What do you Think about Voice?
Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 4:03 PM by: Jeska LindenEagle-eyed Second Life Residents may have noticed that we’re hosting all kinds of feedback channels via the Second Life log-in screen. We’ve got a couple of surveys running that load up for every 200th Resident who starts the application. The latest one – the Voice Attitude Survey - launched today!
It’s been almost six months since the Voice channel was opened on the main grid, and we’d really like to know if you’re using it, what you’re using it for and how we can make sure it’s doing what you need. So if you’re one of the lucky people who gets the survey link at log-in, please let us know! And if you’re not, head here and you can participate anyway by answering the 14 multiple choice questions, even if you don’t use voice.
The survey is hosted by a company called Qualtrics, so the link sends you over to a secure site with their web address at the top.
The results of the surveys are invaluable. For example, we’re keeping a very close eye on the Resident Pulse, which lets us know from the people who matter the most (you) whether the Second Life experience is getting better or worse. We’ll use the results of the voice survey to learn about your needs and to make sure future product launches go smoothly.
Let us know what you think about Voice today!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:06 PM
I don’t care for voice, never used and not planning to but what interests me is key metrics! Been looking for some info on that the only info i could find was from Oct 3rd. Looking at the amount of US$ spent i can already guess why i can’t find no up to date info.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:07 PM
I didn’t ruin Second Life as many felt it would. It didn’t take SL by storm as many others thought. Those that use it, use it. Those that don’t, don’t. If they would fix the huge unresizable IM window, there wouild be nothing left to say about it. ;P
December 6th, 2007 at 4:12 PM
I only use voice when I nip to much Jagermeister and feel like singing to my friends… Apparently mute works
December 6th, 2007 at 4:12 PM
Voice = lame with a Capital L
December 6th, 2007 at 4:12 PM
Voice, I have used it, so much is inane drivel. Like giving the keys to a Rolls Royce and people use it to drive and get milk and bread from the shops.
It hasn’t changed the world one bit,
December 6th, 2007 at 4:12 PM
Haven’t used it wont be using it and the survey should let us give an opinion like I want my pre voice friggin client back.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:13 PM
Umm… Well yew see voice kind of makes me a little mad… It reminds me of what I lost yew see.
Voice is not very fun for those who are mute.
:’( Whhhhy must you remind me of my pain!?
<3
December 6th, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Voice is just fantastic feature, for me it’s best way to save the time when i do my classes speak to many people at the same time .. i can build and speak without interruption, and by other side it is a big help to speak with some one keep your hands free of hard long time typing.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Have used it only a couple of times when it was first introduced but it didn’t catch on. I would vote to dump it if there was an advantage peformancewise.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:16 PM
I think it would be nice if Vivox released the Linux binary blob for voice! @:D>–<
December 6th, 2007 at 4:17 PM
Great If You Like To Hear 13 Year Olds Screaming
December 6th, 2007 at 4:21 PM
It seems that guys only want to use it to get a cheap voice sex call (and yes we girls always walk around in high heels and stockings every hour of the day - sheesh!)
Instead of of them paying some serious dollars to get some girl on an agency phone call, they think that they can pay some lindens and get off that way. They don’t have any nasty credit bills to explain to their wives either, simply a SL transaction.
Voice was definitely designed for married men by men.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:26 PM
It would be better if i didnt lag like a salt covered slug when i have it active
December 6th, 2007 at 4:29 PM
In truth, there are some applications for voice… but for the most part it interferes and interrupts my game. One negative aspect of it is that one can’t “back check” voice. And it is a royal pain trying to follow main chat and listen to voice chat going on in the background, trying to track both at the same time. It’s never been easy to follow main chat. Now it’s even more difficult.
Before LL installed voice, it asked people if they wanted it. The vast majority said NO. I think the vast majority are still saying NO.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:29 PM
I was one of the people truly dreading the advent of voice. I’m deaf and although I regularly go to speech therapy, I also have speech difficulties. I truly felt that bringing speech into SL was the beginning of the end for my abilities to interact with people.
Fortunately, it appears that voice has not caught on very well and I continue to interact with almost everyone well.
However, despite claims to the contrary, I do not believe that speech puts no strain on the servers. Even if the speech is handled by a different server there is still a constant stream of position data that needs to be fed to it so that it knows who to broadcast the audio stream to, at a bare minimum. Each layer of communications adds complexity to the code, increasing the chance of there being bugs somewhere (basic law of programming. Everyone can get Hello World working without bugs. Second Life server, I doubt, will ever be bug free).
December 6th, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Voice is divisive, it creates two sections of SL, Now I go to a club, I have a choice, listen to the music, or people shouting at each other.
