Spontaneous key-activation caused by VAC ?

[ViktorViktor]

I just recently started flying online 2 weeks ago.

I was flying online at WingsOverEurope yesterday, and some strange things happened. I have the following functions (not a complete list) mapped to VAC: chat, bailout, map, TIR center, TIR pause.

While flying, the chat window and map became activated every so often without me uttering a word (was hooked into TS, though, and was listening to dialog). Eventually I quit speaking at all, as VAC was no longer responding.

After some minutes flying, saw a speck flying in front of some clouds and snuck up on him. He lacked a friendly icon so I put a burst at pointblank range (into cockpit?), then lost him in the clouds. Didn't get an 'Aircraft Destroyed' message, so I figured he got away.

Some more minutes go by, and I decide to chance a landing at my airfield, which was close to the frontlines, with clouds over it. So I come in very quickly and set down (without landing lights so as not to give the vultures a tip). As my speed drops to 30-40 kph, I hear the rattle of machine guns, so I swerve the plane off the runway, then hit the engine off button ('I' on my machine). I have not uttered a word the whole time.

What happens next is that the message 'bailed out' pops up on the screen followed by 'aircraft destroyed', and my pilot figure jumps out of the plane and runs away. My plane didn't seem to have been hit, by the way. I checked theWOE statspage and I am not listed as having shot down anything nor have been shot down (was my 1st time on WOE). (But my hit rate was 10%.) Have bailed out once now, though.

My bailout keys are INSERT and Ctl-E (I double-checked), which are quite far away from 'I' so there is no chance that I hit them by mistake. And I had quit speaking more than 5 minutes before this happened.

So what happened here ? The only thing I can think of which may have affected the situation is that the day before I installed (but have not opened yet) a WORD-dictation program. But how could these key activations happen without me speaking at all?

Does anyone have an explanation for the 'aircraft destroyed' message ?

[Judan]

I have the same problem with some keys activating without speaking to.What I think happens sometimes is that ambient noises around you activate some keys. What I did to solve the problem is to set up a key for VAC that turns VAC on and off so when its in the off postion vac will not pick up any of the ambient sounds around you.I use the space key so when I press the space key I can send commands when its not pressed VAC will be off and not pick up any ambient noises.
Salute Judan

[ViktorViktor]

I'll try changing my settings so that VAC becomes key-dependent (push to talk?). But the great thing about VAC should be that we don't need to type anything to make it work.

By the way, I have a Creative MP3 player that recharges by being connected to a PC's USB2 contact. I notice now that it turns itself on (and starts playing radio chat programs I download) when the PC is turned on. Could be that the player turns itself on at other times as well, I need to check this out. But I have no idea if this sound is being received and construed as commands by VAC. Does anyone know ? I'll assume it does and test-run VAC again tonite, first keyless, then keyed.

Would like to get it working problem-free before my 30-day trial period runs out.

When it works, it's great!

[Shift_E]

Sorry for the reply delay, I was out of town to my daughter’s college graduation.

Let me offer some general information about voice recognition performance. All sounds that the microphone picks up will try to be interrupted as a voice commands. If you are using a desktop microphone and you have your speakers turned up, then the recognition software is working overtime trying to process voice commands. This will keep the recognition engine continually engaged and degrade recognition performance. Also, all sound and microphone input is processed through your sound card, so if you are playing music, running a game with lots of action sounds and using voice recognition, you are really taxing your sound card. Any sound card and microphone will work reasonably well if the microphone only picks up your voice to process commands. I’ve worked very hard on VAC to only process the commands loaded in the profile, which means if the microphone and VAC properties are setup correctly then you should not be getting false positives.

To optimally setup VAC you should:
1. Run the microphone wizard, playing close attention to your voice playback. If your voice is clear and static free during playback your microphone will work well with the speech engine.
2. Voice train the speech engine, once is all you need. However the more times the better your accuracy.
3. Adjust the Pronunciation setting. If you are getting false positives, this setting can eliminate them. http://www.dwvac.com/vactips.htm

I hope you find this information helpful. Let me know if there is anything more I can help with.