Got Opinions on Voice?
Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 2:51 PM by: Jeska LindenYou may have noticed we’ve been working on better analyzing and quantifying our Residents views on voice over the past few months. For example, Aleks Linden’s current survey on Voice, which is almost finished, is examining how Residents use Voice in Second Life.
We’re also looking for help on how best to prioritize additional voice features as we move forward. Voice communication has been an official part of Second Life for several months now and we’re interested in finding out what types of additional voice features you might be interested in so we can work to make Second Life better for everyone! (You may have already received notification to take this survey via email a few weeks back, it is the same survey).
Help us Out!
Interested? Please take 5 minutes to respond to this brief multiple choice survey by clicking on this link:
http://secondlife.qualtrics.com/SE?SID=SV_d0AI31Jtyq2FTZW&SVID=Prod
A few notes on the survey:
- The survey is hosted by a company called Qualtrics, so the above link sends you over to a secure site with their web address at the top.
- In order to participate, you will need to enter your Second Life name. Please note that your Second Life name is used as a unique identifier and to validate that you are a “real” member of Second Life. It will only be used as a unique identifier for Linden Lab. Third parties will NOT see your Second Life name in any form.
- Research findings (not tied to individual Residents) will be shared with Vivox (our voice provider) in order to facilitate further voice improvements.
- All data will be destroyed at the end of the research period.
Got questions? Contact Jeska Linden. Thank you all for your help in making Second Life better!
January 28th, 2008 at 2:55 PM
You should also note that this is not a new survey. I started to take it and realized that I’d already taken it recently.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:59 PM
Some very interesting proposals there!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:00 PM
First time for me to take it, I did the other one they mentioned as well. Some similar questions. If the survey is any indication of where voice is going, I like it.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:02 PM
Argent - thanks for the reminder on that, I added that to the post (there were some invitations via email to some of the mailing lists and a group of people who expressed interest in taking surveys.)
Thanks!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:03 PM
Quite possibly the worst survey yet, most of the features proposed were gimmicks and no real helpful functionality, like possible event functions (certain people can talk set by group/chat/parcel admin, then other people can be selected to talk)
Or how about an integrated voice program instead of the one which doesn’t work on most PCs because SecondLife.exe consumes all the system resources.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:03 PM
Infact, why not a comments section for people to give suggestions/ideas/comments?
January 28th, 2008 at 3:06 PM
pyrii - thanks for your thoughts on the survey, we are looking for focused feedback on which potential features to prioritize next, if you’ve got more feedback, please feel free to email it over to me as mentioned in the survey!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:11 PM
hmm, I dont’ know, but ever since voice, my music no longer works correctly. Drags, distorted and doubled which makes it hard when you are running a dance club. I’ve tried support, my ip provider, but only music is bad in sl, not on other websites
January 28th, 2008 at 3:12 PM
LOL - well count me twice. This things looks identical to the one I did a few weeks ago.
Either way, these are some cool features to look forward to. And I know if not as much a question of ‘if’, but ‘when’. I’m anxiously awaiting some of these.
Thanks, Jeska.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:18 PM
Personaly I would like to see how many mentioned they don’t use nor want voice. However that is a statistic we the unimportant wont see. I still say who cares about voice when the main system is still crashing. Making the system stable should be first priority. I bet my survey was thrown out because it was NOT what Linden Labs wanted to hear about their dog and pony act!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:19 PM
hahah i’d like the voice morpher.. then make a sexy babe and when nude newbies start hitting me up reply with a very deep male voice: HEY BABE
January 28th, 2008 at 3:19 PM
Since the beta release of the Linux voice client I was trying out the new features and I very much like it. The Linux beta is still a bit clunky, and the fact that you can’t select your sound device for the viewer itself does not help, but all in all it works, and it’s a lot of fun
January 28th, 2008 at 3:20 PM
Oh yeah, just what we want… phone numbers and voice mail so we can get spammed with “Lowest prices in SL… One million lucky chairs” in real life.
I gave voice several shots. I’ve found ONE situation worthwhile, I was building with someone and was nice to coordinate without taking hands off keyboard and mouse. That happened ONCE.
Voice is no longer set up on any of my computers and certainly none of the “features” mentioned would encourage me to re-enable it. Also Lindens, please don’t forget that the voice-to-text, text-to-voice and voice changing features are already available in Second Life by a SL Vendor. Or is that another SL business person you want to drive out of business?
January 28th, 2008 at 3:24 PM
PS: I would like to have a mailbox for normal text messages, why don’t we have one? IM caps and messages in email are sooo outdated.
