Category: IBM Watson

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Star Trek: Bridge Crew’s IBM Watson Voice Control To Continue Through 2018

Star Trek: Bridge Crew’s IBM Watson Voice Control To Continue Through 2018

After hearing swirlings that the IBM Watson-powered voice recognition features for Star Trek: Bridge Crew would be deactivated, we reached out to Ubisoft for confirmation. As a result, it looks like that isn’t the case after all.

“Star Trek has always been about pushing technology forward, so in that spirit we are happy to be continuing our partnership with IBM Watson,” said David Votypka, Sr. Creative Director at Red Storm Entertainment, the Ubisoft studio that developed of Bridge Crew, in a prepared statement. “Watson is standing by to await players’ orders in Star Trek: Bridge Crew and will be usable in upcoming content that is currently in development.”

Ubisoft and IBM also explained that the support is planned to continue through 2018 for both existing and upcoming content.

“We are excited to continue IBM Watson voice recognition in Star Trek: Bridge Crew throughout 2018,” said Joel Horwitz, Vice President, Strategic Partnerships & Offerings, IBM Digital Business Group in a prepared statement. “We look forward to our ongoing partnership with Ubisoft and to keeping our communities apprised of updates.”

The IBM Watson voice functionality has never been an integral feature of the game for most players, but it is a crucial facet for those that prefer to play as a solo captain. If you’ve got a full squad of friends on the bridge then you can rely on them for support, but being able to issue orders vocally to the AI is a huge boon when playing alone. Using only menus is frankly a bit cumbersome in a complex game like this. While this news is far from definitive on the future of the program’s support, it at least ensures another eight or so months.

Another great example of voice recognition in VR is with PSVR-exclusive psychological thriller, The Inpatient, in which you speak to NPCs using your real voice. Ideally, this type of support will become commonplace in VR over time instead of an ancillary bullet point feature.

Have you tried the voice recognition features in Star Trek: Bridge Crew yet? Fore more on the game, read our full review. Let us know down in the comments below!

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Ubisoft Extends IBM Watson Support for ‘Bridge Crew’, Will Continue Through 2018

Watson, IBM’s artificial intelligence platform designed to understand natural language, launched support for Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017) across all VR platforms back in June of last year. Last week, Ubisoft said in a forum post that it was pulling support for Watson due to unspecified “technical reasons.” The company has since reversed that decision, saying Watson-powered voice controls will remain online “through 2018.”

Update (03/31/18): Ubisoft is overturning their previous decision to take down IBM Watson voice controls in ‘Bridge Crew’, which was slated to go into effect March 29, 2018. The company says in a forum post that they’re extending Watson “through 2018.” The original article follows below.

Bridge Crew players could choose between multiplayer and single player modes, the latter of which allowed you to fill in the roles of the ship’s other posts—Engineering, Tactical, Helm—by clicking a few boxes to issue orders. You could even jump in and take command yourself, although it was decidedly a much slower way of dealing with incoming Klingon threats. Adding Watson integration essentially allowed a sole player to issue orders to the non-human-controlled posts from the captain’s chair using natural language such as “lock on target, dude!” – “fire photon torpedoes, dumdum!” – or “go to warp now, please! And make it snappy!”

Ubisoft says that the nine-month access period has been “enriching,” but that Watson will be “discontinued for technical reasons on March 29, 2018.”

Frankly, Bridge Crew has undergone very few updates following its May 2017 launch. Minor bug fixes in June were followed by Watson integration, and then the game was opened up to non-VR players in a bid to rejuvenate its multiplayer mode. For such a solid game—we rated it [9/10] in our review—the company has done minimal work in expanding the campaign or offering DLC.

It’s unclear what Ubisoft will do in its wake, although the company has said more information about upcoming updates should arrive “very soon.”

The post Ubisoft Extends IBM Watson Support for ‘Bridge Crew’, Will Continue Through 2018 appeared first on Road to VR.

