Voice Survey - 2 Weeks Left to Have your Say!
Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 8:46 AM by: Jeska LindenWe launched a survey about voice in early December in order to get your feedback on the service, and to figure out how we could meet your needs in the future. We’ve had an incredible response.
Almost 2000 people have clicked through from the blog post and from the pop-up window that appears to one in 200 Residents at the Second Life log-in screen. Now we’ve only got two weeks left before we tally up the results and report them back. If you’ve not already done so, please take 5 minutes to answer the 15 multiple-choice questions on what you think about Voice, how it’s affected your Second Life experience, and how you think you might use it in the future.
We strive to take this information to work towards releasing new features in a way that meets all our Residents’ needs. So please, we’d love your feedback! You can complete the survey by clicking on this link. It’s on a website hosted by the survey company Qualtrics.
All your responses are kept completely confidential and no third party has access to the data.
We’ll let you know the skinny in a couple of weeks time.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:13 AM
does anyone use voice?
January 17th, 2008 at 9:22 AM
I don’t use voice… It’s guarranteed to crash me…
Kinda tired of hearing people whispering to their microphone senseless prattle to just listen to the sounds of their voices, or heavy breathing, clearing their throats, and lots of random back ground noise…
Text Chat seems to retain more of the proper Fantasy feel that is the pure charm of SL in my opinion. If I wanted to talk to people on the phone I’d call them.
Personally I’d much rather those system resources were placed into stabilizing SL, toning down lag, and keeping random items in my inventory from dissappearing forever when I try to rez them.
That would be a much better use of bandwidth and server performance.
KH
January 17th, 2008 at 9:30 AM
I took the survey. I tried voice, but really don’t find it all the useful. For communicating with people who are non-native english speakers, text is much more effective. I’d rather see LL spend time on other more useful features quite honestly, especially things like Flash capability and better online collaborative office tools.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:42 AM
I use voice… infact that middle mouse button is burned into my brain, sometimes i push it to talk when someone comes in the room… O_o lol
Voice has just brought all of my friends together in ways that wouldnt be posible without it. Everybody in our sim uses voice, and most our sandbox users that visit have it on as well, i just don’t understand the people that thinks no one uses voice.
January 17th, 2008 at 9:43 AM
At first I refused to use voice for months, but then trying it out and chatting with friends. It is fun.
It also helped me get somewhat less shy than what I am, being able to talk to strangers. It has it’s uses, getting closer to your friends for example, but text is still the main way to chat on.
Use voice when you can, with friends you can setup a conference and chat with them from anywhere in-world while you are off doing something else for example.
I am a non-native English speaker, voice do help me with the pronunciation and so on so I learn and become better, I am already good enough using text, voice is what I need to do more and this is a great way!
January 17th, 2008 at 9:57 AM
I would like to use voice, but the linux voice binary is still missing…
January 17th, 2008 at 9:59 AM
Coincidently grid instability began with voice being shoved down our throats…gag gag…in spite of overwhelming opposition to it, you implemented it and we’ve had to struggle with the strange freeze-ups and increased lag ever since.
I’m totally with #2 on how it also introduces RL in a way that messes with the sense of fantasy. Furthermore, voice suddenly became an issue with males wanting to “hear your voice”. Well, I don’t want to hear your voice. Cyber sex is not my thing and I don’t want the intrusion of someone who wants to be crude.
But then I need to deal with the “Why not?” questions and the allusions I have something to hide. Voice brought on a hassle and divided the community into two groups just like predicted.
AND the grid has never been as stable as it was just prior to Voice, in spite of assurances that it wouldn’t cause problems. The proof is self-evident and on-going.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:01 AM
Lots of people use voice, it’s just that those without it don’t know they’re doing so
Ever noticed a bunch of people standing around doing nothing but saying LOL on occasion? They’re using voice.
Personally, I don’t use it much for two reasons: One, I normally use a Linux machine and the Linux client doesn’t have (native) voice capability yet (though it’s possible to use voice through a form of Windows emulation); Two, whenever I do use it, it’s annoying - people screaming idiotic things, beautiful avatars with the voices of castrated frogs, and enough technical glitches to make it not worth my while. The one place I do like it is in public speaking/lecture situations. But not for me for everyday use.
I don’t mind if others use voice, except for the people who refuse to respond to my typed chat or respond by saying I need to use voice. I ignore them or leave sims where that is the standard situation.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:06 AM
#7
Funny my throat is rather clear. We were never forced to use voice. And as far as I can tell, the database issues we have been having have been going on since BEFORE voice was implemented, and it’s entirely unrelated. Honestly, database problems have been going on for YEARS not just the last few months. Most of you are too new too this, and I’m already past my 4th year.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:07 AM
I tried voice in several clubs. Conversations that were inane and repulsive in chat were now more inane and repulsive,and add giggling. My opinion is, if you want to form cliques, use voice by all means. I have no problem with not reading the inanities.
Voice divides SL between those who have it and those who don’t.
I think Delu’s response is excellent..voice is being used for all the right reasons with Delu.
