Elite: Dangerous. I broke down.

[Grim.Reaper]

It's awesome, go for it:)

[Gusington]

OK. Thinking 'strength.'

[SirAndrewD]

OK. Thinking 'strength.'

Oh Gus...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXyB7niEc0

Seriously though, it's an experience.  I mean, I have NO idea what I'm doing.  Pretty much having to flashback to 1987 in my computer lab at school playing Elite and Starflight on the fly, and I'm still not quite getting it, but it's awesome. 

My wife was watching me play over my shoulder and asking how she could join in. 

[Grim.Reaper]

OK. Thinking 'strength.'

Oh Gus...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBXyB7niEc0

Seriously though, it's an experience.  I mean, I have NO idea what I'm doing.  Pretty much having to flashback to 1987 in my computer lab at school playing Elite and Starflight on the fly, and I'm still not quite getting it, but it's awesome. 

My wife was watching me play over my shoulder and asking how she could join in.

Couldn't agree more with my limited time today.....even though I did not know what I am doing, it was just plain fun....graphics are great and just can't get over how well the cockpit experience is...tomorrow hope to play a ton more.

[GDS_Starfury]

My wife was watching me play over my shoulder and asking how she could join in.

thats a dangerous question around these parts.  :-X

[Grim.Reaper]

For folks with the game, just found out something this morning that I am not sure if others were aware...you can request to have your commander name changed within the game through the support system.  The commander name is how everyone else in the game sees you and by default it is something very generic.  This way you can make it more identifiable.

Here is the link, just sign in with your account and go to the commander tab to make the request.

https://support.orerve.net/http/user/loginform

[JudgeDredd]

Thanks - done.

[SirAndrewD]

One thing I can suggest.  Playing the Blue Danube in the background makes docking much, much better.

[mikeck]

Well I followed the support link, logged in and don't see anywhere that says how to change my game name.

[Grim.Reaper]

After you login, look for the commander tab I circled.

[Grim.Reaper]

I'll tell you that setting up your flight stick and keyboard commands is like a game itself:)  The mapping tool is very flexible and you have a lot of considerations to make based on your own personal needs.  I have actually spent most of the day just learning that and playing around with different setups and I am still not comfortable with what I have.

But one cool thing I learned today is the fact you can map a button to perform multiple functions depending on the action sequence your performing...for example, while your in normal flight you can assign a button to do task a, but when the UI panel (information displays and how you mostly interact with your cockpit) is displayed, that same button can be configured to do task b.  This really helps maximize the number of things you can program on your stick.

Good stuff....maybe by end of tonight I'll be satisfied with my setup:)

[Grim.Reaper]

Just keeps getting better and better....now found out you can use voice commands to do a lot of the stuff you would do with keyboard/stick button presses...pretty cool.  Just tried it and worked pretty darn well.  This will be extremely handy!

You need this software (trial is free for 21 days, then costs $8)
http://www.voiceattack.com/download.aspx

Here is a forum thread that has a manual how to configure
http://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=12857

Cool video showing it in full use
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cK4cAT-a4

[Grim.Reaper]

Well after my first day, really didn't play the actual game much and just focused on control setup and then when I found out about voice commands, that took up the rest of my time:)  I am still not done with the setup since it took me a while to figure out the voice commands, but it was absolutely worth it!  Great feature and really powerful and adds tremendously to the immersion factor in my opinion.  I won't have to worry about trying to find buttons in the heat of battler using this system.

Also kind of cool what you can do with it....you can have voice commands that activate one function or you can chain a bunch of commands together with one voice command.  Found another neat item with this is you can have the computer say something back to you after you issue the command, making your spaceship basically talk back to you and confirm your commands.

For example, I setup a voice command to turn on my hardpoints (no jokes here), which deploys my weapon.  I just have to say "Hardpoint On" and the weapon will deploy.  After it deploys, the computer will talk back to me and say anything I programmed it to say and in this case just something simple like "Hardpoint Turned On, Commander Grim Reaper".  Nice little personal touch:)

Although a steep price to pay for the game, I am likeing what I have seen so far and I haven't even really gotten deep into the game yet.  Getting it a little early has allowed me to mess around with all these configuration items ahead of time.

This voice program is not limited to Elite and can be used with most games I believe that involve key mapping....but I didn't really try it out with anything else.

[Nefaro]

I tried the voice commands in Sub Command and it was a great feature, despite it occasionally entering the wrong command in on an occasional number even after I had "trained" the Windows voice recognition software numerous times.  It always seemed to be a certain number IIRC.  I'd say something like, "Steer course 325, speed 5 knots" and it would sometimes come back with, "Course 335" or some such. 

I believe Dangerous Waters also supported it but I didn't want to bother setting it up at the time, especially if it may still do that.

[Grim.Reaper]

Yep, voice stuff can be tricky but so far so good with this one.  I did the speech training 3 times as recommended and so far it has done a great job understanding all my commands.  I keep the commands to 1 or 2 words as much as possible.

We'll see how it plays out in the end, but so far so good.  I would hate for them to disobey my orders in the heat of battle:)