I’d rather pay for that than for voice features
January 28th, 2008 at 3:27 PM
Yes, you should include us negatives in there, since I think we are in the majority. I don’t know anyone using voice, let alone wanting new features.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:45 PM
Today, the spacialization within voice is dramatically underutilized. I can’t help but think that this is a config, something like drop-off is for lights. Instead of hearing voices fade with distance, they are heard loud and clear half a SIM away. It dramatically interferes with local discussions because of the distraction. Each SIM should have a voice drop-off config within the estate tools. The lack of drop-off may also flood the area with too much of the source sound, resulting in the impression that the source is not localized within a space (i.e. that it is coming from a specific location.)
January 28th, 2008 at 3:50 PM
Why are human resources allocated to new feature surveys while the jira has 7 unallocated, open show-stopper bugs (defined as ‘only the most severe confirmed issues demanding immediate attention) in the SVC tree and almost 100 unassigned show-stoppers *shudder* in the VWR tree?
If not all of those show-stoppers are the receiving immediate, concentrated and urgent attention they “demand” then please put this survey down for a while and attend to them.
Make a citizen who’s reported a show-stopper happy today!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:53 PM
So I took the survey, and at the end it stated “would I be willing to pay and extra fee” for these options. No, I would NOT! As a paid, premium member, why should I have to pay for these? If a person who has a free account wants to pay, sure, by all means, they should. But not those of us who have invested our REAL Money to SL. As it currently stands, premium membership doesn’t give us any “perks” to be a paid member, since even now, free members can “buy” land from private estate owners. So, NO, I would NOT be willing to pay for these “options”. It should be, instead, given, without extra fees, to paying members and give that option to pay for those services to people holding all those free accounts.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:53 PM
Ever since the introduction of voice to the grid, same grid has been behaving wonky beyond belief. Sure, there were some problems before, but since voice got implemented, it has become hard to find a whole day without any issues. Working on the grid, teleporting around, even merely staying online, has become tough since voice came up.
No, so far I do not use it. I see no reason to. Any “new and exciting features” will most likely bring more system troubles and not ways to make all our experiences better. It’s highly likely we’re gonna get them anyway, though. *sighs*
January 28th, 2008 at 3:53 PM
Hmm, Maybe we should concentrate on making it so everyone has voice, or are you forgetting about us linux users? Even when I log in with my macbook on the occasion to handle emergencies I rarely see anyone with the little dots, much less actually using voice.
January 28th, 2008 at 3:55 PM
Oh, forgot to mention…that most people I know, anyway, use SKYPE, and its totally FREE!
January 28th, 2008 at 3:57 PM
Voice was exactly what SL was missing! When working on builds across an entire sim we can conference and get the tasks done much easier than by having to pause and type.
People that seem to be against voice are the guys acting like girls in SL and hate to be called out on it. :p
Keep moving forward with the voice features:)
January 28th, 2008 at 4:10 PM
I would rather see the current bugs with Voice addressed before expanding it.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:10 PM
@22 and those that have hearing or speech impairments or don’t speak the same language as those around them eg- for many english is a second language and they can type it much better than they can speak it
Not that I mind speech, it’s a nice feature to have and one I was surprised wasn’t included when I first started sl and I’m sure those that make use of it will appreciate any improvements
January 28th, 2008 at 4:11 PM
quote:got opinion on voice?
for sure: SKYPE RULEZ : I can choose the SL friends who can speak with me, excellent sound quality, very stable, low memory/ressources usage + no memory leak, almost always available, and… FREE
vs SL voice: “potential” grieffing issues, many problems with parcel music, everything but stable (well, as anything in SL), bad sound quality, high memory/ressources usage + HUGE memory leak (well… it’s in the SL viewer), available… when it works, and you ask if we may pay for it???? ROFL
Voice is disabled on my land and in my viewer. It won’t change.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:14 PM
Um… page-6 has radio buttons for a choose-all-that-apply question!
January 28th, 2008 at 4:22 PM
I’m with Mimi. I’d rather see text messages than voice. There’s no reason IM’s should be capped, they could be sent as messages to cell phones and never show up on my screen in world. I’d be fine with that! Or, even if they remain emailed, once again I see no reason why I need to see it in my inbox and on screen when I log in. One or the other, not both.
Voice to text is a cool feature if you don’t have the ability to type for whatever reason, but at 80 wpm, I’d rather type! If I wanted to talk, I’d use Skype. I don’t need to lag my computer out anymore by adding voice!
To me voice just seems a little too real! I get enough realism (my inworld hubby is my rl fiance), I don’t need to bring any more of SL into my first life. Enough already! LOL
January 28th, 2008 at 4:26 PM
People that seem to be against voice are the guys acting like girls in SL and hate to be called out on it. :p
—
So you really think all the people who don’t use voice are guys playing as girls? How about all the guys not using voice then, those must be girls playing as guys? And given the voice morphing software out there, you REALLY think this stops anyone wanting to play cyber sex with you from doing so?