If i need to use voice for a meeting, or to talk to friends, I use Skype as I always have, at least that is clear and works well. I can set up a conference call in seconds, and hear everyone , not so on SL voice. some are badly distorted, someIi cant hear even with the volume full up.
The deaf and mute community are pushed out by voice,
If I go out and dont eneble it, People assume that i am ignoring them.
in brief,
It is something that is not needed, does not work well, and is divisive to the community.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:30 PM
I have one system I can use voice on. One system that is not Linux. For over 6 months, Linden Lab is playing us Linux users for fools!
If there isn’t going to be Voice for Linux, be honest and tell us.
If there is, then put it into alpha testing already!! We Linux people know how to make things work, just give it to us and we can make our systems’ audio fit it’s needs. I’m just simply assuming that they got trouble making it work in Linux’ audio world….
That said, I do use voice, I have the Windows laptop only for that purpose - would put Linux on it just as soon as Voice is available for Linux!
Voice has helped me a lot in business and personal matters, and it is a good way to quickly verify that I’m female - sometimes that is needed.
I find few people voice - especially not 13 year olds…
December 6th, 2007 at 4:31 PM
I like voice, but I forget to use it as most people still type. I keep trying to remember to use it, but my old typing habits are hard to break.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:31 PM
The only reason i came back to SL was because of voice! Now i’m hooked. Voice has made SL so much easier to use, specially when walking and building. I think there should maybe be a speech to text convertor or something as I think people refusing to use voice are now missing out on conversations/fun.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:32 PM
I use it frequently.
Sometimes it’s a very efficient way to communicate, sometime text or demonstration is better.
The volume setting is still so low that it’s almost impossible to make it usable while music is playing. A default of 50%, and the ability to adjust upward when needed would help tremendously.
Range also still seems to be an issue (at times?)
Most of all I enjoy the ability to create ad-hoc private conferences.
In those cases I almost always lock my mic on. I’d like the mic-lock to switch off when re entering spatial chat from “IM”.
I often wonder if most people know how to create a voice conference… basically, you create a standard “friends conference” by selecting names on your friends list and then clicking IM/call. And then click the call button in the conference window
December 6th, 2007 at 4:32 PM
@11 & LL
I agree, you keep saying it’s coming out but we’re still waiting!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:35 PM
I might think more of it if the Linux client wasn’t still without, 6 months later. I haven’t really noticed the loss, none of my friends (mostly Windows client users) seem to be using it anyway - I doubt that is for my benefit.
In THEORY, I would take it or leave it: usually leave it, but having it there might be useful sometimes, I guess.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:36 PM
Voice is good in meetings, Robin Linden’s office hour the other day worked really well due to the use of voice and that wasn’t just because Robin has one hell of an attractive accent!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:38 PM
I also think voice was a great addition, it doesn’t cause me lag and I use it all the time. Being able to have a private voice conversation while typing to open chat is nice too, much easier than having 2 type conversations.
Thanks for voice LL !
December 6th, 2007 at 4:38 PM
Voice is pretty neat. Good for when your doing things, like decorating or building or something, and typing would slow you down, even for people who don’t use voice, they can still hear you, and type to respond. It works out. And for those who don’t like it, they can just shut it off completely, the end.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:38 PM
Um… page 6:
“Select all that apply”, and radio buttons %-S
December 6th, 2007 at 4:40 PM
These surveys are an excellent idea! However, what’s with only having essentially 2 options to explain how you feel about certain things.
I feel Positively -or- I feel Negatively -or- Not Sure
I’m sure that I’m not not sure, and I don’t feel either positively or negatively. I’m kinda in between, like a 3 or 4 out of 5. I dont’ think voice is perfect, it’s kinda buggy on occasion, not perfect, third party, one convo at a time, etc, etc… Why can’t I switch between two talk channels seamlessly?
I’m not going to complete the survery because I don’t feel that I can give my 100% honest opinion.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:42 PM
Useless. Pointless. Worthless.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:43 PM
You need to proofread a few of the questions and answers too (not just spell-check): Right now, the form looks a little slapped-together, I’m afraid.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:43 PM
but this blog and the new windlight have now pushed age verification out of sight, so it worked .
December 6th, 2007 at 4:47 PM
I dont like voice.. It isolates those who cant/dont use it and puts them at a disadvantage such as not knowing when your being abused in voice by those who do.
