With all the "future?" posts at the moment I couldn't help but let this complete load of nonsense float into my conciousness... A spanky sparkly game which uses player voice/sound recognition to make shapes and physical changes in a virtual world. I have no idea how much control a player would be able to comand, or if they would be limited by technology. But wouldn't it be cool to play a crazy pong variant or something where the paddle moves with your voice pitch. Use powerups by barking! More seriously, how far could the technology take you. Being able to navigate a bubble (which changes shape, size and colour depending on sound) through a 3D world?

I could see a variant of the Helicopter game where the height of your copter is directly connected to the pitch of your voice.

As much fun as these technically demos would be, I think most gamers would find it quite annoying to have to go:
"eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
all game long.

I personally dont see voice recognition making it too much further into games. I mean, its just as much effort as me to say my name into a game UI as it would be for me to type it -- and until voice recognition is flawless, why waste my time?

I actually do see voice recognition being used in strategy games, to give commands to units. Simply assign a squad a "name", and then using one of the present commands, have them move. But then how would you do something like "attack that dude." It would have to become extremely specific ... and at that point, after you have said everything, why not just click?

Maybe its just me being narrow minded or pessimistic, but I think voice recognition in video games is about as useless as odor technology. It simply takes too long to say things...you can do so much more clicking your mouse than speaking.

Just my $.02

actuly I wonder how http://butifnot.tripod.com/racecar.html would do in a voice controlled racing game.

Voice controls are useful for giving basic commands such as Red unit 1 attack Blue unit 2. Or Bot 1 guard the flag

other then that there not very usful.

Yeah, in team games of UT2K4, voicechat is often reduced to "Phatboy, defend node six" and "somebody bring the Leviathan to point three". If simple orders like that could be recognized by bots, I'd be all about it. With good map taxonomy, RTS games could benefit as well. Examples:

"Team one, escort tank column two"
"All units defend base"
"All peasants proceed to lumber mill"
"Nearest three firebats assault enemy base"

etc.

Im still waiting for the Online games to use VR for communications.
With all the fast mouse/keyboard control use, there is little time to do alot of typing messages to coordinate a group of players.

The VR takes something like 200MHz worth of CPU (a fraction of todays capacity)
to convert voice into text to be sent down the players connection to be shown as text.

Interface commands are then free to control the players avatar (where precision
is more important).

Widespread use like this could feedback into the VR technology companies to find improved ways of processing....

I've experimented with voice recognition, and I can tell you it doesn't work very well unless you train it, and that takes hours. Most people won't want to do that. Anyway, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but there's a voice recognition utility in the Microsoft Speech SDK 5.1 that lets you give voice commands in Age of Empires II. I didn't find it very useful because there's a delay between issuing a commmand and seeing it happen, during which time I could have used my mouse or keyboard. When we have more CPU power and better recognition, I would definitely like to see this in more strategy games.

Quote:

visage:- As much fun as these technically demos would be, I think most gamers would find it quite annoying to have to go: "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" all game long.

big lol!
++

Quote:

Original post by Tom I've experimented with voice recognition, and I can tell you it doesn't work very well unless you train it, and that takes hours. Most people won't want to do that.

It would be great if someone made a standarized "voice trained datafile" that could be used with all VR software. Then you could use VR in text dictation and in games without having to train each application.

In games it would be great to issue commands to wingmen in flight-sims or to write messages in mmorpgs. In non-massiv multiplayer games I suppose it's possible to just send the sound itself, but if that's not feasable dictating messages would be much better than having to write them by hand. It would also be very helpful in games with a lot of different keys you'd otherwise have to remember. I don't think VR should replace the keys, but only supplement it. It's much easier to remember "Fling Shot" or "Burst" than "N" and "M".


EDIT: Another cool feature would be that if you made very annoying sound, the enemies heads would blow up.

Quote:

Original post by evelyn Quote: visage:- As much fun as these technically demos would be, I think most gamers would find it quite annoying to have to go: "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" all game long. big lol! ++

ROLSAFLAMOA!!!!!!!!!