1. Yahoo chat did not fall apart when voice was introduced there. Neither will Second Life. If hundreds of thousands of businesses across the world can conduct productive meetings on teleconferences, I have every confidence that when there is more exposure we'll develop the social norms to deal with it as effortlessly.
The sky is _not_ falling.

Posted at 8:26AM on Mar 8th 2007 by Jaymin Carthage

2. Whilst opinions differ about it, a number of the folks I first met in SL were refugees from There after There went voice. They were deaf, mute etc. They are already disadvantaged in RL, having it chase them to There, and now it appears to SL is just extending that disadvantage to a place that, for the vast majority of us doesn't need it.

That's not to say it won't be accepted and used, but we've managed just fine without, and much though it pains me to agree with Prok we're not seeing a huge demand for it anywhere I've seen.

I make some of my money in SL from teaching. I won't be switching over to voice. Why not? I mostly teach 1:1 so the same old voices predominanting isn't an issue (except my dulcet tones of course). But teaching in SL, in groups or 1:1 has some lovely benefits to using text. Firstly it gets the student a free set of notes, which also means they concentrate on what is being said (well mostly) rather than scribbling down what is said. This leads to smarter questions from the learners because they're thinking as you teach, and thinking about what you're teaching. Bliss.

I've taught a small number of groups in SL and RL cross-over. SL with text of course. SL lets a very different group of people express themselves fully and fairly to RL. Often the ones that stop to think get lost in the RL classroom because the people that don't stop to think leap in and occupy the floor. Some of those, a very small proportion IME, speak fast and think fast (and often type fast too), but because "typing over" is less intrusive than "speaking over" the people who take their time to think before replying are still likely to actually express their ideas. Changing how your students think and react is surely part of the art of teaching?

I've also run business meetings. The ability to swear about pig-headed clients vocally whilst typing "Of course we can do that" can't be overlooked. Again, although typing may be a little slower, you get free notes at the end of the meeting, well worth it once more.

I'm not saying I'll never use voice in SL, although it is unlikely. The places were it could be used I still more advantages to not using it. One of the places I would seriously consider it is when working with dyslexic learners - reading and writing disadvantages them seriously. It would be one I'd have to stop and talk to the learner about though: dyslexic learners often struggle with taking notes, so having well spelt notes easily available is an advantage for most of them too.

As for chatting with my friends. I "know" what Akela sounds like, despite never having heard his voice. When it turns out he doesn't actually growl and howl and sound like a wolf I'll be disappointed, he sounds so much better in my head!

Posted at 9:21AM on Mar 8th 2007 by Eloise Pasteur

3. I'm sorry, but voice chat isn't "disenfranchising" anyone. It's simply adding a capability to virtual interaction that exists in RL interaction. Personally, if voice chat were intentionally excluded from the client because of the objections of some people who feel it disenfranchises them because of real world considerations (physical differences, role playing another sex) people like me who badly want a VR environment that equals or exceeds most of the capabilities we have in RL would be the ones feeling disenfranchies. LL is betting there are more of us in the second camp than the first camp. I think they're right.

Posted at 11:52AM on Mar 8th 2007 by Luciftias Neurocam

4. I, uh... actually I do growl and howl in RL... a little too much.

Posted at 11:23AM on Mar 8th 2007 by akela.talamasca

5. I have also had a chance to see the Voice Beta in action, and yes, it IS cool. The positional audio system works, even if it tends to hiccup sometimes when getting a dozen or more avs in one place (not surprising, as collecting and redistributing all that audio is basically an order-N-squared problem). Using Push-To-Talk is also a Good Thing to help eliminate background noise, though I'm never sure how long I should wait after "keying up" before speaking, or how long to stay "keyed up" after I finish talking. Perhaps VOX could be implemented, with a way to set the "squelch" on the client side?

Still an open question: How will the voice support handle SAM running alongside the SL client? This will be important for those of us who DJ in SL. I need to try and test this.

And once this goes live, I may need a better-quality headset. I was looking at some reasonably-priced models from Sennheiser last night.

Posted at 12:32PM on Mar 8th 2007 by Erbo Evans

6. While I understand voice is the next step in virtual worlds, I think it would be widely accepted only when users will have a choice of what kind of voice to use. In a sense, users would be allowed to have a voice either live using VoIP (like now), or through the means of text to speech software.
Some people's real voices would sound very inappropriate when coupled with their SL avatar. By having a choice of voices to select from, the end user would be able to make their own selection on how their avatar should sound. Sounds like a nice little business to start in SL, doesn't it?
I'll race you!

Posted at 1:05PM on Aug 8th 2007 by JasoJatho

7. In the education and business environment, voice is a much sought after feature. Looking at existing synchronous web based learning platforms, they all have voice. That being said, it will make a huge difference to some of the long term residents to whom the image is important.

I have heard stories of There, and I hope it doesn't come to that in Second Life. Personally, I will make heavy use of voice, however I won't ignore the keyboard. Last night I was in Lusk on the preview grid with others in the voice chat system, but I wasn't speaking due to roomates being asleep. When I would respond to things being said by typing (I type fast enough to keep up), often they would go unnoticed.

I joked at one point that "This is what it must feel like in There". But nobody laughed.

Posted at 4:00PM on Mar 8th 2007 by otakup0pe

8. I've not tried it, not likely to, but a little birdie tells me that voice on the mac doesn't work very nicely - vivox doesn't always close and the audio stream to a mac is horrible. Anyone have any firm data on this?

Posted at 1:55PM on Mar 9th 2007 by Eloise Pasteur