Sims like iRacing have a unique problem that most games don't have. Too many commands, not enough buttons. I don't know about the rest of you, but if I have to use the mouse or keyboard while racing to enter commands, that's a problem. Manipulating how much fuel to get on the next stop, requesting only the right side tires be changed, navigating to a specific blackbox... all of these things take button presses or the mouse.

I'd never really noticed how big a problem this is until I found an $8 program called Voice Attack. Voice Attack lets you program commands/macros/etc. and have them be triggered by your voice. You could, for example, just say "right side tires, full tank, pitting in". iRacing would then queue up the two right tires to be changed, put in a full tank of gas, and display the words "pitting in" for everyone to see. You could also verbally change the brake bias, weight jacker, and race tape. You can trigger specific blackboxes to appear just by saying their name.

I've only tested it out in a solo session, but the results were very good. Even with my surround sound cranked up, Voice Attack heard me clearly and only on a couple of occasions failed to understand my command. I'm going to use it the next time I do a race, which will be the real test.

It works with other programs as well. It'd be great for flight sims, where you'd be able to just shout "eject eject eject!" and have the game respond appropriately. You could have it work with Netflix, iTunes, Giantbomb, etc., where you could say "Pause" and "Play" to control the video playback. It's like having the verbal features of Kinect except it's fully programmable and actually works more often than it fails.

There's a free, 21 day demo you can try. You can only have a handful of commands programmed into it at a time in that version. I tried it for all of 5 minutes and was immediately sold. If you guys try it out let me know. Once I finish programming it for iRacing, I'll post my script in case anyone wants to try it the way I've set it up.

Have been using this for a couple of months or so now. Absolutely love it. Being able to say "fuel info" at any point of a lap (even the middle of a corner) and have the fuel info black box up so I can have a quick glance whenever I get the chance is awesome.

As long as you do the Windows voice training thing 2-3 times, you rarely get misses with the commands. Occasionally I'll have to repeat myself, but that's the exception. It also doesn't pick up false positives when you're just chatting in the voice chat.

Here's the profile I have set up (I think there are too many commands for the trial). The fuel adjustment is a bit clunky. Could be made much smoother if you change some key bindings in iRacing and adjust the profile a bit.

I don't participate in iRacing, nor have a gaming PC... but I know I'll definitely be getting this program for a measly $8 on top of my multi-K PC build when I do it.

@khann The way you set up your profile for iRacing is... interesting. You have a whole lot of mouse movement macros to simulate moving the cursor to the blackbox and clicking the individual things you want, such as each tire. The way I've currently set my profile is much simpler and doesn't rely on the mouse at all.

I'm at work right now, otherwise I'd share the file (I'll put a link to it when I get home later in the day). But in a nutshell, within iRacing I programmed a bunch of commands into the Options tab of the Options menu. #clear$ is bound to 1. #rf rr$ is bound to 2. #lf lr$ is bound to 3, and so on (these are commands I used to have mapped to buttons on my wheel). In Voice Attack, I have it set up so that when I say "Left side", all Voice Attack does is press the 3 button. There's no need to be on any particular blackbox, and no need to program a complex macro controlling where the mouse needs to move to.

An alternative way to do the same thing but not have to use one of the 15 auto text chat fields in iRacing's options menu would be to just program those text strings into Voice Attack. You can say "right side" and have Voice Attack type out the whole command, #rf rr$ and Enter. Again, don't need to worry about being on the right blackbox.

@maxx77: That's a much smarter way of doing things :D

And here's my 90% finished iRacing profile: iRacing - Maxx77

There may be better ways of setting it up, but this is how I have it programmed right now. I can say "Tires" and it'll display the Tire blackbox. I can say "Full Pit" and it'll give me 4 tires and a full tank of gas. I can say "Add 3 gallons" and it'll give me the closest amount of fuel the car has to 3 gallons. There may be a better way of adding specific amounts of fuel to the tank, but that's the best I could come up with for now. I only programmed up to 7 gallons. If I ever need more than that, I can say "Plus" repeatedly (or push a button the wheel) and just keep incrementing the fuel counter until it gets to the exact number I want.

My profile relies on the way I have my buttons programmed in iRacing itself, so this profile won't work for everyone immediately. You'll have to either edit it, which is easy to do, or reconfigure your iRacing to match it. You can also change the words to be anything you like. It's a very flexible program. Anyway, here are my iRacing keybinds that go with this Voice Attack profile. I'm only listing the ones I changed, everything else is set to the iRacing default keybindings:

AUTO TEXT CHAT

#clear 1$ | 1

#ws lr lf$ | 2

#ws rf rr$ | 3

#ws$ | 4

#ws fuel 22g$ | 5

#ws lf rf$ | 6

#ws lr rr$ | 7

Pass Left$ | 8

Pass Right$ | 9

Pitting in$ | Shift 1

Checking up, Checking up | Shift 2

#ws fuel 22g lf rf lr rr$ | Shift 3

BLACK BOX CONTROLS

Select Next Control | =

Select Previous Control | -

Increment Selected Control | Shift =

Decrement Selected Control | Shift -

Toggle Selected Control | \

Things I might change in the profile: I might set it up so that if I say "Pace car, turn 3" it'll display that line of text in the game for everyone to see. Could be useful if someone else is talking at the time.

Just did a race using Voice Attack and it worked fantastically. I had a couple of false positives. It thought I asked for right side tires once, but that was easily fixed by saying "Clear". It triggered the "Pitting in" chat text one time when I cleared my throat. Worked perfectly otherwise. I might stick the chat text buttons onto the wheel and remove them from my voice profile since pretty much all of my buttons are free now.

@maxx77: How many times did you do the voice training?

Only once. It's been working really well with just that one session. I'm going to go through it a couple more times though just to be safe.

I just use my mouse/keyboard. Unorthodox and perhaps dangerous but unless I have an early pit stall, I can usually figure things out on a straightaway and confirm things in pit lane while riding the limiter

I had a feeling this might be about Voice Attack. Seen a bunch of people using it as a on-ship computer in Elite: Dangerous. Might look into picking it up once my flight stick arrives!