Dante all the reasons you like it are the reasons I don’t. No offense, but I don’t want to hear everyone talking at once on my sim. I love my music, my friends, and my thoughts.
Only my opinion..
January 17th, 2008 at 10:08 AM
Many answers will be contradictory, including mine.
Yes, voice is a huge technical improvement. Yes, voice is important to make SL into a valuable tool for business and education. It was necessary to introduce it.
On the other hand I experienced harassment because of voice, people accusing me of being a man because I don’t voice or because I used a voice changer to keep my privacy. Voice divides the community. Many non-English speakers are reluctant to use voice because of their accent. There ARE problems because of voice.
Voice is good, and voice is bad at the same time, depending on the environment you are in.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:09 AM
Heck I think the problems started way back in the day when Bit Torrent protocol was first developed. Maybe if the Lindens stopped BT in their office and server networks, we won’t be having data base issues.
It’s more likely to be causing database server issues than VOICE, considering so few people actually USE it.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:09 AM
@7: The reason so many males want to hear your voice is because they want to verify that you are a RL woman behind the avatar. They’re either considering the possibility of meeting you in RL one day before they’ve even gotten to know you (creepy), too paranoid to trust your word, lack enough imagination to suspend their disbelief and RP a fantasy, or too homophobic to get beyond the idea that you might not be a woman. Personally, I’d avoid/ignore any person with any one of those characteristics.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:11 AM
2000 responses out of how many residents? Seems voice isn´t only of no value, but of no interest at all for the vast majority of users. It´s there, yes, but who apart from some phone sex junkies and male griefers uses it?
January 17th, 2008 at 10:12 AM
hugsalot is right. Besides, the voice servers are (almost) completely separate from the asset servers. Trust me folks, server problems have been plaguing SL long before Voice came around.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:13 AM
Some do use voice and i have tried it and was usefull once or twice, and no one asked me to prove i am female with it LOL
January 17th, 2008 at 10:13 AM
The survey could have had more “grey area” options … for instance, I don’t use voice on my home system, but use it quite a bit at work.
I work for Simuality, a developer in-world, and our lead builder lives in Amsterdam, our main in-world coordinator lives in Brussels, our offices are in Evanston, IL, and we have various project managers in cities around the U.S. … with voice our avatars can all sit around a conference table and have a live meeting … and our “overseas” staff really much prefers speaking English than trying to keep up via typing!
January 17th, 2008 at 10:16 AM
@ LL
“We strive to take this information to work towards releasing new features in a way that meets all our Residents’ needs.”
Give us higher framerates, a stable client and a working database. Thank you.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:22 AM
Voice has its uses. For one thing, at live music presentations, voice can be an easy source of performance streaming. Its also good for those who have difficulty typing.
That said, it’s also a continual pain. If we’re in a market, it distracts from what we’re doing, interrupts conversations with friends, and it’s difficult to find the person who is talking/ cursing/ doesn’t have the brains to turn off his/her speaker system while voicing, etc.
Voice isn’t history-tracked, so if we miss what someone said, no way to go back and check. Not only that, but SL has the habit of turning voice ON in areas where the system is checked to keep voice off… so yet another thing borked.
Is voice a good or bad idea? I think overall bad. Causes more problems than benefits. I would like to see it implementable by land owners for specific persons (such as a performance) but other than that, it ruins the atmosphere.
Oh, there is one use. It prevents a beer-bellied guy from pretending to be a 19 year old girl. LOL
January 17th, 2008 at 10:23 AM
@ 16
“Simuality, a developer in-world,,,”
Go ahead and invent the ultimate babbler for voice. I bet 2000 users will buy it.
Non compehende?
January 17th, 2008 at 10:26 AM
I love having the option of using Voice, but sim owners, residents and other SLers should use good judgment. Very busy sims which are always crowded should have voice chat disabled completely by their owners. Likewise, users would be wise to avoid voice chat in any sim or location that relies heavily on system resources and high bandwidth. Personally, I find it is best for small group and one-on-one situations in relatively quiet environments… and I would hate to see voice dropped from SL’s features.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:28 AM
@ 18
“Oh, there is one use. It prevents a beer-bellied guy from pretending to be a 19 year old girl. LOL”
Does it?
ttp://www.audio4fun.com
What it really DOES prevent: A furrie claming to be a furrie. Sound oh so human. No more telepathy in SL. Sigh…
January 17th, 2008 at 10:28 AM
I tried to answer the survey, but question 5 had no option for not using voice so I had to stop there. I did test it during beta, but I do not use it, and do not have it turned on at my property.
I chose to leave it off in my store since it was impossible to tell who was speaking at any particular time and this opened up the possibility of customers being harrassed via voice with no mechanism to deal with it. It is hard to AR a voice stream that is not logged anywhere.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:28 AM
Second on lack of linux voice.
