be browsed like chat history can. Also, who knows how much lag SL would have with streaming voice chat... EWW >_<

If you want voice chat, run TeamSpeak in the background.

Okay. I just nuked an entire reply to this because this kind of attitude really punches my buttons. *deep breath* Try it this way...

Scenario: Fred Avatar doesn't use voice for whatever reason -- maybe his sound card is crap and he's too broke to get a new one, maybe he doesn't like the idea (like Madox).

He wanders up to a bunch of others who're voice-chatting and not typing. They're having a conversation about one of his favorite topics. Maybe somebody tells him what they're talking about, and that's cool. But what now?

Fred is still SOL because he can't/won't use voice-chat. And he can't force them to start typing at the same time as voice-chatting because, hey, voice-chatting is easier and typing takes much more work to do.

Especially if they're hunt and peck typists or otherwise not inclined to type. Also especially if you take into account the fact that trying to get a bunch of people to do something at once is often very much like trying to herd irritable cats.

----

That's exactly what I have to deal with every day in first life. Just substitute 'sign language' for 'text chat' and 'verbal communication' for 'voice-chat'.

I will freely admit that I'm biased, but either way, the attitudes on either side of the debate are going to be pretty similar. And right now, voice chat is *already* optional as Misnomer points out.

So that's my take on the situation's possible social effects, aside from the points that other people have made about the technicalities of implementation in SL.

My main point in posting this, however, was your attitude, which comes off as patronizing, even if it was unintentional. Toward this end, I've rewritten it several times so that, hopefully, it doesn't come off as a flame. It's not meant as one. More as a reality check that not everyone is in your happy situation of being technically capable of voice-chat, either biologically or hardware-wise.

I'm gonna have to change my mind here...

I agree with Nergal, Mis, Chris and Madox. TeamSpeak if ya wanna voice chat.

Nergal - I don't know if/why you'd take this the wrong way, but its possible, so uhh.. dont

Just curious if you were born without hearing or if there was an accident of something. Just ignore me if its not a good subject.

No problem -- I'm always happy to answer questions about deafness.

As far as we know, I was born deaf. Despite any impressions that the previous posts may have given you, sign language isn't my only method of communication, although it's a major one. I also read lips reasonably well (although my accuracy in that respect isn't as high compared to that of sign language).

I've used TeamSpeak, however, it requires someone to host a server. I find it really annoying. Also, it's not a 'geographical' type thing. It's more like an IM. It's not really what I wanted. Also, to switch rooms or whatever, you have to switch windows, which is a pain.

Yes, there are other ways for voice chatting, but an integrated way is the best.

I also didn't mean to sound rude, Nergal.

Wow Nergal - so is there any phrases or words that you have had a hard time learning? Obviously sound-type words (boom clang thunder etc) but what about other more subtle words that we might not think have a sound aspect. I've interested in linguistics and how blind people ever learn to read, but I imagine deaf people also must have difficulty grasping some phrases.

A little off topic, but the weird thing about onomatopoeia, or "sound" words, in English for me is that, until leaving the US, I never realized how many English ones don't really sound like what they should sound like.

Take "Oink, Onik" for example.
In order to make that sound like a real pig I find I have to do some serious pronounciation work on it and add a lot of nasal to it. So much so that it really fails to sound like "Oink" anymore.

I really envy countries that have syllables based on strict pronounciation rules, rather than English's rather vauge concept of letters and pronounciation. If for no other reason than every word sounds exactly as it is written, meaning you never have the problem of hearing a new name and not being able to spell it.

"We now return you to our regular discussion, already in progress."

Well I assume 'oink oink' came from the Old McDonald tune. But since then, us Americans have gotten better with movies like Deliverance.

'Get up, boy. I bet you can squeal. I bet you can squeal like a pig.'
'Weeeeee. weeeeee'

Pigs speak different languages too, dont forget that.
http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/pig.html

Nergal - another question. I know when I think to myself, most of the time I think in spoken words. (if that makes sense) Since you don't know what words sound like how do you think to yourself. Thinking in words probably puts a bottleneck on the thought process actually...

I always wondered if people living in an English speaking country who came from a country where they spoke... let's say French, but now also speak English fluently, think in French or English.

This thread is way off from where it started now but I've got to chime in that VOIP (voice over IP) takes a disgusting amount of bandwidth, as some people implied earlier.

And it ain't like SL has a lot to spare...