VAICOM PRO plugin for VoiceAttack

[sthompson]

16 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

EDIT: Right I tested. You don't need to press a TX for "Salute" and "Request launch" whether the canopy is open or not, IF you have REL/HOT enabled. Only tested for Hornet on Super Carrier. So you say that doesn't work for you?

 

If Salute is the problem then could this be a Tomcat issue? My recollection is that the Tomcat "Salute" command is not the same as the Hornet one in the DCS internal system, and that VAICOM implements the Hornet (Supercarrier) version. So the VAICOM voice command Salute does not work for me in the Tomcat but does work in the Hornet. But I haven't tested this recently and so could be wrong.

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, Razor18 said:

I just clicked DIAL from MAN to OPER and back, now VA recognizes both without a TX press too...

Aha! That switch is one of the few things where my knowledge of VAICOM lacks. I did fiddle with it the other day, and REL/HOT stopped, and had to switch it back an forth a a couple of times. So that could be it.

You can safely upgrade VoiceAttack again. VAICOM only uses it as proxy to Microsoft Speech Recognition. 

 

1 hour ago, sthompson said:

If Salute is the problem then could this be a Tomcat issue?

I asked him if it was especially for the Hornet/SC.

But it seems this is solved above. 

Cheers all! 

[Subcidal]

Still stuck in an auto update loop, Seems like I'm not alone so that's somewhat comforting lol. Good to know it was mostly AH-64 stuff. Any idea what's new in the RIO update? I'm brushing up on the f-14a currently.

 

 

[MAXsenna]

3 hours ago, Subcidal said:

Still stuck in an auto update loop, Seems like I'm not alone so that's somewhat comforting lol. Good to know it was mostly AH-64 stuff. Any idea what's new in the RIO update? I'm brushing up on the f-14a currently.

 

 

Just turn off auto update. 

Latest AIRIO had some LANTIRN update I believe. 

Edited September 13, 2022 by MAXsenna

[DerKlausi]

Hi all,

I've been using VA without issues so far and wanted to give VAICOM a go. However, I'm having a very strange issue: it simply won't recognize my commands! So far I've only tried it without launching DCS, but the VA 'log' window already tells me something's just not right. Examples:

"ATC"
My old profile recognizes: "ATC"
VAICOM profile recognizes: "at sea", "at seeing" (fluent) and "eight TC", "80 seem" when spelling letter-wise.

"Two, engage my target"
My old profile recognizes: "Two, engage my target"
VAICOM profile recognizes: "to engage might already had", "engage might take it", etc.

I'm not a native speaker, but speak fluent and pretty clear English with some small accent influences from UK and US which I can mostly 'switch off' when necessary. Any ideas?

**Edit**: I don't know if this could be related to my issue, but I've noticed 2 things:

1. In VAICOM Pro - Editor, words like "target" and "enemy" are missing from the keyword list, which only has 578 entries in total. Is this normal?

2. When training, I'm experiencing the same issue as someone commented on a YT video: VA does not show me any confidence score, instead a MS Windows Speech Recognition window pops up and offers me several choices, with all of the choices being different from what I just said.

 

Cheers,
DK

Edited September 15, 2022 by DerKlausi

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, DerKlausi said:

Hi all,

I've been using VA without issues so far and wanted to give VAICOM a go. However, I'm having a very strange issue: it simply won't recognize my commands! So far I've only tried it without launching DCS, but the VA 'log' window already tells me something's just not right. Examples:

"ATC"
My old profile recognizes: "ATC"
VAICOM profile recognizes: "at sea", "at seeing" (fluent) and "eight TC", "80 seem" when spelling letter-wise.

"Two, engage my target"
My old profile recognizes: "Two, engage my target"
VAICOM profile recognizes: "to engage might already had", "engage might take it", etc.

I'm not a native speaker, but speak fluent and pretty clear English with some small accent influences from UK and US which I can mostly 'switch off' when necessary. Any ideas?

**Edit**: I don't know if this could be related to my issue, but I've noticed 2 things:

1. In VAICOM Pro - Editor, words like "target" and "enemy" are missing from the keyword list, which only has 578 entries in total. Is this normal?

2. When training, I'm experiencing the same issue as someone commented on a YT video: VA does not show me any confidence score, instead a MS Windows Speech Recognition window pops up and offers me several choices, with all of the choices being different from what I just said.

 

Cheers,
DK

 

Hi! Did you read the manual? It's very good!

