Events/Discussions using Voice?

I have not seen the Voice feature used in any events yet. That would be so much fun. Especially in discussions. Am I missing out on something? If I'm not, why do people not wanna bother with it?

Imagine ten people (or more) all talking at the same time, each with their own time lag.

And background noise filled with dogs barking and children screaming and radios on and on and on....

Add in some feedback because people are not using headsets..... and there is always at least one person that must be heard above everyone else.

Could be amusing for two minutes though.....

My experience is that no matter how many times you scream to everyone NOT to leave their mic open all the time, that someone does and the group can't figure out who it is. This results in lots of background talking, house noises, etc, etc, etc.

Again, it's funny for awhile because it's obvious the person is totally clueless, but then the headache starts to set and the fun begins to stop.

My experience is that no matter how many times you scream to everyone NOT to leave their mic open all the time, that someone does and the group can't figure out who it is. This results in lots of background talking, house noises, etc, etc, etc.

Again, it's funny for awhile because it's obvious the person is totally clueless, but then the headache starts to set and the fun begins to stop.

P.S. For those who are going to come on and start attacking me for being a Voice hater. I was not against Voice at all. I assumed by now that everyone would be using it and would forget all their concerns before. My experiences listed here are why I don't think it's caught on as much as expected. Glad it's there for those that use it.

Voice turns out to be useful for businesses using SL for teleconferencing, and in other controlled environments. But not so much where anarchy prevails.

Darn.

Unlike what others here make it sound like voice chat is really quite fun and enjoyable AS LONG as standard conversation etiquette takes place. Just like in rl you dont speak over someone else talking, same applies here. If you wait for a pause or the person speaking to finish to speak it works pretty decent. I have used it for a few days in various places (clubs, private homes) and usually even in packed clubs less then 10 ppl user using VC. Usually closer to 5 or 6. Many more ppl listen rather then partispate.

I concede if everyone listening tried to jump into the convo it would get a bit chaotic. But I have yet to see as I said even in packed areas more then half a dozen people at once using is uncommon. And it seems most ppl use proper etiquette so its not that bad.

M2C

Some of the book discussions had voice (Bookstacks/BookMooch). Not sure how often voice gets used. Last event everyone but one had that little white ball above their heads, and everyone typed instead of using voice.
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And the Christmas party I went to had "readings".

Those British and their ghost stories at Christmas-time . .
I believe one of the stories that was read involved a boy that went into a forest and was eaten by ghosts and became a ghost himself. He went in there even though the wise old farmer told him not to do so.

I have been to one Live music event where the musician used only voice. IT wasn't bad and the 25 AVies there waited between songs to say a word (was very surprised!) and although I would never try it I use a dedicated server as most of us live musicians do it seemed to work well. I have also been to a few trivia with voice that were fine.
I have had 2 poetry readings at my club using voice ..the worst part is getting others to not do voice griefing during a performers time.

I hate voice and I make no apologies for it. When I joined SL, I didn't want the fact of my hearing loss to be a part of my SL experience. But, that stupid voice chat has frequently put me in a position where I almost feel like I'm pleading to be included in conversation because people are using voice chat. Then, people start assuming I'm too stupid to figure out how to turn my voice chat on, and start sending me IMs to explain it. Though, I got tickled the other day when a friend told me he never uses voice chat because his hearing is so bad that it sounds like grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon, which is pretty much how it sounds to me too. It was just nice to know I'm not the only one with that frustration.

Plus, from my limited experience voice chat causes lag both on your individual computer and in the sim you're in. I was at an event in a sim the other night that was having serious lag issues, and the host of the event requested nobody use voice chat because it would make the lag worse. So, why would you want to use something that would cause massive lag and excludes some from being able to participate? Is typing really that hard?

We have tried using voice for live readings in my village, and in addition to the problems mentioned above is the issue of fall-off - or the way the volume of voice decreases as you move further from the speaker. If you have more than 20 AV's at an event it can be difficult to fit them within 20meters of the speaker, and some will not be able to hear. Using an audio stream tied to the land parcel gets around this issue and provides the same level for everyone listening.

You HATE voice because you can't use it? Most people don't use voice so I don't think it will effect your SL experience. It's there so that people who enjoy using it, can. It's part of THEIR SL experience.
I don't use voice but will certainly not begrudge those who do. If I did use it and someone told me they couldn't because of hearing loss, I would gladly type. We might not all have a headset, but I think it's fair to say we all use a keyboard. Then again, imagine not having the use of your fingers - for whatever reason - voice would probably be great.
To each his own...

Voice doesn’t cause lag! Separate servers. Besides, flexy hair causes more lag then voice ever could.
Anyway Language Lab (languagelab.com) has started teaching English and Spanish using voice, with other languages to soon follow. Students have social outings to shops and clubs while interacting in voice. Just one example of how voice is being utilized in SL.

There is, though, a significant difference between an event that specifically uses voice as part of it - _requiring_, or strongly encouraging, the use of voice - and the informal use of voice in another environment, or amongst friends.

