Jester - voice controlled - a wish to Heatblur

[Lt_Jaeger]

I use the Tomcat almost exclusively but I never really used the Jester wheel at all.

Right from the beginning it was clear to me that I would love to actually talk to Jester since that would add so much immersion. I basically do everything for immersion, that is the most important part for me. I fly VR or don't at all, if something is wrong with it, I use a seat shaker / Jetseat to bring some life into my "butt meter", I use PointCtrl as a fingertracker, so I actually "touch" the switches in the cockpit. I don't have any keybinds on my HOTAS besides the ones that are in the real thing (with one exception). I did build me a center console and a left side panel (got no room for the right side on my desk) and went thru some length to have the switches and buttons in the position I see them in VR, AND I talk to Jester.

Currently I use VoiceAttack with VAICOM AIRIO add on. I think this solution did work reasonably well until now, but it gets kind off wonky, since the VAICOM developer seems to be AWOL and VAICOM (I still hope for the better) will turn out abandon ware.

That brings me to the point to ask HEATBLUR if you guys ever thought about going the next step and make Jester, and his brother in the upcoming F-4, voice controlled?

You guys went thru so much trouble to bring me the best consumer simulation of an F-14 that was ever made, you will bring me my dream plane (F-4) most probably in a even better recreation (if this is still possible), but even so I fly in in multiplayer outfit, we have rarely enough RIOs to fully men the bird. Now if I could talk to Jester – kind off like I'm used too with VA, VAICOM - but fully integrated into the code and not piggy backed by some smart externals, I think this would gain another level of immersion for your product.

I just can ask to give it a thought and hope I'm not alone with this wish.

[MAXsenna]

You're probably not alone, and the best solution would of course be if this was part of DCS core.
But this is no trivial undertaking. Consider this:
Should this be a plugin for VoiceAttack like VAICOM? If not, should HB/ED make their "own" VA version and use the Microsoft Speech Recognition engine for speech to text, just like VoiceAttack does?
Or should they challenge the Microsoft Speech Recognition engine and make their own engine?

I believe there's a reason VoiceAttack has been pretty much unchallenged for all these years. Seems there's an alternative now, haven't bothered to test it yet.

Sent from my MAR-LX1A using Tapatalk

[Lt_Jaeger]

I know its not trivial, otherwise I would not ask Heatblur for it

To be honest, since my programming hay days were in the 80s and I did not care afterwards, I have no idea about how complicated or easy this endevour is. I don't see the ball with ED just yet, there is plain no need for all this single seat aircrafts, but with the F-14 , F-4 and the A-6 I see a hugh benifit in litterally talking with your RIO, WIZZO, NAV whatever he is called, thous my wish (and wet dream)

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Lt_Jaeger

[Bailey]

If you are willing, I have a VoiceAttack profile for the F14. It is freely available and open so that users can make their own changes if they want to. The link for my VoiceAttack profiles is in my signature. 

An integrated solution would be nice. ED revealed in a news letter that they want to head that direction. HB also said so when talking about the Eurofighter. I personally worry about the flexibility of such a system.

[Lt_Jaeger]

15 minutes ago, Bailey said:

If you are willing, I have a VoiceAttack profile for the F14. It is freely available and open so that users can make their own changes if they want to. The link for my VoiceAttack profiles is in my signature. 

An integrated solution would be nice. ED revealed in a news letter that they want to head that direction. HB also said so when talking about the Eurofighter. I personally worry about the flexibility of such a system.

I did not check out your profile yet, because i was happy with what I had with VA VAICOM, but running into limits now, so I will have a look as soon as I'm back on my PC.

 

About the flexibility...I think the main goal would be that it is NOT flexible, it should work for one plane only and be baked in, and would only depict the interaction between the Pilot and the guy in the back. At least that is how I imagine it.

For sure there will be always room for VA and additional commands if one want. I love it for example, to fiddel with the gear lever or hook lever, other "pilots" just use ab VA command, which would be fine and should not be restricted. I'm just not seeing a voice operated something made by HB, verbaly exchanging jokes with Jester, totaly different game

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Lt_Jaeger

[IronMike]

We will keep your wish in the back of our minds, and who knows, one day it may seem appropriate and feasible to go down that route - but to manage your expectations, currently it would be outside of what we can do time-wise. You can imagine that our plate is pretty full, and thus we need to focus on the core things primarily, maintaining and bringing to release both Viggen and Tomcat, as well as of course continuing with the development of our upcoming modules. Thus I will say, for now, it is rather unlikely.