VAICOM doesn't do any recognition per say. Neither do VoiceAttack. That's why you have to do the initial training in Microsoft Speech Recognition, which does. English is not my first language, so I did this about twenty times, but you don't have to do that if VA already works well. In the manual you'll have some suggestion for setting up VA, and it's different if you're going to use the VSPX option.

Anyway, for your initial problem. In an ordinary VA profile "the keywords" are already in the profile/commands, so I have a feeling you didn't do the "Finish" step. It's not enough to just press "Finish". Read the pop-up. This will put the keywords/commands into the VoiceAttack profile, so VoiceAttack will match the speech-to-text from MS, and pass it on to the VAICOM plugin.

1. Try a re-reload in the keywords editor and then re-start VA. I think that number is correct after the initial installation. Make sure you have enabled import modules and theatres in the settings, or you want get all the ATCs from maps besides The Caucasus. This will also import some ships, whenever they are used in a mission, like the Forrestal. To get ALL the ATCs, you have to do a mission on ALL the maps. The VA log will tell you when you have imports. And, after every import, you need to do a reload and the "Finish" step.

2. There are different opinions whether that training actually helps. It does make use of the Dictation function of Microsoft Speech Recognition. You can achieve the same training by dictating a Word document. You turn off the VA listening mode by disabling the VAICOM PTTs when you press the orange "Mic" button. Just enable it again. Again, it's Microsoft which does the recognition.

Hope this helps and make you get it sorted!

Cheers!

[DerKlausi]

vor einer Stunde schrieb MAXsenna:

Hi! Did you read the manual? It's very good!

VAICOM doesn't do any recognition per say. Neither do VoiceAttack. That's why you have to do the initial training in Microsoft Speech Recognition, which does. English is not my first language, so I did this about twenty times, but you don't have to do that if VA already works well. In the manual you'll have some suggestion for setting up VA, and it's different if you're going to use the VSPX option.

Anyway, for your initial problem. In an ordinary VA profile "the keywords" are already in the profile/commands, so I have a feeling you didn't do the "Finish" step. It's not enough to just press "Finish". Read the pop-up. This will put the keywords/commands into the VoiceAttack profile, so VoiceAttack will match the speech-to-text from MS, and pass it on to the VAICOM plugin.

1. Try a re-reload in the keywords editor and then re-start VA. I think that number is correct after the initial installation. Make sure you have enabled import modules and theatres in the settings, or you want get all the ATCs from maps besides The Caucasus. This will also import some ships, whenever they are used in a mission, like the Forrestal. To get ALL the ATCs, you have to do a mission on ALL the maps. The VA log will tell you when you have imports. And, after every import, you need to do a reload and the "Finish" step.

2. There are different opinions whether that training actually helps. It does make use of the Dictation function of Microsoft Speech Recognition. You can achieve the same training by dictating a Word document. You turn off the VA listening mode by disabling the VAICOM PTTs when you press the orange "Mic" button. Just enable it again. Again, it's Microsoft which does the recognition.

Hope this helps and make you get it sorted!

Cheers!

Thanks, and yeah - I already had a read in the manual and watched some howto videos. And I've also done several passes of Windows initial speech training

Here's something I still don't understand: I've switched to VSPX hoping this engine would perform better than the Windows engine. Now I've tried training "Awacs" in VAICOM Editor. Chose "Awacs" as command phrase and clicked the mike symbol. Now two issues:

1. I'm getting the Windows Speech engine popup again and also its word suggestion list!? Why is that? Manual says VSPX is independent of MS Speech Engine? Now that list does obviously not contain "Awacs", but "a works", "a wax" etc. So I added "Awacs" by spelling it. However - no change!

2. I finished training after thirty or fourty repetitions of "Awacs" and copied the string to VA. Tried recognition and I'm still only getting "a works" or "a wax".

Am I missing something?

 

Cheers!

Edited September 15, 2022 by DerKlausi

[MAXsenna]

2 hours ago, DerKlausi said:

I already had a read in the manual and watched some howto videos

So you now got the "Finish" step sorted? Remember this must be done every time you turn VSPX on/off.

2 hours ago, DerKlausi said:

I've switched to VSPX hoping this engine would perform better than the Windows engine.

Sorry, but it still uses the MS engine, or we wouldn't need VoiceAttack. From the manual.

"As an alternative to VAICOM’s default speech processing mode, VSPX speech processing can be selected in Preferences (VSPX requires a PRO license). VAICOM’s Single Pass eXtraction mode provides a faster interpretation model for processing spoken sentences than the default model used by VAICOM to handle speech content".

I usually like the VSPX mode better, because you can talk real fast, and don't have to wait for the confirmation beeps.

