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Most of my stuff is dealt with via HOTAS but I will definitely look into voice attack as an option. To be fair, I will need to completely re do my whole set up I think!
I'm glad you recognise and accept that - that means you're half way there already!... I tend to keep the critical stuff on controls on the stick and throttle levers, and secondary stuff on the controls on the base of the stick and throttle. As such, with Voice attack also doing the secondary stuff, I never have to remove my hands form stick or throttle in normal flight. The only times I find myself reaching for the controls on the base of the stick are the rare occasion where something is not working correctly (maybe too much ambient noise interfering with voice recognition) and I need manual control.
As for a couple of other comments.. I find the Rift S sound adequate for ED. Not brilliant 50kw hi-fi, but adequate.... See how you get on with it.
Re voice attack (VA from hereon). I deliberately gave a very basic example of initial VA usage and hinted it could do much more......
As for how much more......
I use a plug-in for VA called EDDI - I use it in it's most basic form, where it is only scanning ED's journal and status files. Amongst other things, that imports information from the game as to the status of your ship and what is going on th the game and makes that availble within VA... VA can then use that to help you.
For example, my Landing gear example only toggles the state of the landing gear. i.e it deploys it if it was up, and vice versa. Version two of my landing gear commands was in fact two commands, one for up and one for down, each command checking whether the gear was currently up or down, and only pressing L if the gear was in the wrong state. VA knows the state of the landing gear as EDDi tells it. This helps prevent 'numpty moments' (tm) where you request a gear activation when the gear is already in the state that you needed. Cue gear up landing (or howl of laughter form the controller as you line up)...
Another advanced example. EDDI will read you the location of your landing pad within a starport when you request docking. I wanted a detached version of that, as often the information was being presented to me when I was dealing with other issues and I missed it. First I wrote a VA command "location (number)" whch computed and read me the pad location (that I had to speak aloud as part of the command). I'm just tweaking that command to get the pad information from EDDI - that is quite involved, But now as I'm approaching the toast rack, I just say "location" and it tells me the distance from entrance and the clock-face position of the pad within the docking bay. That command is a lot more involved as I need to get VA to record the information from EDDI when I request docking and hold it for regurgitation on demand. It also needs to clear the stored info when the pad allocation is no longer valid (requiring hooking into several other in-game events, captured by EDDI). Granted that is advanced use, and I have strong coding skills, but it shows what can be done. Having the "location" command available on short finals to the mailslot should also help with those 'numpty moments' where you forget to request docking at your normal point, and find out as you enter the toast rack....
(edited for typos and a minor clarification)