![show #13 [art by richard a.goldberg]](https://draxfiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/screen-shot-2014-04-04-at-5-31-34-am.png)
we are tackling two big challenging things this week: recording the show with our oculi on while trying not to bump into physical objects AND we are discussing the linden lab terms of service.
brace yourself and listen to the full hour before commenting, deal?
and additional reading material as per usual below:
– sl go [sl beauty for mobile & low-end machines] now unlimited use for 9.95 US$ per month
![pro tools, google docs & sl go by onlive [on an oooold mac pro!]](https://draxfiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tdf-18-collage-onlive.png)
– jo and her rift review [+ maria korolov says: “the race is on!”]
– should fb buy ll? [according to april 1st & gwyn llewellyn they already have]
– vitriol against oculus team!
– philip rosedale on identity in the metaverse of the future
– forgot to mention: sl now can share to twitter and flickr
– our guest richard a.goldberg
– what is work for hire?
– what are the linden lab tos?
![to agree or not to agree [pic by justin esparza]](https://draxfiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tdf-rh-th-13.jpg)
– jo goes to frisland this weekend
![frisland in sl [pic by honour mcmillan]](https://draxfiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/frisland-3.png)
– rescue the petrovsky flux art installation in sl
– starting monday april 7th = virtual worlds best practices in education
– paradise lost [immersive theatre only in our metaverse!]
the drax files radio hour [with jo yardley] is a weekly production of basicdrax entertainment.
the show is supported by leap motion, kahruvel design, vika creations, humanoid animations, escapades,botanical, death row designs, nantra, angel red cotoure, and landscapes unlimited!
music by bd
special thanks to richard a.goldberg for providing the station id this week.
contact the show via skype draxfiles, avatar draxfiles or email radio@draxfiles.com.
the drax files radio hour 
I’ve been thinking about the text chat aspect of future VR. I think I said once already that text chat has no place in VR, yet I’m aware now that some people use text chat simply because they either can’t talk, or can’t speak English well, but can read or write English. So text chat might have to remain for the sake of accessibility.
Loki, there are some important and perfectly valid factors that make text chat an absolute necessity in VR. Let’s have a look at them, one by one:
1. Many people feel that giving their voice away is a no-no, because it connects their physical and virtual existences too much.
2. Many people’s voices are not in accordance to how they’ve reimagined themselves in the virtual world of their choice. Using voice would have – as Inara Pey explained – a very detrimental effect on the mystique of their avatar characterisation.
3. Many people, as you pointed out, are self-conscious about their accent in English or about their ability to speak in English.
4. Many people simply don’t like the way their voice sounds through a headset or other PC microphone.
5. Many people simply hate voice chat, because they want to immerse themselves in relative quiet and in peace. Voice chat makes this utterly impossible.
6. Voice chat in an environment with multiple speakers, all speaking on top of each other, is an obnoxious, annoying mess.
7. There are always cases where you need to enter text in order to give the exact spelling, syntax or whatever to someone (for instance, the exact syntax of an LSL command). Try doing that with voice. Or try giving someone the exact spelling of an unknown word in voice – not many people are familiar with the NATO phonetic alphabet.
I am appalled to see that these factors have been downplayed and downright disregarded by the proponents of “total immersion” VR goggles who have been telling us all along that these things don’t matter.
PS: VR goggles are not the Messiah of the virtual reality realm.
To those working on Intuitive user interfacing with a headset i think you’ll find most of your factors are not considered important reasons to keep a complicated chat interface. But as someone who exclusively uses Text Chat in SL and has anxiety over using phones and Skype, it’s a subject thats close to heart. In the further will i have to get over my anxiety and embrace a voice only world? or is there a solution that can cover your factors with text typing & keyboards that simply hasn’t been tried yet.
No. Those who work on communications applications – at least those who want to do their job right – try to cover both bases: text and voice. And add another factor: More often than not, voice chat may be problematic (distortion, intermittent reception etc).