As far as “conferencing across a sim when building”, the few people doing this can use skype etc and not lag the rest of us because a few people think this is “added value”. I’ve built multiple sims up and never seen a need for this.
No doubt LL is going to move forward with voice -but- the people who don’t use or want this are not just guys why want to fool you into having sex with them. Try to come up with a better “insult” to use against the people who don’t feel voice is the best thing since sliced bread. That one is getting a bit old.
Stephe Ehrler
January 28th, 2008 at 4:26 PM
I for one would REALLY like to try out voice. As long as voice has been around, the Linux voice client is still not voice enabled. Of course I’m tempted to ask, Why? But of course I already know the answer: the voice system is closed source and supported by only one company. Hasn’t Linden Lab learned their lesson yet? If it’s closed source, it’s going to be buggy and take forever to be implemented, especially if it only benefits a minority of users. Closed source software is expensive, inefficient, discriminatory and frequently broken. Please change this!
January 28th, 2008 at 4:32 PM
I found it to be a step in the right direction towards finding out what we would like in the voice feature. Granted some of the features can be found for free outside of secondlife, at least they are trying to see what we would like to have. The voice to text is a nice option for those who cannot hear or speak. maybe that one should be a free option for them.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:34 PM
Perhaps one solution is to morph all voices by default to match certain attributes associated with your avatar’s sex, shape, size … etc
January 28th, 2008 at 4:34 PM
what would be best is if there was a normalizer included in the client so that everyone talks at the same volume, instead of having some folks being really soft, and others being really loud.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:35 PM
For the most part, none of us get to choose how we sound irl? Why should SL be different?
January 28th, 2008 at 4:41 PM
does anyone use it?
January 28th, 2008 at 4:47 PM
I prefer typing it keeps my mind busy. My typing skills have really improved!
January 28th, 2008 at 4:52 PM
SOMEONE HELP ME!
i spoken with many lindens and i still can’t use voice!
My router does not let slvoice client work!
(works only when im hooked directly to modem)
i looked at wiki and still have not found any answers!
Nobody i spoken to knows how to fix this, im all alone!!
If someone knows how to fix this, please IM me in-world, AJAY GIANO
January 28th, 2008 at 4:54 PM
How about fixing the huge memory leak that occurs on some systems when the voice client is running alongside the SL viewer?
I think that would be an important step to take before adding any new features.
January 28th, 2008 at 4:56 PM
It’s great for sitting in an orgy room and laughing at newbies.
Other than that, it’s OK.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:03 PM
focused feedback which means “we dont care wght the customer wants”
there truly needs to be a couple of those there who wont stop making bad stuff tha lags us down like mad and have them look at and actually READ the mail…IF there was a place to send it
Voice bites so far leave it alone stabilize SL stop implementing for a week will ya?!!!
January 28th, 2008 at 5:04 PM
Question #5 forces me to say what I’ve used it for when I’ve never used it.
Why isn’t there an “I don’t use voice at all or ‘none of the above’” option for that?
Anony
January 28th, 2008 at 5:08 PM
Okay . . . somewhere out there are whole groups of people who use it all the time and are leaving others out in the cold, that’s right, just won’t talk to anybody unless they have a dot over their head . . . and just down the road from them are masses of people who never use it and never see anybody else using it and don’t know why anybody would ever even bother to use it.
Who ARE all these people, lol, and how come they never can find each other? I say let’s get them together for a little fireworks - one sim - dots and no-dots - cage match, winners take all, lol.
Really, who are THEY that are referred to so often, let’s start naming names, lolol.
I say, next time you are in a place that doesn’t respect your choice of voice option, report ‘em, lolol, let’s have some names and get to the bottom of this of who won’t talk to who stuff.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:10 PM
Here’s a feature I’d be tempted to pay for, Take the blasted lag inducing unwanted “feature” out.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:13 PM
As someone who not only owns a business and thriving role playing islands, voice is a bane. It is not hard to figure out but I have made sure to not only disagree and keep it inactive myself, I have disabled it on all my sims. Voice is good only for ruining the anonymity and enjoyment many have being something different than themselves. Lets not mention accents and those who enjoy social interaction in SL because they are deaf or unable to speak, those who are now shunned because idiots DEMAND voice or you must be lying. Voice is nothing but a ruin to some people.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:13 PM
“For the most part, none of us get to choose how we sound irl? Why should SL be different?”
None of us can fly or teleport, or get to choose how we look IRL either…. but we can in SL. Why should voice be any different?
