Additional George AI commands in keybinds (without interface)

[srhZSOC]

Please could key binds for all the George commands be added? Appreciate that voice control might be coming down the line, but I wondered if it would be fairly straight forward for all George commands have individual key binds.

This would mean that players could increase altitude, slow down, break left etc by pressing just one key if they want, without having to open the George menu, cycle to the right menu (FLT, CMBT etc) then pressing the appropriate short or long press key. This would save time when in the front seat and taking fire  and also make it fairly easy to use Voice Attack to order George as you could just add voice commands to the appropriate key bind. Or if you have a button box you could set up George commands that you use often to be directly available.

[mvesky]

Unless I'm missing something that already exists and I haven't found it, I would love to see the George AI functions mappable directly to keys or HOTAS buttons/switches. The menu works, but it's a little slow because several of the common commands are on different menus. Scrolling through them to get to the right one takes a lot more time than simply pushing a single saved keystroke. And if you forget to confirm that you have the right menu selected, it's easy in a busy cockpit to tell him to do the wrong thing. It'd be smoother to be able to have the functions immediately accessible by keybind.

Additionally, I'd love for it to be possible to set the desired airspeed by 5 knot increments, rather than big steps (hover, 40, 70, etc...).

[tomcat_driver]

1 hour ago, mvesky said:

Unless I'm missing something that already exists and I haven't found it, I would love to see the George AI functions mappable directly to keys or HOTAS buttons/switches. The menu works, but it's a little slow because several of the common commands are on different menus. Scrolling through them to get to the right one takes a lot more time than simply pushing a single saved keystroke. And if you forget to confirm that you have the right menu selected, it's easy in a busy cockpit to tell him to do the wrong thing. It'd be smoother to be able to have the functions immediately accessible by keybind.

Additionally, I'd love for it to be possible to set the desired airspeed by 5 knot increments, rather than big steps (hover, 40, 70, etc...).

That's specially true if you take into consideration Voice Attack and VAICOM.

 

[EFGross]

+1

[T-Pickle]

Direct key bindings for the AI-Helper menu without having to toggle the overlay first would be great indeed!

In addition it would be nice if there was a special option to keep the George-UI (except for the target list) hidden. That way people would be allowed to either directly command George to look for targets with the new bindings, or to toggle it as usual and then use the directional AI commands, but still without having the overlay pop up. Lastly, if they keep the special option unticked and don't use the direct key bindings, users who prefer it could still use the system as it is right now.

Ideally, there would be separate options for hiding the menus of the gunner and pilot.

Overall this would add many options to make the module and its controls more suitable for different setups and personal preferences.

[450Devil]

While I think the George interface system is a great innovation. However it is very chunky and non-intuitive. Recently I was working on a Voice Attack profile for the CPG. To my dismay I found that I could not establish a simple flow of voice commands because the developer has chosen to utilize four separate (Modes) Options (H-B, CMBT. FLT and CMWS) but elected to use the same keybinds (W,A.S,D) to initiate actions.  That means that the Mode needs to be changed to initiate specific actions which (to be honest in a combat situation) is not very intuitive or helpful.  A fix would be to have a separate modifier for each mode - for example LCRTL or LALT etc - so that each action is individual to that mode. There would stil be long or short presses of W (Up), S (Down), D (Right) A and D (Left) keys but Modal actions could be delineated by modifiers such as LCTRL for FLT Actions; LALT for CMBT actions; LSHIFT for FLT actions; and RALT for CMWS actions. 

Setting up a Voice Attack profile in the above scenario would be much more intuitive and immersive as it would allow the player to move from FLT actions to CMBT actions etc without having to have to change George modes.

As the aim is to make DCS as "real" as possible, such a simple change to the Apache George AI would be a step towards this aim.

Edited February 3, 2023 by 450Devil

[Bri01]

This is so needed. The interface now us unusable in a combat situation. 

[Schmidtfire]

+1

I was binding Voice Attack for George AI the other day, It was a painful experience. And there are certain things like Speed/Altitude, Break Left/Right that should be available from all modes. You get ambushed in FLT and need ask George AI to perform a Break. Not the ideal situation to be dealing with modes.  

Even then, it's too slow to be useful in heat of combat. Before George AI has even started his Break, the Apache gets hit with whatever is coming it's way.
Maybe George AI needs additional evasive maneuvers. But that is another discussion.

[Antix70]

Can we get keybinds in the George AI Helper to open the George Menu in the exact mode we need?

For example, right now as CP/G, pushing Ctrl-V opens the George menu in the mode that you last left him in.

Whereas pushing Ctrl-V would open the menu to the FLT mode
Pushing Alt-V would open the menu to the CMBT mode
Shift-V would open to the H-B mode, and finally,
Lft_Win-V would open the CMWS mode

Right now, using VoiceAttack to control Pilot George is pretty difficult depending on the mode it was last left in.

I hope what I'm suggesting makes sense.

