do we even want voice?

My *one* eperience with voice went like this:

A freind TP'd me into a SIM to meet someone else. We stood around for a few minutes, watching about 10 other avies standing, no one talking. I finally IM'd my friend, but he didn't know what was going on. He said a few things in open chat...nothing.

Then one of them said, "We're using voice, duh!" and a few of the others essentially ganged up on us, then everyone went silent. The whole time only one other person (other than myself) moved.

After about 20 minutes I left.

It was annoying and left me with little interest in exploring voice. I don't care if LL adds voice (although I don't want the grid lagged worse than it is). I simply won't use it. I want my Second Life to be exactly that - the less RL the better as far as I'm concerned. And the first time someone coughed or hoarked a loogie in the mic....

/me shudders.

I don't mind seeing new features added for those who want to use them. I'm not planning on using voice for various reasons (background noise, wanting privacy from children, wanting to emote in text, wanting to maintain a separation from my first life persona and second life persona and so forth) ... but if others want to use it, that's fine with me. I don't see how it adds anything substantial to the experience, but then again I'm very text oriented so that's probably why I see things that way.

Only if you are good at voice acting, which few people are. Anyone can type

/me exclaims ecstatically, "That's the answer!"

- but it's much harder to do it convincingly in speech unless you are a good actor.

wrong assumption, next guess please.

So how do we manage to get over the fact we aren't really listening to, or concentrating, on what someone is saying to us?

In text chat, I can "uhhuh", "ok", "yup" randomly and make it sound like I'm actually bothered about some meaningless drivel that someone is trying to enthuse to me about... but that's not so easy in voice.

Broccoli

Correct. The current grid problems have nothing to do with voice.

Want more?

http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/07/30/what-is-wrong-with-the-sl-grid/

The reason I won't be using voice? So many people suspect that I'm really a woman that it'll be quite disappointing when they find I am actually a man posing as a man.

OK, coming back to the original question - for me this breaks down into a number of slightly different questions:

1) Do people want voice integration?

Well some do, some don't, some don't really care and will see what happens. What is clear is that there are far more people on the forums or blog who do not want voice - whether that is reflective of the grid, or whether it is the case that those who really do want voice hate text so much they never post of forums, I'm not sure.

However, all those I've met in world who are interested in seeing voice in SL, aren't that excited about it becuase...

2) Does SL need voice integration?

Here the answr is no - almost everyone I've spoken to who is positive about voice, has go on to say "but I speak to x, y, z when I meet them in SL anyway over ..." - typically skype but any other third party VOIP software will fit there. There's also thirdparty attempts to do integration. In my first week in SL, I found an attachment which would announce to others users of the attachment that I was available to speak via skype and what my skype id was - and then there are more imaginative add-ons like the SL speach tools.

Basically, anyone for whom speach is important is already doing speach "in" SL via thirdparty tools. However there are lots of other features which are either much higher up the wish list (such as transactional mangement of asset servers, some means of backing up inventories - and before people start there*ARE* ways of doing this without breaking the permission system, see the Jira entries for many ideas, html on a prim, ability to have more than 30 people on a sim before lag prevents anyone from moving) or have been promised by LL for far longer (such as an update to the Havoc physic engine etc.) - and unlike voice these functions cannot be fullfilled by third party add ons.

Indeed Vivox themselves did such a thirdparty add-on for SL - ironically, I suspect that LL thought that they could quickly drop this into SL without any major changes to the sim or viewer code, which brings us to...

3) what is the impact of voice integration?

Clearly LL bought the Vivox sales pitch (see their website) that this would be a fairly simple drop in solution which wouldn't involve much impact on the SL infrastructure itself. As such, I suspect the impact was not fully assessed. In particular:

i) the PR impact - the impression is that voice is a higher priority than getting other stuff working

ii) the social impact - we can go over and over whether the changes introduced by voice are for the better, for the worse or will be a mixed bag, or voice will be a passing fad. However, voice has the potential to dramatically change the social dynamics of SL

iii) the impact on the 3D aspects - it isn't just how you interact with people that voice changes it is also how you interact with objects. Objects traditioanlly can listen and react to converations around them. There are a range of potential voice related new LSL functions, however it is not clear when if ever we might get these. Also the infamous chatterbox UI almost by design seems to take the focus of the viewer away from the 3D world to voice chat and IMs. Some have noticed how some groups using voice seem completely oblivious to the 3D environment that they are standing in, and the chatterbox UI seems to just reinforce that the 3D part of the view is just a secondary concern

iv) accountability impact - at present LL can consult logs of text chat if needed to resolve ARs. This in itself isn't 100$ effective, there are reports of someone being banned due to the text chat impling guilt where there was no guilt - e.g. saying something like "I'm making a bomb" because you are merely making a bombshaped prim in a sandbox just prior to a griefing attack. However, as far as I'm aware, there will be no such facility via voice making AR's even more cases of x's word against y.

4) Is voice integration ready to go?

