
Elite Dangerous Ship Assistant Powered by Alexa [video] - rcarmo
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ScE4ky6_U5k
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andybak
It's mentioned briefly in the article but take a look at how much has been
achieved already on controlling Elite via voice without needing Alexa:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6SECeLL3hE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6SECeLL3hE)

And with Mr Shatner himself providing the voiceover.

More here: [http://www.hcsvoicepacks.com/](http://www.hcsvoicepacks.com/)

Disclaimer: I just bought this. I'm waiting for my HOTAS flightstick to arrive
then I'm donning my Vive to spend some quality time with Kirk in VR.

(Voice control is of particular relevance to VR as you can't see the keyboard.
Any games with complex control schemes suffer greatly. Elite, War Thunder and
DCS spring to mind but it probably applies to some RTS games too. Voice seems
like the most obvious addition as it maintains the sense of immersion.
Strangely - it's currently very underutilized in VR)

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fao_
The video you linked; the voice assistant sounded faster than Alexa.

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pearle
Gamers typically use VoiceAttack[1] for voice control in gaming. It uses the
built in Windows 10/8/7? speech recognition system and layers macros and basic
programming on top of it.

[1] [http://voiceattack.com/](http://voiceattack.com/)

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andybak
Yep. The Kirk thing is based on VoiceAttack if that wasn't clear.

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harel
Elite is the galactic time sink. I used to play it on Amiga when i was
younger. Reached Elite, lost childhood. Then as I got older I used to play it
on my Palm V. Got very far, lost productivity. Today I play dangerous and try
to adult myself into limiting my sessions into one mission a sitting. Ok,
maybe two, sometimes three. I fear having something like this will disconnect
me from the world too much. Nonetheless, great job!

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J-dawg
I was the same with Elite as a kid (although I never actually reached
'Elite'!). There was something about that game that made it so immersive. I
wasn't just playing a game, for a few hours a day I was a hard-bitten space
trader.

When I first heard about Elite Dangerous I was fascinated. Everything from the
original game but with modern graphics to make it look the way it always
deserved to. I genuinely feared how much of time sink it could become, and
decided to stay away. I still watch the videos on YouTube sometimes!

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Mtinie
My personal gripe with Elite Dangerous is that the initial learning curve is a
pain in the ass. I'm all for escalating challenge -- especially if it means
that the jump from "hey, this is fun to play around with" to "I'm out in the
border regions, alone, looking for adventure" is intense -- but with Elite
Dangerous, I felt like the starting experience dropped me WAY into the deep
end of the galactic pool, without much in the way of explanation about the
"why" or "how".

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sergiotapia
How many years off are we to truly conversational computer talk? The prompt
'pings' get in the way of the flow.

When will I be able to just talk to my computer and have it know I'm done and
respond, with a 'ping' 'pong' system?

I don't even use my car's voice commands because it's really slow to use while
driving. I would love to just say: "Hey text my wife I'll be home in 10
minutes" and have my car respond.

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camtarn
"Okay Google, text Marianne and say I'll be home in ten minutes". "Sending a
message to Marianne, saying I'll be home in ten minutes. Send?" "Yes."
"Sending."

I love Google voice assistant. My phone's mic is unusually bad though, so if
you imagine all of the above with me learning forward and shouting at my
phone... ;)

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drzaiusapelord
On the flip side it can be maddeningly stupid. I have two Tom's in my
contacts. one is regularly texted and called and other very, very rarely so.
When I try to use voice to text Tom, it asks me which one. Every time. This
adds a lot of interaction and time and honestly makes using the phone
touchscreen faster and more pleasant.

I have the Google Home and my kid loves the Ghostbusters song. For whatever
reason if you ask Home to play Ghostbusters you need, first, to specify the
song not the movie, even though I have no Netflix integration setup. Then when
it gets it correct it will only play the instrumental version for some bizarre
reason. Weird, its clear the Home engineers are Ghostbusters fans as you can
ask Home "Who you gonna call" and it gives some humorous canned responses, but
somehow they can't get playing the Ghostbusters song correct.

Worse, because I have Google Play Music, there's some kind of licensing limit
with Home. If I have Home playing music then my desktop PC refuses to play any
youtube content, not play music, but unrelated videos. I can't watch any
youtube videos unless I log out. Its incredible how bad the usability here.
Buying a device for your kitchen shouldn't make all your computers be unable
to play videos.

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camtarn
Have you thought of renaming the less-called one to Thomas? :D It's a bad
solution, sure, but it _is_ a solution...

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drzaiusapelord
That's what I ultimately did. I just named him Tom2 or somesuch.

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demarq
I hope Amazon picks up on this. Alexa and Sci-Fi Games are a match made in
heaven!

Great hacking OP! well done!

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thirdsun
That's a fantastic idea. Actually, Alexa could serve as a built-in voice
assistant in a lot of games if it fits the setting. To me it seems like an
impressive and actually useful feature, not just a gimmick, to developers and
users alike.

