Voice

Anyone know when the "Voice" chat will be released in sl? I read where they're now testing it but I didn't see any release date.


I guess all those guys hiding behind females av's will not participate when this does come out. No more freebies, guys.

I hear it's supposed to be released on the 23rd of this month or sometime around then. As far as not testing it, it's been up in the beta grid for a while now. I've been spending more time there than on the main grid over the last week!

Please no one express any opinions about voice chat or the moderator will lock the thread...but leave the ageplay and age verification threads until they're out of control!

and many females wont use it in an effort to avoid unwanted commentary regarding their voice or their accent or their age.

It will be in the 1.16 client.

And a whole lot of people, RL females as well as RL males, will refuse to use it. Read the dozens of other threads for a long list of reasons why.

If the possibility that the chick you're cybering might in RL be a guy, then you may as well zip up and become celebate in SL. Voice changers will still allow the female avatars run by guys that are willing to use voice to sound like sexy girls.

hehe the forum doesn't represent a whole lot of people in SL. I consistently see more people in the Beta Grid using voice chat and loving it than the total amount of people that post in here about how bad it will be.

/me looks around for the moderator to lock us down.

I have since the day I created. I have no interest in 'pixel bumping' with a complete stranger.

Broccoli

i see more people not using it than i see using it.
as far as the forum goes, i thinks its a fair cross section of ppl in-world.

Because of a few “hiccups” at today’s LL beta block party I wasn’t able to spend as much time with newcomers to voice as I had hoped. But those that I did help all seemed pleased and even surprised at what they found. Not there were the screaming griefers that are so often described here in the Forum with such foreboding. Neither were there the hordes of “voicers” dragging anyone without a dot over their heads into the street to be strung up by their fingers. What was there were lots of curious people ready to give it a go before making decisions based on others paranoia.
So will there be any comparisons when voice comes to the main grid? I hope so. Just have ready 10 tall glasses of water and a paper bag to blown into.
DK

That's what I'm talkin about!!!

All I will say on Voice is that I think unless LL has done a perfect job making voice absolutely lagless and limited in distance I do not see it becoming the main meathod of communication in SL. Lag is a real annoyance on my Vent server some times and users some times get needlessly annoyed because it seems others are talking over them when it is infact them or some one else lagging. The other problem is multiple groups in a single area or sim trying to have different conversations, if Voice is not range limited these groups are going to conflict.

Personally I am not sure how often I will use voice, or if I will even have inbound voice on. Usually I chat with my Guild Wars crew on Vent while on SL so that means my voice input and output channels are already tied up. So yeah, it's not that I have a problem with people hearing my voice, it's that I would be using my voice to communicate with one group while I use my keyboard to communicate to another. At least I know there is some resemblance of order on my Vent server.

I for one love Voice. And yes, to OP, it's supposed to come out on the 23rd.

I don't see what all the fecking fuss is all about anyway. EVERYTHING in SL is a choice. NOTHING is being foisted upon you at gunpoint or even at all. You don't want to voice, turn it off. Jeeze, not so hard now is it?

I for one can't wait 'til Voice is on main.

After today's mess I can't see them drop this on the main grid anytime soon. Voice stayed up for 10-15 minutes before the distortion and chopping up got to the point where nothing could still be made out. Then it recovered but the same degradation crept up later at regular intervals.

As for experience, that's all tainted by your own personal feelings on the topic - or any topic. If you want to see happy voice-loving people all around, then that's what you'll see. If you want to see people left out or abusing or being scolded at, then that's what you'll see. There hasn't been a shortage of either.

Well I am not saying I won't give it a whirl, but I do see technical draw backs. Perhaps LL has solved these perhaps not, all I can say is Voice is not new to me so I am aware of certain limitations it has, and problems LL has had or will have to overcome.

That being said I like being able to keep in touch with my Guild Wars guild on Vent while chatting with people on SL, can't do both on voice unfortunately. They annoy me some times so I may use voice on SL when I don't want to talk to them.