January 28th, 2008 at 5:14 PM
i dont know anyone that uses voice i dont and none of my friends use it im sure there are platforms in SL it is good for such as conferencing for business or education i also see your looking for us to pay for this feature i will never use it never pay for it when there are many free places to voice such as skype or yahoo we already pay enough for the bad quality of SL i hope you dont plan on charging all residents for it i never wanted it i never use it and i never will use it …all it has done is degrade the already crappy structure of the game to many bugs like we need anymore to add to the pile up that never get fixed
January 28th, 2008 at 5:16 PM
also why does the survery not have option NO we DO NOT want VOICE and see how many click that
January 28th, 2008 at 5:24 PM
If I have to see another complaint from people who are too lazy to turn Voice off in Second Life saying “WE DON’T WANT IT, REMOVE IT BECAUSE WE’RE TOO LAZY TO UNCHECK ‘Enable Voice Chat’ IN THE OPTIONS WINDOW”
Bloody hell… If you don’t like it, don’t use it, it’s an optional feature, there for those that want it. There’s many uses, it just needs the customisability that allows it to be used properly in those circumstances.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:25 PM
I look at this way I filled it in, i expressed my feeling abput voice and thats it. I too think voice is a waste of resources. Specially when I only see less then 20% using it.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:37 PM
Voice is great if you like listening to people breath, say ‘Can you hear me now”, cough and exclude more than 60% of people from a public conversation.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:38 PM
Oh yeah.. And also if you enjoy having no hope of every scrolling back to read what was said wjhile you were afk.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:42 PM
Again another voice survey? We don’t care about voice. Why replace the fun stuff by stuff only a few want!
January 28th, 2008 at 5:43 PM
Heya, I don’t mind voice and all and I think I took this survey as mentioned above. I think the real problem is that people want a better viewer, stable servers and such before you go into making things like windlight and voice. I do think voice should be included within the sl client rather then opening in a second program. Also, fix the scaling of the windows please. Let us be able to shrink all we want without having to know xml and crap. Voice is voice, you hear people blahing on it sometimes but not very often. So in closing don’t use caps lock to cruise control through cool and why complain about complainers???
January 28th, 2008 at 5:45 PM
@33 - one cannot choose to look like a dragon, wolf, or whatever all that well either in RL. Part of SL is that we *can* be those things, and many others.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:54 PM
Phone numbers are really a useless gimmick. People I to talk to already have my phone number.
An integrated voice changing software would be great though. I could enhance privacy and make more people (especially women) use voice. A voice changer should be normal and used by anyone, not just by “dudes who want to fool other dudes into thinking they are a hot blonde”.
January 28th, 2008 at 5:57 PM
As I expected when voice was introduced, some groups have taken to it and others haven’t, and the ones that have pretty much close out the people who don’t or can’t use it.
I’ve tried it now, and found that I simply can’t follow a voice conversation in SL for any length of time. The quality of voice reproduction is spotty, it breaks up regularly, and if I miss something I can of course not scroll back to read it. The spacialization cues are spotty at best, and the chat directional cues (avatar’s head turns towards speaker) are completely missing. It also reduces the available bandwidth and SL’s UDP based bulk transfer means that I end up with sim ping going through the roof until I cut my max bandwidth setting to the bone.
The only thing that would reverse this trend towards splitting people into voice and non-voice groups would be reliable and automatic voice transcription, so that we get voice converted to text chat. That would solve the bandwidth problems, the spacialization problems, and the quality problems.
January 28th, 2008 at 6:22 PM
I took this survey earlier. I would have loved to be able to say “NOT in the least bit interested!” on most of the “feature improvements” they offered. The only one that looked the least bit positive to me was the option of a built-in voice morpher. But even then, it would remain useless to me, because I am NOT going to subject the rest of my family to a one-sided conversation, like some rude slob in a restaurant talking loudly on a cell phone. Maybe Voice is great for people who live alone, or in a basement bedroom, away from the rest of the household. those of us who like to stay in contact with our RL spouse and kids while we do things in SL won’t find it useful at all.
Or you could listen to the dog that is at this very moment barking loudly in my ear. Makes for great verbal communications.
Phone numbers and voice mail for avatars? No way.
January 28th, 2008 at 6:25 PM
I hardly use voice because I enjoy being immersed in a non realistic audio environment for the most part. Having voiced enabled takes away from that 3D experience for me.
However, that is an option I can freely choose one way or another. I think it is great that LL offers voice to users even if it is not something that interests me.
There are a few occasions that I have used it and will probably use it again. Tonight my phone was out so I used voiced to speak to my boyfriend when we normally use the phone.
Of course there are so many advantages to having voice in Second Life.. not only for chat. Life music.. seminars.. conferences ..and so on, the list goes on infinitely. Kudos to Second Life for voice enabled, especially also on a local scale, meaning more than only private chat.