I feel sort of left out when people do use it even when its only 1 or 2 people and i think others feel left out too but still wont use it.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:47 PM
Mixed feelings about it. I like it when talking to close friends but in normal SL life there’s always the drunk or the person who plays their music too loud.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:49 PM
Melanie Milland - If you have been paying attention to the Jira entry for Linux Client Voice capabilites or the Official Linux Client Forum, you would have heard word recently from Torley linden that Vivox already developed a blob for Linux. They also have been trying their best to incorporate that blob into the secondlife client. They still are having issues with it, but since they have been stalling this for so long, they MIGHT include it in the next client release. It still may bug out, but at least their voice code will soon be available for us to fix. (Please don’t take my word for it, he didn’t guarantee that it will happen)
And For all of you linux users who haven’t any patience for getting voice working, your current clients are already capable of using voice. Using wine to run the Windows Blob, modifying some text files, and running some scripts, you can talk on the linux platform. Please see the Linux Forum for more details.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:51 PM
Never use it, have it switched off. Annoys the heck out of me I have to turn it off on my parcel every time I log in…
So far I’ve found one small club that uses it all the time, otherwise nobody I know uses it. It’s one of those things, like Age Verification that doesn’t work - at least if you are a non-US citizen like three quarters of us. The desperation of a blog post 6 months after hiding the verification posts shows it can’t have been tremendously successful.
Personally, I generally use the OnRez viewer, now I found it has the old style comms boxes and a sensible browser window. The UI layout is the worst possible part of it, whether we have it switched on or not we have to put up with it, but clearly as OnRez have shown, it doesn’t have to be that way. I’d much rather have that added to the viewer than Windlight, and all of the other lagball broken technologies you seem to want to force on us.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:55 PM
@34: the proper way is to put the blob out and let the open sourcers have a shot at it!
Not make us wait for half a year!
December 6th, 2007 at 4:56 PM
*Quotes from my in world profile*
“No, I do not use Voice. I didn’t come here to hear your vocal deformities; accents, sneezes, inane laughter or the slight inflection change when you say you’re fine but convey you’re not. Nor will I assault you with my own.”
While I can see it’s application in spcific, limited venues such as teaching or meetings, I view Voice in SL as primarilly aimed at two ends:
1) Courting Big Business to invest in and have a presence in SL,
and
2) More razzle dazzle to keep feature junkies happy and look attractive on the sign up web pages to prospective users.
Linden Lab has stated that they have redirected a signifigant portion of their available workforce toward gaining more stability of the SL client and it’s server side infrastructure.
I’m waiting to see the results, and distractions like Voice, Windlight, Sculpties and witch hunts don’t impress me as much as having the platform useable would.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:56 PM
If you’re keeping a close eye on the resident pulse, then you need look no further than here or the Open Letter, but as usual, you seem to ignore everything the residents say. Maybe now all the numbers are dropping off, and the economy diving, you are finally waking up but it may already be too late…
December 6th, 2007 at 5:05 PM
Wow. I think we’re tired of telling you. Voice wasn’t really needed in SL. Those who use it, use it… those who don’t use it don’t. I, personally, will never use it.
To me, SL is something that I have running in the background. Using voice would demand my attention for the entire time I am on and makes it inconvenient to catch up on conversations when I have been away for a few minutes which, as we all know, does happen.
While I don’t begrudge anyone a shiny new feature. People in SL have to understand that there is a large contingent of people who want their anonymity for whatever reason. LL’s implementation is buggy, invasive and doesn’t really acknowledge this need.
The problem with voice also started when people began acting in divisive ways about it. And many people DID do this… they made it known that, if you didn’t use voice you were one of the outcasts, but well… as we can see… it hasn’t taken the grid by storm as some have predicted. Even new users aren’t using it much.
Voice is good for certain things, but I believe that text will be the lingua franca on SL for a long time to come. The reason for this is because many people CAN’T use it for technological reasons, of for personal ones. So, in the end, the people who use text have the upper-hand because while voice may go out or cause lag, be unusable because of connection speed or any of a myriad of other issues… text will always be there, will always be built in, and, unless LL removes it.. will always be available.
Good day,
Anony Mouse
December 6th, 2007 at 5:07 PM
Horrible survey. It kept asking the same thing over and over. How about asking us WHY we like or dislike voice?
For me, I find it creates two public channels to communicate that don’t speak to each other. It’s had more of an effect to divide the community than bring it together.