I won't be using it. I'm not against it - in fact, I welcome it - but I'm generally doing something other than SL when I'm on SL. Watching TV, reading a book, reading blogs and forums, drawing, working, Poser-ing, Blender-ing... whatever. Typing gives me a chance to get back to people when I get a sec, y'know?

I keep hearing this same song, "People will be shunned if they don't use voice..." or the like.

Really? You'd honestly stop talking to someone if they type and don't speak? That seems a little odd to me.

Ah, well. If someone shuns me because I don't use voice, I guess they aren't worth is.

C'est la vie.

Male voice altered to female by voice changing software: http://www.screamingbee.com/SoundClips/Pro/WhatToWearPro.mp3

Male voice speaking unaltered with voice training: http://www.heartcorps.com/journeys/voice.ram

Voice changing software isn't what you have to worry about guys

Yeah, about 1/3 of the female avs I met in the beta grid over the course of a week were using voice scrambler programs...and you could totally tell.

I think there will still be guys out there that will just choose to ignore it and go along for the "ride" anyway, though!

I recently returned to sl after packing up and leaving some time ago so this is all new to me. I for one think this is a great idea. It's not too often I say this about anything Linden usually does.

Thanks for the info.

So, this is a touchy subject as far as the mods are concerned? Wonder why?

Voice is the future of gaming. Many new games coming out have it. Some of the games that have been out for a while now are either getting it or have gotten it. So I don't see what the big deal is. Besides, many gamers have been using it in many different forms although the 'voice" is not part of the games themselves.

And like someone here said, you can choose to use it or not.

Yeah, that describes me as well. I multi-task most of the time in SL, and that is much easier when dealing with text. With voice that is much more difficult. For me the only time I've had a use for voice is with a couple of business meetings, and for those Skype worked just fine, and most meetings have been more effective in text because then everyone who attended the meeting has the same set of meeting notes, e.g. the actual transcript of the meeting. So I'm not really seeing a value prop in my case.

The other thing is that I usually keep the sound off completely on SL. So my take on voice is rather blase. I think people who love to talk will love voice. People who hate the phone, will not use voice. As for me, no thanks. I hate the phone.

But to each her own.

Yes, I expect I will stick to typed chat for my female avatar - even though she doesn't cyber, having a gruff male voice will still cause her too lose some of her charm I think.

One question though; at the moment, in typed chat we see the name of the person speaking followed by their chat, like a film or play script; how will voice chat work? How will we know who is saying what in a room with several avatars in it? Any gathering of more than about 6 people will quickly become an incomprehensible babble surely.

How do you tell who is speaking in RL? You listen for a feminine voice, look for females, and match it with a likely-looking person whose lips are flapping up and down. Same in SL, except some of the females are baritones.

In RL, the human ear is capable of pinpointing the direction that sound is coming from, aswell as the approximate distance to a speaker aswell - thus allowing us to identify who is speaking. How do you propose that this be simulated in SL?

So basically, it just won't work. If anyone wants to chat, stick to Skype and Teamspeak, inworld voice will just be impractical.

Except in SL, their mouth movements, if they do them at all, have nothing to do with what they are saying...

In RL, I can be is a noisy environment like a rock concert, and I can at least try to read lips to get an idea what someone is saying. Even though I can't hear them. In SL, if you're voice-enabled, you have to keep spinning in place to see who has that silly colored ball overlapping their nametag. And if you don't have voice enabled, it's impossible to even know they are trying to talk to you.

"What's with George over there? He looks like he's having a seisure..."

"Meh. At least it's better than that Funky Chicken dance animation that he used to trigger every few minutes..."

I believe there is a "spatialized" component to it. You will need stereo headphones or speakers, and the source of the voice will be approximate to the position in the scene of the speaking avatar.

The is only one system in the world that is able to simulate real life directional sound; it involves wall and ceiling panels that resonate to create the sound and costs about $70,000 to install. Stereo just won't cut it I'm afraid. I'm still not convinced. I suppose virtual reality headsets might do, but how many of us have them? Perhaps they're the way of SL's future though.

Then we simple add a system like that to the system requirements, just like 2 gig of RAM, a 2.4 GHz CPU and an expensive video card.