Unified voice chat on the grid - what do you think?

I would be against it, as I prefer to write than talk. I hate the mismash of ignored conversation and ill-thought out words that comprises most everyday chat. Not that we don't say unimportant things in SL, of course, but we can scroll about and read what was said.

Written language is just another language. I disagree with the notion that it is somehow inferior to spoken language. Inflections and the rest are completely possible when writting (yes, even without emoticons!). Not to point out the obvious, but the bulk of human thought prior to the twentieth century is stored in books and manuscripts. Do we really believe that we would connect more to the philosophers, playwrights, poets and novelists of the past if we could only hear their voices? I doubt Miss Austen would have wanted to strap on a microphone to blurt out Pride and Prejudice!

Real time written communication is a wonderful thing. I can get people trying to shout over each other with competing inanities at any local RL pub.....

I think, as with everything in this game, there are pros and cons about having voice. I played in There for a couple of years and had voice and it was actually fantastic. There wasnt much of an issue of people talking over each other because of the "Wiggly" that would show up over the talking persons head as they pushed their push to talk key. There was also a range in which the talking would be unhearable and you would honestly have to be pretty close to people to hear them talking. The pros were the fun times we had all talking away, even those without mics could turn us on so they could hear us and just typed their response. The shy ones too could listen and not talk. To address a previously mentioned point as well...those playing different genders that made the choice not to talk were not suspect of being a different gender, just that they didnt want to talk!

There is a bit of a difference though, between here and There (haha I love that, ok movin on). In There each house was its own instance, outside was all one area but once you passed through a door it was like another world. True people were building houses outside so it didnt apply to those, but if you say had a group of friends in your house you had privacy of no one standing outside your door listening. You could also talk in IMs.

I'm not sure how it would work in some of the really busy areas of SL but Im not sure it would even be good for business of clubs etc. If someone DOESNT have voice or cant even hear people talking, you have groups of those that are talking and someone else or a even a few people standing there in total silence. I dont know about everyone, but I would assume most people would hate that situation.

Perhaps having specific areas where voice was an option, making it available in private IMs, or some such other workups would make it a valuable asset to SL, but at the moment, it could produce a huge mess.

Does anyone else find it ironic that peopl want Voice chat included in their Text based 3d game.

While on their Cell Phone - they want text chat.

LOL


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It will change how people act.
Some people who are very outgoing now - will be shy and reserved.
Others the Opposite.

A lot of people who use SL to have virtual affairs will be shut out, becuase you can type things you simply cant say in a room with kids/ spouse/etc.

A lot of people will be a lot less kinky too. Since they can type it but not say it. Others probably the opposite.

A lot of people will get less work done. Its easy to catch up on your ims every 10 minutes - On voice chat its impossible (as Kyrah said)

Some might get more work done - Such as sales - Some people can smooth talk you to buy anything. lol. (yikes telemarketers)

*moves to feature suggestions*

oh yuck, all of second life would feel like teleconferencing into a meeting!

That really sounds bad. I was kinda neutral before but that image is leaning me to saying I think its a dumb idea.

If presets:
Does "draconic" sound like what I think dragons sound like?
If just a bunch of controls:
How am I to know 1) what dragons sound like (specifically me, as I'm at a complete loss as to even the simplist of things: eye color, relative inteligence, NAME...) and 2) what controls to tweak to get the sound I want? I have enough trouble dealing with color and a mere THREE controls: Red, Green, and Blue.

Besides, voice modification can only go so far.

Besides:
Lag, it's bad enough already and you want to through dynamic audio into the mix?
Speakers: I run mute most of the time because either I don't care for the sound or I'm in a place where either 1) I'd not be able to hear it anyway (too noisy) or 2) it would be rude (too quiet, such as a library or class (yes, I have booted up SL durring class before)).
Focus: if we add sound to the main world, then PMs need sound too. We have enough issues getting out TEXT to go to the right place, imagine what would happen if you said something aloud to the wrong person or group?

And lastly:
I've been playing an RPG game (table top pen and paper stuff) over Yahoo Chat for about a year now and I have not YET said one thing, and these people are close friends most of whom I have meet in real life.
I'm not about to start chatting to random people over SL

This is the one version of voice I could agree with. People could have their choice of using their own voice, or use a vocoder plugin of a desired gender, etc. Ideally, people would be able to upload voices just as they now upload animations and such. I don't have any idea how difficult this would be technically.

Until this is possible, I think voice in SL is a bad idea beyond the workarounds already in use. Taking away the ability to play the other gender or nonhumans effectively would kill SL for many many people.

I wonder, when Philip came out against voice in SL, he was looking at the number of premium users in an avie of the other gender.