I don’t use voice for several reasons. I’m usually not in an environment where I can use it openly. I also don’t like hearing “Can you hear me now?” every few minutes. Also, in general, most people don’t know how to use voice properly and all you hear is them coughing, breathing and sniffing. The main reason, however, is that I don’t like the two exclusive chat venues it’s created.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:10 PM
I haven’t used it and don’t plan on using it. In my experience, people tend to be ruder when they are using it. What they are too lazy to type, the have no problem saying.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:12 PM
So much has been said about LL being required to follow the laws of CA and the US. Equal access is one of our most strongly supported and enforced laws, as it should be. There are over 10,000 paying members of SL that are deaf. With voice, equal access has now been destroyed. With all of your focus on following laws, why aren’t you (LL) following this one? I can tell you why, the deaf community simply doesn’t have the money other special interest groups do to sue for equal access. Follow and enforce all of the laws or none of them. Voice has created a devistating seperation between your hearing and your deaf customers. Do you plan on going to the trouble of following all of the U.S laws - or just the ones that will bring you the most money and positive publicity? What do you plan to do to help your deaf customers? Please answer our concerns.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:13 PM
Get rid of voice and I will be satisfied.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:15 PM
A lot LESS people use voice than I thought. It hasn’t seemed to change SL for anyone I spoke to. Compared to the good old stream it’s a waste for performances, and I still wonder if LL considered the growing number of folks in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community. I never used it and honestly tried, but I don’t seem to be missing much
December 6th, 2007 at 5:15 PM
So much has been said about LL being required to follow the laws of CA and the US. Equal access is one of our most strongly supported and enforced laws, as it should be. There are over 10,000 paying members of SL that are deaf. With voice, equal access has now been destroyed. With all of your focus on following laws, why aren’t you (LL) following this one? Follow and enforce all of the laws or none of them. Voice has created a devistating seperation between your hearing and your deaf customers. Do you plan on going to the trouble of following all of the U.S laws - or just the ones that will bring you the most money and positive publicity? What do you plan to do to help your deaf customers? Please answer our concerns.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:16 PM
[...] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Linden Lab have announced their latest survey is devoted to Second Life residents’ experience with using voice. Get [...]
December 6th, 2007 at 5:17 PM
While I felt it would bring more lag, it didn’t.
I’ve used it many times including to play some music for my SL wife.
It of course can be annoying at times, many people seem to be unable to click the button and turn off their Mic.
To those complaining, I agree, there are many bugs in other parts of the program that desperately need attention and frills really shouldn’t be LL’s focus.
Hence my anti-windlite spree. (which BTW lags the hell out of the game!).
Anyways, I like Voice.
AJ
December 6th, 2007 at 5:33 PM
Is There Any Actual Point To All This?
If You Wanted Our Opinion You Should Have Asked For It Sooner…
Oh Wait, You Did…
Then Promptly Ignored Us.
But As Long As IBM And The Other Push-Me-Pull-You Companies Are Happy With Voice, You Will Ram It Up Our Bottoms, Without Lube.
But Gee…Thanks For Asking
December 6th, 2007 at 5:34 PM
personally, I like voice. it can be a new and refreshing way to talk to a bunch of friends and laugh together. it does bring people closer together in my eyes. I also like the new UI now, save for a few peeves I have with it, but I should get off my rear and make JIRA entries for them, lest they already exist.
my main peeve with voice is that the general volume is waaayyy too low globally, despite the slider being maxed out already, so every time I enter a voice chat, I have to manually drag up the slider for each speaker to 2/3rds to 3/4ths the way from its default setting to have a “normal” volume. Id love for this to get fixed
December 6th, 2007 at 5:35 PM
Jeska, why bother asking, you foisted this crud on us without us wanting it with lies “The vast majority of users want voice”
I call bull.
I guess like the vast majority of users want IDV (FIRE ROBIN LINDEN) I guess.
How the heck can you guys decide what is broadly offensive if you don’t even know what the vast majority of users really want???
You just make this up as you go along… and post fluff to push IDV and it’s flawed apptempt to provide data mining to the USA Government off hte front page.
You guys are as transparent as heck!
December 6th, 2007 at 5:37 PM
Voice? I don’t like it and don’t use it and in nearly six months the bug still hasn’t been fixed which shows voice active on my land and regions when it is in fact disabled. What I really detest however is the big obtrusive box that has joined up friends, groups, and IM into one unwieldy behemoth. I’d like my communicate button split into Friends and Groups again, and separate floaters for those two functions again. At least make it an option please. Thanks for asking though! It makes us think you value our opinions and input.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:40 PM
Voice in an active environment such as SL adds to the realistic effect that SL is attempting to create. Those who say dump voice are not looking at the big picture at all, it is invaluable at times and beneficial in most. THAT SAID, would it be possible to provide an option in the network settings to route voice over normal HTTP port 80? I cannot allow ports where I play SL and therefore cannot enjoy voice…not to mention teleporting logs me out….
please help Lindens!!!!