Also rarely get sound at all, sometimes works for a couple minutes after login.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:29 AM
I would be interested to know what the statistics are. I know a lot of people and the only ones i know that use voice are those that DJ. Even they don’t use it for day to day chat. I bought an expensive headset and played with it when it first came out. Only one person has asked me if I use it since then.
I can see how its helpful for buisness, but for the rest of the time, nope.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:32 AM
I dj and my voice on the air is part of my value. I used to frequent certain places because the chat was cool and intelligent. Now at these same places, it’s a bunch of avatars standing around, not typing talking about the most ridiculous things like what they had for dinner that night and that they are going to go smoke a cigarette, etc. The intelligent fun chat has all but disappeared from this place. And to make it worse… I don’t use voice, don’t want to use voice and I get harrassed because of it. I’m either told I’m really a man, or am too “afraid”. If I gave enough of a damn to talk to some of these people I would call them!
Voice could be useful for education and arts purposes… but in my opinion, renting a shoutcast server is more effective…then you dont have people interrupting and interjecting while you are speaking or playing music.
My 2 cents? Work on Making SL more stable (IE- so every time I tp my shoes aren’t up my ass, being able to tp, not crashing 80% of the time I’m logged in…etc..) before implementing bells and whisltes like voice.
However I think windlight is really cool and when the bugs are worked out, it will be a great addition to SL.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:33 AM
Voice works for me , the locality feature in 3space is rather cool, but it would be good to override that so voice chat could happen when avatars are in other regions ( or i just couldnt figure out how to do that )
I think its great and its 2 thumbs up for me.
It has already been used in presentations ( mutmedia to conference rooms w/ virtual product mockup brainstorming ) and for that business reason it is a high value feature, preffered to live video stream.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:46 AM
Voice is another feature we don’t need. Focus on fixing the real problems in SL. Voice destabilized every viewer I’ve tried it on. I gave up a couple releases ago. I’ve turned it off on my sim and refuse to use it because of the performance penalty.
Also, when engaging in roleplay, there is no way to record and review voice if there is a disagreement.
Marcus
January 17th, 2008 at 10:48 AM
@ 25
“The intelligent fun chat has all but disappeared from this place. ”
Yes. I can only confirm this. I tried it for a week and decided that I do not need nor want it. It seems to be attractive only for males who are into SL only for meeting women in order to throw as many RL onto them as possible, including all the lovely sexism and discrimination they use to spread in the RL streets.
Then my headset broke and it won´t be replaced. Guys, go for a 1one1 webcam instead if you want some “realism”, and don´t mistake SL for a free RL phone cell contact forum. I have enough RL in RL.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:56 AM
I would have liked a comment box on the survey - for a lot of the questions. Now you may know that I don’t use or intend to use voice but you don’t know why.. You know that I think it has negativelly affected some personal relationships, but you don’t know why… An oppertunity missed.
It’s funny that if you answer “will you use voice in the future” with “no”, the next question is still “what will you use voice for in the future”…
January 17th, 2008 at 11:08 AM
i want to be honest with the management something i rarely see from SL managenent. Your allocation of resources sucks. most of the time i spend geting on to SL or trying to get back on after you have crashed me. I feel as though you could be better planners, not putting on details until you have mastered the basics, but there are only a few good people left in america who want to do the right thing. The rest will do anything it takes to make a buck.If you decide to allow this text i say at least you see the problem. Now the BIG Question is WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT! VOICE would be nice if you would fix everything else first !
January 17th, 2008 at 11:11 AM
I’ve talked in SL while DJing, though that is using the DJ software and the stream to talk, not the SL voice app. Other than that,i have no use whatsoever for it. Fixing things like TP, Invintory loss, s l o w rezzing, sim crossing would be nice.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:17 AM
I am unsure how to feel about voice. I have noticed it utilized usefully by some to carry on conversations, but sometimes it’s better not knowing what someone sounds like. At least, rude people who don’t seem to have any respect for others.
I leave voice off sometimes, and turn it on sometimes.
It can divide people some, when conversations are carried on in voice while others have it off.. yet it can bring people together, too.
I never actually speak in voice chat, though. I just don’t like to talk. (My avatars usually being a different gender than I am may have a little to do with it, sure, but I personally don’t hide that. I just don’t like to talk much. Not even in online FPS games, etc.)
Text can be superior for when are busy with something: you can read the text at your leisure, and don’t have to pay attention to voice at the instant it happens.
Text is also clearer, barring typos.
Then there is the issue that when lagging, having connection issues, voice can become choppy and not understandable.
Voice adds some value, it’s just not good all of the time.
(It does open nice possibilities for playing music to others. Or silliness with text to speech. Or, certainly, serious conversations.)
January 17th, 2008 at 11:18 AM
As far as the topic is concerned, I love voice :D.
I have used other chat programs in SL for ages, its easier to talk to folks, new people I wouldn’t normally do so to, via voice.
I really dislike the entire attitude about this question though, most responses seem to boil down to ones own insecurities about their online identity, and the inability to cope with reality and fiction.