Also from the manual

"VAICOM’s interpretation module is independent of any desktop language or MS Speech recognition engine used".

It's referring to the settings in VoiceAttack, and the speech languages not included in Windows by default. Like Norwegian and Russian.

(EDIT: See screenshot at the bottom. The forum logic as acting up again. Hopefully they can fix it soon).

 

1. See above, you are basically training the MS speech engine. As you can see, the manual does not say that, but I admit it's a little confusing. Though, if you remember from the Microsoft training, it does tell you what to do. Like I wrote, it's similar to dictating a Word document, where you can choose the word if it is correct, or spell A W A C S etc. It never works for me, so I usually do not bother. You will know Microsoft understands it when it gets it right. The real fun part is when you click the mic again, so VoiceAttack is listening and gets it right. While MS does not. So yes, this can be VERY confusing and frustrating.

2. Not sure what string you copied to where. The "Finish" step? Or just "AWACS"? When you get strange behavior like that, (very often with names, numbers and abbreviations), it's usually because VoiceAttack cannot match the text it gets back from Microsoft with any commands in the profile (the keywords list in this case). Test with another profile, say some command that is not there, and you should see similar behavior. Also remember, neither VAICOM nor VoiceAttack does the recognition. VoiceAttack tries its best to match the text or whatever is returned from MS, to the commands in the profile. And the commands are VERY different if you use VSPX, so what command VA passes to VAICOM is probably the trickery of VSPX that makes it work, and one can talk fast.

If I were you, I'd switch back to non-VSPX mode to get VAICOM working first. There is a bug in later version that doesn't copy all the keywords correctly, (new ATCs and aliases), when doing the "Finish" step in VSPX mode. So I have to fix it manually.
It took me a while to understand what's really happening behind the scene!

Cheers!

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by MAXsenna

[dburne]

@MAXsenna

I am thinking you may be the only one that has actually read the manual cover to cover and been able to absorb it all lol.

Big Kudos for all the help you provide which is invaluable with Hollywood's absence.

Edited September 16, 2022 by dburne

[MAXsenna]

@MAXsenna
I am thinking you may be the only one that has actually read the manual cover to cover and been able to absorb it all lol.
Big Kudos for all the help you provide which is invaluable with Hollywood's absence.

Haha! Thank you! Thrice at least!
Even read the VoiceAttack manual, once, a few years back. It helps, and a lot of testing.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[dburne]

14 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Haha! Thank you! Thrice at least!
Even read the VoiceAttack manual, once, a few years back. It helps, and a lot of testing.

Cheers!

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk
 

Well I will tell you I just got home from a pretty big surgery, Two disc spinal fusion with some removal of spurs and a titanium plate inserted. So I say this whilst being pumped up on some pretty good drugs lol. I will not be able to enjoy my flight sims for 6 weeks. I plan to do a lot of movie watching and maybe reading some good books. Who knows I might just throw in both the Vaicom Pro and Voice Atttack manual as well on the list. Well maybe Vaicom Pro. Well knowing me, likely a cursory glance over it lol.

Anyway, I am going from full bore DCS several hours each day to zero for 6 weeks. Not sure how I will deal with this ugh.

I will say though your help is greatly appreciated I am sure by many, many folks here - they may just not be too vocal about it which seems to be the way it is these days for some reason.

 

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by dburne

[Horns]

On 9/6/2022 at 6:36 AM, Subcidal said:

Hey all,

 

Getting back into DCS recently and went to start up VA and vaicom, it said there was an update for vaicom so i give it the ok to update and it did so. Closed VA and now it asks to update everytime I start up VA.

Figured I would install the updated files manually so i downloaded them from the vaicom website and it's showing the latest versions as build 2.5.27.3 for vaicom and 2.5.11.4 for AIRIO which is also out of date. But when I download the files I just get version 2.5.26.4 for vaicom and 2.5.10 for AIRIO (Checking the build numbers of the .dll's themselves.). Sent off an email to vaicom support, can anybody confirm the files are the incorrect builds from vaicom's download page?

An alternative link to the latest build would also be appreciated.

 

 

13 hours ago, dburne said:

@MAXsenna

I am thinking you may be the only one that has actually read the manual cover to cover and been able to absorb it all lol.

Big Kudos for all the help you provide which is invaluable with Hollywood's absence.

 

Does anyone have any idea how long @Hollywood_315will be away for? As mentioned on Sunday, I have emailed support as I have the same update loop problem as Subcidal and others, wondering when Hollywood might be available to address it...