December 6th, 2007 at 5:41 PM
Voice would be so much better if avatars mouth moved, and it had some sort of enviromental effects on it, cos it is just so PLAIN!!!!
December 6th, 2007 at 5:44 PM
@ #7 Cheese Cake:
You’re not he only one.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:47 PM
how to express this fascinating fact… well… voice is NOT WORKING under linux client. and no, i don’t want and i don’t intend to use non-linux clients.
December 6th, 2007 at 5:54 PM
I can see it would have real value for things like meetings or classes in SL so it could be something that can easily be toggled on and off.
The truth is it is never going to catch in on widely because of the lag here anymore. You could make a lot of people happy if they could simply move around. The last thing on a lot of people’s minds is in SL now is being able to talk. Trust me.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:03 PM
Frankly speaking Voice can be a useful feature. BUT until they stablize the client as a whole the usefullness is doesnt rearch its max. Its more then letting people here my english with can alittle bad at times. I don`t even have my voice turned on because of the problems that crashing. And yes I read all the notes and tricks to try to make it work ( and no WEB PAGE its just not about men playing women avies ( shakeshead) )..
Thank You
U sagi M usashi
December 6th, 2007 at 6:04 PM
I dislike voice. I am mute. It has ruined a lot of my SL relations. Sometimes I feel like I’m being completely ignored.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:10 PM
I would use voice if I could find anyone else who used it, but most people dont. Of course there is the issue of men with female avatars
who can’t do a womans voice. I dont type fast so I would prefer to use Voice more.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:10 PM
Qualtrics will not be returning to you the data you expect.
The survey question which asks what residents plan to use voice for - i.e. chatting with friends, making business presentations, &c. - asks us check all that apply.
We cannot, as we are presented with single-option radio buttons instead of multiple-answer check boxes.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:14 PM
Since voice is interduced the lag is ten times worse
as land owner I can not switch it off on my land ,,,, ohh yes I can but it is only off for me and not for everyone else well I as landowner should be the one to decide if I allow voice on my land or not and not Linden Lab.
one feature on it is you can set it so that only people in your friends list can voice chat with you WHY ISNT THAT FEATURE IN IM
well needless to say Voice should be removed from sl if people realy want to voice chat give them a link to skype so it wont weight on the servers of sl
December 6th, 2007 at 6:15 PM
I don’t feel it’s conducive to this platform. If people want to use voice, there have always been other very capable applications such as Skype that could fill that capacity. This is our world, our imagination. Many residents come to this world to live fantasy lives. Voice detracts from this experience. IMHO, SL lost a bit of its magic once voice was implemented. It has splintered the community, caused unecessary lag and technical problems, and detached us from our virtual presence.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:17 PM
It’d be better if there were some way to log voice as you can do with text. One RP group I belong to was thinking of banning the use of voice in group RP because you can’t provide an authenticatable voice log in case of some problem or incident. I’ve never personally voiced, and can think of only the limited situations mentioned above where voice would be really attractive.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:22 PM
Whenever I turn it on I am amazed at just how inane the voicechat is in most places. I think it was a huge waste of development resources.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:22 PM
I wish they had it set so it was disabled on all land by default. Then 99% of SL that doesn’t use voice, wouldn’t have it turned on using resources. Like someone else posted, if voice is positional, it’s using up resources just like open chat listen scripts or radar systems do. I finally gave up turning it off on my land cause everytime I TP back there, it’s been turned back on! I’ve never liked the idea of voice and really wonder what my voice would have to sound like to be appropriate for a petite pink skunk? O.o
Steohe Ehrler
December 6th, 2007 at 6:25 PM
I agree with #12..
Voice is only for MALES, to make sure the girls they are on top of are realy girls…
So,I say to all GIRLS…..Let the men keep guessing lmao.
To the lindens..get rid of Voice..
December 6th, 2007 at 6:25 PM
Never used it, none of my friends use it, and honestly I havent ever met anyone that was. (Maybe they were and I have Voice off so I didn’t know, but it certainly didn’t hamper my understanding of what was going on around me.)
IMO it is another widely unwanted, unused, featurebloat, bug causing, asset sucking thing that the time spent developing and managing should have been and be spent on much more inportant aspects. Stability and customer service to be specific.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:36 PM
A lot of us were concerned that Voice would cause lag. What we didn’t expect was the incredible number of bugs that came with voice, even if a person doesn’t use it.
Today on CNN Money there was an interesting story about Facebook and how the CEO didn’t listen to his users, made bonehead decisions, didn’t think through new features or test them before implementing them, and so on.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/05/technology/kirkpatrick_facebook.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2007120512?cnn=yes
I thought that this sounded so much like how Linden Labs runs SL. Then I came to the part of the story where I read that he apologized and backed off of some of the boneheaded things he imposed on his customers and I realized, this guy is not anything like Linden Labs.