@51 It is not always a better viewer or server that is needed.. sometimes it is actually the user who needs a better PC, graphic card, more memory, etc. or net connection.
January 28th, 2008 at 6:30 PM
I’m with Syd and others who prefer Skype - much better voice reproduction, and have the added option of video if you want it - which can be a nice touch in growing friendships across the world.
Voice in SL for me is annoying, distracting, difficult to follow conversations when there are different groups carrying on conversations within ‘earshot’, exclusionary, and basically a non-event where I’m concerned.
I have it turned off, but as it’s embedded into the viewer, I still have to contend with the technical issues it creates.
I can conference call on Skype if I want to, and when SL crashes - which it does regularly - it means I don’t lose the conversation.
As grid and viewer stability are more important to me than the currently foisted bells and whistles - I’m all for taking OUT the bells and whistles and getting the system running at optimum for a nice change.
Did the survey - but couldn’t say any of this there - and there are a lot more people responding to this blog against voice than for it - where are they represented anywhere except here?
My twopence worth
Shai
January 28th, 2008 at 6:52 PM
What is the purpose of asking for the user name in the survey? Anyone who is a user of Second Life can access 1,000s of avatar names through search if they don’t wish to supply their own. Or if they want to take the survey multiple times.
A person who sees the survey on the blog and is interested in looking at it can find plenty avatar names with 10 seconds of Google searching.
If a person or group had an desire to skew the results it would be very easy considering the low level of verification.
January 28th, 2008 at 7:19 PM
Re: @16 Matttt Li…
How did you get it so you hear everyone clearly and loudly until they are too far away over half a sim away? I cant get it to work that way… the farther people get away from me, the quieter they get.. I cant hear anyone half a sim away… mine wont work like that at all. maybe its a hardware/software issue on some people computers, and not SLvoice
January 28th, 2008 at 7:24 PM
I spotted some ambiguities that you might want to watch out for:
1) What does “use voice” mean? Does one need to talk to “use” it? usually just listen to others on it, if I use it at all - this is what I interpreted “I have it activated but I never use it ” to mean.
2) On the “for which would you be willing to pay an additional fee” page, is it an additional fee for ALL the features, an additional fee for EACH feature? An additional fee in L$ or in US$? Is it a part of Premium?
January 28th, 2008 at 8:10 PM
Would have been nice to have a section about general performance complaints..
IE
Voice Quality - it is:
[ ] Choppy
[ ] Cuts out a lot
[ ] Makes it hard to have real conversations because you’re always saying “Oh I didn’t catch that.”
Tick which applies.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:26 PM
I’m split on voice.
On the one hand, the vast majority of users voted AGAINST it when it was proposed to the general populace… but LL added it anyway.
On the other hand, voice does have some valid applications– such as live music performances– that have been needed on SL for a long time.
On the third hand, I find voice very much detracts from normal game play. It’s just fine for normal “mundane” sims. But it has several problems elsewhere:
1. Voice keeps turning itself “on” when private island owners tell it to not be active on the sim.
2. There is no way to track voice “history” to check what one has missed while afk.
3. Voice can be very distracting while trying to build or script, and having to turn it off regularly is a pain (of course, there are ways around this, but lordamercy… how many options do we have to toggle on and off already every time we log in?).
4. Most notably… presents yet another blockade to the deaf community who had felt they had found a home on SL where they were equals to everyone else. Now they not only can’t hear what someone is saying… they can’t even lip-read.
So voice is one of those love-hate things. I’m sure some people love it and find it very useful. Others hate it and wish LL had listened to populace vote (for once). Live musicians will probably praise the day as they learn how to use voice to broadcast live music shows (and yes, it can be done very efficiently, and with NO LAG as experienced with Shoutcast).
But I believe the majority, overall experience is negative. It’s distracting, untraceable, and often spoils the illusion.
January 28th, 2008 at 8:48 PM
I have some really great suggestions about the quality of voice…
1) Some kind of compression, so everyone is the same volume… (Because some people are really loud and some are really quiet)
2) Environmental Effects, (eg. When you are outside, make it sound like you are outside, with some reverb or delay, and dampen the sound when you enter like a closed space…)
If valve can do it, i’m sure you guys could pull it off…
January 28th, 2008 at 8:50 PM
I took the survey a while ago. I noticed also that none of the questions really addressed whether I wanted voice or would ever use it. I don’t want it and will never use it. I’d rather have a less buggy SL. Of course they won’t ask us whether or not we paying members want it because they know we won’t give them the answer they want to hear.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:01 PM
Another survey? wow. and a BIG wow on paying for voice. I would much rather pay ( I’m willing to pay for any other feature)for some other features but not voice. I would NEVER pay for voice. Especially when other people use SKYPE and when voice is free in Second Life and not a lot of people use it. A voice changer?! That’s even worse and it will cause more jerks to pick on girls. What ever happened to the people who are deaf? Are you going to screw them again? Just remove voice, it’s that simple. Your making this harder for yourselves and for those people.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:21 PM
I just thought of a wonderful addition to the SL Metrics released every month. One that shows the numbers and percentages of people both with voice enabled and voice disabled!