The only ones that dismiss the need for text-based communications are those who simply think they know better than everyone else and that they are somehow entitled to force their elitist ideas down people’s throats. And no, I wouldn’t embrace a voice-only virtual world. As a matter of fact, voice has been a pathetic failure in Second Life for all the reasons I’ve mentioned.
And another thing that is overlooked is that here we’re talking about how people have experienced certain implementations, technologies and concepts and how they have assessed them. Voice chat has not been widely adopted in SL. Even if Vivox suddenly and magically solved all of its problems and plugged all of its numerous security holes, it still would not become the #1 method of communications. And, of course, neither will the Rift become the #1 method of using Second Life.
Let me add here that, with one of our business associates abroad, having a video-conference on Skype with voice is impossible, simply because his connection is crap. If Skype was voice-only, what option would we have then? None.
And let’s not forget those who are hard of hearing or deaf, as well as those people with a speech impediment.
Yes voice chat is an option but far from being good or in some cases even functional.
I use voice in games all the time and have no issues using it in SL, but I understand that some people do.
Voice to text and voice morphing will take care of some of those problems but text to voice may also be an option.
Where you type on your keyboard but it is turned to voice chat in world.
I also think that perhaps an in world virtual keyboard may help.
But we’re far from finding a proper solution for everyone.
Fact is though that with the Rift typing is very very difficult.
Voice to text is far from reliable. And voice morphing opens another can of worms, as drama whores will immediately start with the “everyone who uses voice morphing is of different gender than their avatar” or whatever other slogan they’ll pull out of their rectums in order to cause, well, drama.
A virtual in-world keyboard? That sounds like a good idea, but you’ll need a proper gesture tracking/gesture control system (Myo, Leap Motion, Kinect, etc).
Yes absolutely.
I think we’re going that way anyway because the mouse, keyboard and (sometimes huge) controllers we’re using now are frankly ridiculous in VR.
We can use our hands in VR in almost as much detail as we can in RL, so a VR keyboard might be the way forward.
Either way, its all still very early days.
Maybe I can experiment with it once I get my leap motion.
Another option would be a VR/RL button, one that allows you (via cameras on your headset) to quickly see what is in front of you in RL so you can type or avoid walking into a wall or to check what the cats are doing.
Many say that a headset that can do both VR and AR is the way forward so that would solve a lot of these issues as well.
Nevertheless I do think more and more VR people will start to use voice and this should be a good reason for LL to improve voice chat in SL.
I really don’t think the physical keyboard is going anywhere. We’ve seen a revival of high-quality, costly mechanical keyboards recently because gamers and typists need them. I need to write about 200-300 pages of documents each week, so I need a keyboard and, frankly, all attempts to replace the physical device with projected ones or what have you have failed miserably. And, by the way, rubber dome keyboards (like the a-dime-a-dozen you can get with every new PC) are crap.
As for voice chat… That’s what you think, but seven years of voice chat in SL has shown people can live very well without it and don’t care much about it. Also, you’re forgetting that LL can’t improve voice chat in SL, because it relies on an external vendor (Vivox).
necesito comunicarme con draxtor
Reblogged this on Jo Yardley's Second Life and commented:
Our latest Drax files radio hour episode, about ToS, Oculus, copyrights and much much more.
It is a shame that once you start a business these days, the first employee is not an engineer or developer but a lawyer.
i somehow missed this comment and yes so right you are!
Excellent episode, really enjoyed it. The interview with Richard A Goldberg was superb, not just from the Linden Lab TOS discussion either, the background to historical issues was wonderful too.
SUGGESTION: Look at Richard Garriott and his new ventures/customer engagement with his community, compare to the recent trend with SL/LL and the community there.
The interviews with Richard Goldberg and Dennis Harper were excellent. Richard offers a calm, insightful, well-structured and well-supported case for why the current ToS are too far-reaching (without the screaming and the ego-fawning drama whoring we have witnessed). Dennis offers very good information on SL Go. And then, there’s the VR goggle stuff, which is nothing but filler.