Garmin Vocals ?

[Pukmeister]

Can Garmin do something about the voice commands on their future units, such as a user selectable character to do the talking?

Maybe they could get Joanna Lumley to do a posh set of vocals for most users, and Kathy Burke to do a 'Waynetta' style of vocals for any Chav users?

Surely it would add more 'character' to the units in the increasingly competitive world of GPS and give them the edge over the competition.

How about it ???

Who's voice would you like to hear from your GPS unit ??

 

[SilentG]

Already possible on the Tom Tom systems. They call them "voice skins" I believe. Various celebrity sound-a-like voices available from John Cleese through to Ozzy Osborne ("in 200 f***ing yards, turn f***ing roight" etc...)

Given that the latest Garmins can speak at you in your choice of languages, it presumably would not be too difficult for Garmin to launch a similar "feature",or are they too sensible for that kind of frippery?

SG

 

[PanEuropean]

The Garmin unit I am working with right now - the new 2720 - has entirely new voice technology that is made possible (in part) by the much more powerful processor in the 2720.

The voice actually reads out all the names - street names, user waypoint names, etc. - in plain English, and the implementation of the text to speech capability is very well done. It speaks far more fluidly and naturally than any previous Garmin unit. So, you get voice prompts such as "In 300 feet, turn left on North Main Street, then keep to the right". Heck, you don't even have to look at the screen anymore, it is that good.

I kind of doubt that Garmin would ever implement 'voice skins', though. It's not so much that they are a conservative company (there's a hidden standing 1/4 mile drag race timer in all the 26xx series GPSR's - so they do have a sense of humour), its because their primary focus right now seems to be on making the user interface as simple to use as possible. The goal is that you should be able to give the GPSR to your maiden aunt, without a manual, and she should be able to figure out how to use it just from reading the choices on the screen.

Michael

 

[SilentG]

Pronouncing the street names sounds a lot more useful than the novelty voices. When you're in the UK next on your travels, let us know how it gets on with telling you to drive 200 yards down Worcester Avenue, turn right on to Gloucester Road and arrive at Leicester Square Unless it has a capability for a table of none standard pronunciations, It might struggle with a lot of UK place names.

SG

 

[PanEuropean]

It does an astonishingly good job of pronouncing any English language word, no matter how unusual - for example, I can have a user waypoint called "Granny's Place" or "Grannie's Place" and it handles both perfectly well.

I have been doing all my testing in Switzerland, and it is having an awful time with some of the German names, but that is because the German rules for pronunciation are different than English rules. For example, we would pronounce the suffix "-strasse" as strass, but according to German grammatical rules, all vowels at the end of words are voiced, so the correct pronunciation should be strass-ey. But, heck, I can't fault it for this.

I am looking forward to trying it in the UK. Right now, I only have the 'American English' voice. Hopefully by then the 'British English' voice will be out. So far, though, it has exceeded my expectations with respect to the quality of the voice. It is far better than any text to speech system I have ever encountered, at any price.

Michael

 

[Pukmeister]

I still wish mine sounded like Joanna Lumley..... :spin