I realize too, the metaverse is not complete without voice, it's just we need to be able to synthesize it/modify it for those whose normal voice or lack thereof won't work with an avie they've created. Even more ideally, we should wait until we have decent text to speech translation.

If included..it needs to optional - both hearing -and- talking.

Technology-wise, this was somewhat inevitable. Corporates are moving in, and the logical use for them is to hold international meetings here and save on flight costs. And without integrated speech, that won't work so smoothly.

Personally, it is something I would only use with close friends, and then only in an IM-type chat. Despite (or perhaps because of) my RL job, I am a very quiet person, and anything bigger than a one to one chat makes me edgy.

Well, now that all the systemic problems have all been solved by LL, it makes sense that they should add voice chat. It wouldn't have any cost to multicast every pearl of everyone's utterances to all the receiving clients. Primitive and texture bandwith would not be impacted at all.

Oh, and if you thought following text chat in a place with 15 avatars was fun, you should really enjoy this.

To infinity, and beyond!

Okay, even I couldn't keep a straight face on this. Think about choppy, out of order conversation where you hear a response before the preceding statement and everyone has their mic gain too high or too low. Fabu!

We already have this. It's called "skype".

You misspelled "will gradually be pressured into leaving".

He's been known to do that himself, of course

Chatting without having to type would be a great thing, but should be a choice, not a requirement. I hate to type, and I hate to stop what I'm doing to type a long explanation when I'm working with someone else (which has caused me to avoid working with others).

I don't like the idea of having to listen to a lot of chatter from nieghbors in the background, or, as Sarah Nerd points out, rl background noise (like a hungry teen begging for his dinner, lol).

I do like the idea of it being another option like IM's. I think it would be great at parties, which is another thing I avoid at this time because of the need for all the typing, not to mention trying to keep up with all the IM's and the chat history.

As far as the translation/foreign language problems, I agree with what every one else said, it would be tough for non-english speakers if it were the only option, although I would love to have the option to try to understand some spoken chat in some other languages.

The issue of gender bending is a non-issue, imho. But that's just me...but I wonder if you don't suspect everyones gender already, maybe you should?

An option to have a private voice chat between friends (either just 2 or a group) would add another dimension to sl that I think would be an enhancement to my overall sl experience, even though I would have to go buy the equipment. I would prefer it to be unified, and not a separate program, but only if it did not increase lag or negatively impact any other feature already in existance.

Thought of another issue.
If there is a fadeoff so that chat fartheraway is quieter, the possibilities for group conversation inworld (as opposed to IM) is easier, anyone farther away not part of the discussion would fade into the background, like it does in a crouded restaurant.
The issue here of course is that you generally don't find people in SL getting as close as they would in real life, such that in the goup itself, the people on the otherside are too quiet to hear.

This is how it was in There. I haven't even crossed the sill for years, but when I was there I always had the ability to speak, I just didn't want to. People would MAKE me.

this is absolutely true since people already pressure others to use Skype.

I wonder how many go back to the way chat rooms were in the 90's when we were all sharing phone numbers - and your business was everyone in the chat room's business.

I cant say I would want to go back to those days.

"Those who forget the past .." lol - oh well.

I loathe voice in games and it was what drove me out of There.com. I do a lot of multitasking and it's nice to be able to run to the kitchen and stir dinner without being unnecessarily rude--and that's one of the nice things about a social game like SL. It's nice to be able to watch TV or listen to music in the background. It's nice to be able to chat with my partner. It's nice to her to not have to listen to it. Voice makes all that impossible.

I also really hate wearing a headset. My enduring memory of my short time in the game Eve is my ears hurting.

And there is no such thing as voluntary voice. Once people start using it, it will become mandatory. I watched it happen in There.

Is September 1993 over yet? (If so, does anyone have a finite date?)
Still, I do prefer most text-only mediums over much of the internet. I use teh Basic Four IM clients (as Trillian). I only recently got Skype so I could participte in a once-a-week meeting of people from a forum I'm on, and as such I will only run Skype on Fridays.
I still participate in Usenet, and have done some venturing into IRC, but I find that I get lost if the group is larger than about 5 (as I do in similar situations in SL). I'd MU* but I never really got into it, the commands were unintuitive just because of the nature of the way MU*s are built.

http://www.virtualworldtimes.com/news/2007/02/linden_to_launc.html

Just in case it hasn't been posted already, I'm just too lazy to look through 5 pages of posts right now

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

(Pardon the length)

I have a considerable stutter. It is something that I have dealt with my entire life and to this day still impacts my interaction with people. When I discovered Second Life I was quite pleased it was text based as my imparment would not hinder me here.

