“But I moved to VoiceVista, which is still Soundscape at its core, but has had a lot of updates and an updated interface, and I actually really like VoiceVista. Still, based on the Soundscape technology, it has more updates. There's changes happening all the time.”
“And VoiceVista, by the way, yes, Breaking News is starting. Oh, hang on, hang on. Breaking News. It has now started working for me again. Hang on, what? That's not news. No, no, wait, wait, wait. For the longest time, I was saying, look, it reads out all the markers, so the GPS must be working. That's all fine. It tells me what, you know, the number of the house I'm in front of when I'm walking down the street. It just won't read out the intersections, even though they're all turned on. It won't do it. Well, now it started working again, and there has been an update in the last couple of days which adds all these funky new sounds to everything. So now when I took the dog out this morning, I was beeping and bopping all over the place every time I walked past something. Yeah, but what about the app? It's working perfectly. Go to sleep. It's working perfectly right now. And I've got to say, I still think VoiceVista is absolutely amazing. I can't give enough praise to the developer for the work he's done on that. And I believe it's even made it[…]”
“Camille has been in touch on the subject of VoiceVista. Now that the temperature is well warm enough to allow me to handle my iPhone without freezing my fingers, I gave VoiceVista a trial run. Zero degrees and feels like minus six. First, I did not think the app would work without a data plan, but it does. It mentioned all the intersections, streets, schools and businesses I walked by. It also mentioned the bus stops, but consistently telling me that they were 15 metres behind while I was standing at the bus stop. For some reasons, it also mentioned the previous and current name of the grocery store. It omitted to mention the pharmacy or drugstore, not sure what you call those in the UK. It told me I reached a max of six kilometres per hour, which I do not think is quite accurate, as I walk every day and usually walk five kilometres per hour according to my Fitbit watch and app. Today was a good day as I managed to walk 25,000 steps. So, thanks for the recommendation, Shaun. Steven, if he is interested, could use VoiceVista to find nearest KFC. Hello. Happy tapping, Camille. Yeah[…]”
“I wanted to share that I'm currently helping to translate VoiceVista into European Portuguese. If you or anyone in your community knows Portuguese speakers in the UK or Canada who might have feedback or suggestions for improving the translation, I would be grateful for the opportunity to help make the app more useful to every Portuguese speaker. I also want to mention that your podcast brings laughter into my life every day. As a self-proclaimed nerd who loves technology, I can really identify with the conversations you guys have and that's awesome. I really enjoy the podcast. Just one more thing. Why did Shaun stop making each? Come on, bring the each back. Keep up the fantastic work and thank you for sharing your stories with us. Take care. Sarah from Glashnap. Oh, Sarah, thank you so much. It's wonderful to hear from you and thank you for bringing us into your world. Hello to all your office colleagues as well. Hello. Don't steal the tea. Make sure you don't drink other people's milk. These are very important office issues.”
“You mentioned that your VoiceVista is reading out your speed every now and again. Yeah, mine's doing this as well. I believe, I think I saw in the settings somewhere that it's every 100 meters by default. It will give you your current, well, mine at least, gives me my GPS accuracy, the direction that I'm traveling in, and current speed. But mine reads out in kilometers per hour. But you gave your speed in miles per hour. Is yours reading out in miles per hour? In which case, do you know how you got it to do that? Because I would prefer that. Mine's reading out in, so my top speed, if we're getting into this, has been so far as four kilometers per hour, which according to Lady A is about two and a half miles per hour. But I'm the same as you. I heard VoiceVista doing this. And then my instant thought was when I heard my speed, I instantly started speeding up. I was like, I bet I can top that. Me too. It's become a little bit of fun now when I'm on my way to and from work, trying to beat my speed[…]”
“There is a feature in VoiceVista. If you go to the settings and go to call-outs and turn absolutely everything on, because I can't remember the individual option name. Just turn everything on. Everything on. When you're walking, it will say at some point, it will say the house number of the street you're on. And it will also say current speed. And it's usually one mile per hour for me. But today, I hit maximum speed of three miles. Honestly. Yay! Now I'm getting it. Okay, right. Honestly, I've never felt so alive. I've never felt so free. I'm just saying, I think this should be a segment. I want everyone to test their speed, right? You know, there was a show over here called Top Gear. And they used to have Star in a reasonably priced car. And they used to go around the track and whoever was fastest. And they had a leaderboard. I think this is our segment. We should do this. Who's fastest on VoiceVista? Obviously we need to work on the name, but I think this could be amazing. Blind person going to the store the fastest. The fastest cane. Yeah, we'll work[…]”
“I am a keen beta tester using VoiceVista and instrumented the introduction of route creation with breadcrumb mode, for example, which I don't think you've covered, but an absolute game changer for blind people. It would allow, for example, to allow you to go out with a sighted person, creating a route with breadcrumbs, and then independently allow you to follow the same route later on your own. I use this when I am out on my tandem bike cycling with a cycling club and then go with a pilot on my own and can separately navigate the bike or on a walking route as part of a group and then later want to repeat the route on your own. Anyway, keep well, keep up the energy, and enjoy the break during the month of May. Brian. Thank you, Brian. I take all of that in the spiritives and tenders, which seem to be very nice. Yes, thank you very much. And great work on your work on VoiceVista, by the way. I am still having issues. I was going to look into that new breadcrumb routing feature, but I am still having issues and I cannot figure it out[…]”
“Now for VoiceVista. I've just had a little play with that again, and I have something called crosswalks. I don't have intersections either. And I think the crosswalks, my wife says, are the places where you cross traffic lights. When you get the green man in the UK, other countries may have something different. So that's the kind of thing that we get, crosswalks. I don't get intersections. I don't get unnamed streets, possibly because the street hasn't got a name. So that's how VoiceVista is working for me at the moment. And it's regularly updated. And I think it's now worth giving serious consideration to having it paid for. So I shall do so. Just a couple of other things.”