January 28th, 2008 at 9:33 PM
A mental midget wrote:
Hevenz Vansant Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 3:57 PM PST
People that seem to be against voice are the guys acting like girls in SL and hate to be called out on it.
———————————
It’s exactly this kind of attitude that made me caution LL from bringing voice into SL. Homophobics look for any reason to slam other residents that dislike voice for a myriad of reasons. Voice is divisive and is damaging to community building.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:35 PM
Where is the option for I tried it once and will never use it again?
Take the lagmonster out of SL, it’s not wanted by the vast majority of people and despite the voice lovers saying turn it off… it still causes a server load as the Av positional data is sent to the voice providers servers.
January 28th, 2008 at 9:51 PM
@67 (Wyald Wolley) Exactly.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:10 PM
The ‘voice’ was..I fear..succinctly phrased by William Shakespeare…”Much ado about nothing”
I tried it once..and have removed it, as I do not need or want it..furthermore..I NEVER hear it being used!!
However..the cry for “MORE STABILITY IN THE SERVERS” is soooo loud, I don’t even need to use my ears to hear it!
January 28th, 2008 at 10:16 PM
yes so it finally comes to light that LL is wanting to charge both island owners AND residents for this voice chat…
this grid took a performance hit when voice was introduced, despite LL’s promises to the contrary.
please just put voice aside and start working on the things that really need the attention.
January 28th, 2008 at 10:42 PM
The few times I did turn the voice on at welcome areas, it was mostly foul language in an area designated as PG. If I wanted to hear the “F” word 50 times I’d watch Eddy Murphy do stand up. It sounds like kids, that’s how they talk when their parents are not around. Voice is so far worthless.
January 28th, 2008 at 11:19 PM
I’ve used voice a few times, and every single time, I’ve been disappointed in it. It generates too much treble in my headphones (which are Bose, practically flawless with both my mp3’s, my gaming outside SL, so on and so forth), as well as both the sound-to-camera-position and sound-to-avatar-position sets both aren’t that great, because the audio drop out is very high for both options (i.e. not being able to hear someone else past 5-10m or so if your camera is on yourself, such and so forth). Skype, Yahoo, and MSN do a much better job of holding conference calls, or just talking to a friend (being it’s as easy as clicking “call”, and the volume bass/treble is relatively balanced too). Also, ‘dropped calls’, people blasting music into their microphone, choppy speech, laggy as hell to have it on…and to top it all off, adding more features and having to pay for it? Screw that. For a feature that works sub-par to those already existing systems (Skype, MSN, etc.), oh wait…I just thought of something, even better then that…SL has all these bonus features too, and it’s been getting progressively worse…It’s like Deja-Vu~!
January 28th, 2008 at 11:24 PM
“So you really think all the people who don’t use voice are guys playing as girls? How about all the guys not using voice then, those must be girls playing as guys”
what about furries that wont talk? does that make them really human? LOL sorry had to say it
January 28th, 2008 at 11:26 PM
I took the survey, but would just like add that I was apprehensive about voice until I met someone and someones that I really wanted to talk to. Now I would not go back. Some quirks with voice that shoud be fixed is having to turn people back up if you cross a sim or go to another location and back. I’d like a feature that you could keep a friends voice at the same level as default. A lot of us would. Even going form inworld voice to private chat has that problem. Sometime it seems to reset for not apparent reason. IF YOU HAVE had a tutorial or explanation on this I would love to see it and apologize if I’ve not read past blogs. javana
January 28th, 2008 at 11:30 PM
[...] (January 2008) - a further survey is being undertaken on preferred voice features into the [...]
January 29th, 2008 at 12:31 AM
Can`t LL Just say. We know it causes LAG reguardless if it sit on a total diff serve? Gesh Its not your your end its our end that feels the stress…….How are is it for LL to just say this?
And If i hear the reason why people doesnt want voice because of gender reason i will just ……..throw a Webb Page Fit HAHHAHAH
January 29th, 2008 at 2:49 AM
I took the survey but did not see a list of suggested improvements: here area a couple I would be interested in:
1) Hooks in LSL to allow scripters to react to voice animations and identify who is talking, even if they are in private chat. This would allow better animation of multi-avatar private conferneces.
2) Allow voice animations in private chat if desired.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:12 AM
Yesterday in Second Life: Second Life Daily News
… Linden Lab continues to seek feedback on voice, both current and future possible features….