I suspect it is Vivox who are pushing LL to go live with voice rather than LL themselves as the delays make Vivox look bad (indeed LL doesn't seem to have a good track record with partners - their identity verification partner probably isn't too chuffed that the public impression is not only is verification months overdue but it seems to have completely falled off the agenda).

As it stands, the voice FL to me seems less stable and efficient than the main viewer. There are numerous UI issues which need to be worked through, and in some cases redone (chatterbox is a good one but there are others - the speach volume controls obscure the lower right hand side popups). There are firewall issues (voice requires at least three new ports to be enabled on firewalls - and it isn't a case that voice doesn't work with if these ports aren't available, other things go wrong such as the menubar voice enabled land icon, which can report land as enabled when it isn't and vice versa). Some people are reporting problems getting it to work or getting it to work well. And of course there are those on Linux who look like they will remain voiceless.


So to summarise - voice seems a nice feature to have but given all the problems (actual and potential), and given that there are already thirdparty solutions which offer as much as the LL/Vivox integration (given that this doesn't seem to offer voice related LS functions etc.) it hardly seems a priority against all the other issues and missing features people are demanding and LL have promised which cannot be worked around via thirdparty addons.

Matthew

[Edited: Collette pointed out AR accountability]

i don't think voice has anything to do with the instability right now. From what i'm told it isn't even being hosted by linden lab.


(chorus) real men of genius! Today we support you, Mr sim repairing grid monkey. Of all the people in charge your the one who goes out of his way to make sure the residents of second life are on their toes. So crack open an ice cold beer and let the servers fry.

Somehow, someone with the name "Entropy" not being concerned over any feature assisted community fragmentation - doesnt seem unusual.


-----------------------------

No accountability:

Voice helps people harrass - becuase there is no log of what they say. I've yet to see someone explain how this isnt so.

Voicers can say what they like in voice and a AR report will not have a record. If the Linden actually "Just beleives" the report thats actually worse.

Since then an AR can basically claim someone said anything nasty they wanted on voice. And the Linden would believe them?

Thus its really an unfixable problem.

Just a reason to harass:

Voice doesnt create jerks out of thin air - It does however give people a reason to be nasty to others. I think we will see an increase in incidents where nastiness accompanies someone's not being willing to use voice by those that do. Its the old peer pressure thing. A lot of people have never matured emotionally since high school.

The problem isnt LL adding voice. Its when that voice is put in the hands of idiots.

While claims of how wonderful a feature voice will be - consider for a moment. If it was required to be premium to use voice, how many of these problems would be reduced to more managable levels?

I fully support Voice being a 'premium service'.

Broccoli

I agree. That would also be a good incentive for some to go premium.

I listened on the voice beta a while back, as I don't have a microphone. It more annoyed me than anything else. I'm not interested in it. I'm even less interested in the paranoid rantings of overaged adolescents. They can go "Voice" themselves as far as I'm concerned.

Noooooooo, Chas i'm shocked!!!!!

I guess that would make my reason not to use voice: because then i won't be able to hide the fact that i'm actually a woman

You can Chas can use voice changers?

Or maybe pretend to be each other ..



something like that.

Just in case some wiseass thinks they can put 2 and 2 together and get 7, Chas and I are seperate people.......

Don't believe a word of it. Brenda and I are one!

Um, since there is a First Look Client out for Voice and has been since late 1.17 .... The code for Voice Support has already been in the main servers - with no problems as of yet. The recent issues have been around since before Voice and were never truly fixed.

But I look really (and I mean really) bad in a dress.

Eeeeek...... no way am i pretending to be Chas! He doesn't have anywhere near nice enough hair

(sorry Chas, will buy you a coffee later )

well theres the absolute proof Chas isnt Brenda - No way Brenda would be cuaght dead with bad hair.

where does it say that voice support is being rolled onto the server farm?

I have yet to find any sort of official voice support (or any real support for that matter)

I highly doubt voice is the reason for the problem, it is just another day in the life of SL...

now to answer the question as stated in the thread topic....

"Do we even want voice?"
I can not speak for the collective "we" I can only speak for "me" and I want voice.
Do I "need" it, no, but I do want it, been using it and very much enjoy using it.
I have had a couple experiences with voice griefing, and just mute them, easy peasy
(yes you can mute only voice and still see their text chat)

Do I think voice is slowing things down? nope, I have not noticed any changes in performance due to voice.

anywho, this thread was longer than I thought and did not read all replies, so if I am repeating anything already said, forgive me.

(PS I think there has been a few polls already posted about voice which pretty much sums up what the question this thread posed) if that makes sense, it is early I just woke, blah no coffee yet!

looks to me like sally said this, not brenda, unless sally is an alt of brenda, or is brenda sally's real name

(confused LOL)

Have you not been paying attention? The Voice Client has had a first look client out since late 1.17. The rolling restart was more or less to lock in the final code ...

Oh and by the by? You can shut off voice (as in, no Voice allowed in a SIM or land parcel) if you own a SIM or a parcel of land.

Gads ...

Brenda and I are now really upset. You helped us choose that hair, Sally. Shame on you.