“Shaun was complaining yesterday about VoiceVista not mentioning intersections, yet everything else seems to be fine. I would suggest he goes to Settings, then Callouts, then go down to Intersections and Junctions and make sure it is turned on. I suspect this somehow has been turned off. There are other selections which you should turn on, as desired, in the list under Callouts, including, at the top of the list, a master switch to turn on all choices. Regards, Graham Langford in Toronto. God bless you, Graham. Yes, now I have checked all that, and this is so strange. Doesn't work in the morning, works absolutely fine in the afternoon. I have no idea why, and it's the same across every Soundscape and VoiceVista. It must be the GPS, it must be system level. I don't know what's going on.”
“And also VoiceVista and the subscription, unless this has changed in the last week, because I did subscribe, so I'm not seeing the option anymore. It's not mandatory. That is a voluntary subscription. You don't have to subscribe to use it. It's just if you want to help support development and its ongoing use, then you have the ability to subscribe. But you can still use it even if you don't subscribe. At least that was the last time, last week or two ago when I subscribed. Okay. I've seen a few people asking on online, not to us directly, but just kind of putting out there, hey, it would be good to hear how VoiceVista works in comparison to Soundscape. I think I know someone who might be the right person to do this.”
“So why are you choosing Voice Vista over the others? What is it that's driving you to that? I just think it's really well done. I like the interface of it. I always thought the SignScape interface wasn't that great. It was a little bit cluttered. I really like what he's done with the interface. You know, buttons with actions. You can swipe up to just select your roots and everything like that. And I just think the features are really nice. I like the marker is behind you or just in front of you call out as well. I just think it's really well done, to be honest. And am I right in saying that there's a subscription model coming to that? There is, yes. In the latest update I noticed, there is a voluntary subscription model to help with sustainability and development. So there's no limitation if you choose not to subscribe. You still get the full features of it. But you can choose to subscribe in the case here in the UK. I think it was 99p a month or for an annual fee of 8.99. So yeah, I went straight on there and did the annual[…]”
“I'm loving VoiceVista. Yes, but off the backs of other people, organizations, and in the case of VoiceVista, the single lone developer. We need to stop calling them a lone wolf. I think we need to stop calling them that. I deliberately didn't say wolf. I just said a lone developer. It makes him sound more mystic and more heroic, I think. See, there was a time when lone wolf sounded quite outlawish, but now it just sounds, I don't know, like I'd be watching CNN and I hear the words lone wolf a lot, and I'd just think, hmm. Okay, let's move on. Have you actually... Voicemister, absolutely fantastic, by the way.”
“Now, I've been using Voice of Vista a lot. And by the way, we should talk to the developer of Voice of Vista as well to get everyone on board. But I find Voice of Vista really interesting because it gives me the actual address of where I'm near as well, which I really like. And it also gives me, such as the bench is just behind you, I noticed this morning, which is really cool. But I've also noticed that it doesn't always, it seems a little bit inconsistent in telling me I'm coming up to an intersection. So I tend to have Soundscape, whichever version, and the Voice Vista running at the same time, and I get every bit of information I could possibly want. So I do see where you're coming from, but I do kind of worry. The Soundscape community and the Scottish Tech Army Soundscape, they do seem incredibly similar at the moment. Now, we don't know what future development and add-on features are going to come, but I can't find a difference between them. And at the moment, when I ask Lady S to open Soundscape, it says, which one? Soundscape, Soundscape or[…]”
“Voice Vista has sort of saved my life recently, you know, because I've been using that every day since you've been unable to download SoundScape from the App Store, Microsoft SoundScape. And, you know, Open-scape, they were the ones that first kicked all this off, but as far as I know, they're still in beta at the moment. And I think it's the original team, as Kirsty was saying, I think the original team behind SoundScape are actually involved in that project. It sounds great, right? It's like I don't want to put them down whatsoever. The developer of Voice Vista has been pumping out updates all the time, he's added AirPod head tracking support and all that sort of good stuff.”
