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! :/

[UltraZippy]

This post is quite old now and at the time I would have agreed, HCS setup was a real pain but the Singularity option makes it very easy to use. Just make sure you follow the install help (the manual for me was out-of-date) and you should be able to get things running the same as you see on the youtube vids. It should create a file on you desktop which tells you how to set key binds in the game, they don't need to be anything real just a key bind HCS does the rest for you. Secondly use the Singualrity Profile in Voiceattack don't create your own, that's just making work for yourself.

[Cormellion]

One other thing too, if indoubt reinstall VA too. Also really make sure your sound files line up correctly I had mine in a higher sub folder for a bit and it completely foxed me as to why it wasn't working.

[SSNCnavaldex]

Hey i reaaally wanna get into this :) i own a vr headset and would like to buy Orion or Eden , do you guys have any idea when it goes on discount? i read one guy saying he bought a pack with 50% discount

[Ryu_Sheng]

sales are rare

[Rick]

I have 3 of their packs and they work great for me. The thing is you have to do the voice recognition training with windows. If you don't do it several times, Voice attack isn't going to work right. It is voice attack and not the voice packes that have to understand you. The voice packs operated under voice attack. People that have problems with voice attack not understanding them, have most of the time, not trained windows enough. It is kinda a pain in the you know where you read a script to the computer over and over but in the end, it will pay off.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Цитата допису Rick:

People that have problems with voice attack not understanding them, have most of the time, not trained windows enough.

True. I did 2 training passes, and after that it understands even weird words of my not native English.

It is kinda a pain in the you know where you read a script to the computer over and over but in the end, it will pay off.

And if you keep in mind that you do it once and you use it for months, if not years, it's really worth the efforts.

[Christofor]

Elite dangerous + voice attack (voicepack ) makes the game so much more intense . Love it .

[SSNCnavaldex]

Цитата допису Chris(BE):

Elite dangerous + voice attack (voicepack ) makes the game so much more intense . Love it .

Your comment just made me buy voice attack and all the htc voice packs

[SSNCnavaldex]

Цитата допису Chris(BE):

Elite dangerous + voice attack (voicepack ) makes the game so much more intense . Love it .

Nah .... im ovbiously fooling... i have no money , i barely have now to buy voice attack , and then hopefully Orion in maybe some weeks , i can't ask more :'( ( and i fell in love with Eden and can't have her voice that as some people say , " t's like having butter poured into your ears " xD

[Cormellion]

The HCS are excellent I have a few and make the game easier. But it is VA you need. You can program VA yourself relatively easy and even get audio responses using MS inherient text to speech. BUT the HCS adds alot of immersion and sequenced commands you don't have to program yourself. As for voice training that is essential, I did multiple times, so I wasted what anhour... Not a lot really. Watch a few youtubes on VA and HCS, and program your flight sticks/ keyboard keys for HCS commands to work. I'd stick with the default folders, but remember if you buy steam VA as I did then the default won't work, you have to find the VA folder in steam. oh a good feature in HCS is the missing bind text that gets dumped to your desktop, that let's you know which keybinds are needed in eleite.

[ChozoSR388]

Yeah, the Singularity system has really lowered the steepness of the learning curve, but if you have trouble with some things, YouTube is your friend in regards to VA. I have the non-steam version, myself, but I'd imagine they're pretty much identical. I'm still training - not that I really need to - but I've done like 14 or 15 passes since I bought the program last year. By the way, the VA website has a free tool for backing up your speech training profile. Good for if you need to reinstall Windows, or a problem crops up. But, back to the packs, I've not had any issues even back when I first picked up Verity last year.

[Bodphast]

I originally came across ED while trying to decide if I wanted to jump on to the Star Citizen band wagon or not. At that time (and maybe still) it seemed a better option. I watched a video showcasing ED and Voice Attack (using ASTRA) and I was hooked. I bought ED, VA, ASTRA from HCS and an X-52 Pro HOTAS. It took me about an hour to 1.5 hrs to set it all up.... the HOTAS, VA, ASTRA and ED (I also installed EDFX). I have had no issues and there is nothing I can't do. It was a bit of a process to set it all up but that is to be expected when integrating so many different technologies but it was well worth it... IMHO. I am really enjoying it so far (I still thing Star Citizen will be a blast.....one day) and I still jump into a few games of LOL every now and then to break up the monotony which anything done to excess will do. Just my two cents....CHEERS!!!

[Team Triss]

Цитата допису Bodphast:

I originally came across ED while trying to decide if I wanted to jump on to the Star Citizen band wagon or not. At that time (and maybe still) it seemed a better option. I watched a video showcasing ED and Voice Attack (using ASTRA) and I was hooked. I bought ED, VA, ASTRA from HCS and an X-52 Pro HOTAS. It took me about an hour to 1.5 hrs to set it all up.... the HOTAS, VA, ASTRA and ED (I also installed EDFX). I have had no issues and there is nothing I can't do. It was a bit of a process to set it all up but that is to be expected when integrating so many different technologies but it was well worth it... IMHO. I am really enjoying it so far (I still thing Star Citizen will be a blast.....one day) and I still jump into a few games of LOL every now and then to break up the monotony which anything done to excess will do. Just my two cents....CHEERS!!!