January 29th, 2008 at 3:17 AM
Gearing up while we’re not fully out of beta, are we?
Linux users still don’t have Voice. We’re waiting for Tofu Linden and Vivox to have us hammer the Voice daemon for Linux.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:39 AM
@55
quote: “Voice is great for people who live alone, or in a basement bedroom, away from the rest of the household. those of us who like to stay in contact with our RL spouse and kids while we do things in SL won’t find it useful at all.”
hahaha! I really like this one and I totally agree. I know some people who are using the voicer at times and I noticed that they don’t seem to have/care about their rl at all. My experience is that voice destructs that wonderful Illusion that sl provides. I really don’t want to hear the “smoke-for-20-years-voice” behind that sexy girl “cough cough”. That’s almost the same like when you notice a sl-girl is a guy in rl.
I recommend both types not to use voice.
January 29th, 2008 at 3:43 AM
@80: Drake, there is a Linux beta release for the voice binary. IM me, and I’ll send you the link.
January 29th, 2008 at 4:58 AM
LOL Is this survey to drum up support for voice? Is this to make people more aware?
I find it funny that a vast majority said “We don’t want it” and it went ahead regardless, and now you’re trying your best to plug it to everyone.
Sure, some use it. I’ll bet it’s about 10%, certainly under 1/4 of the population. I’m not talking “voice enabled sims or parcels” here - because you keep switching it back on, even if I turn it off. No doubt a shameless ploy to say “Look at all the voice enabled parcels”
I’m talking about 10% - 25% of end users actually using voice. Do you have a figure for voice enabled clients? Will you share it with us?
I’ll happily eat my prim trousers if I’m wrong
January 29th, 2008 at 5:03 AM
i dont use voice and dont know anyone who does. The only reason i cansee is to track down squeaky kid voices.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:06 AM
Well, Q1 in the survey was unanswerable… there was no option for ‘I have never used voice’ but that was one of the options in Q2 and Q3. So I had to say technical difficulties were preventing me using it rather than my brain tells me LAG LAG LAG don’t touch.
For those who have the luxury of a separate space, and a spouse who doesn’t complain, voice might work…. for me, my other half plays WOW using Voice, across the room, can you imagine the background chat you’d hear on SL…”no, kill him! YES!!! He’s dead!! Oh no, look at that monster! Now what do we do???”… .
I think those of us in shared spaces might give it a miss…
January 29th, 2008 at 5:58 AM
Close the public voice channel, restrict it on IM. Abandon that “active speakers” and headlight crap. Do it in a way that voice is there and fully usable in group chat and in IM voice chat (like Skype), but no longer an object of public knowledge and interest. This will be helpful by all means.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:37 AM
@jeska, just looked at the survey, it seems a waste of time to actually complete it since it won’t make sl better for everyone, just those few that you appear to listen to and the sub-set of those that use voice.
Chances are things like voice mailboxes and externally accessible phone numbers are only being considered to generate revenue from third parties, especially with the 2nd last question (ps - if u want to know what we’d pay for - working classifieds that don’t require 60 camping bots running on the sim or 6 digit fees, a stable environment, priority help assistance)
for a business coming into SL holding meetings that type of thing, these features might be great, voice conferencing, mail box for when the person is out of the office etc.. but for residents who run a business inside second life, it just means less leisure time.
We don’t get to go home at the end of the day and relax because whenever we’re logged in we’re expected to provide assistance, now we’ll get a plethora of interesting voice messages we can’t even understand let alone respond to and trying to translate a voice mailbox request into the appropriate language - nearly impossible to guess which language it is let alone translate
How about this as a feature - whenever we voice conference a LL employee, if they’re not online and it’s out of office hours, it rings their home phone?
January 29th, 2008 at 7:03 AM
i think the 2nd survey was really well done & a gratz to the linden wicht made it possible for another way for people having it in SL®.
i’m a sl mentor and use the voice engine quite alot , its been usefull as its at times tireing typing yada yada at times . also people are very glad for it , but with a decent CONNECTION I say !!! DECENT connection you peeps then voice can go through any walls you wanna , i can 110% guarrantee that since start voice got out there haven’t been any major cut outs any major laggin , laggin is only in your heads! or the computers specs/internetconnection.
Those that like it use it those that Don’t like it , THEN DONT TALK AT ALL , welcome listen or not , what ever floats your boats i think alot can agree with me oon that. altho i experienced alot of bad ways of useing the voice as for greif/prank/bossing/hurting/pushing/yelling/ and missuse of it .
People, less complain, More Fun its the way of the game remember!
January 29th, 2008 at 7:33 AM
@70, btw, if you turned voice off, *removed it* as you say, of course you will never hear anybody using it! duh!