“So what I might suggest you do as an alternative, Debbie, is search for VoiceVista. Because it is another application which is using the Soundscape, I guess, elements of the Soundscape application in there. So you could use that as an option. There's also Good Maps Outdoors. I haven't tried it. It's not great in the UK, so it's not something we can really try out properly. And give it a fair review. But others have said it is very good, and it also does contain elements of it. But I think VoiceVista is the closest that is available that you could go and download today. It's excellent, VoiceVista. I must admit I'm using that all the time. They've just released an update which includes AirPod head tracking support. Well, that's good. Yeah, so now it's getting closer and closer to the original Soundscape. And as you said there, it's available now officially in the App Store and none of this beta. But I just Googled OpenScape beta and I found it through Google to sign up to the beta program. But honestly, I don't know if they're still accepting at the moment. Yeah, that could be the problem. But[…]”
“It's funny how tired... and it seems ridiculous to say, but I've noticed, because I've been using VoiceVista a lot when I've started taking the dog out in the morning again, getting my physio up and running, sort of stumbling, hobbling. So I've been using VoiceVista and when I don't use it, there's odd times I forget because I'm too tired. I'm just stumbling out the door. You've got to concentrate so much more. What something like VoiceVista Soundscape OpenScape gives you is the ability to, you know what, turn off your brain for a second because I'm not constantly looking out for the signs or the tactile landmarks, if you will, that I'm coming to the turning in the road or whatever. I can just wait until I'm actually told. It's nice to be able not to concentrate 100% of the time. I think that's where you get tired because you do. You're constantly thinking what's coming up next, where am I now? It's exhausting.”
“Oh yeah, there was a new update released recently yesterday, day before for VoiceVista, which does support the import and export of markers. Because someone did mention this before and I couldn't find it anywhere. I went into Soundscape thinking, I must be able to export the set audio markers. Could I find it? I have no idea. I went through settings, I went through the markers area. Couldn't find how to export at all. You should have taken your time and figured it out. What I'm saying though, Steven, is I do not believe it was there. I will check it out though. All right, I'm just saying. I did notice in the update notes for VoiceVista, all right, stop. It did mention the support for importing and exporting the markers. So I'm going to look in how to actually do that.”
“A few seconds after sending my email, I came across an app called VoiceVista. This is available for free on the iOS App Store and is another soundscape fork. I've only had a very quick play with it. The main difference is that the menu in the top left is gone, and there is a settings tab instead. But other than language, there's not much in there. No head tracking support, for example. But it's available for everyone now, and it's free. The developer looks like he makes a lot of games that are very popular on Apple Viz, so that's a good sign.”
“Can I just say, VoiceVista, we talked about this the other day, just had an update as well. And this is for you, Michael, in Schornberg. It now has the ability to virtually place you somewhere. Michael was looking for that feature as well. So you can say, I'm at this hotel, but you're not really. You can place your location there and have a look around, which is cool. Yeah, okay, cool. Interesting app, and it is available now, which is cool. And this is iOS only, right? Oh, yes. As far as I know, currently, yes, iOS only.”
“Also, I want to mention Voice Vista, because Voice Vista is a new app, which a lot of you have been telling me about over the weekend on the emails. And this is kind of another version or another fork, as they call it, of SoundScape, Microsoft SoundScape as it was. Voice Vista seems to be using elements from the SoundScape code in this new app, which is available. You can go download it now. It's free to download. This is the first one. It's actually in the app store, as far as I'm aware. OpenScape, obviously, we've talked about before, but still in beta. But this one you can get right now. And I have been using it.” “There are things that aren't in there, like the 3D head tracking, stuff like that isn't in Voice Vista yet, that may come in time. But those, I've seen a lot of people who are beta testing Openscape, who are saying Openscape still wins it, so far. So, you know- That's interesting. Well, it's considering it's the same code. It's the same code. I will say, Voice Vista do it slightly different. At this current time, Openscape is a one-to-one copy, almost interface-wise, at least. It is using Apple Maps for its data, whereas the others aren't, I don't think. But Voice Vista, when I tried that, they've put their own UI on it, so everything's split into tabs. Look around is a separate tab to what's nearby or whatever it may be, roots and markers. They're all tabs in Voice Vista. But I just used it for, okay, what intersection is coming up, which it's so useful for? And I gotta say, I had all three running at once. Voice Vista gave me extra information. Like what? Such as the name of the pub I was walking past. None of the others did that. Such as[…]”