Receiving phone calls in SL

Has anyone tried AvaLine yet (the new service that allows SL residents to receive phone calls while in-world)?

I am curious to know what happens if you answer an incoming call, while already in voice chat with others in SL.

Incoming call from 'number withheld'...

'Hello'

'Where the hell are you? Your dinner has been on the table for 30 minutes, and is now in the bin!'

'Sorry dear..'

'Master, no need to say 'sorry', you have every right to whip me..'

'Well?'

'I am coming'

'oooh Master...'


Rock

Lol.

I don't see the upside to it unless the two people know each other in SL and RL and are calling each other.

Otherwise the fact it gives out the phone number, and the example you gave (Ha!) are reasons enough not to use it.

Soon as my RL phone rings I turn SL voice off. Just in case. Who needs to hear that?

I've tried it, phoned myself and had an interesting conversation.

141 does work for witholding your number in the UK, it just comes up with some different number.

That's certainly the very, the very very last I want to have happening. Similar to the introduction of voice at all a new unwanted feature LL is pushing out. Hope it will be *DISABLED* per default, but given the per default *ENABLED* 3rd party voice feature that was forced at us all I have my serious doubts. Thumbs down once again Lindens.

Me too. But LL do say in their blog that 50% of all residents are now using voice, and given that many people think that 50% of residents are bots, that implies that we are all using voice.

Scary

Rock

Or...maybe the bots are talking to each other.

That must be 5 of the 10 that objected the adult policy *ROFL*

I've been in SL nearly a year and I've yet to find anywhere that uses voice regularly for anything except presentations of lectures etc to an audience. None of my friends use it at all either.

I wonder if that 50% is actually "50% of residents have attempted to use Voice once or more."

The title of their blog piece is: Over 15 Billion Voice Minutes Served

I never used it at all when it first came out, for several months, then a bunch of residents arrived in our sim who all used it, and one by one the rest followed suit. It seems that everywhere I go now I see the little white dot over almost everyone's head showing they are voice enabled.

As usual though, in all these forum debates, the real figures will be almost impossible to get at.

Rock

What the hell?..

Go visit all the welcome areas like Aherm, Waterhead, Korea 1, Bear Infohub. Voice is very popular. Although for some reason it can be quiet in Aherm in the UK morning to afternoon.

There is still quite a lot of people in the welcome areas that don't use voice, but I'm pretty sure that most of them do enjoy listening to others on voice and that's why they show up.

The popularity of the welcome areas increased dramatically when voice came along.

I can see why some text chatters hate voice. If you're a text chatter in a voice area then you're likely to be ignored. As a text chatter even I find myself blanking out other text chatters when in a voice area. Text chat is cold and weak compared to voice chat.

Most of the times the RL phone goes when I'm in SL, it's calls I don't want to answer anyway, like telesales. So taking calls in-world would be something I would desire even less than sitting with my feet in a bowl of crushed ice.

I have done that and heard all the voices. Some of the people are sensible but there's a lot of slightly scary sounding people too. I tried voice once but nobody could hear me whatever I did, and I seemed to be doing all the things right.

Mr Absent
Registered User
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 1

And you are?

Popularity is a questionable word, I spent ten minutes in Ahern once, I really don't want to go back and nearly all the abuse and vulgar language was in voice.

Ugh. I have much better things to do with my time in SL than hang around at infohubs. My experiences of those have been largely that they're a magnet for griefers.

Personally I find voice difficult and infuriating to use. The few times I've attempted it, I find that it distorts, and I'm unable to decipher actual words that people are saying, it just sounds like a load of feedback and background noise and garbage. I ended up having to keep asking everyone to type what they were saying because I couldn't hear it (and I'm not hearing impaired).

I've since discovered the cause is that my internet connection has insufficient bandwidth for it to work properly.

My other issue with voice is privacy - I'm rarely alone at home when I'm on SL, and I don't necessarily want to include my housemates in my SL conversations.

I'm not here. Please leave a message.. (Preferably a voice message)

me and mine used to go to them... mostly to laugh at the antics of others...

I prefer text, better synchronicity, and don't have to deal with regional accents (plus there are a few translators out there) and it doesn't require extra equipment or excessive bandwidth. the price seems to be speed, but I prefer clarity, synchronicity, and bandwidth conservation every time. (yes I flood my bandwidth, whatever isn't being taken up by SL if being used by something else... my ISP probably wants to install caps just because of me)

Yeah, we miss out on the warmth from the mouth breathing, the baby crying, the dog barking, the food munching, and the Adonis who sounds like a 16 year old with acne.

According to the blog, having the voice feature enabled, whether you have a mic or headset attached or audio turned on, and being in the presence of someone else who has it enabled, counts as "using voice". Since many people who don't use voice leave it on with the sound turned down because LL refuses to implement VWR-1317 they're all counted as "voice users" by Linden Lab.

The sound of life!

It beats listening to your avatar going "tippy tappy tippy tappy" on an invisible keyboard all day long.

I turn that sound off.

I call shenanigans, Mr Sock Puppet. I visit Waterhead, Ahern, and most other welcome areas on a fairly regular basis, and these places have ALWAYS been busy, I've seen Ahern have all four sims full as far back as 2005... the only long-term change in usage of these areas has been the overall reliability of SL. When the grid is unstable there's fewer people there because the sims are restarting more often.

No

No way, dude, I totally owned you.

/me pounces on the sock puppet and covers it in doggie slobber!

What was this thread about? Oh yeah. Phone calls in SL. It wouldn't do much good to call me, I'm afraid. My end of the conversation would sound much like this:
Woof. Wuf wuf. Wrrrr. Hmm hmmm hmmm. WUF! Arr arf uff. [slurping sound]. Wuhhhhhh.

That's no longer the case in Havok 4. Even Andrew Linden can't call shenanigans.