Edited September 30, 2022 by IronMike

[Jayhawk1971]

I concur with Lt_Jaeger. VAICOM ceasing to work with the Tomcat would be a huge blow to immersion. Worse than that if you're a VR-only user.

It can not be overstated how the AIRIO extension has been a game-changer for me in terms of handling the Tomcat. Being able to quickly give verbal commands to Jester has done wonders for SA, as I am not being distracted staring at and interacting with a big wheel (with different layers) in front of my nose while in the middle of the thick of it.

Should this functionality go away, it would be quite a blow with regards to enjoying this and other upcoming multicrew modules with "Jester" functionality, sadly. 

I just sincerely hope that nothing has happened to Hollywood_315 of course (!), but from the POV of a customer, also that he isn't the only person on the planet who knows how to access Jester functionality as he did. If he doesn't come back to the community, I just hope someone else will take up his mantle with a similar product.

The best solution would of course be ED "simply" baking the functionality in, or as Lt_Jaeger suggested, HB includes this with the Tomcat and upcoming multicrew modules, should their workload permit it someday.

Edited September 30, 2022 by Jayhawk1971

[Dragon1-1]

2 hours ago, IronMike said:

We will keep your wish in the back of our minds, and who knows, one day it may seem appropriate and feasible to go down that route - but to manage your expectations, currently it would be outside of what we can do time-wise. You can imagine that our plate is pretty full, and thus we need to focus on the core things primarily, maintaining and bringing to release both Viggen and Tomcat, as well as of course continuing with the development of our upcoming modules. Thus I will say, for now, it is rather unlikely.

Here's an idea: can you make everything in the Jester menu selectable via a keyboard shortcut? If you can, making a VoiceAttack profile to actuate those options would be relatively trivial. Plus, it has the added bonus of enabling an alternate way of controlling him, by the way of a dedicated button box.

[Spurts]

6 hours ago, Bailey said:

If you are willing, I have a VoiceAttack profile for the F14. It is freely available and open so that users can make their own changes if they want to. The link for my VoiceAttack profiles is in my signature. 

An integrated solution would be nice. ED revealed in a news letter that they want to head that direction. HB also said so when talking about the Eurofighter. I personally worry about the flexibility of such a system.

Does the profile include LANTIRN commands?

[Callsign JoNay]

For me it's not even about immersion, it's just better. For me to be able to just say "scan sector angels 10 at 20" or "grid center" without having to navigate the cumbersome wheel is so convenient.

[Whistler_RIO]

3 hours ago, Spurts said:

Does the profile include LANTIRN commands?

Yes it was updated for the last stable-release which had those features.  There is a slim possibility that Hollywood will stick to his release policy and maybe when the next stable-release is out there that needs it, he updates?  he was never very prompt or at all responsive to Open Beta issues.  As it stands, i have a 100% functional VAICOM with all extensions available. we are, it must be said, talking about something that is not broken at this time.

That said, i would just love the code repository, if Hollywood were to decide to stop support, so we in the community could pick this up from here if needed. Its rather straight-forward logic for 80% of what we use it for, the voice-command side is a pretty straightforward proxy logic layer for voice-attack, which is itself an API for your operating system - no need to rebuild all of that wheel.  The enhancements like KneeBoard Extension, now THAT is some pretty fancy mod-making IMO, and without source code, would be really hard to do.
 

[draconus]

22 hours ago, Lt_Jaeger said:

I don't see the ball with ED just yet, there is plain no need for all this single seat aircrafts...

They have 4 two-crew helicopters, mind you.

[Bailey]

ED talked about it in conjunction with ATC. 

[Lt_Jaeger]

After giving it a thought (thanks god I'm no Dev, I would never fulfill actual needs just dreams   ), it might even better if ED goes down that road and offers an API to 3rd Party's, that way basically everything would be tied together.  So again, I jumped to short.

But knowing HB, they would pimp what they have available above the ordinary (little fanboy here), so I might be right after all.