^^ 100% correct
I've been using VA/HCS/EDDI together now for about 3 years. Once properly set up, fully customized, and integrated it's a powerful and rewarding experience in ED that truly adds so much to the way you play that it really makes ED enjoyable and worth playing for years.
Problem is - setting up everything individually and then getting each component properly integrated is no easy task. Then you have to cope with keeping things up to date, which can be confusing.
I use desktop speakers, but I also have a professional grade microphone designed for podcasting. Obviously, not practical for everyone.
If you install and integrate all the components you are going to use - it is still imperative that you have the Text-to-Speech PROPERLY trained. I think I ran through the script 3 or 4 times before I felt it was ready. Once that's all in good shape, you need to go under the hood of VA and fine tune the Recognition settings so that the background sounds don't reach levels to be misinterpreted as command in VA.
This is just a brief outline of the level of attention needed to make everything work properly, not by any means an exhaustive troubleshooting guide. I have the time to invest and enjoy solving this kind of puzzle. It should go quite a bit easier with a good gaming headset with integrated mike, but if you use VA/HCS + EDDI you still have to do the installation and setup properly. And then there's the whole keyboard/joystick tracking in the HCS pack that's a separate setup that's really a necessity if you don't want things getting out of sync when you use a key press or button push instead of a voice command...
Once done - it's fantastic and you just fly without thinking - you just speak commands or use HOTAS as needed using the most convenient option available as you go about the business of ED game-play.
But it definitely isn't as easy as it sounds - even given the brief outline of things your likely to encounter in the process.