@68, the vast majority against? you mean the same 30 people out of 50K who post here four or five times until the 150 limit every time voice is mentioned?
why are all these experienced power users who have been here supposedly for years with all their like-minded *friends* still hanging out in welcome areas with the kids risking exposure to the *gasp* f-word spoken out loud?
January 29th, 2008 at 7:53 AM
I will mostly repeat what a lot of anti-voice said before, but I find it ridiculous that LL tries so hard on voice features while a lot of issues are yet to be solved. I tend not to buy in the fairy tale that voice doesn’t effect on lag, as voice was starting to be implemented when I joined, I cannot compare but most people who I talk with that have been on SL since before voice implementation tell me it had hugely increased the lag.
Moreover, I know it is not a scientific survey, but very few people I know on SL use voice so I find it’s unfair that the satisfaction (?) of a minority affect on the whole population.
And last, I couldn’t agree more that with all the other tools that are dedicated to voice and are free, having voice in SL is really of little importance.
A few years ago, I was a regular user of Yahoo! chat-rooms, and I observed that its decline started with the implementation of voice. It was not the only reason, but it was definitely a important one.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:18 AM
This ’survey’ left no room for complaints about voice - aren’t we making it a little too obvious we don’t want to hear complaints from the userbase?
January 29th, 2008 at 8:34 AM
“We’re also looking for help on how best to prioritize additional voice features as we move forward.”
Did I miss that part of the survey? Anyway, here are my top two:
1) Allow easy recording in the client for making machinima.
2) Allow other VoIP systems (e.g. Skype) to interface into the SL client at the same time as Vivox.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:23 AM
@67
What does guys acting like girls have to do with homophobia? Are you suggesting to me that the guy who’s playing a female is always homosexual? I never made a connection to that in my post nor did I imply that whatsoever. In my experience on SL and most recently, there was a guy on our sim acting female in a very disturbing manner, trying to convince my customers they should be “BI” so he could have his way with them. Does that clear it up for you more?
Voice changing allows people to be even more dishonest about who they are and for some it might add to the character they wish to represent but when your inacurately playing someone you are not and causing RL problems for others, that’s when the voice changing becomes problematic. Just ask nearly any girl over at Isle of Lesbos who most are looking for relationships, only to be duped by a man playing as female.
Your connection with homophobia seems more self induced or you are just another angry person looking to take out your frustrations on someone else. Stop trying to read between the lines and create a situation you think you need to defend.
Allowing the option to turn voice off while others choose to use it was perfect implemention of this enhancement to SL. As stated before, when building across multiple sims it allows my team instant communication without the need to stop, start typing, then waiting for a response. My team gets their build done much quicker and allows us clear communication about the task at hand.
Lastly, voice is great for parties.
January 29th, 2008 at 9:50 AM
@89 — Given that every surveys that have been taken on voice at New World Notes and other independent sites have indicated that it’s not wanted by a large portion of the populace tells me that it’s not just the “same people posting over and over again every time voice is mentioned on the blog” as you claim. Also, I believe that the person who said she “barely heard anyone using it” was probably talking about BEFORE she turned it off.
Please grow up and get used to it, people. The public has spoken. Voice is good for some, but not good for others. Those who want to use it… fine, more power to you… you have that right, those who don’t that’s fine too. Stop bugging each other about it.
I completely agree with the poster who said that they don’t use it because they want to actually be able to continue to talk to the people the live with while using SL. I find being on the phone annoying and when I’m on it I can’t wait to get off of it. Using voice on SL would feel like being on the phone for many hours. I would go nuts.
Sincerely,
Anony Mouse
January 29th, 2008 at 10:22 AM
Please fix the grid first before spending more resources on voice. Also, I’d like to see Flash integration in SL before you spend anymore resources on voice.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:26 AM
The comments on this blog entry are a wonderful reason to be against voice. Now any female avatar who chooses not to use voice chat is immediately labelled as a guy who doesn’t want his cover blown. I can see it for builders… but I’m sure many who found a need for voice already use third party software that works better. I notice, however, that most of the supporters seem to only insult those against it instead of actually defending their position.
I choose not to use voice becuase as one of the younger members of SL that I’ve run into, I immediately stand out in a crowd and get a lot of unwanted attention.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:32 AM
I tried voice for few minutes when it was new. the first thing i heard on voice was the OH OHHH OHHHHHH which was no doubt the culmination of a romantic encounter in an adjacent area by avatars unseen. so i shut it off. since then i have used voice a half dozen times to play my guitar whilst sitting on an amp on my roof. kinda fun to do the same thing in SL and RL at the same time.
but i do notice in areas with voice, people clumped in the TP area and not building, selling, buyi