HCS voicepack black friday sale and HCS Voice Pack to COVAS overlap

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Looking at the Black-Friday sale on HCS Voicepacks:

COVAS Eden - Cockpit Voice Assistants - Elite Dangerous Gamestore

The Cockpit Voice Assistant (COVAS) relays real-time information about your ship and your surroundings via your helmet, and is in essence yo...

dlc.elitedangerous.com

I was wondering which voice packs correspond to which COVAS? For example "Verity" voice pack is voiced by Verity Croft, same voice actress as Verity COVAS, ie: the original ship's voice. Fun fact, (IIRC) the ships default voice was provided by Jim Croft's wife, Verity, Jim Croft being the head of Audio at Frontier Developments.

So we know Elite Verity = HCS Verity, I did a little digging, and the answer was surprisingly simple, COVAS name = HCS Voice Pack name

COVAS Name	Voice Actor	HCS Voicepack
Verity	Verity Croft	Verity
Celeste	Sabrina Ruiz	Celeste
Archer	Richard Ede	Archer
Alix	Alix Martin	Alix
Jefferson	Jannik Archer	No HCS Equivalent?
Leo	Norman Lovett	Leo
Eden	Idun Vik	Eden
Carina	Marina Sirtis	Carina

Although for all the overlap / continuity, seemingly there isn't a Jefferson HCS Voicepack?

 

[Bottom Hat]

Thomas Jefferson? I thought he was bereft of life.

 

[Stelar 7]

Love me some HCS Voicepacks.

Having said that there is a digital effect on the COVAS that is not present on the HCS side. I have Verity and Eden and both sound more human on HCS.

Still tons of fun though.

 

[Caydran]

It would have been nice to have HCS detect the COVAS equivalent voice pack and reply/respond or otherwise work together as one, instead of the mess that exists between the two. For convienence sake, I mute COVAS and use HCS voicepacks alone, as the two just don't seem to get along.

It's ashame that HCS and Elite's COVAS share voice actors, but the code in both won't cooperate on any level.

This should be a bug for both COVAS and HCS to solve.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I bought voice attack in 2017, but have never used it, just after I bought it I transitioned from HOTAS to dualsticks, then to FAoff, then to a better set of sticks, and another even better set, and even yet my bindings are still evolving. For example, it was only when they put SLF pilots on the rebuy screen that I started using them in earnest, and it turned out I didn't have any of the commands or orders for them bound, so I had to shuffle bindings to free up a hat switch to use for some SLF commands. So the thought of setting up HCS + Voiceattack would mean revisiting my bindings for the umpteenth time. However, I was thinking about setting it up with a hcs voicepack, but as I am a bit OCD, I'd like it to feel like an extension fo the COVAS not a bolted on alternative to it, so I was looking for matching COVAS + HCS options. But if the voice packs don't play nicely with the COVAS, maybes I need to go for a contrasting voicepack that is distinct from my COVAS? Something cool like Astra, but Cileste sounds imperial, and I have her COVAS, But Atra and Victor could work? Hmm...

I'll have some beer and do some flying, and make a well oiled informed purchase decision in a couple of hours lol

 

[Elliot Coleman]

I bought voice attack in 2017, but have never used it, just after I bought it I transitioned from HOTAS to dualsticks, then to FAoff, then to a better set of sticks, and another even better set, and even yet my bindings are still evolving. For example, it was only when they put SLF pilots on the rebuy screen that I started using them in earnest, and it turned out I didn't have any of the commands or orders for them bound, so I had to shuffle bindings to free up a hat switch to use for some SLF commands. So the thought of setting up HCS + Voiceattack would mean revisiting my bindings for the umpteenth time. However, I was thinking about setting it up with a hcs voicepack, but as I am a bit OCD, I'd like it to feel like an extension fo the COVAS not a bolted on alternative to it, so I was looking for matching COVAS + HCS options. But if the voice packs don't play nicely with the COVAS, maybes I need to go for a contrasting voicepack that is distinct from my COVAS? Something cool like Astra, but Cileste sounds imperial, and I have her COVAS, But Atra and Victor could work? Hmm...

