Simple Voice Commands (e.g., undue, delete, exit)

I am really disappointed more developers are not implanting simple voice commands in VR tools and games (e.g., for ease of use/interface and/or immersion). There's a reason why the HMDs come with built in microphones. In the era of keyboards and mice, voice commands are primary used for accessibility purposes. By displacing the keyboard and mouse, VR fundamentally changes interface design. EditorVR is a perfect situation to demonstrate that voice commands can play a new and very valuable VR interface role.

In EditorVR If an object is selected, why not allow the user to simply say "delete" to delete the object? Rather than having the program always listening for a command, initial experimentation can require the user to push a controller button before speaking a command. Always listening, however, would be optimal. Localization can be implemented down the road if it works well.

Delete, undue, and exit are obvious and very simple one and two syllable voice commands. A second yes/no verbal confirmation may be required before executing program critical commands such as exit. A simple low volume tone/other sound, or visual que can give feedback to the user that the verbal command was executed.

Even very rudimentary voice commands open up a whole new avenue of user interface within EditorVR. Additionally, it can done without displacing other interface options.

Open source code and utilities can cover implementing experimental voice command, so Unity does not have to use a ton of developer time/resources to incorporate and test.

Really impressive start - thanks Unity!

 

Spot on, @Talon167.

This was on our list back in January (or even earlier, but I'd have to go dig through our preliminary docs) when we were prototyping. Unfortunately, there were so many things to get done with a small team that the priority did not increase during our development period.

 

I definitely agree with bumping this up to a higher priority. I think typing text into text boxes should be considered an archaic thing of the past when in EVR. I've build a few QWERTY UIs for Razer Hydra in the past. QWERTY solutions with 6DOF controllers just feel sub-par, even in the best implementation I can imagine. I've researched Cortana integration, but so far I've refrained in the hope that the Unity will eventually build us a cross-platform voice command API.