If you don’t wanna use voice, don’t. But also avoid causing more headache for the rest of us who do because you want the world to think you are some hot blonde and should have the feature removed so no one ever asks you to prove it.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:20 AM
I like how you guys continue to say things like “Fix lagg! and leik, inventory loss!” when LL is actually a pretty large group. Some people work on the new features, some people fix the old. Voice is an option. If you do not use it, that doesn’t mean that nobody else does or finds it useful.
I generally don’t use it all that often, but when I do, it’s cool, it’s nifty, and fun. Especially when I am doing a group build with someone, and we are talking/arguing about where to put stuff, etc.
I think Voice is a very handy feature, and well done with SL. Much better than say using Vent as a means of communicating which requires proper codes and addresses, then any passwords for specific channels, forget it…
So yeah, I think voice can be very handy… just don’t know what else LL has to do with it. It seems pretty complete and polished to me…
January 17th, 2008 at 11:22 AM
My buddies and I were big fans back when it first debuted and was only on a little bit of the main grid later on. As soon as it was grid wide one of my good friends that hid her deafness from my friends and I closed herself off from us. All is happy with her now cause we’re a god bunch of friends, but I’ve also seen RP characters destroyed because someone had to reveal they were a man playing a women and vice versa.
The senseless breathing, grunting, different cultures of the world with their own distinct levels and tones of their voices can and have made for a rather upsetting environment whenever the voice people come around. My friends and I will just leave the area we were in and return later on.
I only see voice being useful for people building a sim, business, setting up major RP rules which would take days to compile on a notecard, but then again, can’t they just use Skype or a voice service whose only job is to do voice?
January 17th, 2008 at 11:23 AM
Well how about that: PPl who want to have voice on their Sim should pay for that service.
I’d rather use Skype or YM if I’d like to have a “good” and “stable” way to communicate.
From what I’ve seen - voice brings the living dead to the game.
How to recognize a voice Sim: Avatars standing around like dead -
no activities for hours… and silence in open chat.
For ppl who are deaf or have no way to access voice - (either they can’t afford the appropriate hardware or their connection is just too slow) it’s a VERY annoying thing.
I’m looking at voice now for several months and finally disabled this
useless Gimmick on my island.
Maybe carging 25 USD a month for voice will support LL in buying new
hardware to take the load of meanwhile 60k users at a time.
And btw. if you’re too lazy to type… why don’t you leave SL grab your good old phone and call your friends?
In my opinion… Voice is utter BS
Live long and prosper
January 17th, 2008 at 11:27 AM
It IS easy enough to not use voice, too. Just turn it off in your preferences and you won’t even know that people are talking. Instead of bitching LL out about it, take your own personal positive action on the matter.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:37 AM
Can’t think of a single thing that I’d want to use Voice for when I can talk to people on Skype, MSN, Yahoo or even the telephone. I don’t know anyone who uses voice for any reason on a regular basis in SL either, and nobody has ever asked me about using voice in-world either.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:38 AM
From talking to so many people in SL , I know that voice is hardly being used, BUT, I will be very suprised if that comes out in the survey, it will be twisted to make it look like the best thing since sliced bread, again.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:43 AM
To the people who claim Skype is better than voice, you’re out of your minds. Skype is a HUGE bandwith hog and it’s a P2P app too. It opens seven or eight data streams just for a single person to person voice call. It’s even worse for video or if you open a conference call. It’s not even as efficient as the SIP protocol, which only has two data streams, incoming and outgoing, and nowhere near as good as the inter-asterisk exchange (IAX) protocol which multiplexes over a single data stream.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:56 AM
My friends and i use voice all the time…. we love it … only small complaint is that i lose voice when i TP to a new place but it eventually comes back…. why are people so scared of voice? Even my friends who don’t have a mic, still turn voice on so they can take part in the conversation so we have a mixture of voice and typing… don’t take it away…..thumbs up to voice
January 17th, 2008 at 11:58 AM
I remember the DAY they introduced voice. I don’t care what some people here claim, the few weeks preceding voice was the MOST stable SL has ever been. The day this was intruduced, it’s been a down hill slide as far as stability. Maybe the voice servers are different ones but; did they take other servers off line to become voice ones? Who knows. Obviously these servers could be used for something else (asset allocation or upgrading sims) if they weren’t being wasted using them for voice.
And again obviously, extra code is in the viewer to deal with all the aspects of voice, which = more bugs and problems as you bloat the software to include this “feature”. Plus the spacial aspects of voice ARE using up bandwidth/resources for everyone, even if the voice itself isn’t, which I also can’t believe doesn’t affect performance. The pipe all this has to go through is only so big. As many times as I’ve seen issues with voice on the blog, LL is using personal to keep “voice up” and “repaired” that could be used for fixing other real problems or features that can’t be provided by 3rd party outside sources.
If people want voice for meetings or to talk to a girlfriend, get skype or team speak etc. It’s VERY simple for your “group of friends”, or if everyone on some sim wants to use voice, to all set it up on their machines, and doing that would improve THEIR SL performance as well as the majority of residents who don’t use voice. It’s not like voice isn’t possible if it was removed from SL, I’m not sure why people who use voice think that somehow something would be taken away from them?