An organiser would be a bit foolish to have voice being a central part of an event to be honest, unless it was something which was really _so_ much simpler with it, as there are a lot of people who either can't even get voice to work (*points to self*) or just don't want to be bothered and will not go to your event. I don't think there are many events which _ban_ voice, but that doesn't make them any different from anywhere else.

I think that if it was possible for a parcel to be set up so that only members of a particular group could SPEAK using Voice, but that everyone could listen, it would work far better for public performance venues. That is, to the best of my knowledge, not possible now.

The problem with "vocal distance" can be solved by tying your SL 'hearing' to your camera location, and moving your camera closer to the speaker/performer that you want to listen to. The listener can be anywhere in camera range. But if that camera is too far from the listener, they will in turn be deaf to anything that is actually occurring near their avatar...

Personally, I can hear just fine, and my RL voice could get me a job as a TV or radio broadcaster. (And has, on two occasions in the past!). But my RL environment where my computer is set up is such that it would be quite impractical for me to even consider using Voice, except as a passive listener. Because more often than not, there would be the sound of a TV set, or a barking dog, or kids voices, or low flying aircraft, or all of the above at once, interfering with what I was sending out. People would constantly be telling me to mute my mike. And the members of my family in RL, who can politely ignore my typing in one corner as I sit at the computer, would be annoyed and on occasions upset if they had to listen only to my side of the conversations I would be in. If you think it is annoying to be in a theatre or a restaurant and have to listen to one side of some stranger's cell phone call, imagine what it is like when the person is a member of your own family, and is ignoring all that is going on around them and having a one-sided conversation with the computer screen. Bleah!

Add to this the fact that as a roleplayer, I really don't WANT to hear RL voices that don't sound at all like the impressions I have of the characters I am interacting with. Nor do I want them to hear my voice. It all adds up to conditions that leave me with Voice always deactivated, and 95% of the time I have ALL sound muted.

Any event that requires the use of Voice to enjoy or participate in, even as a passive listener, is one I would not even bother to go to. Because attending them would be, for me, like a deaf person being asked to join some friends in listening to a radio broadcast. I get to sit there and hear nothing, and I can't participate at all. No thanks. While there may be a few people there who would be willing to take the time to type to me, most of what is going on will be stuff I can't percieve or respond to.

Voice may be fine of you live alone and/or have your computer in a basement or back bedroom, where it is quiet and no one else can hear you. But if you don't, it is not worth using.

I think that would be useful, if voice actually worked consistently for everyone - a much better alternative to the workarounds that have been developed for broadcasting streaming audio from Skype and so on. But I still come across people who can't get voice to work at all; I am one of them. Better for an event organiser that they make the technical effort rather than the attendees, since the attendees are the ones who will just leave if they can't hear.

The techniques for broadcasting to streaming audio are pretty robust and well-understood by now anyway, I understand. One of the first events I ever attended in SL was a building class organised in that way.

I teach using voice only. I always send out this instant message to every student;

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TO ENBALE SL VOICE CLIENT: CTRL+P then goto VOICE TAB and check top box. Enable it and APPLY. A white dot will appear over your avatar's head. You may need to run the sound wizard and choose your input and output selections also.

Goto the lower right hand corner and touch the blue circle with the white speaker icon in it. The sliders open turn down music. Then goto the talk bubbles to the left of the word TALK atthe bottom of your screen. See my name appear opn a list fo ACTIVE SPEAKERS to your left. Touch my name and scroll my sound up.
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I find it so much easier to communicate this way. I have voice activated in all of my venues. Only a few people use the voice chat even when there is a crowd so it has never been a issue.

Wurlitzer Seisenbacher hosts a talk show every Friday night using voice. No one speaks other than him and the interviewee until the Q&A period opens up, and most people are very good about not talking over each other and having a meaningful discussion. It's not the nightmarish hell that you might think it is.

Well, Ms Leandros, you will never have me as a student then, since I am still consistently unable to use voice.

On the other hand that is probably a good thing, as I am a terrible student. I relentlessly ask either stupid or difficult questions and occupy far more time than is at all fair to anyone else - and I never do my homework.

Thats a valid point. I didn't think about that. I can see a VC required event being quite difficult unless some predefined rules were put into place ahead of time.

As for the other comment about only letting one group speak per land rules that is I think a great way to manage it. Similar to having a event in IRC and making the room moderated where only the room ops and those they give 'voice' access to can send to the room. Everyone else is in effect just a observer.

No not a nightmare at all

I wish there were more events with voice, haven't looked for quite a while (gave up). Events without voice by a teacher, main speaker etc, I don't even bother with.

Having 10 people chatting (text) all over each other at a busy event is common. That's not the reason I don't go though. Reading chat puts me to sleep!!!

Voice a lot better, faster, easier to follow, way more interesting

Just another thought. I have heard people talk about how much they love teaching using Voice, and how much faster and easier it is...

When you teach a class, and use text instead of Voice, everyone in the class automatically has complete notes for the lecture, with all the questions and responses.

What do they have after a voice-only class? Nothing, unless they are a professional stenographer, taking notes in shorthand, as you rattle on as fast as you can talk.

i've seen it used everyday at events since voice was introduced, i have ran many of them and have attended many many more.....perhaps you are "missing out" on something?


perhaps you dont have voice turned on?