Suggestion: Use Google's new realistic voice to bring immersion to the E:D through vocal interaction

[coojw]

Google unveiled its latest software advances in natural voice technology, so life-like that you can't really tell its not a human talking. If Frontier could somehow license this tech to be used in its game, imagine how immersive it would feel to have npc's talking to you, threatening you, befriending you etc. It will be a unique experince unlike any game ANYWHERE has ever accomplished in a game. It won't completely replace voice actors, as some things will need the emotion only a human can provide (like the generation ship logs etc), but some of the mundane text-to-speech items, and other written items throughout the game at large can be orated to you, the player.

Google's technology at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6M4v4ay92Q


Perhaps frontier can work out a deal to have it put in their game.

 

[comdr0303]

Google's technology at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6M4v4ay92Q
Perhaps frontier can work out a deal to have it put in their game.

Nice work they did, but ingame NO WAY, not for me as i just silenced all voices exept ship voice...all that blablabla just dont need it, i like to enjoy the silence.

As for the deal, you think google would make a good price for E ? I would hope so because the gaming industry & gamers could launch this app like a rocket [haha].
Keep on dreaming, this will not be soon i guess.

 

[coojw]

Nice work they did, but ingame NO WAY, not for me as i just silenced all voices exept ship voice...all that blablabla just dont need it, i like to enjoy the silence.

The feature could be turned off with a toggle in the options menu. Most people I feel would welcome the immersion this would bring, some people to a lesser extent prefer the silence.

 

[Aashenfox]

You can already do this all on your own. Look for a product called Voice Attack. Would be nice if it was in-game and didn't require significant time investment, but once it's done it's done. I don't see FD redoing this when a solution already exists, tbh.

 

[coojw]

You can already do this all on your own. Look for a product called Voice Attack. Would be nice if it was in-game and didn't require significant time investment, but once it's done it's done. I don't see FD redoing this when a solution already exists, tbh.

im not sure you understand what I'm referring to, (and im using voice attack, but this concept is unrelated) we're talking about natural speech from npcs, missions, galnet, other text based sources, in game. We are not talking about pre-recorded voice bytes. We're talking Conversational level, on the fly text-to-speech.

 

[Leechyboy_uk]

... We're talking Conversational level, on the fly text-to-speech.

How many voice models are there for Google's new voice-tech?
Considering that the 'text' for the 'text-to-speech' has to come from somewhere, if the same voice (or one of a small number of voices) was repeating the same phrases over and over then I'd probably find this immersion-breaking, if anything.
Considering that FD have 100 developers working on ED, couldn't they just get each member of staff to record those lines? At least this way over the space of months of play you wouldn't hear the same voices repeatedly, and those same (and new) staff could record new lines as required - this would do away with any licensing issues with Google.
o7

 

[Aashenfox]

im not sure you understand what I'm referring to, (and im using voice attack, but this concept is unrelated) we're talking about natural speech from npcs, missions, galnet, other text based sources, in game. We are not talking about pre-recorded voice bytes. We're talking Conversational level, on the fly text-to-speech.

I did wonder. Good luck with that. Voice attack does a lot that people don't realise, such that it would be sufficient to create a much better illusion of AI using Cortana or other voices, but yes, it would still be a log reader with canned responses, I won't lie to ya

Would love to have conversational NPCs, but this isn't available in any game yet, and Elite isn't exactly at the forefront of gaming innovation. I would suggest that your suggestion is not as simple as you suggest.