maxx77

Don't know if everyone thinks to look at our other topics on here, but I posted a new thread concerning how to get voice commands working with iRacing. A program called Voice Attack lets you set up custom commands triggered by your voice. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I did a race using it and it worked incredibly well, even with my speakers cranked up. I can tell it which blackbox to display, how much fuel I want on my next stop, which tires I want replaced, how much tape to put on the grill. It has freed up almost every button I have on my wheel and made it so I never need to grab the mouse or keyboard during a race.

The program works for any game or Windows application. I've been using it the last couple of days to control video playback like how you can control videos with the Kinect on the Xbox. The Kinect can barely hear my voice above my speakers when watching videos, making it all but worthless most of the time. Voice Attack though... it's been picking up on my voice nearly every time. I can be anywhere in the room and somehow it hears me on the cheap headset I have plugged in. I'm not even wearing the headset, it can be 8 feet away and still hear me, even with a video playing loudly. There's some kind of voodoo magic at play, it's the only explanation.

Anyway, it's a game changer. I'm probably going to use it with just about every game and program I use from now on.

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.

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.

@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.

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.

I know I know :( For what it's worth, I'm better with the slower stock cars than I am with the Gen-6, so less chance of a spectacular wreck that takes out the whole field. I had really good fortune last time we went to Daytona though. Hate to miss it but I really doubt I'll make it.

I'll be there! Probably not on Sunday though, like usual.

Already bought the Mustang though. And yeah I'm not taking it seriously, but I am still going to stick to the Impala for now. Main reason I'm asking now is because I want to make a new livery for the run-off and wanted to know which car I should be making it for. It's either going to turn out amazing or really awful. I have an idea what I want it to look like but haven't started working on it yet. You'll have to wait a couple weeks to see what it is.

What kind of person would I be if I did that though!? Granted, I traded in my Monte Carlo (basically an Impala) for a Mustang in real life, so it's not like there isn't precedent. Still... probably just stick with the Impala for now. It got me an actual win this season. Probably shouldn't junk it until the season is actually over.

@slowbird: What I mean is, is it still a thing, or are the points locked in now? Will it matter for the next 4 races or would it be alright to just drive whatever now? I want to switch to the Mustang if we're not still counting points. Not that the manufacturer points race matters all that much, but I want to stay consistent so long as it's still a points race.