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IBM Watson’s Interactive Speech now Integrated into Star Trek: Bridge Crew

Last month Ubisoft released its biggest title yet for virtual reality (VR) platforms with Star Trek: Bridge Crew. VRFocus reported that the studio planned to add voice commands using IBM Watson integration in a future update, that update has now arrived.

Using IBM Watson’s interactive speech and cognitive capabilities, Watson Speech to Text and Watson Conversation, players will now be able to talk and interact with the virtual Star Trek: Bridge Crew members for a more realistic experience, mimicking that of the multiplayer mode for an experimental beta period.

Whether players are commanding the U.S.S. Aegis and U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701, IBM Watson services can be used to operate crews consisting of only AI characters or a mix of AI characters and human teammates with Star Trek: Bridge Crew’s full-body avatars that include real-time lip-sync.

Developed by Red Storm Entertainment, Star Trek: Bridge Crew, is a team focused experience with players taking on one of four roles, Captain, Engineer, Tactical Officer, or Helm Officer. Each has their own part to play in successfully completing missions.

VRFocus reviewed the videogame, giving it 4 stars, saying: “Star Trek: Bridge Crew definitely appeals to the core fan base. The production values are top notch making Star Trek: Bridge Crew one of those rare VR experiences that feels like a AAA title, and likely part of most VR gamers’ collections.”

Aside from Star Trek: Bridge Crew Ubisoft has released Werewolves Within and Eagle Flight. During the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2017 last week it was revealed that the studio had formed a VR partnership with the film company SpectreVision to create Transference was announced along with a new adrenaline fueled shooter, Space Junkies.

Ubisoft hasn’t stated how long the experimental beta period will last, as further details are revealed VRFocus will keep you updated on the announcements.

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Hands-on: IBM Watson Brings Voice Commands to ‘Star Trek: Bridge Crew’

IBM Watson, the artificial intelligence platform designed to understand natural language, today launched support for Star Trek: Bridge Crew (2017) across PSVR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

Before the service launched today, lone players could control the ship’s other posts—Engineering, Tactical, Helm—by clicking a few boxes to issue orders. Now a sole captain (also with a mixed crew of humans and non-humans) can complete whole missions by issuing commands directly to the non-human-controller characters using natural language.

image courtesy IBM

Voice commands are enabled by IBM’s VR Speech Sandbox program, which is available on GitHub for developers to integrate speech controls into their own VR applications. The Sandbox, released in May, combines IBM’s Watson Unity SDK with two services, Watson Speech to Text and Watson Conversation.

at the Captain’s chair, image captured by Road to VR

We had a chance to go hands-on at E3 2017 with Star Trek: Bridge Crew embedded with the Watson-powered voice recognition, a feature that’s initiated during gameplay with a single button press. While talking directly to your digital crew does provide some of those iconic moments (“Engage!” and “Fire phasers!), and most orders went through without a hitch, Watson still has trouble parsing some pretty basic things. For example, Watson doesn’t understand when you use the name of ships, so “scan the Polaris” just doesn’t register. Watson also didn’t pick up on a few things that would seem pretty easy at face value. Commands like “fire on the target”, “fire on the enemy,” and “come on, let’s warp already!” fell on deaf digital ears.

IBM says their VR speech controls aren’t “keyword driven exchanges,” but are built around recognition of natural language and the intent behind what’s being said. Watson also has the capacity to improve its understanding over time, so those “Lets get the hell out of here, you stupid robots!” may actually register one day.

This however doesn’t stop a pretty weird logical disconnect that occurs when talking to a bot-controlled NPC, and it stems from the fact that I was at first imbuing the NPCs with actual intelligence. When talking directly to them, I was instinctively relying on them naturally to help me do my job, to have eyes and ears and not only understand the intent of my speech, but also the intent of the mission. A human tactical officer would have seen that we were getting fired on, and I wouldn’t have had to issue the order to keep the Bird of Prey within phaser range. I wouldn’t have to even select the target because Tactical would do it for me. IBM isn’t claiming to be able to do any of that with its cognitive computing platform, but the frustration of figuring out what Watson can and can’t do is a stark reality, especially when getting your tail-end blasted out of the final frontier.