I don’t use voice and don’t intend to ever use it. I don’t run a TV or radio in my RL background because the chatter is just annoying and distracting. Voice is like that; only mindless drive by people with less to say and no public speaking training to say it clearly. Besides, If someone has to type something out, they at least have to think a bit.
Then there’s this huge box that I have to keep open on my screen since voice . (I know I could just run an old viewer, but then not have all the bug fixes). I did all the things to make it as small as possible, but it’s still too big with large blank areas covering up too much of the view of in-world. Every time I have to move my camera to look around this scenic-blocking piece of crap I’m reminded of the useless “Voice” that brought it into being.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:47 PM
I see Lots of the same people on these Page’s, whingeing and moaning. They never have anything Positive to say about anything.
I think voice is a great thing. I like to help people as much as I can in
SL. Voice has made It so much easier for me to teach People all kinds of stuff, that would take so much longer to type.
I am currently teaching someone with reading and Writing difficulties, how to build things and set them for Sale. Not only are they learning SL skills, they are also improving their Real World skills and quality of life.
Somebody tell me that’s…. useless. — Pointless…worthless.
Look for the positive and keep the negative to Yourself, What is the point to all Your Moaning…. NONE.
Thank you LL you have made some poeple SecondLife alot easier and more rewarding…..just ignor the fools and keep up the good work.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:48 PM
I really, really enjoy voice. I don’t use it for every day interaction with clients or associates, but to communicate with my husband or my employees when we’re having a meeting. I find that it’s much easier than typing my fingers down to bloody stubs, and it’s brought us all so much closer together as well. I mean gosh, if I want to find things to complain about, how about the fact that I crash EVERY SINGLE TIME I TP anymore? Or that no matter what the setting, I never get to my last location, I always end up at home? Or that the lag has been like being cooked into a Jell-O mold? I mean, come on people. You can choose not to use voice. I can’t choose not to have lag.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:49 PM
For those who have a use for it, it’s fine. I have no interest in it, don’t know anyone who uses it, and doubt very much that I’ll ever use it, but I think it was good to implement for those who wish to use it.
December 6th, 2007 at 6:54 PM
I don’t use voice. I don’t plan on using voice unless y’all can come up with a voice-changer that can give me Mel Blanc’s vocal skill. I don’t like my voice much, I don’t communicate well in voice, and I find that hearing other people’s voices completely blows the fourth wall away.
I have often found myself isolated because people I know are using voice. I have also found myself just waiting for people to speak unaware that they were using voice.
And even the smallest concessions to the non-voice users, like VWR-1317, have been rejected.
What do I think about voice? If I were to put what I really think about into words you’d ban my ass.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:05 PM
The phrasing of most of the questions was as though they were written before the actual roll-out of Voice. One of them was “Pick all that apply”, even though you had radio buttons instead of check boxes.
One of the key things for me is that for the Linux people in particular, and those who can’t use voice do to being in a particular business or home environment, that voice conversations completely go by them. I dropped in at some Linden office hours, to find out what was going on - and as they were held in Voice - I was pretty much unable to participate.
I’m kind of interested, if Linux support ever actually *DOES* arrive, if it’s possible to participate in multiple private voice chats - and if so, how that works. Easy enough to keep multiple IM chats going. I suspect this will be more or less the deal-breaker for me.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:14 PM
Voice sucks, doesn’t work for may CUSTOMERS. Maybe a focus group or two will show LL marketing what is actually wanted, ooops, they don’t care
December 6th, 2007 at 7:16 PM
@ Bikey Bekkers #68
No, there’s no whining. People are expressing their opinions as are you. And, *laughs*, it appears as though you are vastly in the minority.
And FYI, I did say some positive things. I said that it’s good for some things, but that it’s implementation fails to take privacy into account. There are bugs present in the voice system that can cause it to be left on *AFTER* you log off from SL. Also, there are bugs that can allow people to here all voice conversations occurring on a given sim… not good.
There’s aren’t whining… they’re facts.
LL really needs to stop slamming things into SL and needs to start concentrating on making what is already in SL work properly. I still have problems with loosing inventory, failed teleports, friends list issues and so on.
@ Kaeko Freenote #69
Good for you, I’m glad you enjoy it. And no one is saying that anyone is being forced to use voice. Have you ever considered that the issues your seeing might be because you’re using voice? I.e. connecting to the voice server on TP for a given parcel causing the crash or causing lag, since it’s eating up extra bandwidth?