I’m not going to go deeply into how this socially has damaged SL and turned parts of SL into a “my space” type extention of people’s RL instead of a place to live a second life. What next, require people to put a RL picture of themselves on their avies face? Or to “validate” that an Avies shape = their RL one? All these guys want “to validate” that the girl they are talking to is a RL woman, how about you validate to us you aren’t some over weight 50 year old guy with a nasty skin condition?
SL is SUPPOSED to be about: that this stuff doesn’t matter and we get to know the person themselves as they want to live in SL without the physical trappings we all deal with in RL.. And as someone else said, voice morphing software makes much of this “validating” a moot point anyway.
But back to my point, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take this bloat OUT of SL and put these resources into stability, at least = to what we had before you threw this resource hog upon us.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:59 AM
I have few experiences of life voice, and they were bad, but the problem did not come from LL or the viewer. simply some headphones are bad (I bought one), they have a low output, are noisy (catch power grid buzz) or the mike is too short, recording scratching noises (touching our skin).
January 17th, 2008 at 12:00 PM
My biggest complaint with voice is not the voice function itself, for I am a willing user of voice, but with the resource allocation the voice executable requires on the client. Just enabling voice in preferences and keeping the default push to talk feature enabled still requires 25-35% of the CPU clock cycles to remain idle. The voice executable is a major contributor to client side lag.
Then when trying to use voice in a texture, particle and/or script intensive environment, the SL viewer, which then requires 85-100% of the CPU clock cycles just to render the present scene, cause the voice executable to be momentarily halted resulting in such degraded voice quality as to be rendered completely useless. Perhaps that is one reason in regions where voice is prevalently used everyone observed if they stood still and didn’t require a change of scenery in their viewer that voice worked much better.
Voice is great when doing keyboard and mouse intensive tasks, such as building, texturing or just moving furniture. It allows one to work without constant keyboard chat interruptions. However, a couple of obnoxious users who lack any form of voice etiquette, such as keeping their mic open all the time so we can all get a personal blog of their pathetic little lives, ruin the experience for everyone. If you are going to eat, belch, yell at your kids or dog, or talk to the plumber on the phone, do so with your mic off (you know who you are).
January 17th, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Well I’ve used voice ever since I got it working and I’ve never looked back. 95% of all my conversations in SL are on voice, the only time I type is on the odd occasion that non-voice people turn up and don’t have it turned on to listen to people on voice.
I have encountered some people who refuse to use anything other than voice (i.e. why should I bother typing for the stupid non-adopters) but if someone doesn’t want to or can’t use voice I don’t see why I shouldn’t communicate with them so I just type.
Overall I’m very impressed in the quality of voice chat. If I want to RP (I occasionally visit some steampunk sims) I just…. turn it off. There, that wasn’t so hard was it?
January 17th, 2008 at 12:05 PM
I can see where it is useful in a business conference setting, and in the education field. Other than that, it has no value what so ever to me:(
As far as the Cross Gender RP issue, usually my avatar is female, sometimes I am male. I have never hidden the fact of my RL gender to anyone that asks me. Anyways as with most everything in life there are pros & cons.
I wish the best for LL and all of the people who I know are working very hard to make this amazing platform a new standard.
Good Luck *bigg huggs* :_)
January 17th, 2008 at 12:41 PM
@CaptJosh: “It IS easy enough to not use voice, too. Just turn it off in your preferences and you won’t even know that people are talking.”
Its’ not the Lindens who make people use voice, it’s people like you. “Just turn it off”. I’ve turned voice on for a total of maybe 5 seconds. No thanks, I don’t need to hear any more of that. But that doesn’t keep it from having an effect. I *need* to know that people are using voice, because otherwise I can’t tell the difference between a group of people who happen to be idle at the moment from a bunch of people who aren’t going to respond no matter what.
WHICH IS WHY IT IS LUDICROUS THAT THEY HAVE CLOSED THIS “WON’T FIX”:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1317
Fin, have your vice chat, spend time and effort on it instead of core issues, but at least throw us a bone, please? All we need is *one bit* of data about an agent. It’s not gonna hog much bandwidth.
January 17th, 2008 at 12:52 PM
For goodness sake please folks Any one who says voice does not work well has either never tried it or has a computer that is not up to the min system requirements.
Voice when used properly with a popper set of head phones works wonderfully. I use Skype quite often and the SL voice client is better then Skype. I have used the voice client for hours on end with friends and and have not one wee bit of trouble with the voice client.
I also have to agree with hugs and others the SL voice service has absolutely no impact at all on the data base the voice client uses a completely separate server system. I also like to point out as others have here if you are unhappy or do not like to use voice then do not use it its not mandatory that you do. I have been to many places where there have been both people using voice and others chating in text with no problems. as for greafers the mute button comes in real handy for them. I also love the fact that you can adjust the volume of any person in the chat you can pick and choose who you choose to listen to more closely or not at all by adjusting there individuals volume.
