Voice Attack or Covas?

[C Lee]

So I own Astra for voice attack and am just now getting back into the game.

Is COVAS the same thing only them trying to steal money away from the amazing people that made Astra?

Or is it even the same thing?

Also if it is the same thing, I hope they hired the people that made Astra lol..

[titanopteryx]

Covas is a computer voice that narrates basically. Like when you're being attacked it says "Under attack". Or when you deploy your landing gear it says, "Landing gear deployed.". I don't know what Astra is, but Covas is just a voice says tells you what you're doing or what's being done to you.

[C Lee]

Originally posted by titanopteryx:

Covas is a computer voice that narrates basically. Like when you're being attacked it says "Under attack". Or when you deploy your landing gear it says, "Landing gear deployed.". I don't know what Astra is, but Covas is just a voice says tells you what you're doing or what's being done to you.

Ah. Astra allows you to say commands into the MIC and it'll perform the action. Saying something like "Astra, landing gear up" makes the landing gear go up using Voice attack. Its pretty sick.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

Voice Attack reacts to what you say, and can respond to you. You can also program it to do things, that don't exist in the game. For example, it can press and hold a scanning button for you, by you simply saying "scan!".

Covas is a different voice for your onboard computer. It doesn't say anything outside of what is programmed in the game.

[C Lee]

Originally posted by SickBoy:

They're not the same thing and fill completely different purposes.

COVAS is the built-in, in-game ship voice. It exists purely to give the player info and to be an immersive ship AI (albeit not one that actually does anything... it's just for 'flavor'). COVAS packs are for different voices/languages. They all provide the same information, so the only reason to buy additional ones is if you want a different voice... or to support the developers, I suppose.

VoiceAttack, on the other hand, is an external program for voice recognition-triggered commands. It's hugely versatile since it has scripting capabilities to execute a series of keypresses (or even basic IF/THEN conditional statements). There are packs you can get to augment your VoiceAttack setup, and while those packs (like Astra, or my personal favorite: Anubis) can have a COVAS-like voice (again: purely for immersion), that's not necessary at all. It's totally possible to use VoiceAttack without any additional sound files. Its function is, at its core, purely converting voice commands to key press sequences. VoiceAttack is not Elite: Dangerous specific and can be used with absolutely anything, even non-game applications.


TLDR:

COVAS = official in-game voice audio
VoiceAttack = unofficial voice recognition commands
Astra/Anubis/etc. = "packs" for VoiceAttack that include a bunch of pre-configured commands and voice sound files

Well so in other words.. COVAS is useless lol.

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

COVAS is useful if you want your computer to speak a different language, or a different voice, if you got tired of your current one.

[titanopteryx]

I bought Celeste. I dunno, I just like the voice. I'm thinking of buying Leo next. Sadly there's no Baroque Clown voice. I don't know what that sounds like, but I'm sure I'd recognize it if I heard it.

[C Lee]

Originally posted by SickBoy:

Originally posted by Destraega:

Well so in other words.. COVAS is useless lol.

Nope. Plenty of use. A lot of information is primarily communicated with it and, unlike VoiceAttack, it actually knows the state of your ship (and the game itself). VA is cool and all, but even with its variety of scripting capabilities it doesn't know the true state of, well, anything going on. It can certainly try, but one mis-step and you're in a heap of trouble.

Here's an example:

Let's say you have a voice command for "request docking permission". All VA can do is execute a series of commands... like "1", "E", "E", "D", "SPACE". While that works (at least in my setup), it ONLY works if you have the first tab of the left-side screen selected initially, and if you're not in that menu already, AND if your keybinds actually reflect what it's trying to do. Anything other than the perfect initial condition will cause the dominoes to fall in the wrong direction, so to speak.

Another example:

Let's say you have a voice command for going into supercruise. But let's also say that you're in a situation where you *can't* actually go into it (e.g. you're mass locked). Welp, VA is going to say that you went into that mode (whereas COVAS won't)... but in reality you didn't. While that's a fairly harmless situation, imagine if the same applied to your landing gear (which is very, very easy to do as well).

You ALWAYS have to double check what the voice says with VA and make sure you're setup properly for the sequence of commands... whereas COVAS will always give you the proper info since it's part of the game. Admittedly it can't execute commands, and there's no real necessity for buying additional packs.... but it's far from useless, and VA is far from being a replacement.

If only the dev team would hire whoever makes astra or any of the other ones and implement it into the game.. I honestly think it would make sales shoot through the roof once people realized they could talk to their ship and have it do stuff lol.

[titanopteryx]

Originally posted by Destraega:

Originally posted by SickBoy:

Nope. Plenty of use. A lot of information is primarily communicated with it and, unlike VoiceAttack, it actually knows the state of your ship (and the game itself). VA is cool and all, but even with its variety of scripting capabilities it doesn't know the true state of, well, anything going on. It can certainly try, but one mis-step and you're in a heap of trouble.

Here's an example:

Let's say you have a voice command for "request docking permission". All VA can do is execute a series of commands... like "1", "E", "E", "D", "SPACE". While that works (at least in my setup), it ONLY works if you have the first tab of the left-side screen selected initially, and if you're not in that menu already, AND if your keybinds actually reflect what it's trying to do. Anything other than the perfect initial condition will cause the dominoes to fall in the wrong direction, so to speak.

Another example:

Let's say you have a voice command for going into supercruise. But let's also say that you're in a situation where you *can't* actually go into it (e.g. you're mass locked). Welp, VA is going to say that you went into that mode (whereas COVAS won't)... but in reality you didn't. While that's a fairly harmless situation, imagine if the same applied to your landing gear (which is very, very easy to do as well).

You ALWAYS have to double check what the voice says with VA and make sure you're setup properly for the sequence of commands... whereas COVAS will always give you the proper info since it's part of the game. Admittedly it can't execute commands, and there's no real necessity for buying additional packs.... but it's far from useless, and VA is far from being a replacement.

If only the dev team would hire whoever makes astra or any of the other ones and implement it into the game.. I honestly think it would make sales shoot through the roof once people realized they could talk to their ship and have it do stuff lol.

Woah, hold on... You don't want to go from Diana Troi's mom to Hal.

[Agony_Aunt]

You can also use EDDI which will use your windows voices to give reports. It was designed initially to work with Voice Attack as a plugin but runs standalone as well.