Voice hysteria?

Hun he just wishes he was you .

Doesn't matter whether you like voice or not, the bottom line is it's terrible. The design is terrible, probably the worse of any voice enabled game. The sound is bad as more then half the time it won't work and when it does the sound is very poor. The background noise drowns out voice chat and using the sliders doesn't help either.

I don't know if it's fully implemented or not but I do know that although I wanted voice in sl, after seeing this contraption they installed I will not even attempt to use it anymore. It's just not worth it.

Hey, Brenda's supposed to have great hair!

What's that strange echoing sound?

That is unfortunate - the least they could do is make it functional for the majority of voicers.

Hopefully they are fixing the issues.

We should just all cut and paste from all the previous "voice makes me cry" posts to make new Frankenstein threads instead of actually typing out all the same bullshit.

In fact, I may have said this once before! This, too! This, too!...oh god.

I can't wait for LL to do something new that you guys don't like so we can have something marginally worth discussing.

What IS that strange buzzing sound?

I don't know, Chas. I pulled your finger like you asked and now everything's going crazy!

There it is again. Weird.

True - but 74% of all statistics are made up!

Mari

Quoted the wrong person.

My fifteen, twenty dollar radio shack headset works perfectly fine.

Labtec headset, non-USB. $5.99 at Newegg.

LOL!!! So dramatic and passionate! "Voice makes me cry"!

/me laughs herself into an "accident" and hurries away quickly

I'm with the OP on this one. I was sceptical at first but am now really enjoying voice. I started only voicing (can voice be a verb? Well it is now) with friends, but now feel ready to voice with strangers (I speak to new clients over the phone at work, and that's not really taumatic - most of the time).

My headset was £20 (about $37) and works fantastically. Plantronics do make good headsets - most call centers use them - but I'm more than happy with my Logitech.

ah ok, that cleared it up hehe

I just used it last night for the first time. What a boon, we could actually discuss what I was doing (creating a building for the other guy). He said what he wanted, I offered my suggestions, and the whole thing went about 3 times faster than having to type, stop, wait for him to type, respond etc.

Voice is the way forward, I can remember my parents complaining about colour being introduced in the movies - too bright, makes your eyes ache, better in black and white...

It's called progress people.

And how many times did he have to repeat himself? Was he understandle? Good English? No wierd dialect? No lots of background noises (in or out of SL)?

One of the big advantages of text? You can read it again? Even read back to what was said long before... and even save it if you wish so.

I remember my parents complain about phones... and with everyone having a cellphone these days, they were right.

Every progress is not a change for the better.

Morwen.

I have started using voice in SL and think its great!! I can talk to my friends and say a lot more than having to type everything and also nice to hear the voice behind the avatar. One problem is everyone talking at same time but this can be solved by just looking at green soundwaves and judging when person has stopped talking or by saying over like in radio speech.

I think LL have done great job with voice so far and long may SL continue.

In an hour he had to repeat himself precisely once. It obviously helped that we were both British, there were no weird background noises, at my end at least. In short I would not have had better comunications with someone via the phone.

This morning I had a general chat with a guy I just met from Moscow, I've no mike on the computer Iwas using so I typed, he spoke. He had a distinctive Russian accent that was perfectly understandable and did not need to repeat a single thing in about 20 minutes.

These are the only two occasions I've used voice, I know its too small a sample to be representative, but I have absolutely no problems with either the concept or the implementation.

Background noise and being un-understandable are things that tend to go away with experience. E(nglish)S(econd)L(anguage) speakers tend to have their understandability go way up with good feedback and setting up your mic/preferences properly to not broadcast background noise tends to clear up most folks.

It helps a lot if the experienced users help the new folks get settled. Same thing happens in Ventrillo while I play WoW. New person to Ventrillo gets on, blasts us from outer space and, instead of deciding that Ventrillo must be a bad thing, we mute him and talk him through getting set up in text, unmute him and release a new user into the wild. Works like a charm. Aside from broken equipment, I've never had a "lost cause" in Ventrillo after 2 and a half years of new folks in and out.

Repeat after me, either verbally or in text. Everything will be fine.

It all depends on what you're using it for, and your own preferences. I would say that, in many contexts, voice is not "progress" when compared with text, which is a medium that provides a record of what has been said, gives more time for responses, provides more descriptive opportunities for RPing, maintains a greater separation between SL and RL and such. Now, if I were trying to buy a pack of bubble-gum, voice is surely faster, but for many other uses, I very much prefer text. Your mileage may vary, but making blanket statements to the effect that "voice is progress" is both arrogant and off-base.

I've never been called arrogant before, thanks. I shall treasure this moment.

I could be completely off base here, but my new laptop came complete with a webcam. In 2 years time will we be having this same discussion about the next progressive step, video in SL?

Notice how I did not call you arrogant personally -- my comment was that the blanket statement that "voice = progress" across to board is a woefully arrogant statement.



We probably would be.

It comes down to this. Is SL (1) an extension of your RL or (2) a second life that is separated, by design, from your RL. If you're a number (1) person, then of course voice, webcams and the like are welcome because they just facilitate injecting your RL more fully into SL -- I understand that, and I think it's fine for voice to be included because I know many people in category (1) will find that it enhances their RL/SL interface. If you are a number (2) person, however, it's more likely that these kinds of things that pierce the veil between RL and SL will be viewed more negatively precisely because people in category (2) want to maintain a separation between RL and SL that people in category (1) do not want.

What we have here is a case of people who approach SL very differently, and as a result, this tool is viewed very differently from different parts of the user community. What is arrogant, therefore, is to make a statement that it is progress for everyone, when for a certain part of the user base it is not viewed as progress simply because it adds little (and detracts much) from their own preferred SL experience.