HCS Voice Packs - Beware!

[catuk1181]

Sorry for the dramatic title but just a little heads up to any who are unfamiliar with HCS voice packs and are considering buying one for Elite Dangerous.

There are lots of people out there who will use these and enjoy them! (I have no doubt some of those people might comment on this discussion; hopefully not to give abuse-depending on their mental age) but there are also those who pay the rather significant price of £14.99 for a Verity pack (like me) and then find that they are not even using it after a week!

The promotional videos make it look simple and straight-forward with simple voice commands being responded to immediately! This was certainly not the case with my experience and after AGES setting up all the key-bindings, etc. I found that she only responded half the time.

The remainder of the time she would respond but do nothing (meaning I had to go investigate the key-bindings and make sure they had transferred across to Voice Attack, etc.) and then retry.

Basically, it was a complete headache and I now prefer to play without the voice pack, meaning I've wasted time and cash for nothing.

To those who might want to respond with♥♥♥♥♥♥ don't bother - this is simply a warning to those out there who are not currently using it with success, that it's not as easy as it is made out to be and is not always as effective.

For those who it does work for, I'm sure it's awesome!

Paul (the guy from HCS) was a nice guy who tried to help but it was still a fail in my experience.

----TLDR----

1. HCS Voice packs are not plug and play - they take hours of setting up
2. I paid £14.99 and refunds are not available if you can't / don't use it (I'm not 12 or rubbish with computers, but it was enough that I gave up with it)
3. Elite Dangerous is not as great as I'd hoped it would be and so I'm doubly gutted! :/

[Team Triss]

Originally posted by JoseyWales:

Holy balls Wall of Text

I don't think I could have asked for a better summary, thanks so much for typing that up.

I'm curious what you mean by the "Singularity" profile; is that the functionality that makes it so you can use several voice packs at once, or something else? I also see you mention the plug-in that interacts with the game; I think that EDFX is a replacement for that, but I'm assuming you use the "HCS Plugin" they mention on their website? How much of the game is that able to interact with, in your experience? Can it tell you that your mission was updated, that you're under attack, that your landing gear is deployed, e.g. all the stuff that your normal COVAS would tell you?

If so, I'm sold.

EDIT:

Originally posted by JoseyWales:

One more thing in response to

Originally posted by LoR Team Triss:

...but unless VA completely replaces the in-game COVAS I'm not sure I want to invest the money or the time.

This is more of an enhancement to COVAS, not a replacement. There are some places where you'll find that the voice pack talks over the in game COVAS, but you can go into game sound options and mute certain specific responses to prevent this.

Ok, so there are things that your COVAS would announce to you that the voice pack/VA can't read from the game and announce to you?

[Josey Wales]

I've been told (mainly by my wife) that I can be long winded. ;)

Singularity is the actual VA profile that all of their voice packs now use, in part to allow you to use multiple packs like you mentioned. I think the other big reason they went to it is to centralize everything and only have one profile to support.

I think you're right about EDFX, but I don't think it works with the HCS packs. I think someone wrote it to allow some custom functionality similar to the HCS plugin for folks who want to write their own VA profile. But don't quote me on this...I'm not certain.

So for the most part, the HCS pack's voice responses are to specific voice commands and don't replace the in game COVAS stuff. You still get all the same in game alerts unless you go into game settings and mute them. As I mentioned there are a few overlaps where the pack says the same thing or something similar, so there is some tweaking required to get everything right, but you definitely won't lose anything by using a pack.

[Ryu_Sheng]

Originally posted by JoseyWales:

One more thing in response to

Originally posted by LoR Team Triss:

...but unless VA completely replaces the in-game COVAS I'm not sure I want to invest the money or the time.

This is more of an enhancement to COVAS, not a replacement. There are some places where you'll find that the voice pack talks over the in game COVAS, but you can go into game sound options and mute certain specific responses to prevent this.

I disagree actually. For me it;s become a replacement. To the point where i've turned off the ingame voice completely.

Now, admitedly to gt this i had to use IVONA to replace the god awful MS Voice, as well as EDDI, but this mixed with HCS and VA have comepletely replaced the ingame voice, and it sounds better and more fluid.

Though in my case i have multiple voice packs, as well as the drunk passenger and cat ones! Makes for an all round good time

[DalekPrime]

One thing I read quite a bit in this thread: the keybindings aren't there for ED...this is true, however when I spoke with a support agent at HCS they sent me to a download that added all the missing keybindings. It quite literally took minutes to set up from there (after of course installing VA, the Voice Pack, and the singularity profile..)

I am currently looking into which other voice packs I will purchase to use in conjunction with
Vega. Data is cool and all, but I want a ship with a personality, too!

[in memoriam of Sharky]

Originally posted by DalekPrime:

One thing I read quite a bit in this thread: the keybindings aren't there for ED...this is true, however when I spoke with a support agent at HCS they sent me to a download that added all the missing keybindings. It quite literally took minutes to set up from there (after of course installing VA, the Voice Pack, and the singularity profile..)

I am currently looking into which other voice packs I will purchase to use in conjunction with
Vega. Data is cool and all, but I want a ship with a personality, too!

Nice necro....

Btw the thread was about a standalone software what was sold by an other company and it was not part of ED.

[Lupus]

Locked as necro.