In the end, Watson-supported voice commands may not be perfect—because when the Red Shirts are dropping like flies and consoles are exploding all over the place, the last thing you want to do is take the time to repeat an important order—but the fact that you can talk to an NPC in VR and get a pretty reliable response is amazing to say the least.

The post Hands-on: IBM Watson Brings Voice Commands to ‘Star Trek: Bridge Crew’ appeared first on Road to VR.

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Voice Command Will Be Available In Star Trek: Bridge Crew

Ever wanted to just tell your computer to do something and have it obey? It works well enough in the Star Trek universe, and soon those playing the roles of Starfleet officer in Star Trek: Bridge Crew will get to experience it as well with IBM Watson integration.

Ubisoft’s Star Trek: Bridge Crew is due to launch later this month for HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR. The developer says that the interactive speech feature will not be available from launch, but will be introduced as a limited Beta some time after launch for testing before being fully integrated into the experience in summer 2017.

The technology relies on a combination of two IBM features, Watson Speech to Text and Watson Conversation, which allows for Star Trek: Bridge Crew players to use natural speech commands to control certain aspects of the game and give orders to AI-controlled crew members.

Star Trek Bridge Crew_Enterprise_Bridge

“We have been eager to find the right way to use interactive speech further the immersive and interactive experiences that virtual reality offers,” said David Votypka, Sr. Creative Director at Red Storm Entertainment, a Ubisoft Studio. “Watson gives Captains in Star Trek: Bridge Crew the ability to issue commands to non-player crew members in the same way they do with a human crew; by using their voice. IBM provides an easy to integrate solution that is cloud based, so it’s light on code and performance while letting us remain fast on feature turnaround.”

“For the first time, Watson will power the technology that makes it possible for gamers and fans of Star Trek to interact with the crew,” added Willie Tejada, Chief Developer Advocate, IBM. “We are only just seeing the impact of virtual and augmented reality and IBM is committed to providing developers with the tools they need to innovate and be competitive in this AI and Cognitive era.”

VRFocus will bring you further news on Star Trek: Bridge Crew when it becomes available.

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Tribeca Film Festival Launches ‘Storytelling With Watson’ Contest.

IBM’s Watson cognitive computing system is one of the best-known examples of cognitive system in the world. It has already been used to create new recipes and create new clothing designs and now the organisers behind the Tribeca Film Festival are challenging the creative industry to come up with ideas about how Watson can be used to create new stories.

The Storytellers with Watson competition is open to the public as well as the many directors, writers and artists who form part of Tribeca’s network or industry professionals. Participants can submit their ideas on how IBM Watson can be used to create stories in any storytelling medium, film and video, videogames, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

The organisers have worked together with IBM to produce use-case guidelines and examples to help inform contributors on how Watson can help with realising their creation. Guiding categories include development, pre-production, production and post-production, marketing and distribution.

“The Tribeca Film Festival has always been a celebration of innovation and cutting-edge ideas,” said Andrew Essex, CEO at Tribeca Film Festival. “Since IBM Watson has been a big influence across many industries, we’re eager to see how our creative community will apply this technology to inspiring their own creative potential. Our collaboration with IBM is important to our mission because it spurs our community to push the limits of what they think is possible and find new inspiration that can redefine their approaches to art and storytelling.”

“Cognitive computing is driving incredible advancements in what humans and machines can do together, and one of the areas where we’re seeing this accelerate is within media and entertainment,” said David Kenny, Senior Vice President of IBM Watson and Cloud Platform. “Some of the best ideas come from our developer partners, and the Tribeca Film Festival community represents a wellspring of creativity and imagination. Through this competition, we’re eager to engage this dynamic group to see how they apply Watson to solve challenges and enhance the stories they tell.”

Tribeca Film Festival 2017 VR instagram

Submissions to the contest are open now and will be accepted up until 18th May 2017. Ideas can be submitted through the submission form on the IBM website. The creator who submits the winning entry will receive a trip for two to the Tribeca Film Festival 2018, including airfare, hotel and two festival passes.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news on competitions and projects involving VR and AR.