Text to speech for NPC's
- Thread starter Mav359
- Start date
It's actually not bad for TTS on the fly. If you're expecting voice actor work like the other voices in the game, you will be disappointed. Keep in mind the video on the site is pretty dated--the voices have been cleaned up quite a bit since. The author of the plugin has made a fair amount of effort to get as many voices in this as possible to keep the variety level high.
It's free to try--you only end up paying if you want to be able to download all the voices for all the sayings quickly. If you don't need that, the 10k free characters per month will keep you paying nothing. So, if you're looking for more immersion, give it a whirl--you have nothing to lose but your time.
I'll repeat my offer--if anyone is trying to set it up and has difficulties, PM me and I'll help you best I can.
It's free to try--you only end up paying if you want to be able to download all the voices for all the sayings quickly. If you don't need that, the 10k free characters per month will keep you paying nothing. So, if you're looking for more immersion, give it a whirl--you have nothing to lose but your time.
I'll repeat my offer--if anyone is trying to set it up and has difficulties, PM me and I'll help you best I can.
YES, I figured it out. The app is G19 which is found here. There are option settings titled "USE VOICE TO READ NEWS" and "NPC VOICES"
This is the key, enjoy! o7
Last edited:
Many of them have been--they're pretty bad in the video. I still run into a few now and then that are that bad, but most are pretty clear and the voice variety is nice.
- - - Updated - - -
It's not quite the same thing--but that's a nice tool, too! Thanks for sharing.
I'd encourage folks to give both a whirl.
RE: G19, How is it not the same thing? It offers full text reads (in varied voices male and female) of all messages, including those sent by CMDRs (if option set). Frankly, it is quite excellent and best its freeeee! Great job to the dev for that tool.
Last edited:
Fdev should look at this as a development direction of their own.
Near as I can tell, it doesn't read the logs and spit out what the ships/players are saying via text. All I saw was "simulated traffic chatter." So you're saying it repeats everything that is sent as a text message? Do share where exactly that is claimed as a feature, thanks!
- - - Updated - - -
Indeed--you can very likely use this without paying a single red cent. However--be sure you have a backup strategy in place. That caching is only as good as your backups should you have a disk failure.
YEEESSSS G19 reads the text displayed in the Messages section!
As noted, if you have g19 installed, go to the Options section, and choose "Voices"
Once in the "Voices" section, check on "NPC Voices", "CMDR Voices", and "Use Voice to Read News"
Once you have those settings set, fire up ED, and go out into the galaxy and hear all messages your receive in the "Messages" section of the ship UI.
Of course, G19 also has the simulated traffic chatter option too which is quite excellent. I use it only in SuperCruise.
Another bonus of G19... all the radio and video features that you can utilize as well! I often fly with Sidewinder Radio tuned in as low background.
o7
wind
UPDATE: here is a post in the G19 thread that specifically shows the UI options setting to enable to message NPC/CMDR voice overs.
Note there may be a few other needs such as ensuring you have multiple Windows voice packs in place. I have Hazel, Zira, David, etc... all free. I believe these are the voices that randomly are used for NPC/CMDR message reads. Though all in all, this level of immersion is available now via G19 and some Windows voice packs which is all FREE!
As noted, if you have g19 installed, go to the Options section, and choose "Voices"
Once in the "Voices" section, check on "NPC Voices", "CMDR Voices", and "Use Voice to Read News"
Once you have those settings set, fire up ED, and go out into the galaxy and hear all messages your receive in the "Messages" section of the ship UI.
Of course, G19 also has the simulated traffic chatter option too which is quite excellent. I use it only in SuperCruise.
Another bonus of G19... all the radio and video features that you can utilize as well! I often fly with Sidewinder Radio tuned in as low background.
o7
wind
UPDATE: here is a post in the G19 thread that specifically shows the UI options setting to enable to message NPC/CMDR voice overs.
Note there may be a few other needs such as ensuring you have multiple Windows voice packs in place. I have Hazel, Zira, David, etc... all free. I believe these are the voices that randomly are used for NPC/CMDR message reads. Though all in all, this level of immersion is available now via G19 and some Windows voice packs which is all FREE!
Last edited:
To my humble inofrmation FD purchased some TTS tech a long time ago, don't know if they did anything with it, what the plans are or if it's actually true
I thought Steven voiced the Engineer bases already....
FYI I recorded a session last night on Twitch which captures NPC voice dialog driven by G19 for the Messages tab. Most of the night, ironically, I did not have active messaging; though I had one in particular specific to a Cruise Ship captain reporting an arrival delay that popped up when I was on approach to a nav beacon.
See here at: 1:33:20 - 1:33:31
Note, via G19 if you watch more of the twitch recording, u will hear the system traffic and also Sidewinder radio all driven by G19. I also use EDDI with VA for my ship AI dialog which you may also hear in the stream recording. Enjoy! o7
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/136988578
See here at: 1:33:20 - 1:33:31
Note, via G19 if you watch more of the twitch recording, u will hear the system traffic and also Sidewinder radio all driven by G19. I also use EDDI with VA for my ship AI dialog which you may also hear in the stream recording. Enjoy! o7
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/136988578
Last edited:
There is a difference between local TTS and a cloud-based one, which is what the app this thread was about is doing. Also key is the number of voices available. Not to say that any of these solutions are the "best", everything has a trade off. Thankfully they're all possible because FDev decided to go with the journal idea and give us access to a lot of this info to process onward however we want.
Note, G19 has a number of voices that are heard. Not sure how technically it is done, but it is there. When I view my G19 options, it shows three MS TTS voices listed which I assume play in. However, often the voices are not these voices, or perhaps g19 speeds up/slows down to affect pitch/inflection to make it sound like more voices coming from base three.
All in all though, G19 is a really fine ED complementary tool (note I have no stake in G19, only that is it good!), and kudos to the CMDR how wrote the code and provided it to the community for free!
Will try future streams to see if I can capture more robust dialog and point out, but overall, its quite a nice experience. Now I need to figure out how to show a better picture in twich that is not so blurry. I use OBS Studio for streaming, but need to work out the finer kinks for optimal presentation on twitch.
Yes, I've done the same thing with the free MS voices out there, by changing the volume and speed, or by mixing other things as they play such as static. Especially for background radio chatter, if you can't hear it very much you can be fooled into thinking it's a lot of different voices from just a few. I think in most cases you're just trying to add more ambience rather than have a huge variety. Another trick I did is have the message voices be about 30-40% of my ship's voice, to give that illusion of distance as well.
I set this up after I saw it on OA's YTchannel. Works quite well and adds flavour and immersion. If you register you get 10k credits/month free. So there is no need to pay anything. And as soon as most of the messages are stored on your disk there is no need to connect to Cere anymore.
Someone's already experimenting with using pre-recorded voices for ED's NPC's, but needs help:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?p=5384086&viewfull=1#post5384086
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-testing-it)?p=5384133&viewfull=1#post5384133
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-testing-it)?p=5384219&viewfull=1#post5384219
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...-testing-it)?p=5386594&viewfull=1#post5386594
Last edited: