Hey all. Survived a severe weather event (Summertime weather clashing with an unusual Spring-like strong cold front). Had a few close calls, but at the end I still have power (always good).
As said at the end of my E:D blog post (how I was planning to get Voice Attack), I’m using the free trial version. This is actually recommended by the dev to grab before paying for the product — reason being how you got to make sure it’ll even work with your computer (and I highly appreciate this).
But before I can use it, I need to train my computer to understand the way I speak (via Speech Recognition). Having one issue with training though. See, there’s this pause button. But this thing sometimes auto-pauses as I’m saying the phrase on the screen.. highly annoying.
There’s also a time where the thing pretty much did a “no SHIT!!” moment, having me say “If you think you may have a poor quality microphone”, followed by “consider using a better microphone.”
…I think a few brain cells died when I saw those phrases (especially the ‘get a better mic’ one). Just, WHY! Most people should already know this! Why is Microsoft treating people like complete idiots that don’t know what to do when they have a bad mic!? Or, are they basing this from the number of complaints they had in the past, of people that were actually this dumb to ask them…?
Meh, whatever. Hopefully if I train this thing enough, I’ll be able to use Voice Attack for E:D.
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Well that didn’t take as long as I thought. Got the trial version of Voice Attack working and managed to open my calculator. I also did a custom command to move the mouse to the Recycle Bin and double click on it. Quite cool.
Then tried to play around with it in Elite: Dangerous (after wiping out the only profile I had). Sitting in my parking space, I tried to teach it to set the pips (ENG being first), and worked surprisingly well! I thought it was going to error out with the number of keystrokes I told it to set the pips, but it immediately set it without any issues. Very nice.
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I don’t remember what happened next, but I do remember looking for a Youtube video on how to set up Voice Attack commands for E:D, and every video was all “get a voice pack”. Odd, I’ve never heard of this being a requirement. So I did a search for a free voice pack, and found the one MrMyu used; ‘KICS’.
Finding an actual download of it was tough, as apparently this voice pack is no longer being supported by the maker (and one time I swear I nearly installed Ransomware on my computer, following one of the links that was posted to get it.. if it wasn’t for Firefox blocking the download, I might’ve been fucked).
Instead I found a legit link for it from megaupload and got it downloaded.. now to figure out how to install it (which is done by putting the files in the ‘Sounds’ folder where VA is installed).
Then you add the profile using what’s provided, and say “initialize” to test her. And this is where I had an issue, as this version of VA will not allow me to use a different profile in the trial version.
So I handed them $12 for the Steam version of VA (from what I understand, this version doesn’t require the user to maintain a license key, and will auto-update when a new version comes). Seems fair to me, and it’s only $2 more.
Now with the full version, I was able to set the profile and said “initialize”. Didn’t hear anything, tried saying it two more times… nothing. What’s wrong? I did it exactly as this video said to do! Read the comments section, and saw someone was having a similar issue.
Cross-checking what I had, it seems.. I now have to put the VP where Steam is installed.
With that done, I said ‘initialize’ again, and after an odd five second delay, it works!
Immediately tried it in E:D, trying to pull up the galaxy map (by saying “galaxy map”). I hear KICS saying “I’m on it”.. yet no map pops up. Then I try the pips by saying “engines”… again, nothing.
The hell..? I thought this was a requirement! What gives?! I even verified that it was sending the commands to the correct window! Looking in Google, there’s no videos (apart for setting KICS up with a HOTAS).
Meh.. well it’s past bedtime now. I’ll play with this tomorrow.