[sldev] Voice

[Matthew Dowd]

> 
> I assume it's less noticeable with actually using voice, because I
> guess using voice will draw the attention away from the screen anyway
> ... equally fundamental but probably less noticeably for those who
> do, because people who tend to use voice, seem to tend to use SL in
> a less immersive way anyway.  I guess these are more those kind of
> people who write articles about SL saying it's a chatroom with
> 3D avatars and now it's going to be Skype with pictures.

That's also my concern with voice - I suspect if someone produces a secondlife viewer which will allow you to teleport and use voice but without the graphics (indeed this is essentially Sleek plus voice), they'd be happy.

If were were allowed to wager ;-), I'd even put a bet that we'll see something like this as a feature request in the forums or jira!

However,

> It sort of reduces the in-world stuff to an animated background
> wallpaper.  I noticed this already when using the voice viewer, it
> is a sublte cause, but for me has a fundamental effect on the way
> I use SL.

This is the point I made in the jira issue I created to capture votes from those who want the new interface abandoned rather than fixed. Farallon's screenshots, Brenda's commentary and indeed the idea of docking windows, all revolve around the philosophy that the SL viewer as a whoe is the communication media - that the raison d'etre of SL is that it is an immersive communication medium and that all components of the enviroment (visual, audio, spatial, etc) are equally important integrated components of that communication.

The new UI seems very much driven by the idea of "lets create a skype like application within the SL viewer" and as a result it starts segragating these different components components of communitication and breaks the unity between them; worse it enforces this seperation onto the user rather than providing an experience where the user moves naturally between them without even noticing - and for me, that goes against the entire philosophy behind virtual 3D environments.

And that is fundamentally, why the new UI has had such a negative reaction. There are some nice features in there, such as the ability to see the list of all people involved in a group IM session, but the fundamental motivation and philosophy behind the new UI is wrong (IMHO).

Matthew
 

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