My Voice Attack profile for AI control - user input wanted

[gridley 17]

Hi all,

Updated this post as this profile is now very functional, and [for me] indispensable for controlling AI.

Still always looking for input and feedback to improve. Please post here...

[Old post]

Since I was unable to find a voice attack profile shared online, I built one from scratch (heavily based on a released profile for VAC).

The list of functions is included as an HTML in the zip below as I couldn't get it to format here in the forum.

Any and all comments VERY welcome. I'm happy to make edits that make sense!

EDIT - new version up 27APR15:

* Added screenshot - delete if your Steam App is configured differently

* Added wildcards to numbers to allow faster team selection (thanks ChuWei and VA!)

* Got prefix/suffix pairs working for formation commands

* Added "disregard" to close menus

* Added some additional similar phrases for some commands

* Added "one" to select team member or fireteam 1

REQUIRES VoiceAttack 1.5.7.68 or greater.

Download HERE

Best,

sg

Edited April 28, 2015 by Gridley
New version 27APR15; significant improvements

[Patchwork 1]

I'll possibly see about giving this a go. I rather like the idea of controlling the AI this way. I've never really been a fan of handling AI so hopefully this might be a much needed improvement for me.

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

I am interested in the subject of voice recognition for ArmA and have read about Voice Attack but I haven't used it, yet. According to the manual Voice Attack allows you to issue mouse clicks with voice commands. This could be useful for mods like AGM where the earplugs and other features are accessed by mouse clicks. Does this really work reliably in VA?

Gridley, choosing Jojo-the-Slayer's profile as a basis for your VA-profile was an excellent choice. It is one of the most elabvorate VAC profiles I know. Jojo-the Slayer also published a mission specifically designed for testing his profile in battle. The briefing provides valuable info about the commands. Probably you can use the same mission to test your VA profile. Here's a link: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=22709 The mission is also available on Steam.

[gridley 17]

I am interested in the subject of voice recognition for ArmA and have read about Voice Attack but I haven't used it, yet. According to the manual Voice Attack allows you to issue mouse clicks with voice commands. This could be useful for mods like AGM where the earplugs and other features are accessed by mouse clicks. Does this really work reliably in VA?

Gridley, choosing Jojo-the-Slayer's profile as a basis for your VA-profile was an excellent choice. It is one of the most elabvorate VAC profiles I know. Jojo-the Slayer also published a mission specifically designed for testing his profile in battle. The briefing provides valuable info about the commands. Probably you can use the same mission to test your VA profile. Here's a link: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=22709 The mission is also available on Steam.

Thanks AK -

I haven't used the feature yet, but yes, VA does allow voice activation of mouse and controller (joystick) button clicks. You can set it up to click or double-click any button and even position the pointer at specific places on the screen. You can also use voice to control the scroll wheel.

Regarding Jojo's mission, I tested it with my VA profile and aside from some minor deviations in my spoken phrases, it works great! Thanks for the tip.

Best,

sg

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

SG, I will be afk from early March until the second half of April, so there's no point in downloading and testing VA, right now. But I intend to do so when I'm back. Since you seem to be the only person with first hand experience, would you be willing to test the mouse click and mouse wheel features? Could you comment on how intuitive and straightforward the software is? Do you have to be a computer nerd to get it to work or can anybody set it up easily?

By the way, if you're interested, I made a VAC profile which is different from Jojo's. He concentrates on commanding the AI and he does it extremely well. I normally don't play with AI, so my profile deals with controlling the game itself, some addons (TFAR, AGM, etc) and external software such as TrackIR. It is linked in the spoiler in my signature. There's also a spreadsheet I made to organize and structure the keyboard and voice commands. You may not find the German activation phrases useful but if you replace them with your own you'll get a good reference of which phrase does what in the game.