Today I have mixed feelings. I can understand why some people would want to have voice in Second Life. I personally would rather call my family and friends than type them an email or send them a text message. In my case, because of my dificulty with speech, particularily in social situations with people I do not know well, I will not use voice in Second Life. I can see how this can also be divisive for other people in SL, such as people who do not speak english natively, people with hardware issues, or other people who simply just don't like it. I know that I won't want to be in an area with a bunch of people on voice chat when I'm trying to build or script. I like to have my music on, often at a good volume when I'm on SL, that will be the end of that too.

My main fear is that people who do not, can not or will not use voice will be shut out from the 'Voicies' in SL. They will be looked upon with suspision, as if they are hiding something. I have encountered this in the past already in SL with one person telling me once that they could not be friends with someone who would not voice chat with them. My simple response to that was I can not be friends with someone who would say that, especially with my explanation of why. That was the end of that friendship.

I have also encountered the 'Unintentional Shun'. I have a group of friends that regularily use Skype. I got my mic to work once but Skype did not work well, nor agree with my computer, as well as the aforementioned issues I have. It's inevitable that when they get on Skype, I get left out. I get told to use skype to chat, but the conversation goes way to fast for someone typing to keep up and the text often gets ignored. In these situations I would rather be left out than left behind, its much less frustrating. I just know that is voice progresses to be 'the norm' in SL, it will become much less enjoyable for me, and I certainly don't loook forward to explaining to everyone that comes along why I don't voice. I have encountered enough shame and ridicule about my stutter throughout my life, and I just see having to bring it up again and again and again...not looking forward to that.

I will survive in SL without voice, its not going to make me leave. I have a decent business here that keeps me occupied and I guess I can always listen in to the chat if I want. One thing that I am sure of is that it will impact my interactions with other people. I have dealt with that for 20-some years in real life, I had just hoped to avoid it here.

<sarcasm>
OH WAIT! Thats right, I almost forgot! I have a simple solution: I'll just stay on my island because I only pay $195 in tier, no one visiting my island is allowed to use voice!
</sarcasm>

(great poll!)

I don't like VoIP in any form.

Heck, I don't even like VoPOTS. (voice over plain old telephone service)

Maybe it's because I've done too much phone support in my life... It's too much like "work" for me to enjoy it.

In RL I multi-task. A lot. When I'm in SL, it may have 10% of my attention or 90%... (the only time it gets 100% of my attention is when I'm scripting, and I'm not talkative when I am).

That means there's background noise. Movies, music, a game on the other computer... whatever.

I don't talk when I'm at the computer. I type.

I've tried several other worlds, with friends that prefer using VoIP systems... and it just gets massively annoying. There's always one person that won't shut up and let others get a word in edgewise. (and no... I'm not the yappy one. Honest. )

Text is fair.... it's sequential... everyone can speak up at anytime and everyone has the same chance of being 'heard' by everyone else nearby. Teleconference like systems, regardless of what they're built on, always end up with people awkwardly talking over each other, repeating themselves, loudest and most deteremined voice crowds out everyone else. It may be more 'life' like but not in a good way.


It's great that LL is offering this as a built in feature.... for those that prefer it to typing.

I'm just not one of them.

Hm im confused about this whole thing

I think if someone wants to talk, just get on skype and do it!


I also thing this is going to cause trouble, like folks being left out, etc. Not just those who prefer not to use the voice, but what about those that wont do it due to maybe speech impetiments(sp) or whatnot. It just doesnt work when theres a group of people and everyone is talking and one person is typing. One of the things that was attractive about SL was that everyone had to type, and then if they wanted to get more personal with people they could take it to phone, or skype. Idk guess just have to see how it works out.


I voted that ill listen and only talk with close friends. Cos it was closest to my choice. Personally, I dont have any intention or desire to be listening to other people talk. Humans annoy me. Now i get to hear yappy voices all over sl? Maybe theres a way to "mute" the voice chat so i can still listen to my music. Or do you have to "connect" by permission with someone to take part in voice or do you just hear it as you walk by?


Editing to also say that- There should be sims/places geared specifically for people who want to take part in this. that would solve some things.

I think this is a fruitless vote. Saying 'I'll only talk or listen to friends' or 'I won't talk or listen', is extremely naive.

The human brain is hardwired for speach and listening to speach, by virtue of evolution. Most cultures view those who don't speak when spoken to, as either freaks or radicals, and view them with suspicion. When voice communication is possible, not engaging is viewed as a sign of antisocial behavior, even when the person isn't. Like appearance, voice is one way we make judgements about a person we are interacting with. The pull to use vocal communication is too strong, and those who refuse, will be marginalized in SL. You may not want to talk, but the person on the other end of the conversation will suspect you have something to hide if you don't.

I am going to Ebay right now and ordering a new microphone as my old one has gone missing, and as soon as the voip becomes available, I want to hook into it.