It's not a huge issue for me but I'm reluctant to turn off updates, as with my memory I might forget to turn them back on lol

[MAXsenna]

Does anyone have any idea how long @Hollywood_315will be away for? As mentioned on Sunday, I have emailed support as I have the same update loop problem as Subcidal and others, wondering when Hollywood might be available to address it...
It's not a huge issue for me but I'm reluctant to turn off updates, as with my memory I might forget to turn them back on lol

No, we haven't heard from him since February.
Just turn off auto updates in the settings.

Cheers!

EDIT: I'll check my computer later for which versions I have. If they are newer compared to the ones available on the website. I'll make them available for those who needs them.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[DerKlausi]

Thanks a lot @MAXsenna for your insights into Vaicom. I've got it running pretty decently with VSPX now, after I realized that I shouldn't focus on (bad) single word recognition, while whole command phrases are working quite well.

@dburne Wishing you quick recovery, hope you'll be able to get back into the pit soon!

 

Cheers,

DK

[dburne]

26 minutes ago, DerKlausi said:

Thanks a lot @MAXsenna for your insights into Vaicom. I've got it running pretty decently with VSPX now, after I realized that I shouldn't focus on (bad) single word recognition, while whole command phrases are working quite well.

@dburne Wishing you quick recovery, hope you'll be able to get back into the pit soon!

 

Cheers,

DK

Thanks so much! Definitely going to be the 6 weeks the surgeon strongly suggested for flying flight simulator, not going to risk all this work done on my spine. And only then if it feels good enough for me to do so, as my full recovery for like playing golf is 12 weeks.

Thankfully last night I finally was able to get some sleep after surgery on Thursday morning.

Edited September 17, 2022 by dburne

[DerKlausi]

vor 2 Minuten schrieb dburne:

Thanks so much! Definitely going to be the 6 weeks the surgeon strongly suggested for flying flight simulator, not going to risk all this work done on my spine. And only then if it feels good enough for me to do so, as my full recovery for like playing golf is 12 weeks.

Take your time. Haste in recovery will almost certainly backfire.

[dburne]

5 minutes ago, DerKlausi said:

Take your time. Haste in recovery will almost certainly backfire.

Yep absolutely, going to do my best on that end. Thanks much!

[Horns]

5 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

No, we haven't heard from him since February.
Just turn off auto updates in the settings.

Cheers!

EDIT: I'll check my computer later for which versions I have. If they are newer compared to the ones available on the website. I'll make them available for those who needs them.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk


 

Thanks Max, your help during this time is invaluable.

[mdee]

Is this software abandoned? Zero updates since beginning of the year. I hope everything is ok with the dev.

[Nyaness]

I think the AIRIO extension isn't working. I've had the update popup multiple times, and it just keeps going into a loop of asking me to update and not actually doing anything. None of the LANTIRN commands are showing up in my command list, nor are any aliases in the menus. I have did the 'Finish' copy and paste multiple times with both VSPX and normal Windows.

[dburne]

7 hours ago, mdee said:

Is this software abandoned? Zero updates since beginning of the year. I hope everything is ok with the dev.

 

[mdee]

6 hours ago, dburne said:

 

All, right, so we don't know besides speculations. Fair enough, it's a bit of a shame though, VIACOM worked well for me for a good couple of years. Would be great to at least have an explanation from the dev himself, esp. that the software is still for sale. I really hope nothing bad happened to him.

Edited September 18, 2022 by mdee

[Griefhard]

On 9/18/2022 at 9:04 AM, mdee said:

I really hope nothing bad happened to him.

 

I just checked his profile and last time Hollywood was online in these forums was April 15th, 2022. Last post was January 20th. Thing is, he used to write quite regularly in his threads and hasn't done this whole year. I fear the worst... 

[Turbine 205]

On 9/17/2022 at 4:57 AM, MAXsenna said:

No, we haven't heard from him since February.
Just turn off auto updates in the settings.

Cheers!

EDIT: I'll check my computer later for which versions I have. If they are newer compared to the ones available on the website. I'll make them available for those who needs them.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk


 

@MAXsenna I seem to be in the ever increasing group of people in the update loop.  Do you have the latest updates you could share with us?

[dburne]

On 9/21/2022 at 5:38 AM, Griefhard said:

I just checked his profile and last time Hollywood was online in these forums was April 15th, 2022. Last post was January 20th. Thing is, he used to write quite regularly in his threads and hasn't done this whole year. I fear the worst... 

Yet somehow I reckon an update got pushed for the Apache in March I think?