Star Trek: Bridge Crew is a fantastic game that takes VR into new territory. One of the things that I noted in my review was that the game relies heavily on having other players join you on the bridge of the Starship Aegis, but that it also functions better than expected for solo players. Now, with a new update that’s set to hit today, Star Trek: Bridge Crew will be even better for those without a proper crew, adding AI assisted voice commands for solo players.

The new update is detailed by BBC who got to chat with some of the people working behind the scenes. By teaming up with IBM’s Watson, Star Trek: Bridge Crew will be adding in the voice commands very soon.

“The idea is you can now talk to your bridge crew, and that part has been powered by Watson,” said Joshua Carr, technical liaison at IBM. “Originally, there was a set of menus to click to instruct the helm and so on. It works fairly well, but it is the lowest common denominator – we are using our hands to give out instructions – but this is virtual reality, and this is Star Trek. When we think about some of the incredible lines by Patrick Stewart’s Jean Luc Picard or [William Shatner’s] Captain Kirk, it’s all about your voice – how you communicate.”

Watson will hopefully allow for more natural speech to control the AI crew members. Rather than having to say set phrases like other voice controlled games, Watson will enable you to get the point across with a variety of statements. We haven’t been able to test it out yet though, so we can’t vouch for the effectiveness. Watson has shown itself to be a very powerful piece of technology though, so using it should really deliver an engaging VR experience.

- This article was updated on:March 8th, 2018