Voice chat?

Well, on my 2 cents worth.. i love voice. Love love love it. But there are times and places for it. When its a group of friends sitting talking, voice is great. its good in the club when only a few people are there. I think its extremely RUDE to voice when your at a club that has a live act or Dj. and tune them out to talk.

I am a HUGE fan of *KNOW HOW TO USE YOUR MIC*.

No one wants to hear you type, chew, scream at the dog/kids/significant other. If you have extreme feedback, ask someone to help you fix it, or use the mic sparingly.

I do agree that a LOT of *girls* that refuse to use voice are guys, and vice-versa, as i know females that play male avies, but not all, not by a long shot. There are a lot of folks that don't like voice for various reasons, and that's their right. I never assume because folks have a dot they are listening, i always ask.

Me personally? I love the accents, the exchanges, the personal aspect of voice. And i typo WAY less when i talk

That's silly.

Everyone knows that the One True Test for male running a female avatar is them calling you "Hun".

I'm a guy but my "telephone voice" often comes across as female. It's a lot easier to fake than people seem to think, and people who are using voice as a sex detector are living in a house of straw.

*snort*

You better stay in PG-rated sims then. Because I could probably pass your "voice test", without even using a voice changer, and I'm no voice actor. People who actually care about passing are REALLY good at it.

I'm playing a male character and I don't want to use voice because I don't want you to find out I'm not really a dog.



I suspect you've pissed off a lot of real women who go "OMG, this dude is gonna stalk me" and just walk away.

Same here. A huge part of our perception of people is visual cues. When you see one thing and hear another you fall out of the SL world and it becomes just a bad version of skype as now the visual cues are meaningless. My SL character is a cat, however in RL I am *gasp* a human. On top of that, one who has multiple accents (England, southern US, 2 from New England, plus affectations from random places) at the same time. Then I further complicate it by usually communicating with Deaf people.

*sigh* When voice was forced^H^H^H^H^Hintroduced it was touted as "an option". Those of us in SL knew it would split communities and warned of that but were poo-pooed. I guess we were right after all.

Lame.

???

Thread in general I think.

Yea, this thought process that if you will not voice you are not a girl is just rather deplorable.

Completely ignorant. Of course it's always the guys looking for hot sex in SL that always want voice or cam, that really push this way of thinking, jerks.

I'm sure some people don't use voice for teh sexxors because their spouse is within earshot.

Whether or not someone is roleplaying their own gender is irrelevant to me. In some ways maybe it's better when they don't as those people may put more effort into their roleplaying. Either way, I'll accept your avatar as whatever you want me to, voice or not.

Anyone could use autotuning software to "pass" a voice test anyway.

I let voice stay turned on. But I don't actively use it except in very rare circumstances.

Here are the reasons why.

1) I'm a DJ. That's not just what I do, that's who I am. The whole point of being at an event with a live DJ is to listen to the music. Not some overly enthusiastic person raving on their mic about how good the music is, or how much it sucks, or anything else. It's about the music. Turn the mic off and type for crying out loud.

2) Voice by its very nature is an exclusive means of communication. People who use SL are from all over the world, and do not share a common language. Many people do speak English but it is not a universal language. It is physically impossible to translate voice into other languages. Text can be translated, no matter how poorly. Also voice will not pick up Ameslan.

In the interest of facilitating communication, it's important to cater to the lowest common denominator. This means 100% text 100% of the time unless everybody present decides they want to get involved in a voice session. Yes some people do have difficulty typing, but for those people they can use voice recognition software to do the typing for them, it has been done in SL. Also the blind can use software to take that text and turn it into voice. So text is the only communication method that can be considered reliable, even in a medium as visually rich as Second Life.

So, you ARE close-minded then.

Trish, think what you want. I know lots of women, who I KNOW are not cross gender players, who won't use voice, for just those reasons you've dismissed.

Yes, sometimes you will be right. (And if you are, who cares anyway? People should be allowed to be who they want to be, here in a world that permits it). But often, you will be wrong.

The last time I used voice I was treated to the sounds of:
* chewing
* belching
* high pitched women laughing really loudly
* feedback
* babble from people talking to other people in the room in RL.
* one person dominating the voice chat with inane comments about themselves that went on and on and on and on...

I'm actually pretty happy about the fact that the voice package doesn't work with Emerald for Macs. When they do fix it I shall ignore it

So my simple answer to why I don't use voice is "because I hate it". If someone wishes to translate that to "I'm really a man masquerading as a woman", then I am also pleased with the weeding process that takes that person away from me.

I wish. My hubby and I often play sitting side by side. We have different tastes, so we're almost never together in SL. He found a crowd that is very into voice, while my crowd doesn't.

If I'm just hanging out with a crowd, it's passable. But if I'm trying to do some serious stuff, it drives me crazy having to listen to half a conversation (since he's using headphones). I can't ask him to stop, because that means not being able to communicate with his friends. (And these aren't sex conversations - those would be easier for me to tune out.)

