VA is basically a voice-activated “macro” system to carry out commands and so forth - it’s quite popular with Star Citizen and Elite:Dangerous. Not only does it have the ability to carry out keystrokes, search text, or other commands, but you can also link in playback of audio for voice reponse.
I have several Elite:Dangerous voicepacks and command packs for VA, and was wondering if anyone’s used this for MSFS, and if so, what hurdles did they run into?
Was thinking of building some very basic voice functions for pilot/copilot interactions, such as preflight checks, inflight nav settings, AI pilot/autopilot toggles, and the like, using Amazon Polly for recording the copilot responses. Or, I could dive into the folders for the Elite:Dangerous packs and use a few of those as well… altho I’m not sure how good of a copilot Brian Blessed would make. “DIIIVE!!!” Yes yes, thank you Brian…
Being an Elite Dangerous voice attack user I also use the HCS packs who also have packs for MSFS and they are very well done indeed. You do need to spend time doing the speech recognition thingy for Windows. Theres two packs they have for MSFS. You can check them out on youtube here https://www.youtube.com/c/Elitedangerousvoicepack1/videos
I have the Co-pilot Elise one and its pretty good. It also recognizes when you change planes.
With ED I have about 8 packs. You could use some of the sound files from the ED Packs, however they wont be the same as those are specifically designed for ED and Star Citizen where Captain Anderson and Elise have the correct responses for MSFS. Would be a very long editing process in Audition or whatever audio editing software you would use to get the correct responses then you’d have to program Voice Attack with a new profile and add in the commands and responses.
I did it once before for a “Low Pressure Warning” for American Truck Simulator for a streamer and it took a while to just find Verity saying the correct words then combine them together in Audition so she said “Warning Low Air Pressure”
One of my friends has the Brian Blessed one lol and Ive heard some of his responses.
I’ve been using it for quite a while, though it has kind of fallen into the background lately.
I do still use some of it’s macro capabilities almost daily when I hit a button on my Logitech Heavy Equip Console to do screen captures while in flight.
Works great. I mostly use it to switch views (“left wing” “right wing” “pilot” “external” etc). I set it up to increase the speed/altitude values by higher multiples because I got tired of spinning them over and over. But I haven’t used it for that in awhile. But yeah, it works just fine.
I have the Capt. Andersen and Capt. Elise voice packs. I prefer the Elise. Haven’t noticed any real issues with them. You can’t edit them, but you can make a profile of thing you want to add and the link that profile to the voice pack profiles. I like it when flying commercial aircraft because it feel more like having a co-pilot in the cockpit with you.
I bought it for MSFS2020 actually. Mixed success so far.
It does not always seem to work with the ATC responses - not sure if it’s because the pop out box is on another monitor.
Hopefully those that have it working with FS2020 can provide some pointers…
I think I remember splitting the ATC to another window and trying to set up VA to activate against that window name and it not working (even when I specified that window name as the Active Window). I might have had to click the window to make it work, then click the main MSFS window back and forth. And you know how MSFS doesn’t like it if another window is the modal window. Anyway, I ended up bringing the window back under MSFS.
I set up my Left Control and Number Pad keys to respond to ATC, then had VA activate against that. Like “Press Left Ctrl + Num Pad 2 keys and hold for 0.1 seconds and release”. For some reason, I couldn’t just say “Two” to activate it, so I had to make it something more verbose. I used “Alpha 2” and it worked. But to be honest, it’s easier for me to just click the respective entry on the ATC window most of the time anyway.
I have the aviator voice pack for voiceattack, I love it, it is like having a copilot that takes your orders and acknowledges that it did what you said. Especially helpful for VR to tune radios, set auto pilot and many other tasks.
We’re hoping to provide a free demo this side of Christmas - Just so people can try both VoiceAttack and our Aviator packs. I’ll let you know once we have that organised - Meantime, we will be supporting Flightsim for a long time, and it is early days. All planes are supported too, so one pack fits everything. More script wil be added when required too, as well as some more chit-chat style responses - Our eventual plan is to include a ton of information as well so that the player can ask about anything flight, and our packs will be able to respond/explain. That’s a little way off, but rest assured, we take development for games we support very seriously and want to bring the immersive experience to new levels as time ticks by
A demo is a great idea, I’m not sure what I’ll get out of the package over what I can do now. I have watched the videos but I think hands on will make its own case if there is one for me.
Are there any differences in the commands available between the current 3 different voice packs? I’m wondering why Elise is $21 while the other 2 are only $14 each. Do they all have the same commands available?
Hey folks - Those of you that use our packs (Elise, Anderson or Williams voices), let us know how you’re getting on with them. Feedback is important, and we want to make the product as best as we can…
The most important thing for us is that we support as many planes as possible with just the one pack required - On top of that, we’d like to hear what you think in terms of suggestions for what we might be able to add.
Does HCS Voicepacks use the emulated keyboard commands to operate the aircraft? Some of those commands have timing problems if a knob has to be turned (e.g., ALT, HDG etc.). Did you solve those issues in HCS Voicepacks or are they still there and the user has to adjust timings to be accurate. Also, do you a profile listing for the commands you cover in HCS Voicepacks? Thanks.