I honestly can not fathom why so many come on here and reject voice with venom and despise as if they have been severely hurt by the voice client.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:01 PM
Voice has been problematic for me. It’s good if I am talking privately to only one person. In any other situation, people are coming in too faint or too loud and we all have to spend time adjusting sound levels before we can even begin to talk. Many people are not alone when they are using SL and so they can’t participate in voice conversations anyway, so it’s something my friends rarely use. If I try to move my avatar around while I am using voice, I will crash before long. I can say it’s a more reliable service than Skype has been, which is the other VOIP service I sometimes use. But I can be in SL or I can voice in SL - doing both at once doesn’t work out well.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:19 PM
@ 33
“…because you want the world to think you are some hot blonde and should have the feature removed so no one ever asks you to prove it.”
Hey babes, visit me in my webcam. 10 dollars a minute. And guaranteed REAL.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:29 PM
Voice doesn’t allow the fantasy SL used to provide. It’s kind of a hassel, too. One also can’t go back and see what was said again, like when communication is typed. What’s more, in a household where more than one person belongs to SL, the SL plateform will only accept one survey. This isn’t very fair to the other users, since some people also have to use other’s people’s computers. None of our family members use voice and still are bugged by other people to use it or we can’t even belong to some SL sites or get some SL jobs because of it. Also, not everyone wants to be forced to go through the extra expenise to be able to use it. Not happy about it, really.
January 17th, 2008 at 1:54 PM
I DONT WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICE !
January 17th, 2008 at 1:55 PM
I don’t use voice but I’m glad it’s an option. There are a few occasions where it has been convenient (public lectures, for example, and I remember one chaired, organized meeting that was handled very well by voice). For everyday use though, it just ruins the atmosphere. That doesn’t mean I wish Voice would go away though or that LL should abandon attempts at implementing it.
@21: What is a Furry supposed to sound like? They talk, they have human voices. Ever seen Bugs Bunny?
January 17th, 2008 at 2:01 PM
@ 53
The Pink Panther never talked. And Bugs Bunny is just a loudmouth.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:06 PM
I completed the survey and in general, my replies were along the line that I’m not interested in Voice, have not used Voice and don’t have any plans to ever use Voice….. pity your survery wasn’t interested in finding out why..
January 17th, 2008 at 2:11 PM
I used voice on two accosions: concerge info about FAT and another event.
Both experiences have been bad:
- Those talking to us did not relalize when we could not hear or their voice was like Computer (concierge).
- Unlike using stream for public speach, it depends on distance, what you hear. this means: you need to know who is talking to bring cam or avatar near enough. But you only can see, who is talking, if already near enough - which is a contradiction
- people near have their mics open, even, if they shouldn’t (push to talk should be default and not be changeble as defaulting to “mic always open”
It may be useful for personal communication between two or three people standing near to each other (if it is working). But then still there is a problem with understanding each other and fpr people wearing hearing aids and having not the by LL preferred computer system,
I guess working on more important things may have helped us users much more.
BTW: The very first question in the survey does have all possible alternatives and no way to check nothing on the other pages.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:14 PM
Voice gives packs of jerks one more parameter to use to identify the weak. Visit the welcome centers to see this in action. Likely there are people in the crowd who will join a voice chat bullying session who would otherwise not feel so empowered. Crowds are like that. Voice chat enables that.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:17 PM
i only use voice so my friends does so i say we still want voice
January 17th, 2008 at 2:19 PM
Here is my take on voice. I have only used it a few times and everytime, i have had many problems with it. I use a wireless system so im sure it has something to do with it. Ultimately tho i have heard many other people talk about problems they have while using voice. I personally do way to much work in sl to deal with voice or any so called benefit any1 gets from it. I want things to run smooth. Hardly a minute of my sl life goes by that im not opening a script or dealing with new or old product. If anything causes any delay in production or causes frustration than its no good to me. I even spend more time listening to music on my pc rather than listening to music or radio in sl cause i would prefer to have thing run smoothly. The biggest thing that worries me about that survey is that they only have 1 question that asks about technically issues.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:22 PM
I want voice because most of the friends of mine only use voice for talking to each other its easyer than typing and its a great way to get to know people yes there are the down sides but its also that way with typing i think we should keep voice because its also good for building to and alot more.so i think we should keep voice.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:23 PM
Allows one to multi task much easier. I say keep it forever, I mean why get rid of it o.O
January 17th, 2008 at 2:24 PM
nNo i use voice chat ALOT i want it to remain in second life without voice chat is not fun at all! you cannot express as much as voice chat can!
January 17th, 2008 at 2:24 PM
A big flaw in the survey, where I learned about it was where I’ve learned the most about SL, the invaluable forums!
January 17th, 2008 at 2:26 PM
Also u could mute ur voice chat if u go to “Preferences…” so others can still talk but u dont need to hear it!
*Yes for the voice chat*
January 17th, 2008 at 2:27 PM
I use voice on a daily basis. It shortens development time and makes meanings clearer than text.