Anyway… more reasons to fix what’s there before slamming in additional things.
Anony Mouse
December 6th, 2007 at 7:30 PM
voice was wanted by exactly 200 people out of millions. take it back out and make it a special corporate client for companies that pay megabucks for teleconferencing sims and let us have less defects in our clients and sims.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:32 PM
Some ppl here have mentioned that voice is used for sex chat (Nikki @12 and Traci @ 65). What I want to know is, Why don’t you introduce Age Verification for the right to use Voice?
Oh, thats right, some boys’ voices break when they are only 12! And some womens voices (and mens) sound like little children.
Oh well, guess thats another useless aspect of Age Verification that can be discounted!
December 6th, 2007 at 7:50 PM
Voice? Second Life doesn’t have voice chat implemented. I log on quite frequently with my Linux client, and voice never works. I thought it was just there for show.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:50 PM
Since Voice came into SL the Program has lagged something furious I hate the stuff and wished it would be taken out it laggs so bad that crashes come more often and locking up happens alot.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:50 PM
I only wish Voice had been in SL back when my father was alive. My dad had Parkinson’s Disease and loved to be online, but typed very slowly. One time he went into an IRC chatroom of mine, to try to socialize, but he couldn’t keep up with everyone else’s typing speeds. Parkinson’s made him lonely a lot of the time. If SL had had Voice back then, I could’ve brought him into SL to chat with people. - - - Those here who say SL should not have Voice, are selfish and they don’t think about the needs of disabled people.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:51 PM
#68
If you bothered to read the original message it asked us what we thought of voice, not what you thought of our responses.
I have used voice 3 times in SL. 2 of them resulted in me falling asleep at the keyboard. If I wanted to listen to inferior voice quality I would resubscribe to Sprint. It adds nothing to my experience.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:54 PM
Personal Use- Voice is okay.
IMO, as a DJ in SL, it bites the donkeys’ nads.
I have folks who try to yell at me over voice to get a request… So I know before I go ‘live’ to kill it, keep the IMs going.
December 6th, 2007 at 7:58 PM
Why are you even asking? From I have seen, LL never listens to their customers anyway.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:04 PM
I think voice is a very important part of SL. I think you will find many people on both sides of the issue. There are many people who will never use voice and will speak out very strongly when ever the subject comes up mainly because it removes the anonymity of the avatar in some cases. You will also have a great many of users who love the voice aspect of Second life. I think over all the number of users who like voice will outnumber those who don’t. Look at how many people are using Skype 150 million users was the last number I saw on the total count of Skype users. That’s a lot of people that like to use voice to communicate. Second Life can be used in the same manner as Skype I have already used it a few times just to say hello and talk to my mom in New York. It added a whole new dimension to our conversation.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:10 PM
I took the survey. For some reason, you had a `select all that apply’ radio button, so you get only to select the one that applies.
I do not use voice. I am not especially interested in using voice, but even to the extent I might use it, it is not available for my platform.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:12 PM
For most of us (excepting the business users, perhaps) SL is a fantasy world, and the more RL intrudes, the less fantasy can be maitained. Listening to people’s real voices, hearing accents when you don’t expect them, and listening to make-believe characters talk in their normal voices, dissipates the sense of fantasy. Accordingly, for me, SL suffers.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:17 PM
Never tried it, have no interest in trying it, friends who have don’t use it anymore because the majority of their friends don’t use it.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:21 PM
Never used it. Never will.
The last thing I want is another lag inducing feature. Especially one that creates such a link between SL and RL.
It was a poor idea.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:30 PM
@83 Crucial
They come out in equal portions. There are many people on both sides of the issue. What you’re seeing is that most of the people in SL didn’t want voice in the first place.
This fact was made plain by the many surveys that were taken before on a number of websites. Additionally it was proven here time and time again whenever a post would come along about voice.
The number of people you’re seeing come out for and against.. are representative of the people who didn’t want it vs. the people who did.
We have freedom of choice. And, in my opinion, the majority has already spoken on this many MANY times.
Anony Mouse
December 6th, 2007 at 8:36 PM
Are linux users also invited to the survey… or our voice is not important there as well?
December 6th, 2007 at 8:39 PM
And one more thing…
on page 6… if you say “click all that apply” then you don’t mark options with radio buttons.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:45 PM
I think the quality of te voice stream could be better, and there are still a lot of people who never managed to get it working. ALso, the individual voice volume controls cause a horrible distortion effect if turned up too high, so they’re not as useful as they could be for hearing quiet people better.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:46 PM
I don’t use it. If I want voice I’ll use Skype. I don’t need or want voice here, to me that’s not the purpose of SL.