If you don't mind I'd like to take the opportunity and mention another voice recognition software which is pretty popular in the flight simming scene at the moment. The developer, Livrot, is trying to introduce his tool to the ArmA community. He is actively listening to users and very willing to implement changes to make it even more useful. His thread is here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?185400-Livrot-Mic-Command-speech-recognizer-and-macro-tool

[gridley 17]

Since you seem to be the only person with first hand experience, would you be willing to test the mouse click and mouse wheel features? Could you comment on how intuitive and straightforward the software is? Do you have to be a computer nerd to get it to work or can anybody set it up easily?

Happily. Might not get to it until the weekend, but I'll post as soon as I do.

By the way, if you're interested, I made a VAC profile which is different from Jojo's. He concentrates on commanding the AI and he does it extremely well. I normally don't play with AI, so my profile deals with controlling the game itself, some addons (TFAR, AGM, etc) and external software such as TrackIR. It is linked in the spoiler in my signature. There's also a spreadsheet I made to organize and structure the keyboard and voice commands. You may not find the German activation phrases useful but if you replace them with your own you'll get a good reference of which phrase does what in the game.

Downloaded - thanks!

If you don't mind I'd like to take the opportunity and mention another voice recognition software which is pretty popular in the flight simming scene at the moment. The developer, Livrot, is trying to introduce his tool to the ArmA community. He is actively listening to users and very willing to implement changes to make it even more useful. His thread is here: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?185400-Livrot-Mic-Command-speech-recognizer-and-macro-tool

I'll definitely gave that a look too.

[kremator 1065]

Excellent mate. Thanks. I bought Voice Attack mainly for use in Elite Dangerous, but am starting to use it in Arma3. It is a fantastic piece of software.

[gridley 17]

would you be willing to test the mouse click and mouse wheel features? Could you comment on how intuitive and straightforward the software is? Do you have to be a computer nerd to get it to work or can anybody set it up easily?

Hi AK,

Had some time this morning, so I created a test profile to use mouse functions controlled by voice. Just wanted to get back to you - it is very straight forward and worked very well.

Here's a screen shot of the functions dialog:

You can see, it's pretty comprehensive, includes separate press and release functions to enable dragging, as well as clicks and double clicks. I didn't have time to play with screen mapping, and I can see where that might be resolution dependent and difficult to share profiles with such coordinates, but clearly has a lot of power.

Best,

sg

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

Thank you Gridley. You and Kremator seem to be happy with VA. I found a short Youtube clip where someone used VA in ArmA3 but most people seem to use it for space games. From what you said in this thread and some Youtube tutorials I get the impression that VA is a nice piece of software and I am looking forward to trying it. Does VA have any bugs or other shortcomings? Are there any features which don't work as advertized? How does VA compare to the competition, especially VAC?

[gridley 17]

AK,

I haven't used others, except some freeware options that are no longer supported (articulate, for example), so I can't really fairly compare to VAC. VAC seems to have more profiles shared by users for some reason, but maybe because it's been around longer. I have no complaints, and there aren't many complaints on the developers forums.

Best,

sg

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

VAC has been around for many years, now. The user interface looks a bit dated and is merely functional. VAC does not support mouse clicks, only keyboard commands. VAC has a lively forum and - as you say - the users are generally willing to share their profiles. For ArmA, there are quite a few available.

From what I know so far - after reading the manual and user comments in several gaming forums and watching several Youtube tutorials and demonstrations - VA seems to be much more user-friendly and modern. The quality of the voice recognition seems to be comparable if the speech recognition engine has been sufficiently trained. I have found many enthusiastic comments, only few people seem to have minor issues with it. VA seems to be used mostly in racing simulations and space games. The creator of VA says he doesn't want to have an official exchange of profiles on his forum, so the users have to find ways to organize the distribution of profiles - usually in their gaming forums. As far as the ArmA is concerned, we can use this thread for this purpose if more VA users chime in. I will write something about my own experience with VA when I have time to try the software.

[gridley 17]

Uploaded new version. This is likely final unless some glaring omissions are found or users suggest mods.

Thanks!

sg

[LeeManatee 4]

going to try asap

[tophof 10]

Thnx for the profile man.

Works like a champ.

[lerun 10]

Thanks will try out the new version.

