Voice commands

For quiet some time I use Voice commands in the game and actually it works pretty good. Its great to control ship functions without using the keyboard. This way I can keep my hands on the HOTAS.

The tool I use is 97% reliable when it comes to voice detection.
A short example how voice control might look like can be found in this vid.

The tool is called voice bot.
You can download it here: What Our Customers are Saying • VoiceBot • Binary Fortress Software
There is a pro and a free version. Free actually is enough for elite. There is no need for long macros in the game so simply commands are enough.

What can be done?
Well. There are relative few limits as you can edit the profiles and add funtions that you want to use.
e.g. I have a function that reduces the speed in supercruise to the best possible approach speed on stations.
I also have a function that simply lets me reply to chat comments when I say "reply".
I have functions which puts full energy on weapons, engines or systems.
I have silent running activation on the voice script.
I have chaff as voice command.
I have the complete map control as voice commands.
I can switch between and inside the menus via voice commands.

Everything is just a matter of configuration. And since you dont have to move your hand away from the stick or more important functions you are of course a bit faster.

I said that the tool is very reliable... but be adviced... a headset would be required. Ive tried it with a desktop mircrophone but background voices really disturb voice recognition.
A headset really is the best way to get this done.

Like i said, you can download the tool for free.
What Our Customers are Saying • VoiceBot • Binary Fortress Software
The basic voice profiles for elite can be found here (in english, german, french and spanish):
Elite: Dangerous (English: United States) • Profile • VoiceBot • Binary Fortress Software
Elite: Dangerous (Deutsch: Deutschland) • Profile • VoiceBot • Binary Fortress Software
Elite: Dangerous (français: France) • Profile • VoiceBot • Binary Fortress Software
Elite: Dangerous (Español: España, alfabetización internacional) • Profile • VoiceBot • Binary Fortress Software

My personal profile is twice as big as the original and has lots of additional commands... but thats actually a matter of taste and need.

There is another tool that can recognize your voice: Voice attack.
This one is a bit more professional and also comes with voice packs. The voice packs respond to your commands with hundreds of recorded phrases. There even is a voice pack covering the official elite dangerous voice actor for the computer voice in the game. So pretty much everything fits well together.
I personally have not tested that tool yet.... mainly because i was not sure how good it works.
The tool is NOT free... costs ~8€ ... voice packs cost extra.
Here is a small demonstration:

Speaking of headsets...

I bought two hetsets recently.
The first one was a relative cheap one. Normal price ~40€ ... I got it on a discounted price of 10€.
75% discount... what can go wrong?
Well, I cant say that its a bad headset. Really. Its sound in games is great and the microphone also is awesome. For that price its absolutely great.
But its nothing if you want to listen to music. The mid tones are missing a bit while the bass is too hard.
Thats how many gaming headsets are configured.
My main problem was its size. It was an on ear microphone which in the end does not cover the whole ear. Since I wear glasses this type of headphone disturbs a bit when you wear it over a long time.
Its certainly not a problem for other users without glasses but for me it wasnt that comfortable to wear. I simply didnt consider that when buying it. But ok well, it was just a few euro and I mainly wanted it to test if i can use headsets for the voice recognition in elite.

Since that worked very well I bought a 2nd headset.
This time a someone better one... discounted price at which i got it was 79€. And this time it was an over ear version that i can wear for hours without that it disturbs.
Like nearly all gaming headsets this one also had a strong bass but came with good equalizer where i could tone the bass a bit done and the mid tones up. Perfect for gaming and listening music.
The microphone however appeared a bit too quiet eventhough it was set to 100% volume.
It still was good enough for voice communication but a bit too quiet for voice recognition.
At this point I should mention that both microphone were USB versions with integrated sound cards. I decided for USB because the voice and sound quality simply is better.
This however has a disadvantage. USB microphones dont have a microphone boost in windows... so you cant make them louder than the default limit of the sound card.
100% was not loud enough on that 2nd microphone and without boost in windows... well... yeah.

After a few hours reading how many ppl have the same problem I found a tool called Equalizer APO.
Great tool.
You can use it as equalizer for all audio sources (input and output).
Equalizer APO download | SourceForge.net

During the installation you get asked for which audio devices you want to use it.
My advice here: only use it for the microphone of the headset.
On my first try to activated it for the input and the output but the settings then were also done for input AND output.
So when I increased the volume of the microphone it also increased the volume of the headphones and messed up my earlier mentioned equalizer.

