Elite: Dangerous PvE - Mobius

I recently ventured into contacting players in the Group with a view to Winging up (mainly so I could experience the process and the additions to the HUD). One person kindly agreed and then I heard him speak to me on my speakers. I had no headphones/mic set up but my question is, would I need Teamspeak to communicate or just activate my headphone/mic setup?

Comd TUZO

You don't need TeamSpeak to use the in-game voice comm. However TeamSpeak is preferred to the game's voice comm by many people.

In your comms panel you can set whether you want voice enabled in wing by default. I've tried the in-game comms a few times in wing and it's never been reliable and when it does work the amount of added 'radio' distortion for effect means that it gets annoying (to my ear at least). I've used Skype as a substitute.

Re: Teamspeak. I've never tried it. I don't know how to use it nor do I know if you can limit your comms to just the people you are in a wing with or if you end up hearing all the chatter going on. Yes, I should find this out and dip my toes in.....

I keep meaning to try teamspeak but I'm shy and not very technically able! Maybe someday, at the moment I just do text speak to folk. Works fine for the most part.

TeamSpeak is very easy to use. All you need is the url of a server, and in some cases a username and password. Then, when you're connected to the server, you can see a variable number of "rooms" and who's in them. Use drag and drop to move from room to room. Once you're in a room, you can hear everybody in that room. And you can set it up to keep your mike open all the time, to open automatically when you speak (with a sensitivity level that allows you to filter out ambiant noises), or you can set a key/button to toggle the mike on/off or to use push-to-talk.

I had my first opportunity to BH in a wing last weekend, and my 3 wing-mates were using the in-game voice comms. IMO, it sounded fine. They were easy to understand, and there was no choppiness in the transmission. With the little voice chat icon next to their name on their wing icon becoming animated when they spoke, it was easy to tell who was talking at the time. I think we were all in the USA, so that probably helped with the quality of the speach. I setup my mic the next day (pretty simple, just hadn't gotten around to it earlier) and tested with a commander last Sunday. He was about 1/2 way across the planet from me (Earth.... not in game ) and while the quality was still good, there was some 'cutting out'... similar to a cell phone call. Considering our physical distance, it was pretty solid.

I haven't used teamspeak with Elite, but used to use it with other sims. TS audio quality is better than Elite in-game, but the in game comms, IMO is pretty darn easy to setup and use and I'm fine with the quality of the transmission. I have the Mobius TS server info on my TS install so that I can use it if needed, but I'm probably going to stick with the in-game voice comms whenever possible, just for the simplicity of it.

BTW, when you setup the in-game mic hotkey, you select 'push to mute' or 'toggle to mute'. I wish they made it 'push to talk'. It seems like I read somewhere recently that they were considering making that change in an upcoming patch.

Comd TUZO .... sorry I wasn't able to help you test wings and comms last weekend. I had just gotten into a wing before you contacted me, and I didn't know how to switch my comms from the wing to you so that I could text you back. My apologies, commander.

Teamspeak can do overlays with Overwolf so you know who's talking. My microphone pumps out boat loads of static so I haven't been using it much, need a new headset.

Thank you all for your input - For me, Teamspeak was another technical advance too far ( I have just finished altering my Hotas bindings to include modifiers and have been trying to get used to the changes - it seems to have improved my combat skills as I took down my first Anaconda (NCP) yesterday). So I will set up the headset/mic and foray again into the void and look to undertake some more wings activity.
Cmdr JohnLuke - no problems, thanks for subsequent input.