Voice in SL?

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From the SL Answers forum. Also, this topic was mentioned before but kind of petered out.

So folks, they want to know what we think about voice chat in SL. Good thing? Bad thing? I'm rather up for it.

Addendum:
Figures, the poll is up less than a minute and I hadn't even voted yet, but someone voted pie. >D

Don't much care... lived without it for two and a half years. Been in other games that had it... don't miss it at all. If you like it great, have fun... if not, then sure don't use it...

The only problem is that those who don't use it will be ostrasised and distrusted. Voice chat can be fun, but for those who can't or won't use it, it's game over.

I'd love to have it implemented, but not only would clubs like the Angry Ant be an absolute noisy mess (while accurate, annoying), but as mentioned before, failure to use voice chat = untrustworthy in MMO communities. EVE-Online is an example: most corps, if you don't use Ventrilo to talk within the corp, they kick you out.

I'd say group-run Ventrilo servers and swapping of Yahoo Messenger names is teh best way to go about voice chat. That, or at the very most, an item on the rotary menu when you right click on an av to send to them.

I've not seen that, but in EVE, like most fast paced combat games, there is precident. Using speech is a lot easier than taking your hands off the controls to type a message, especially when 3 seconds could be enough to see you lose a ship. In games like SL or *spit* There, it's a novelty, and an unnecessary one too, 99% of the time.

If Linden Lab aren't careful, they're going to just make their already complicated program even more difficult to manage. Why can't people who want to chat via voice use MSN or something?

Why is there a need to create this single program that can do everything? Isn't that what we have operatiing systems for? So we can have several specialized programs running independently of eachother? This way, if one of the several programs isn't very good then we can switch it for another one.

What happens if a new and wonderful voice chat technology pops up the day after Linden Lab integrate their own voice chat system?. All that effort would be a waste.

It seems asthough Linden Lab have alot of programmers that are in need of something to do. I vote that they fix a few bugs if they're bored. Adding features is great, it gives people hope that Second Life is progressing. But personally, to see them just bolting on superficial features doesn't give me any hope at all.

They need to tie Andrew Linden onto the the end of a piece of rope and lure him down into the core of Second Life. The core needs fixing or she's gonna blow!!!

They could, but some people don't know about VoIP and others can't decide which to use. There's at least half a dozen good "large" ones that I know of just like there's MSN, ICQ, Jabber, YahooIM, etc. Who are YOU to say "don't use ventrillo, use teamspeak!" to someone else on SL?


The answer to this is two fold. Firstly, as above, there's a lot of choices out there for voice chat and who's to say you and someone else will have the same type? Should the residents of SL have four or five different VoIP programs just like some people have IM programs? (eventually to replace them all with some kind of general purpose VoIP that interacts with all servers, kind of like jabber does)

Secondly, it's a convenience factor. You'd just as well berate OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Office for offering database, text, and number interactions in seperate yet integrated packages. How dare they make your life easier by providing you with stuff you might need.

You make it seem like implementing any version of Havok at all was a good idea. "Pff, why implement Havok 1, they'll just have 2 out in a couple of years." or more recently I've heard jokes about the recent plan, "Why implement Havok 3, they'll have 5 out before they implement it."


They can do both, fix bugs and add features. It's just, and I agree with you in this point, the more they add the more bugs appear.

Good point! I didn't think of that.




But really, I decided months ago that Second Life needs to be broken up into smaller applications. So I just saw this thread as an excuse to rant.

Sadly the integration of several voice services into one program would cause more problems than it solves, as far as errors go. SL should be modular, if it were coded properly everything would be black box and you could replace the renderer, or the email code, or the <insert other feature> with little effort on the part of the programmers. If it were, then adding VoIP would be as difficult as designing your own method of voice communication or using someone elses.

Personally I see an integrated voice chat program unneccessary, and one that can seriously disadvantage some users.
For those with hearing impairments, or audio problems, like audio figureground issues, it would make SL unplayable, and be discriminatory.
Also there is the issue of people from all sorts of nationalities playing SL, some of whose native language is not English. This would cause unneccessary difficulties for those players in communicating effectively.
Accents are another issue that can be a problem, as some accents are very difficult to understand by those not familiar with them.
Another problem I see is if some-one is busy concentrating on something, they are not really paying attention to what is said. Currently, with everything typed, if you miss what was said, or didn't fully understand what was said, you can look in chat history to re-read that. With voice you can't.
Lastly, there are times when one wants to save chat history for many reasons. Voice chat makes that impossible.