I also use text daily, it enables more than one person to speak at a time and interjections much less confusing.
The killer app within voice is the IM calling. I use it for hours at a time to chat with friends. Yes we could skype but there’s no need to now. I never liked skype chat but for some reason I like SL voice much better.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:28 PM
@51 “Voice doesn’t allow the fantasy SL used to provide.”
This will change in time. Voice morphing software will become more sophisticated once there is a market for it. It will take a lot more than SL voice chat to create a market, though. The best thing that could happen to voice would be if a very large multi-player game or social networking program provided basic voice morphing to prime people’s interest.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:29 PM
you can mute it to and or mute the person if u want to use voice u dont have to hear the person u can just mute them so i say KEEP VOICE!
*yes for voice chat*
January 17th, 2008 at 2:34 PM
[...] This is a different voice related survey than the one recently mentioned in the blog, but please feel free to take that one as well: http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/01/17/voice-survey-2-weeks-left-to-have-your-say/ [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 2:34 PM
It’s too difficult to identify who’s being obnoxious in a large group chat. The list of speakers changes so quickly you can’t identify speakers.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:43 PM
The ones who wanna keep voice should keep voice. I don´t care. I only do not wanna get bothered by post pubertarian behavior and phone sex advances and all the kneejerk “realism” this feature brings into SL. I do not wanna meet another Osama or Hitler TALKING to me in SL. If i want to talk or listen to someone RL is good enough for that. Enough of noize there.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:55 PM
@48 I also have to agree with hugs and others the SL voice service has absolutely no impact at all on the data base the voice client uses a completely separate server system.
And this “completely seperate server system ” has an independent way of knowing who is in range? , communicates on its own internal system bandwidth ?, and doesnt piggyback that info from the existing database servers ?? — yeah right ! — from the performance hit that voice places on the client and the sim server itself I , for one , dont believe it has “no effect”.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:02 PM
@47, that jira issue has been re-opened. It’s a fine suggestion.
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1317
January 17th, 2008 at 3:17 PM
I took the survey.. thinking that somewhere along the line it would ask me if voice worked or not. Was that a silly thought? I can Skype just fine.. I try voice every time a new viewer comes out.. once and a while I hear some scratchy sounds.. Just in case anyone wants to know.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:25 PM
It should be an option, team voice is used in a # of mmo’s like w.o.w. it’s only 3.99 a month. I used to get 7 to 12 fps now i get 3to6 fps. wtf LL
January 17th, 2008 at 3:32 PM
[...] Julia Kelly wrote an interesting post today on Comment on Voice Survey - 2 Weeks Left to Have your Say! by Julia …Here’s a quick excerptAlso u could mute ur voice chat if u go to “Preferences…” so others can still talk but u dont need to hear it! *Yes for the voice chat* [...]
January 17th, 2008 at 3:33 PM
Food for thought:
When people type, most often we complain about their grammar, spelling, etc.
When people use voice, most often we complain about their Accent, trying to figure out where the hell it could be. ^^
January 17th, 2008 at 3:33 PM
I use voice and I love it. I am now planning interactive performance using it. Should be fun. Of course not all people like voice. So I guess thats why you can turn it off. It is a matter of personal preference.
January 17th, 2008 at 3:53 PM
Im Happy you all have voice. It makes SL silent for me and often alone. I wonder in the future if I will see anyone speak. Seeing so much conversation was great for a deaf person like me. Where there is voice I often stand there wondering whats going on and why I dont see any text…Guess the future of SL is my RL present. Silent….
January 17th, 2008 at 4:28 PM
Another survey?
*sigh* I suppose the thousands of polls, blogs, forums, threads etc telling LL how overwhelmingly against voice the vast majority of its SL’s user base would before voice was implemented, and continuing to this date months after its been implemented, have not been enough.
I am so looking forward to the next voice survey/poll. I supose we’ll keep getting them until they reveal that more than 5% percent of the user base are using it.
Which of course may be never.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:33 PM
i love voice, as stated 95% of my inworld convo’s are voiced , but the thing i love most about it, the chevrons that go green and red when u talk to loud XD
January 17th, 2008 at 4:38 PM
They didn´t get enough feedback on the original survey, so they had to repost it again in order to get a little bit more of attention. 2000 residents participating up to now are a joke compared to the numbers online each day. While the overwhelming majority of these just ignores voice chat in the same way as they ignore this “survey”.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:46 PM
Hmmmn, says I have already taken the survey, but, of course, I have not.
VOICE - Much better choices out there, notably Skype. Sound quality much better, and no choppiness from lag.
I USED to be able to run SL on my other computer until this BLOATWARE came along. Will I need a quad core to run WINDLIGHT?
KILL VOICE. Thin this client down some so you have room to make the hundred or so easy fixes that have been on the issues list for a long time, as in at least 8 months. Someone there thinks they are another Microsoft. You are not. People will abandon you as you keep packing “features” into SL that increase hardware requirements and decrease performance at the expense of smooth operation of the software.