So as someone who's pretty new to this, were you able to find ample resources to get yourself up and running? What's EDFX, and how did you find out about it? Is it an ED plugin that works with VA so it responds to stuff that's happening in game?

I've been giving serious thought to taking a Saturday off from playing to get VA and a voice pack (can't decide which one!) up and running and redo/rethink my keybinds, but unless VA completely replaces the in-game COVAS I'm not sure I want to invest the money or the time.

I would really appreciate a quick summary of your experience and what it provides, or, you maybe a link to something similar. I'll admit I haven't looked at it in a few weeks and so my memory is a little hazy, but I don't think I found an answer to my question, "does it just respond to you or does it also respond to the game?"

[Josey Wales]

Цитата допису LoR Team Triss:

So as someone who's pretty new to this, were you able to find ample resources to get yourself up and running? What's EDFX, and how did you find out about it? Is it an ED plugin that works with VA so it responds to stuff that's happening in game?

I've been giving serious thought to taking a Saturday off from playing to get VA and a voice pack (can't decide which one!) up and running and redo/rethink my keybinds, but unless VA completely replaces the in-game COVAS I'm not sure I want to invest the money or the time.

I would really appreciate a quick summary of your experience and what it provides, or, you maybe a link to something similar. I'll admit I haven't looked at it in a few weeks and so my memory is a little hazy, but I don't think I found an answer to my question, "does it just respond to you or does it also respond to the game?"

Apologies in advance for a long post, but you asked... so...

I can't answer about EDFX, but I can speak to the HCS Packs. At a high level, I have ASTRA using the 'Singularity' profile, and I'm not sure how I'd play in VR without it. Once setup correctly it has worked nearly flawlessly for me, but it does take an initial investment and some tweaking. It's not perfect, but I'm not dissappointed in the purchase by any means.

First and foremost it is mainly a tool to provide voice commands. You could do the same with just VA and create your own profile if you didn't mind the work to do so. But it also provides a plug-in for VA that is able to read from the ED journal and can track game state, etc. in order to provide specific commands & responses tailored to the state. It can also respond to some in game events.

What you get for the cost, apart from not having to program your own voice commands, is a lot of additional voice response stuff. There are certain modes where it will mimic a simple AI and "converse" with you. It also has responses tailored to the specific voice commands. For example, you can say something like, "Engage System Jump" and it will respond with, "Engaging Jump" and additional stuff, like counting down exit from Hyperspace, etc. depending on the "verbosity" settings. You can also say things like, "On my mark, engage jump", then within a configurable period you can say, "Mark", or "Punch it", or several other things to engage.

It is also able to do things like when you've approached a station and requested docking permission (which you can do, appropriately enough, by saying "Request docking permission"), it can then ask if you'd like to deploy landing modules & divert power to shields, to which you can give a yes or no.

You are not locked down to one specific voice command for most commands or responses, but it is list based, meaning there are a set of specific commands/responses it understands. It isn't like Amazon Alexa where it can try to infer meaning. If you are enterprising you can customize some commands, add additional triggers, etc., but this does make updates more "fun".

As far as my complaints or caveats about it, the documentation and updates leave something to be desired. There are some videos out there and an extensive forum that helps, but it is an effort to find answers when you need them. Also, there are definitely features that are under advertised and not exactly intuitive. But if you have the patience to deal with a few hours of initial setup and tweaking, and a couple of hours to mess with it when a new update surfaces, then you may find it to be worth it. It also helps to learn the basics of how VA profiles are written, because sometimes I've actually found it easier to dig into the profile to find how to trigger certain commands than to rely on "documentation".

It is definitely worth bearing in mind that HCS is essentially a couple of gamers who started out creating a VA profile, ended up expanding and landing some pretty big voice talent, and grew from there. It shows that they aren't a traditional software/game design company, especially when it comes to updates, documentation, etc. They are pretty responsive to support questions, but sometimes make assumptions that a "real" software house wouldn't make. If you have the patience to deal with this then you'll be OK. It is definitely not as simple as installing and running. There is definite tweaking required.

Another huge thing I would emphasize if you do go for it, is to run through the Microsoft voice training *several* times. It took me four or five passes to get the voice recognition to where I wanted it to be. The more times you run it the better. It was frustrating at first, since my initial experience was that the recognition was just ok, but after additional training it usually works very well now. There are times when I'll have to issue the same command twice before it responds, but that's pretty rare. And I don't believe I've ever had it incorrectly trigger something when I haven't issued a command, or fire the wrong command on me.

Anyway, that's my overview. Feel free to ask if you have any additional or specific questions.

[Josey Wales]

One more thing in response to

Цитата допису 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.