I'll have some beer and do some flying, and make a well oiled informed purchase decision in a couple of hours lol

Bindings for HCS are super simple these days. It basically reads your current bindings, then tells you what is not mapped. Only had one thing to change in my bindings. When you save your in-game bindings with HCS running, it automatically updates for Voice Attack.

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

Bindings for HCS are super simple these days. It basically reads your current bindings, then tells you what is not mapped. Only had one thing to change in my bindings. When you save your in-game bindings with HCS running, it automatically updates for Voice Attack.

That does sound good, I thought I had to keep the original keyboard bindings in one column for HCS/Voiceattack to use, and that would essentially mean a binding reset for me, only one more hurdle to get past, the chasmic incompatibility with speech recognition and my Scottish accent...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU

 

[Elliot Coleman]

...only one more hurdle to get past, the chasmic incompatibility with speech recognition and my Scottish accent...

Perhaps not as....colorful as a Scottish accent, but I feel your pain there. Being from the southern US, the "Californian English" typical of speech recognition doesn't play well with my drawl. Took me weeks to get it to understand basic commands for Elite...it still won't accurately dictate.

 

[CMDR Karrde Sun]

With all this talk about buffing combat i actually gave it a go again and had a good time.

HCS is by far the most practical way to change pips using hotas.

But i really don't want to train windows speech again. It works great but only after a few hours of training and adding custom words.

To all the kbm freaks who use macros on mmo mice to do it..

 

[Vingtetun]

Hint for scottish commanders - change the word "limpets" to "lumpets" in the voice trigger editor and it works MUCH better

That's a good point though - you can change what it listens for for EVERY command within the voice trigger editor, so you can work around any differences in accent nicely.

 

[Paul - HCS VoicePacks - COVAS]

Hey folks... always willing to listen to your input - in terms of the COVAS + a pack, we'll look into options for that next year - It isn't an easy thing to do, and with them sounding different, it is even more difficult to justify. We MAY put in some filtering options but that is also something that will take a little time, as we really want to get the music and Spotify options in first

 

[Caydran]

It would have been nice to have HCS detect the COVAS equivalent voice pack and reply/respond or otherwise work together as one, instead of the mess that exists between the two. For convienence sake, I mute COVAS and use HCS voicepacks alone, as the two just don't seem to get along.

It's ashame that HCS and Elite's COVAS share voice actors, but the code in both won't cooperate on any level.

This should be a bug for both COVAS and HCS to solve.

Hey folks... always willing to listen to your input - in terms of the COVAS + a pack, we'll look into options for that next year - It isn't an easy thing to do, and with them sounding different, it is even more difficult to justify. We MAY put in some filtering options but that is also something that will take a little time, as we really want to get the music and Spotify options in first

I filed a "Bug" on the HCS Forum about this.

The response was that I should file a "bug" with Frontier, as the Elite COVAS does not have any info dumped to journals or other game files for which HCS could detect which COVAS voice is running or what COVAS is saying.

My reply to the "HCS Bug" was that FDev would dismiss any such bug as a "suggestion" rather than a bug, because COVAS is working as designed and is not broken. Furthermore, FDev would be more likely to listen to HCS's bug as opposed to a user bug in the Bug Tracker, as HCS uses the same voice actors for some of the COVAS voices and in order to get the two to work together. HCS would need to be the ones to ask FDev to provide some kind of COVAS output in the game for similar HCS voice acted voices to interact with similar COVAS voice acted packs.

Conclusion: If FDev were to provide a means by which HCS could detect and react to a similarly voice acted COVAS voice pack, then both could interact. The premise is that the user selects a COVAS voice pack for which HCS and COVAS share the same voice actor, i.e. "Verity" or "Archer", and has the HCS equivalent installed under VA, then the two packs could work as one without duplication or over-voicing.

I suspect there may be IP issues with regard to Frontier's implementation of in-game COVAS and HCS's provision of external sales of the same equivalent voicepacks, even though the two use the same voice actors.

Oh, Seven

 

[Qualityoflife]

Where's HALS' voice? Dave