talk with an avatar?

[esmith4]

We would like to allow the user to have a bidirectional conversation with an avatar. Two questions:
1. Do the new avatars have functionality similar to the "loadspeech" function of the old avatars (play a wav file and move their lips more or less in synch)? I realize that the new avatar documentation is sketchy at this point but will be improved in the near future, so perhaps I will just have to wait for that.

2. Then we'll want the user to say something back to the avatar, speaking into a microphone plugged into the sound card. Can my script access the audio input (converted to digital by the soundcard) so we can tell when the user stops speaking? Vizard seems to have hooks for many types of input devices, but I have not seen mention of a sound-card audio input.

Thanks -- Eliot Smith