Whilst doing everything by type is cumbersome unless you are an excellent typist, there are many, many more disadvantages to voice in my opinion.

I usually play SL at night when my partner is sleeping, so voice wouldn't really be an option for me. Yeah, on the occasional weekend, it might be cool, but I kind of prefer not having voice in SL.

Not to mention that there are a number of people in SL who don't sound like their avatars look -- and some who would be harshly judged for that. Making SL a voice-based application could really ruin SL for them.

Nod.

If SL got a voice chat function that was widely used I suspect I would have to start looking for "Third Life".

That might be a good thing, actually. I could drop back to Basic, tier down, and only check on now and then to keep in touch with epople through IM. Save me a lot of time and money.

Voice is the only way to go! Message me in game for my Skype name if you wanna discuss this any further. Typing is for the birds!~ lol

Considering how voice chat has worked so well for online games... Sure why not?

"-ow are *huff* yo-" "-oing *huff huff clonk* today?"

"Not bad. Hey, pull the mic back a bit from your mouth, I can hear your breathing."

"-at? *huff huff huff*"

If LL adds this, I hope there is a big fat disable button for it in options.

There are applications that could deal with this. Maybe. Accurate rendition during conversion is the issue, I think.

If, for example, a female av is controlled by a RL male, they would want to convert the audio. But voice conversion usually sounds a bit odd. However, if everyone's voice was filtered, everyone would sound equally odd. A male voice filtered could sound like a distorted male voice. A female voice filtered/converted could sound like a distorted male voice. There'd be stigma associated bc no one would know. Theoretically.

I'm going to guess there are no programs out there that consider this. Anyone know? If not, it might be a worthwhile little shareware opportunity for someone.

So, we'd gain voice, but everyone's voice would sound like crap? Erm, and we'd want this why? Yuck, count me out!

I personally don't want it because I am comfortable typing, but put a mic in front of me and I get stagefright. And as someone mentioned before, if voice is the norm, people who opt not to would likely be seen as suspect.

There's already the option to talk to your friends on YMessenger or Skype or other applications while using SL. Why isn't that enough?

That's what Skype and other VOIPs are all about. Let those that want voice use those applications. No need to implement, here.

I didnt really read anybody's replies to this, so I might be repeating.

Check this out.

LL wants SL to be this all inclusive, world wide, international WTF ever thingy right?

There are a significant number of people who communicate via the internet, chat, and other typing/text type applications.

For example: The Deaf Community.

They are able to communicate to a wider base of individuals. So SL adds in voice chat, and boom the deafies are assed out.

Not to mention those folks playing opposite what their avatars portray gender-wise, and they might not want people to know. Another privacy issue. Stats on LL says this. 45% females. (I'm guessing off of names on CC?) and over 50% choose female avatars.

Tired of people griefing via wavs? Imagine how it would be with voice?

Now I digress, but my main beef aside from all that, is that SL becomes EXclusive instead of INclusive. Already there are people teaching classes using voice only over a land url. Or announcing important information at events via DJ and not typing in the text as well.

It might seem a small thing to you, but it can mean all the difference to those who for whatever reasons cannot access audio technology.

And for those that can - bust out skype and quit ya complainin

Even though voice chat would be a neat option, I too thought of that. I doubt some guys here would like to know that the sexy female avatar they've been boinking every night is another guy.

It might be useful, however, for visually-impaired SLers.

Moved to Current Version Feature Feedback.

I'll ask a legally blind friend on SL whether she'd rather have voice chat or a "follow" command.

Since I dont know of anyone in SL who enjoys lag let's add 40 people streaming voice to the already taxed streams....... yuck

One needn't be legally blind to find being able to talk to people and hear people useful.

Normal old age vision is quite sufficient to to make reading chat annoying.

A couple of beers makes typing problematic for some folks.

But voice doesn't need to be useful, it only needs to be fun .