Just my personal opinion. Not even activated on the islands and won’t be, no need for it.
Minnie
December 6th, 2007 at 8:49 PM
ok all you mute deff folks who are complaining.
well i’m legily blind and have a hard time reading the text so i love it.
use it all the time.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:49 PM
VOICE = is not needed, if players wanted to chat they would use yahoo voice or skype with Second life.
To my self I think Voice in SL is a waste of resources .
December 6th, 2007 at 8:50 PM
VOICE???
As I originally posted back when voice was being implimented, except for very limited uses, a joint build, some meetings, those of us I spoke with, almost to a resident, said: “Who needs it.”
First - Those who wanted voice, had it, skype, team speak, ventrillo or one of the many chat clients that now have voice. In this day of VONAGE and free long distance with most cable VoIP services it is totally uneeded for those who truly want to talk using voice.
Second - It has had a very negative impact overall. Example - The other day SL residents suffered through a rolling restart because of voice. Not the first either!! What a true waste of time, energy and an inconvenience to most for nothing.
Third - The client has been much more crash / freeze prone ever since voice was added. The beta version was that way, and all clients with voice since have been. Sadly, disabling it does not seem to help. A short and unscientific polling of those I know in SL seems to agree with this assessment. The crashing and freezing is effecting many, and started when voice was implimented.
Fourth - It is hardly used. I own almost 1/3 sim spread over 4 seperate parcels in 3 regions. I have never enabled voice on any of those parcels since implimented. Not only has no one ever complained to me or ask that it be enabled, they have not even noticed it was off. That tells me it is not being used in most normal SL situations.
Last - I do not know of one resident that uses voice anymore. While some tried it at first, it is just more noise if public is enabled, unusable that way, and for private conversations among friends, we use the phone or one of the various skype type services that we would normally use.
Bottom Line - nice experiment, now turn the crap off or at least give us a client choice without tje code in it, and if it goes down, leave it down until the next scheduled restart. No more outages or restarts over such a useless waste of bandwidth.
DRD
December 6th, 2007 at 8:52 PM
It took me a long time to get used to voice. But so glad I did. My friend sounds oh so very cute.
December 6th, 2007 at 9:03 PM
Oh, and @68 Bikey Bekkers - Get real. Get “pissed” (that’s drunk for all you US wanks) ride your motor back to the Midnight Lotus and stay there.
Seriously - when you venture outside your little club and maybe talk to a few residents doing other things in SL, you may understand why so many are negative about voice and some of the other little experiments that LL has foisted upon us.
Any many cases, they have little or no widespread use or popularity, yet the whole world suffers because of them. Voice to me is a prime expample. Sure some folks use it, and some love it, but the vast majority do not, yet that same majority suffer the lag, client crashes etc that came along with it.
Another is WindLight. Sure, its terrific. It makes SL gorgeous, but I can not create a vista in it that others can see, only me. And the client sucks. Make it the standard so that I can create the vista others enjoy on my lands, fix the client so it will remain up for more than 15 minutes or that I can TP without crashing and I will support it, otherwise, leave it out of the client.
Maybe when I can TP again without crashing or having all my attachments move to my center, I will support these little diversions, but until the main pieces are running smoothly, you can expect to see me here… bitching and moaning… LOL
And when LL pulls of a good one, I will post on that too.
DRD
December 6th, 2007 at 9:13 PM
Sorry, last post on this:
@ 79 Lorelei Mission - We had two stalls in the restroom at work, now we have one big one, and you sit with your feet a foot off the floor, there are wheel chairs symbols in all the front parking spaces, I have to walk twice as far to get into the library because of the ramps… and you say we are selfish because we are ignoring the disabled by not wanting voice???? OMG - Lets take a poll and break down the demographics by race, then you can call me a bigot too. LOL Sorry, that pig doesn’t even come close to flight. If the voice feature was THE ONLY WAY you could talk while using SL, I would say you might have a point about it being an important assist device, but with the many other services that provide voice chat and can be used while in SL, that argument is not even on the radar.
Sorry, I had to post on that comment. I will go away now, I promise.
DRD
December 6th, 2007 at 9:17 PM
I hate voice………..hmmm, sounds like just about everyone else! Voice sucks and is making the grid worse! I don’t use it and won’t use it……………..
December 6th, 2007 at 9:36 PM
Voice is okay. I use it with close friends, but apart from that, it’s mostly typing. Seems to be the same for most people in the circles that I hang out in. Nice feature, not earth shattering, but useful in a limited sort of way. For me, it’s replaced Skype and G Talk.