From the top of my head it would shine in games like Metal Gear Solid 5.

Does Amazon advertise a use-case like this? I think they should. Considering
that they are involved with the Cryengine it even makes more sense.

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fennecfoxen
Hmm. Interface it with Kerbal Space Program and a mod like MechJeb.

"Alexa, launch to orbit at 120km."

"Alexa, deploy all solar panels."

"Alexa, match planes with target and plot an intercept."

"Alexa, orient the ship in a Sun reference frame facing down, zero degree
roll." (Can I call that "reference frame Sun-Down-Zero for short?)

"Alexa, switch to atomic engines and plot a bi-elliptic transfer to Moho at
the next window where total delta-V is under 6 kilometers per second. Then
aerobrake to an equatorial orbit at 60km, plot rendezvous with Fuel Depot M50,
and dock."

> "I'm sorry, Dave, Moho doesn't have an atmosphere so I can't aerobrake." (
> _ship flies off on an impact trajectory with the Sun_ )

hmm ... okay maybe that's just a little _too_ complex :b

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marak830
The problem with that is it requires information from the game (some of those
commands), i was working on something similar for star citizen and was setting
up screen scraping to get data (but insufficient interest, beta testers and 0
sales after 6 months kinda killed that project).

Basically think of these types of systems (that's voice attack i believe, i
saw this video a while ago) as macros triggered via voice - useful for space
combat (shields forward, slide left(for 6 degree of freedom flight) etc).

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fennecfoxen
It's mostly there. The MechJeb extension does 95% of that stuff already. It
won't plot aerobrakes except for landing, and it only does Hohmann transfers
and not bi-elliptic (but unless you're going Eeloo to Moho there's really no
advantage to be had) and it doesn't really manage different _sets_ of engines,
but it easily could be extended to do so.

It _can_ launch to specific orbits, compute orbital transfers with specific
delta-V budgets through a GUI interface with a time/dV heatmap, and it will
gladly deploy your solar panels (but not retract them), and it can orient your
craft.

(Oh, and you need to explicitly pick out which docking ports to use.)

If only it did a better job at auto-tuning its PID parameters to match the
available control authority, you'd be set. :b

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marak830
Huh, i'd love to see how their doing that - question though - is it from a
specific place only? or are they screen scraping?

I've gotten a lot more into this sort of tech lately, after a started getting
requests for it :D

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fennecfoxen
It's not screen scraping, certainly. Here's some of the code; if you can
figure out where vesselState is coming from, you'll know:
[https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2/blob/master/MechJeb2/Mech...](https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2/blob/master/MechJeb2/MechJebModuleAttitudeController.cs)

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marak830
Hey thanks, ill look into that.

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pimlottc
This title is rather less confusing game when you realize there's a game
called Elite Dangerous. I had no idea what this was about but was curious...

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marak830
I made a couple of replies to some comments, but i thought i would do a little
post of details about something like this.

I worked on a similar system for star citizen, using the inbuilt windows voice
recog system.

At it's core, systems like this are primarily voice activated macro's. They
are a lot more useful for twitch/combat based games (specifically flight
simulators).

I would listen to microphone input, do a comparison for a specific string and
emulate a keyboard press(or a combination of them for x amount of time) based
on what was said. (Mouse too some times - although i spoke to tech support for
star citizen, and had to be careful of how complex some commands could be, to
ensure i did not break the eula).

Side note: I have stopped production of mine until star citizen gets a little
further along (and i am also working on a natural speaking system, to detect
what you mean for the system to do, instead of specific strings - eg if i said
show shields, show me the shields, lets see the shields it would differentiate
between that and say putting the shield power forward).

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xja
The how to link in the description doesn't seem to be working but it's here:

[https://www.hackster.io/mathwuy/elite-dangerous-ship-
assista...](https://www.hackster.io/mathwuy/elite-dangerous-ship-
assistant-04e2cd)

Neat hack! It's awesome that Amazon have opened there API to the degree that
you can implement these kinds of things. Hope Siri does the same someday
(though I think it's unlikely).

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radarsat1
Very cool, yet surprisingly boring to watch.. ;)

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fapjacks
Sounds like a great project: Implement this for Star Citizen.

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marak830
I did, i couldn't get enough beta testers, and zero purchases after 6 months.
Now i just use it for myself (also mine had on screen overlays and other
advantages).

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devoply
grabs the mouse: hello computer.

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spir
A real pleasure to watch, great job!

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Mithorium
I like the part where Alexa asked him what's next

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youdontknowtho
OK. That's cool.

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youdontknowtho
Seriously. I think its cool.

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dovdovdov
this is depressing

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andybak
Why?

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dovdovdov
Space makes me feel super insignificant in the universe.

Then add Alexa's pretty much soulless monotone voice.

