I seem to remember programs existed that allowed you to issue commands via voice instead of keypresses. Anyone know about this? Is it actually useful?

Dragon Naturally Speaking used to be owned by Nuance. I used it on my wife's laptop, Dragon Naturally Speaking Medical. It works. You have to train it for a lot of words, but once trained, it's fast and pretty accurate. It can be used to launch programs like IE, favorites, go back, open documents with and such commands work pretty good.

http://nuance.com/dragon/index.htm

Can I make it work with sims like Falcon 4 AF or LOMAC FC2 though? Like, issue a voice command and the relevant in-game command is issued (ie, attack my target, request landing, etc.)?

Sounds like your looking for Shoot 1.6.4 or something like that.

I used a program called voice buddy from edimensional. I have to be honest and say it seemed like a good idea at the time but I never got it working to my satisfaction. Now you have mentioned it though I may give out another go.

Dragon was never meant for games.

http://clans.gameclubcentral.com/shoot/

Ah yes, I remember Shoot. Is it actually useful though? Are you guys using it?

I was using Shoot 5 years ago in F4:AF. I had all the radio commands programmed into it so I didn't have to use any keyboard shortcuts. Worked great.

Thanks for the votes on both software. I think I'll start with Shoot then, with it being free and all...

What's this about 'training'?

You need to teach the software to recognize the way you say different words.

I used to use Shoot under XP and thought it was awesome. Unfortunately, trying to get it to work in Vista was a massive PITA and I eventually gave up.

I used VAC (when it was free) and Shoot for Lockon, and they work great.

I tried Shoot but could never get the commands to work, even after voice training. I tried VAC for the 30 day trial and I purchased it on day 2.

It is odd that no one mentioned or remembered "Game Commander". You can find it as Freeware these days and it was reported to work on Win7, it works great on XP:

http://www.combatsim.com/memb123/htm/2000/11/gc2bmarks/index.htm

http://www.tucows.com/preview/364262

VAC is the way to go. Shift-E has excellent support. I have always received an email back same day or the next.

G'day Steph,
Just wondering what you are actually using VAC for. I know you're a flyer so I can imagine communications to AI would be very useful. What other actions are you finding of benefit with VAC?
Bob

Sorry for the delay, I don't frequent the hardware section much.

Bofman,
With F4AF I was using VAC to communicate with AI Wingman, AWACS, FAC and Tower. That is about all I used it for, none of the voice activated switch commands just voice commands.

Righty-O, does anyone have a VAC or Shoot profile they can share?

Thanks!

I can dig up my VAC F4AF profile, I'll upload it.

Yes please, along with instructions on how to make the damn thing work. Apparently, they don't come with instructions.

Does VAC auto-load a profile when a certain game starts? That, if I remember, was one of the big selling points for me on Game Commander 2.

Nope, I believe you have to load a profile yourself.

Has anyone been able to install VAC on a 64 bit Vista system? I have the full version of VAC (2.3.1 as I recall) and used it quite a bit with my XP system, but when I moved on to a Vista 64 bit system I wasn't able to install the program. It would go part of the way through the installation process then give me a message that said something like "The operation system is not adequate to run Voice Activated Control." Then the install program would exit without installing the program. Is there a way around this problem? I've tried all the stuff I could think of (trying to install using XP compatibility, insuring that I install as an administrator, etc.) but thus far I haven't been able to figure it out.

Any help would be appreciated.

DKM

I've always used it on my Win7 64-bit with no problems. NOt sure with Vista though, sorry.

Thanks Ice.

DKM

For anyone who's interested, here's the link to VAC, which includes both XP and Vista/7 versions of the program:

http://www.dwvac.com/download.html

DKM