[Shadok]

+1

For now this implementation make me do few mistakes.

For example, in H-B mode, when I slide left (using keybinding) sometime the menu change to CMBT mode and make me do a break left turn.

Edited March 2, 2023 by Shadok

[Antix70]

Exactly.

There is also a longer thread that hits on the same subject, found here:

 

[Grievo]

+1

menu system is quite good, but like many others I use voice attack and fly in VR. 
 

This generally works okay, after a lot of trial and error, but it would be far more intuitive to have discreet commands mappable. This would also overcome some of the limitations with VA. As instead of two or three button presses for a command it would only be one. 
 

Incidentally, this is also the case for the communications menu, wingman commands etc. 

[Rhinozherous]

Still very much needed! 

[Shadok]

I add my vote for this.

Thanks

[Gunslinger52]

+1

However I do use VA for this now (just played with the length of keypress) to get George to maneuver in manageable chunks of input. 

Have a good flight.

'52

[Chesty McVelvet]

+ 1 On this such a simple fix and such a game changing quality of life improvement

 

[DD_Crash]

It would be good if you were able to use Viacom like you can with Jester.

[Bri01]

Any word on this. Just give us keybinds. If people like the cumbersome ai menu they can use it but I personally I think it's very clumsy. I finally started flying from front seat and do my cpg work  instead of dealing with it

[Bri01]

Can we get keybinds for the command wheel pages. Like "1" is flight "2" is combat "3" Is cmws, which isn't even needed as a page. Either is H-B. Witch is only need to slide left right, could be put on flight page. Having that many pages just makes it way harder than it has to be. Thanks.

[Floyd1212]

The CMWS page is there to tell George to flip those switches for you, which are only located in the back seat.

Where would you put "slide left" and "slide right" on the FLT Page?  It looks like short L/R and long L/R are already in use.

That being said, being able to bring up a specific page with a keystroke would be useful for some people.

[Bri01]

Easy to jump in back seat to hit those switches for cmws before takeoff. Just kebinds for the pages would be good enough for me. Atleast then I wouldn't have to fumble through the unnecessary ones and if other people still want to they could.

[Hootman9104]

Necroing this post quite a bit, but would like to see these options also, and add a comment about what I do with the Voiceattack macros.

Forgive me if this has been covered, but thought I'd offer this tip for those looking to integrate the George interface commands easier into VA. Since Bailey already did the work for programing (see the video previously posted), I found it SUPER EASY to implement into my OWN VA profile, without using his entire VA profile

1. Download Bailey's voice attack profile zip file from the youtube video site
2. Import Bailey's VA profile (WITHOUT LOADING HIS CONTROL CONIFGURATION. JUST THE VA PROFILE INTO VA)
3. Open Bailey's VA profile in VA.
4. Go to the "George AI Helper Interface" Category in the profile.
5. Right click each command for the long and short presses.,and select "Copy to" and copy it to your own Apache VA profile.
6. Now go to your own Apache profile, and create your own VA command, for instance "Scan Targets""
7. In the new command, instead of a key press, select "Other-VoiceAttack action-Execute another Command"
8 Use the dropdown to locate which of Bailey's commands you imported.
9. Save and test.

Example:

I created a command "Scan targets", and told the command to execute "George AI Helper Interface-Up short"

Easy peasy, works like a charm.
 

A general further note for other macros you might create, I would suggest to also use the option in the macro for VA to add a Text To Speech response.

I have a VA macro to adjust all my lighting, internal and external for night flight, and have VA readback when it adjusts each switch and knob. Took a bit of time testing how long to turn each lighting know to get it right in VA, but it's certainly nice to have a simple voice command to adjust all the lighting and instruments, and the TTS confirmation for each switch and knob is a nice little immersion, and at the end tells me lighting setup is complete. Or just add a TTS at the end of all the macro steps to tell you it's complete. I find it kind of necessary as sometimes if you try to execute another command when the macro is still processing it screws things up. So I wait until it confirms it's complete before doing anything else. Just a though.

I think I'm actually going to see if I can find one of the online TTS AI generators that sound almost true to life if I can find one that sounds like the voice in the RWR in the Apache, and add those as WAV files to be played in liue of the Microsoft voices in the VA TTS to confirm what the macros are doing.

VA is awesome, the best $10 gaming utility ever in my opinion, I use it for DCS, IL-2, MSFS, etc. SOOOOO many things it can do.

 

[Dagobert666]

+1

[Bri01]

Polychop did AI right. They gave us kebinds for everything. Very nice.

[Floyd1212]

4 hours ago, Bri01 said:

Polychop did AI right. They gave us kebinds for everything. Very nice.

I disagree.  In the Apache I have one 5-way hat setup for managing George.  In the Kiowa, there's like 12 commands I need bound to get the same level of functionality I would out of George.

Ideally, there would be a UI with a simple U/D/L/R/S interface available, with discrete commands available to those that want them.