2 hours ago, F737MAX said:

Happy to have found this thread.

I find fs2crew and MCE far too robotic sounding, which I find distracting and has put me off from buying.

Sounds like (pun intended) that Voice Attack is the way forwards for me, maybe with HCS voice packs.

I'm curious, how could Voice Attack sound less robotic than the others?

Certainly, use what works for you. MCE and I assume FS2Crew can use any voice pack or TTS voice installed on your system though, so I'm wondering what Voice Attack can do differently? 

Maybe one more addition for advanced users. When I started with Voice Attack back then, I found two very interesting Voice Attack plug-ins, which are also used for MSFS by both programmers. The first project for interaction with the flight simulator, the second for a more optimized voice output. Especially the optimized voice output, distorted and with clicking sounds, comes pretty close to conversations via Interphone. I built it a bit different and use self-made soundfiles, which are adapted by means of Audacity in the same Interphone variant. Practical simple example: call Ground, the soundfile "click Yes Sir click" is played and VoiceAttack expects an arbitrary answer, request release for briefly switching on the hydraulics to fill the brake accu, "click, you can fill the brake accu, all areas are clear, click".

Final tip, created variables are valid in all scripts of a profile. This is of course especially interesting if you work with them, they are changed in the scripts and you have distributed the individual flows/checklists in several scripts of a profile for the overview.

Whether both still work today and especially the sim data points still fit, I don't know. Interested people would have to test this themselves.

1) MSFSVoiceAttackPlugin
2) MSCognitiveSpeechForVoiceAttack

 

2 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I'm curious, how could Voice Attack sound less robotic than the others?

Certainly, use what works for you. MCE and I assume FS2Crew can use any voice pack or TTS voice installed on your system though, so I'm wondering what Voice Attack can do differently? 

The HCS voice packs are using recorded human speakers rather than TTS voices. It limits the responses to pre-canned phrases rather than dynamic text but it sounds just like a human being. Because it is one.

1 hour ago, Malaromane said:

The HCS voice packs are using recorded human speakers rather than TTS voices. It limits the responses to pre-canned phrases rather than dynamic text but it sounds just like a human being. Because it is one.

Gotcha. So, same as the voices that ship with MCE and FS2Crew then. I personally use a TTS voice for custom verbiage and checklists, but all the folks using the standard checklists and procedures that ship with these programs are using the same kind of pre-recorded human voices that voice attack apparently is. 

21 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

Gotcha. So, same as the voices that ship with MCE and FS2Crew then. I personally use a TTS voice for custom verbiage and checklists, but all the folks using the standard checklists and procedures that ship with these programs are using the same kind of pre-recorded human voices that voice attack apparently is. 

Voice Attack itself can use TTS voices to synthesize any word or phrase you want. The HCS Voice Packs (which are a purchased add-on for Voice Attack) is what is using the pre-recorded voices.

1 hour ago, Malaromane said:

Voice Attack itself can use TTS voices to synthesize any word or phrase you want. The HCS Voice Packs (which are a purchased add-on for Voice Attack) is what is using the pre-recorded voices.

Gotcha. So this is all pretty comparable then. MCE and (I think) FS2C come with several different human voice packs containing all the pre-recorded checklist responses and callouts, but then you can use any TTS voice with them as well. So it sounds like effectively, these all do the same thing with the primary difference being that Voice Attack can be used with other programs than Flight Sim, but lacks monitoring / crosschecking capability. 

On 11/7/2022 at 9:40 PM, Dermot McClusky said:

Thank you so much for the full review, very helpful!

I built a flow, Normal Procedures, for the Osprey and made a movie about it. Perhaps as a suggestion and example from practice.