If we need to pause to talk to each other, I can usually just type brb, and catch up later by reading the chat log. He can't, because there is no voice log.

Do you also assume that all male avatars who refuse to use Voice are really female?

Honestly, if you care at all what gender a person is in RL, you'd better assume they are all lying. You'll be dissapointed less often.

There's many reasons for declining to use Voice.

My home has a high ambient noise level. Aircraft passing low overhead at inconvenient moments as they approach to land at a nearby airport; barking dog; teenager playing music or listening to TV in the same room... Believe me, you don't want me to have a live microphone in the room when that dog barks!

And I consider it quite rude to be there in the room with my family, while chattering loudly into a microphone in a one-way conversation that would have to sound utterly bizzarre from their perspective. Worse than having someone sit at the dinner table with you while chattering to some stranger on their cell phone.

Voice is fine if you live alone in a quiet apartment, or if your computer is in an isolated room where no one has to listen to you (momma's basement, anyone?). For people with a family or roommates, it's worthless.

But then again, if all you care about with Voice is using it to screen potential single mates of a suitable gender, for the hope of getting dates in RL, then by all means, pass uo on getting to know all of us who decline to fire up a microphone and blather away at you. If you're that shallow, I don't want to talk to you anyway.

I only voice with those I'm very close to, and then, not all the time. I do leave voice on though.

When I have been to a social setting where voice is being used, I often find people that grate on my nerves and I turn it off. There always seems to be some loud-mouthed asshole who is trying to act macho. If I were to participate in the conversation, then I would be forced to tell the guy off and then I'd rather not get into it.

However, most of the social venues I go to involve live music, so voice never gets used there.

I tried it once, it annoyed me no end, for many of the reasons stated. I leave it off. A lot of the times, I use the Nicholaz "Old School" viewer, which doesn't even have it. It's a tool that one can choose to use or not, that's fine. One thing I have noticed is that I get hit on a lot less without that dot over my head, I guess guys are just assuming the worst and not even bothering, which is OK by me.

Does all this mean that those of us who don't do Voice should just assume that anyone who insist we 'really gotta hook up a microphone and Voice with them' is solely seeking to make out with the typist of our avatar? That makes it SO much easier to ignore them.

You want to encounter one of my avatars? Fine. They are all fictional roleplaying characters, and not "real people". My typist does not, ever, date people met on-line. Accept that or look elsewhere.

I came across someone in RP that insisted on using Voice and or webcam. Granted it was an Adult RP, and he freely admitted to "playing at home", but I wondered why he was even in SL then. He could just be looking at porn and get the same result.

I dislike voice chat in SL for just about all the reasons mentioned with the most annoying being that it does not drop with distance and if the person talking is far away or out of sight behind something then I don't know who is talking! Still, I leave it on but only listen in if thinking it may be relevant to me.

Voice is no different to many things in sl - some people love it and others hate it so it is everyone to their own.

On the other subject of males playing as females in sl, most of my friends use female avas but I do not need to know if they are male in rl or not (actually none of my business!!!). If any one of them tells me they are, it make no difference to me - I will continue to treat them as female in sl as that is who they are here

Voice does fade with distance. It's supposed to be approximately the same range as local chat in text, but in my experience it does tend to be longer range, and it depends on your volume setting and that of the speaker. I use "hear voice from camera position", by the way. That way you can cam around and find out pretty quickly where that mysterious conversation is coming from, since it gets louder as your camera gets closer.

I turn on voice only when I'm at an event that requires it, such as a play. In those situations, the folks speaking know enough about how to use their voices that I enjoy the experience. Otherwise, voice is like a bad party line, and I just don't enjoy it. I do not own a head-set. I have a mic, but it is unplugged unless I have to record something for work. It is always unplugged when I'm in SL.

I am a woman in both first life and second. Those of you out there who assume otherwise because I use text chat are just plain foolish.

Holy fuck. I was just talking about friendly chatting on voice.. not virtual dating or sex.

Maybe i should have said "shy", I think I offended too many people with the word 'insecure'.

If I was a girl in second life, I WOULDN'T USE VOICE. You'd have PMs out the ass nonstop for 5 years.

Does anyone out there think I'm shy?

Chimn, it's not you. The subject of voice has always been a polarizing topic. This happens every time it comes up.

You got your answer early in the thread...lots of people have it on, but are either not actually listening, or unwilling to use it to talk. Everything after that is just the usual rehash.

You may be right about the "insecure" (or "shy", if you like) though. I CAN use voice, but seldom do. I'm always shy about responding to someone who addresses me in voice, too, unless I know them. I feel shy and uneasy if I reply using voice, since I do it so seldom, and since I cannot hear myself (unlike a telephone). And I ALSO feel shy and uneasy if I reply in TEXT...because I'm thinking, "will this person see my reply, even? If they do, are they going to think I'm a guy in a dress because I'm using text?"

So, if some stranger chats to me in voice (unless it's at a community gateway where I am mentoring), I am very likely to just think, "erk, a Voicer. We probably don't have anything in common," and just sidle quietly away.