Buddy and Bobbie Horne

This presentation uses Microsoft Agent Characters to act out a portion of the play Oedipus Rex. It is best viewed with Internet Explorer, but may viewed with any browser supporting Visual Basic Scripting and ActiveX components. A sound capability is also required. This presentation is approximately 17 minutes long.

Hints for viewing the presentation:

1 Turn up the sound, not "blasting", but loud enough that you can hear and understand the dialogue.

2. Watch out for that screensaver. The screensaver can start during this presentation. It will do no harm and can be terminated easily by moving the mouse, or pressing a key. However, it is an annoyance and it is recommended the screensaver be disabled before starting the presentation, then enabled afterwards. Of course, you can always move the mouse every few minutes during the presentation.

3. It is best viewed with the browser window in full screen mode, instead of displaying only on a portion of the screen.

4. If the characters appear to sound alike and have the "same voice" (normally a deep, hard to hear voice), it is recommended to install the Text-to-Speech software identified in Step 2 under Technical Requirements.

To begin the presentation, click Here

Technical Requirements:

1. The presentation requires the Microsoft Agent Characters ActiveX control. Recent releases of the Windows operating system will already have this component, older releases may not. The presentation checks for the presence of the control, and if it is not installed, it will be downloaded and installed with your permission. Click "YES" on the dialogue box asking if you want to install the control from Microsoft.com. If you have difficulties with this installation, the control may be installed manually by clicking here.

2. For the presentation to be heard, a sound card and Text-to-Speech software is required. If your computer does not have a compatible Text-to-Speech module (the characters do not speak), one can be downloaded from Microsoft by clicking here. At that page, select the "Lernout & Hauspie TruVoice TTS engine - American English (1 MB exe)" from the drop down list. Click"Download selected engine". Click the "Open" button on the File Download box.

Once the download completes, the license agreement will be presented for your review.
Click the "Yes" button to continue with the installation. Once installation is complete,
the Text-to-Speech software will be installed.

3. Also required for proper Text-to-Speech operation, the Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) is required. Many newer releases of Windows will already have this module. The newest releases (Windows XP Professional, for example) will have the latest release of SAPI (release 5), this release is not compatible with Microsoft Agent. Fortunately the previous release (release 4) can be installed without affecting the latest release of SAPI. If you need to install SAPI 4.0, it can be downloaded from Microsoft by clicking here. It will do no harm to install SAPI 4.0, although it may already be installed, or an older or newer release of SAPI is installed.