Voice recognition issues

Hi,

I'm currently using a voice recognition package called Dragon NaturallySpeaking (9)which is absolutely fantastic in terms of accuracy. When using voice recognition in second life to talk to other people the second life client seems to be dropping letters - as in, the voice recognition picks up precisely what I'm saying, but when it is pasted into the second life box, certain letters are missing.

For example - if I say ' this is a very strange place', - in second life I get ' this is a very strane place'. It does not seem to be totally random though, as it will print 'strane', instead of ' strange' every time. This is definitely not a voice recognition issue, as I have no problems with any other programme except second life.

This problem has not always existed as I used voice recognition within second life about a year ago and it worked fine.

Any ideas?

Yeah... I've used that program before... loved it!
I'm not sure what's up with it, but I've noticed that, too. I tried asking the Lindens, but I've been unable to recieve a responce to it. It's simply a text box, right? So what's so different about its function? Perhaps another bug in the bathtub full of dirty cockroaches? o.O;

that program sounds intresting... do you care to explain a little about how it works please? where you purchased it and wether it is difficult to operate/install.

- Thanks in advance

When you're in a really crowded area of SL and/or using a slow computer, sometimes the client slows down enough that keyboard response gets laggy; some of the letters you type get lost. I suspect that you're experiencing a related phenomenon; the burden of running the speech software in parallel with the SL client is slowing things down too much. I believe that the Dragon software works by stuffing the text into the event loop of your application, which then processes it just like normal keyboard input, so any problem that causes keyboard input loss will also affect the speech recognition.

The easiest way to fix the problem is technical -- throw more computer power at it. In particular, a dual-core processor will help a LOT; SL is single-threaded, so one of the cores is always idle, just waiting for the speech software. Also make sure you have enough RAM, both the speech software and SL are memory hogs. The SL client has become more of one over time, so a system that had enough RAM a year ago might not now -- and if you upgraded the speech software, it probably got bigger as well. I would use a 2GB system for that combination.

I was just looking at Dragon NaturallySpeaking (9) today at Costco today at lunch!

It looks like it could be very cool for SL. I have a duo core machine, so as the privious poster suggested, I probably will not have a problem running it....

Costco charges $49 for the package and it comes with a microphone. It looks like it's easy to install and use, but I have no idea untill I actually buy it...

Maybe the first poster can elaborate....

Hi Jennifer

Perhaps I can give you a little information. I also am using the Dragon naturally speaking voice recognition program. (version As a matter of fact, I'm using it to write this thread.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied with the program. I've been using it about a year and a half now, and have found it to be a dependable program.

I don't type very fast, and don't imagine I ever will. (I simply will not make the time that is required to learn) Also, it is my personal belief that talking through, or to your computer just seems more of an efficient and logical way to interface and communicate. (ala Star Trek) were not quite there yet, but just give it a few more years.

Moving on, if you choose to purchase this program there are a few things you'll have to do to get started. The first one is, you'll have to train the program to recognize your voice. Initially this takes about a half an hour. Second, you will have to continue to train your program periodically in the beginning, and from time to time throughout its use till it becomes familiar with what you are trying to communicate. It's really is not difficult though. It becomes more accurate the more you use it.

In regards to the previous threads about CPU speed, and RAM usage, this is quite correct. Faster speeds, and more RAM are better. You might want to take this under consideration before purchasing this program.

In regards to the original post, I too have the same problem with missing letters when using voice recognition in SL. Although I have two gigs of RAM, I have an Athalon 64-bit chip, which of course is running in 32-bit mode using Windows XP (waiting for Vista so I can go 64-bit) this means my CPU speed is only 800 Mhz instead of 2 GHz. I have suspected this may be part of my problem, as the previous threads have alluded to. Although part of the problem may be SL also. (wouldn't surprise me a bit) At any rate, we shall see when I upgrade to Vista.

In spite of all this, for the most part, my experience is that I can still communicate faster using voice recognition, than someone typing.

Hope this helps

Thank you so much for the in-sight, I appreciate your response (although not directed to me, it did help fill in some blanks) I'm going to explore further and see if I can integrate it as soon as possible. Thanks again!!!

I wonder if setting this option would help.

"AsynchKeyboard
Improves responsivness to keyboard input when at low framerates"

Grumble can you elaborate a little more how exactly does that work? Thanks in advance!

Firstly, my apologies for the delay in replying.

I too have an Athlon 64 chip, but I don't understand what you mean - why would your CPU speed be only 800 MHz? Whether the chip is running in 32-bit or 64-bit mode is surely irrelevant to the speed that the processor is running at.

it's unfortunate that the current version of the second life client doesn't want to play ball... previous versions did not have this problem. the asynchronous keyboard option was already turned on in my client, and turning it off actually made things worse, so I turned it back on.

Any more ideas anyone?

You could try upping the priority of the voice program over SL a notch. SL is a resource hog and the missing text is likely due to not enough proccessing power to perform correctly with both running. SL has a lot of room to drop resorces compared to the voice program, SL loses framerate but the voice program loses much more.

You can go into the task manager (contrl+alt+del) and look up the voice program prossess and right click and select Priority. Note: Changing Priority can cause the computer to act differently than you expect or in rare instances cause problems so be ready to change it back if need be.

the voice recognition is not the issue here, - naturally speaking is detecting what I'm saying completely perfectly. The problem is that the second life client is not pasting it in correctly. for example, if I say " hello, how are you today?" - today is always spelt tday - for some reason the 'o' is always missing.

This is so annoying.

that setting was turned on by default. If I disable it letters are still missing - just in different places this time

Well, I dunno what to suggest then. I have a duel core 4400+ and I perhaps dropped one letter every time I've used it with SL running. On my single prosessor machine it dropped quite a few so I suspect it is a processor resource problem.

Yes, I do believe you're right and that it is something to do with processor resources, because if I adjust the priority of naturally speaking or secondlife the results are slightly different - letters still dropped but in different places.

It seems also to be something about the way that the SL client watches its input, - it is just not responding quick enough somehow. If I say only a few words at a time it does seem to work, - whereas if I say an entire sentence you can guarantee that the second half of the sentence gets completely corrupted.

Hmph... it would be so nice if it worked..

Typical,

I have installed windows vista to see whether or not the voice recognition works with the second life client.. But it doesn't. It wont even paste into the program.

SHucks

dont know if this will help or not. but i have a dual core machine also, in order to run sl correctly i have to set the sl program affinity to run on 1 core.
you should try running sl on 1 core and dragon on the other.