Back in March or so, logins in the last 60 days were around 1.8 million. That is now down to 1.35 million. Keep up the bloating and it will be down to 135,000. If you want to REVERSE this disastrous trend, you need only take two steps … (1) fix the myriad problems that are so petty as to hardly bear mention, but collectively make the SL experience very frustrating, (2) LOWER TIER - in case you haven’t noticed, there is a bit of a slowdown in the real economy (read: recession). SL IS DISCRETIONARY SPENDING. Think about it. My partner and I have gone from four 4096 plots to two. And I sure as hell am not going to run out and buy a new computer to run windlight.
Prim drift, anyone? This is a new problem, right?
Sigh. I keep hoping you folks will get it, but you never do. LL needs a paradigm shift, and a big one, for SL to remain viable. But I’m not counting on it.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:57 PM
I use voice, its a very useful tool. Like hugsalot @8 said these issues in SL started long ago and i’ve been in SL over 2 yrs. Every update since i can remember has been a struggle at times but those dont compare to what we went through for builders, texture, designers, scripters and animators long ago. For the people that are crashing, turn OFF windlight, thats whats crashing your game play. Windlight needs some serious attention for that to be fixed not voice. Voice is connected to every other game on our desktop and so should SL. You can either use it or don’t, but it should be left with the package that SL offers.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:57 PM
I love SL voice, I almost refuse not to talk to people if their not on voice lol unless I have to LOL.
Never have any problems with it!
January 17th, 2008 at 5:13 PM
Yeah, maybe uncompleted sentences are easier to decipher if someone uses voice instead of the keyboard. And the most common used voiced sentences like “hey, u wanna f***, sweet?” get a deeper philosophical background when spoken by a deep brown post teenage voice. Not to mention the moaning. And all the background mic sound effects like running washing machines, refrigators, traffic noize, mobile phone bells and whistles, ll this and more enrich the metaverse with almost kafkaesque touch of reality. And i always loved the sound of the russian language.
“Say yes to voice chat!”
And i think we should also call for the embedded webcam. Who needs Windlight if RL is so thrilling?
January 17th, 2008 at 5:25 PM
I took both surveys but there was no option for a detailed comment so I will put it here. When using voice it is now almost impossible to use the music and media tabs because those feeds are so much stronger than voice. If possible it would be nice to have a more equitable strength in the voice stream so that mixing the media and music while chatting does not drown out the voice client. Thanks.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:53 PM
GUYS, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO USE VOICE, WE WERE NEVER FORCED, SIME SIMS HAVE IT DISABLED FOR THIS VERY REASON!, STOP COMPLANING!
January 17th, 2008 at 6:14 PM
I don’t use voice for 2 reasons:
1) it continually doesn ‘t work for me and I have much better SL things to do than wrestle with something that doesn’t end up working anyway.
2) it’s exclusive. For example, when people come to my beach and see a bunch of people standing or sitting around seemingly dead they leave if they’re new, or they start typing and hope someone’s ‘listening’. Having people standing around ignoring new comers or those without voice I find offensive and socially nullifying. It takes away the stream of witty reparte that has characterised our beach.
I use skype including it’s video capability if I need to talk to anyone, and have no problem with running SL and Skype simultaneously - on my standard MacBook Pro. It’s stable (unless SL crashes or freezes, which it does regularly regardless of whether I’m using Skype), and the video component provides additional functionality.
As we all know, voice doesn’t give a copyable ‘history’ which means you can’t backtrack through conversations if you need to AFK, or you get lost in the babble.
I really don’t need to hear other people’s children who they may think are cute, but I think should be in bed or non-existent - or their phone conversations, radio or tv - or any of their bodily noises and chair squeaks. If it’s someone I’m specifically speaking with in Skype it can be forgiven to some extent, but to get it from everyone within Cooee is nothing less than cacophonous noise pollution.
I also did the survey, and nowhere did it provide the facility for me to explain WHY I don’t use voice.
My 2 bob’s worth
January 17th, 2008 at 6:34 PM
I have no opinion yet because my client doesn’t have the voice option. I use Linux.
January 17th, 2008 at 6:43 PM
I have only turned on voice once to see what it’s like and I didn’t like it at all, it was kind of disturbing even.
It feels like SL has become a lot more boring ever since voice has been available for all, places where a lot of “type chat” was going on feel nearly dead even though there are quite a few avatars hanging around, so I no longer have a reason to go there.
I have to talk a lot in RL, so what I liked about SL is that you could communicate without actually talking - and I’d feel really uncomfortable using it because of my accent.
Unfortunately voice divides the people into 2 groups to some extent and I socialize a lot less than before.
So I could do without voice alltogether because even though I don’t use it it changed my SL experience not to the better - and I miss “the good old times”.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:08 PM
My feeling is that Voice is wonderful. I use it for communications in private, or with close friends. However, what I really want, and WAS using it for, was ‘In World Performances!’
Some of my friends are, as I am, musicians, and instead of trying to access parcel media streams to upload songs, itR