[Bug] 1.7.5 Joystick buttons aren't consistently recognized.

[JLX]

Attached is a short (1min) video showing the problem.

At 37 sec. you can see the joystick (Btn#24) is recognized and activates the voice recognition 2 times correctly before failing to be recognized after that.

This is unpredictable. Sometimes it works for a while, stops, then starts recognizing again. Sometimes switching the active window seems to help (not sure if that is really making a difference or perhaps just the pause when switching).

I'm coming back to Voice Attack after a while and am not sure if this was an issue in recent versions or not.

I'm on Win10x64 and as you can see, the joystick is being recognized correctly by other programs as shown in the video.

Joystick polling is at the default 30/sec (not polling POVs) and I've tested all the way from 15/sec up to 90/sec but the issue is present at all polling frequencies.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Gary]

Very strange.  I'm able to start/stop listening consistently with my controller, and this is the first I'm seeing of this.  If you close and reopen VA, does the problem correct itself for a while?   Have you tried updating your joystick drivers?  I'm wondering if there's something out of sorts and VA is just not able to, 'see' what is going on with your controller.  Have you tried dropping your polling rate down to say, 30 times a second to see i that makes a difference?  It could be too fast for some reason.

Also, you may want to try reinstalling VA to rule out the joystick component (or some other VA component) is not corrupt.

[JLX]

Yes it is strange...

Testing again just now, I can only get it to recognize the joystick once before it fails. However, it seems the following will get it to recognize again - but only once - before failing again:

• Waiting about 30+ seconds. Perhaps some kind of timout issue? (I haven't tested this enough to determine the exact length and if it's consistent. But for example, I'm testing now and after I write a sentence or two, and test again, I get a single recognition.
  
• If I open, then close the VA settings (without making any changes) it reliably works again (for a single recognition).
  
• Closing and restarting VA (always as Admin as usual) also gets it to work temporarily.
  

Also, to answer your questions:

I just completed a fresh download a reinstall of VA and the results are the same.

Drivers and firmware for my VKB Gunfighter/MCG-Pro are up to date.

Although the video was recorded at a polling rate of 90/sec. I've tested at both 15 and 30 as well with the same results. Testing now has been at 30/sec.

I've also double checked for other utilities that may be monitoring the joystick (although as long as they pass the data through it shouldn't be an issue) however, I don't have any running right now. When I play DCS, I have TrackIR running (which montiors mouse/joystick too as well as DCS itself of course) but I get the same intermittent issues.

Time for me to sign off. But if you have any other insight or things you'd like me to test, please let me know.

Thanks for the quick reply. Cheers.

[Gary]

Although your joystick drivers are up to date, I would try reinstalling them.  I know that doesn't sound normal, but this is not something that normally happens.  Thanks for reporting back on all that!

[JLX]

My bad on saying my drivers & firmware are up to date.

There are no drivers for my joystick as it uses standard Windows UID drivers. It does have firmware for programming and that is up to date.

Also, I've just tested again in other programs (e.g. Teamspeak) and, like the joystick tester in the video, it works reliably there just fine.

In addition to my VKB joystick I also have a CH Throttle. I just tested again using the Throttle instead of the Joystick and unfortunately got the same results (VA detects first press only) but after a pause, opening settings or VA restart, will initially work again.



The fact that it works after opening and closing the VA settings seems very suspicious to me. Do you poll/reset anything at that time?


I just noticed that (unlike in the video) the log has the following:
12:21:16 AM - Tip  --->  Add some more commands that can be recognized
12:21:16 AM - Unrecognized : 'aunt and add an ad and'
12:20:26 AM - Tip  --->  Add some more commands that can be recognized
12:20:26 AM - Unrecognized : 'dad an ad and an'
12:17:11 AM - Tip  --->  Add some more commands that can be recognized
12:17:11 AM - Unrecognized : 'and and add an ad and add an ad'
12:16:20 AM - Tip  --->  Add some more commands that can be recognized
12:16:20 AM - Unrecognized : 'dad and an ad and'
12:15:31 AM - Tip  --->  Add some more commands that can be recognized
12:15:31 AM - Unrecognized : 'an ad and an add an ad'
12:13:44 AM - Tip  --->  Add some more commands that can be recognized
12:13:44 AM - Unrecognized : 'An aunt of an ad and an'

But I haven't been talking. Perhaps it's just trying to make sense out of background noise (do have a bit of a noisy mic  as you can hear in the vid but nothing out of the ordinary. i.e. still works just fine with voice activated cut offs etc.).

Is it possible the speech engine is kicking in (even when there is no command) and preventing another mic 'on' trigger until it's finished processing something (which doesn't complete and then times out)

I should probably leave the speculation to the experts. But, it 'feels' like a timeout issue to me whether it is or not.

Ok... off to bed now... really ;-)

Tnx again.

[Gary]

Something is knocking out the joystick functionality for VA, and it's not able to recover - it's why it works when you restart VA or open/close options (VA just restarts the joystick functionality).  It's quite strange - the way VA interacts with joysticks is it's just asking Windows/DirectX, 'hey - what's the state of the joystick?'.  Windows just provides the state - nothing particularly heavy functionally in there.  I can code dive to see if there's a place where things could be made a little more robust if things go sideways.

The log entries are indicative of noise of some type.  If you're using an empty/new profile, you'll get the, 'Tip' entry as well (this helps folks that are new to see that there are no commands - so they'll try adding some).  The next beta of VA will have an option to turn that off    You'll want to look at the noise problem tho.  It could be line noise, too.

The listening/not listening state is separate from the speech engine.  You'll notice the speech engine is still at work even though listening is off (in case of, 'start listening' spoken command).

[JLX]

I've been busy and haven't had time for further troubleshooting but appreciate your quick replies and help in getting this sorted out.

While this does seem very VA related to me as different programs/hardware on my end don't seem to be affected by the issue. It's also curious that I seem to be the only one that is having these problems suggesting it's perhaps something unique to my system/setup which is unfortunate (for me anyway ;-)

When I have more time I'm going to experiment more thoroughly and see if I can narrow down the behaviour and get more clues that might help shed some light on the issue. I'll add to this thread with anything relevant that I find.

Likewise, if you can think of anything else beyond what you've suggested already, please do let me know.

Thanks.