I used Articualte before, and it allowed me to say everything I needed in one go about ordering squads. Though I had to wait a lot longer with the VA one.

Nice work though!

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

I am back from my trip and have begun testing the limited trial version of VA by creating a few simple commands. First impression: I find VA extremely responsive and editing the profile is very user-friendly. Unfortunately I found a show-stopper: Some keys of my German QWERTZ keyboard won't be triggered by VA even if the command is recognized. The same problem has already been described on the VA support forum by users with a UK keyboard and appearently the issue is being worked on.

[ChuWie 11]

[...]VAC does not support mouse clicks, only keyboard commands.

That is wrong. VAC does indeed support mouse clicks. Additionally it supports every single button on the keyboard, be it QWERTZ or any other sort of keyboard layouts, incl. media keys.

[ChuWie 11]

On another note, does Voice Attack now behave similar to how Articulate did/does?

E.g. complex commands such as "2,5,6,8 assign team red" without breaks inbetween?

Such a feature would probably drift me away from using VAC.

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

ChuWie, you're right about VAC. Thanks for pointing this out! I'll add mouse clicks to my VAC profile if I can work out how to do it.

I have not tried any complex commands in VA. As long as the problem with the buttons remains unsolved I will continue to use VAC.

[lerun 10]

On another note, does Voice Attack now behave similar to how Articulate did/does?

E.g. complex commands such as "2,5,6,8 assign team red" without breaks inbetween?

Such a feature would probably drift me away from using VAC.

Hi I have not gotten VA to work this way. That is why I have not gotten rid of Articulate as of yet.

Maybe I don't know enough about VA to get it to work.

[ChuWie 11]

Just a little heads up;

I was too curious if the dev ov VA already implemented/ or intends to implement such a feature. So I went ahead and asked in in their forums.

He told me that the current VA beta build has a 'wildcard' feature which works similar/if not exactly like Articulate did.

I did some testings and the had some positive results so far.

If you bought VA or just want to try out the current trial beta version (like I did); http://www.voiceattack.com/beta.aspx

The manual contains some informations about how to use it exactly but the short version is:

use asterisks around the command, such as:

*1*;*one* - for unit one

*2*;*two* - for unit two

*all*;*squad*;*everyone* - for squad selection

etc,..

(only works in current beta build!)

I'll play around with it a little bit more. I have to find a way currently to transfer my current speech recognition training profile to my virtual machine (where I've set up my test area, since I already used the trial of VA 6+ months back on my main PC).

If all works out well and if VA will be as much reliable for me concerning the recognition as VAC currently does, then I'll completely consider to switch.

(Potentially even share my profile once it's finished transfering it from VAC to VA [currently 4k+ phrases in my VAC ArmA 3 profile incl. WW_AI menu and SAMO suppress commands ;))

[don't rely on it for now though]

[gridley 17]

On another note, does Voice Attack now behave similar to how Articulate did/does?

E.g. complex commands such as "2,5,6,8 assign team red" without breaks inbetween?

Such a feature would probably drift me away from using VAC.

This works currently, just a short pause between saying each number.

[ChuWie 11]

Well this was what I meant, if it's possible without short pauses, as I mentioned.

With my previous post it's now official that it's indeed possible to issue commands without pauses/breaks between commands with the current beta of VA.

Unfortunately I couldn't transfer my speech recognition training profile for test purposes since, for what ever mysterious reasons, my training profile got wiped :(

That was about 3+ hrs of training just gone. And the recognition in VA with just 1-2 recognition training sessions is just frustratingly bad for me atm.

I stick to VAC for now but still consider the switch in near feature when I can get bothered for long recognition training sessions and transfer all my commands over from VAC to VA.

[gridley 17]

Thanks for the tip, ChuWie - I updated team selection and uploaded new version in first post.

Here's a poor video of the profile in action...

[ChuWie 11]

Nice, you're getting there :)

You can even tune it a bit more if you want. I noticed some pauses that could be eliminated as well via the same method;

2, 4, 6, 8, _pause_ you're team blue

3, 5, 7, _pause_ you're team yellow

The possibilities are endless ;)