Since I use this tool everything is working perfectly. Headphones make use of the original equalizer and the surround sound, while the microphone got a nice boost from Equalizer APO.

im not sure if the windows voice recognition is required

I know that at some point I have installed.... but i was testing many tools so i cant tell where exactly it required that

Ok, I have meanwhile tested the voice attack tool.
On the the first view its interface appears very minimalistic. Unlike Voicebot it has no fancy graphics and status displays.
Voicebot certainly has been designed to be a very user friendly tool.
VoiceAttack however, appears to be the more powerful tool and with that also the more complicated one.
Its true nature gets reveiled when working with profiles.
I only tested the 21 day trial which is limited to only 20 voice commands but it was enough to show me what the tool can do.
Most voiceAttack profiles (and also the main program cost around 5-10€).
You have the option to import the full profile or selected commands. Thats actually pretty cool because if you edit specific commands and mess up something you can simply reimport that command without overwriting other edited commands.
The strengh of this tool clearly is the conditional scripting of commands.
e.g. if you have deployed your weapons via voice command then you might have conditional code in your "jump" command and a voice tells you "can not jump, weapons are still deployed"
However, while this clearly improves the immersion, this conditional stuff can also lead to problems if you still interfact with functions on your keyboard.
e.g. if you retracted your weapons by pressing a key on your keyboard then voice attack wont know about it and still keeps telling you to retract your weapons.
This certainly could turn out a bit messy but Im sure that there are ways to prevent such problems somehow.

There are many voice packs around, also with additional functions such as question answer games with the ship computer or even (and thats pretty awesome) let the computer fetch information for your. "where is the next blackmarket?", "how long is the distance between system a and system b?"
That requires an additional tool as far I understood. (i have not tested it yet).
Here is a link to the voice console for such kinds of interactions:
A.E.R. Interface 1.3 Release (Open Source Voice frontend for EDDB & more) : EliteDangerous?

Ive also found a few free voice profiles:
S.A.R.A - GLaDOS 'esque' Voice Attack profile. : EliteDangerous?
Anubis VA for Elite Dangerous

One advantage this tool might have over VoiceBot is the functionality and the feedback responses.
But its not that easy to config.
Another thing is that I experienced that the VoiceBot tool sometimes didnt recognize my voice at all in ED.
I had to alt-tab to the desktop and back to get it working.
Maybe thats a limitation of the free version of voiceBot (a motivation to buy the full version) or its simply a bug.
I didnt test VoiceAttack for long as I only tried the limited Trial version so far. But during that time I didnt have any problems with voice recognition.

While both tools make use of the windows voice recognition, voiceAttack does not seem to be limited to the language of the voice profile.
So if you dont have en_us voice installed this tool still might work for you (but you probably should test the trial version to be 100%).

But VoiceBot and VoiceAttack are not the only options you have.
An Elite Dangerous player has created his own voice recognition tool called "Voice".
That tool is by far the simplest. No complicated interface, no complicated functions.
But it is completely free.
You simply definy the voice command and then which keys need to be pressed.
e.g. All energy on engines: arrow down, arrow up, arrow up
This tool can also give voice feedback, either by playing a wav file OR by using text2speech.
You simply type into a small window "Energy transfered to engines" and it will read that line while transfering your energy.
During my tests last night I unfortunatly ran into a problem.
Sometimes voice command were executed twice instead just one time. That sucks a bit, but I have read today that this might be caused by a feedback loop on the text2speech and that there is a sensitivity slider for the voice recognition on the settings to prevent that.
You can download "Vocals" here:
Vocals : open source and free Voice Attack clone : EliteDangerous?

Try if its working for you.

All in all VoiceAttack is the best tool, but also the most complicated. But the conditional scripting aswell as the ability to have variations of AI replies creates a great immersive environment.
VoiceBot is an allrounder, easy to use and the free version usually is good enough for Elite Dangerous. But it at least for me had a few problems... such as randomly not recognizing my voice until I alt+tab to the desktop and back. It also appeared to be a bit slow with executing commands.
"Voice" is free, easy to use but has no support for macros or scripts so it has no conditional responses. But it makes use of text2speech which makes it easy to create custom replies (eventhough just one reply per command)

Last but not least... and actually not 100% related to this topic.
Here is a VLC skin in Elite Dangerous UI look. This way you can display a music player in the game.
Elite Dangerous VLC Player Skin (smart) : EliteDangerous?

This is my personal voiceattack profile for ED (in german).
228 commands

Its actually pretty impressive what you can do.
One word is enough to deploy weapons, transfer energy to the weaponsystem and disable shipsystems that are not required in combat.
One word is enough to leave this "combat mode" again.
One word and you have docking permission.
One word and you can see the contact list, or the subsystem menu, or your inventory (without manually browsing through the different ship menus).

it is a different feeling, yes
you can focus on flying the ship while talking with the "AI"

right now im trying the exploration part.... the next populated system is 3000ly away
and it works pretty well with mapping systems and planets
switching between maps... jumping to other planets... selecting planets... switching back to the calculated route... etc.
even using vlc as music player

havent touched the keyboard yet

you can use it anywhere

w10 is still free to upgrade