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flyinpilot212121

Serious thoughts on rc4

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For me it is a 'resource hog' as you put it.With detailed scenery my system grinds to a halt with it.I am also disappointed with the relatively few voices with other than US accents. One would hope that in future more accents would be made available and could be incorporated in new versions or downloaded for those with older versions.The fact that it is of little value for VFR flights is disappointing too. The latter,however,is pointed out by the developers.If you have a good system and predominantly fly IFR in the US then it is excellent. The developer support is also excellent.Maybe I need to get an external HD to run it for all flights.

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This may be a good time/place to ask this question. I tried to set up a flight from KLAX to KSAN with two small California airports as waypoints: KLAX CA24 37CA KSAN. This flightplan was transfered to my Garman(sic)500 GPS but on my RC4 plan the 2 califorinia airports were not picked up and it listed my flight plan straight from KLAX to KSAN. Why wouldn't RC4 pick up the two small airports as "waypoints"? jerrycwo4

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RC is a very good product and is much better than the default ATC. Since there is no alternative in the "high fidelity" ATC market (except VATSIM) it is a "must have".RC adds the ability to fly SIDs, STARs, gives more realistic ATC instructions, and options for diversions, etc. It is MUCH closer to real ATC than the default FS9, atc, and as real as you will get until you hit VATSIM, which has severe limitations.That said, RC has drawbacks:-No ground traffic control OR taxi instructions to AI-STARS are not realitically implemented. You have to ask to fly the STAR where in real life you would not, it is a part of your flightplan and ATC will expect you to fly it unless pulled off. RC leaves you alone to fly the STAR with no altitude guidance, in real-life this would not happen when flying into Class B or C airport you would get altitude direction.-Pilot's Discretion always - RC seems to always give pilot's discretion decents, this is not at all realistic especially when flying into congested airspace.-AI Interaction with RC is VERY limited. ATC calls are restricted to AI traffic contacting the centers. RC deletes the altitude and vector directions to AI-For some reason, RC does not recognize 'heavy' callsigns for AI so an AI 747 will not get the heavy designation, but your aircraft will. I did an AVSIM review of RC a few years back so you can read my findings, I gave them a Gold Star because the product is very good.SO, at the end of the day, it is a must-have but be aware that it does have limitations. One of which is the fact that if you have an aging computer, it will cause some stuttering as it compiles ATC messages on the fly. If you have a relatively up-to-date rig, this should not be an issue for you.HTH,Mike T.

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Jerry,<>Airports cannot be used as waypoints. You have to use VORs, NDBs and intersections. If you have FS Navigator you can also include virtual intersections in your plan such as N50000W015000 and RC will happily accept it.Show me any serious flight planner that allows airports to be used as valid waypoints. I'm not sure any exist.Cheers,


Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
Cheadle Hulme Weather

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On the resources comments - I use RC4 on a networked PC .... works a real treat, easy to set up and install (does require Pete Dowson's WideFS), and absolutely no hit on the FS PC doing it this way.Other MASSIVE advantage is that you get the "ATC only" sound out of the seperate PC (ie... independent to the FS sounds of the aircraft, etc). So you can have the FS PCs sound coming out of your speakers, and the ATC sound from RC4 on headphones from the networked PC = highly realistic.The only reason I don't use RC4 now is because I got hooked on flying on line (FS9 = VATSIM) and (FSX = IVAO). All flying is now on-line.But if you don't like or aren't ready for on-line flying, RC4 is the way to go, and better on a networked PC.

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RC4 does have competition. ProFlight Emulator.Biggest question I have is which of these is the better one, but dunno if that would be hijacking this thread....


StoneC0ld_zps439869f4.png

Declared weather:  FSX: ASN / FS9: ASE

 

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I thought I'd clarify some things about SIDS and STARS:If the waypoints of SIDS and STARS are included in the flight plan, you will be expected to fly them. About 40 nm out from destination approach will contact you. It is then you can request an IAP if you wish to navigate on your own all the way to final. If not you'll get vectors to standard patterns to intersect a straight in localizer. Regarding SIDS, if the first waypoint is within thirty nm of departure, you'll get a clearance of "as filed" meaning to navigate on your own crossing your filed waypoints- you'll still get an initial altitude assignment. You can also select this as an option.For flexibility on departure and arrival altitudes, you can use the NOTAMS option. This requires you to deviate from commanded altitudes without reproach but still get guidance from ATC.If you use an FMC (LNAV) or GPS to fly SIDS and STARS I recommend using an external flight planner outside of FS that exports plan formats for FS9 and your FMC/GPS. These planners have databases of these procedures and expand them to waypoints on export. By importing these plans into RC and your navigation avionics (CO-ROUTE in a Boeing FMC) RC and your nav equipment see the same waypoints. This avoids the problem where a navigation instrument's built in procedure database differs from the waypoints in the flight plan causing ATC to think you are off course.

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>I am also disappointed with the relatively few voices with>other than US accents. One would hope that in future more>accents would be made available and could be incorporated in>new versions or downloaded for those with older versions.Jon Dekker has said that he would put a lot of other accents on if he could get enough volunteers to record the WAV files. He has mostly US, next comes UK, a South African, an Australian and just a handful from mainland Europe.Be warned though! If you volunteer, there are a heck of a lot of files to record! :-) Iain Smith

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I was wondering if anyone knows how it would run onAMD athlon 64 X2 Dual core processor 1.7ghz1024 mb ram100gb hardrivege force Go6100running vista 32 bitactiveskyground and flight environmentultimate terrain canada and usapmdg 747, 737level d sim 767This is my ssytem which is a laptop, so as i understand it there is not really any option to upgrade the hardware in it, and buying a new system is out of the question.Thank you very much for your input.


 Intel I7 12700KF / 32 GB Ram-3600mhz / Windows 11 - 64 bit / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060TI / 32" Acer Monitor, Honeycomb alpha/bravo, CH rudder pedals, Tobii 5, Buttkicker, Logitech radio panel. 

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Hi,With only 1Gb of RAM on a machine running Vista and heavyweight aircraft like the PMDG I'm surprised you can run FS9 effectively.However, if you add another 1Gb of RAM and don't run any Ai packages such as Ultimate Traffic or MyTraffic then RC should be okay.It's when you add lots of Ai and fly into big airports RC is put under heavy load. Avoid those on modest machines are you'll be fine.Cheers,


Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
Cheadle Hulme Weather

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Thanks for the reply. Ya I can run fs9 into addon scenery airports(freeware) along with some quite heavy ai traffic(brought to me by the great WOAI) in the pmdg queen.I dont think I would want to sacrifice my ai for RC4 though, i really like seeing traffic moving about the airports and in the sky.Im completely a doorknob when it comes to computers, but judging by your response, vista is a ressource hog?You think if i went to xp i would gain something in my fs? I bought the machine with vista lready installed so im not sure if thats even possible.Thanks again


 Intel I7 12700KF / 32 GB Ram-3600mhz / Windows 11 - 64 bit / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060TI / 32" Acer Monitor, Honeycomb alpha/bravo, CH rudder pedals, Tobii 5, Buttkicker, Logitech radio panel. 

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Hi,<>I'm not suggesting you don't use any Ai. But packages such as Ultimate Traffic with Ai % set at 100 at airports such as KORD, KLAX and EGLL will add significant numbers of Ai aircraft. Perhaps 100 or more.However, if WOAI is less intensive you should have no such problems. If your PC can manage FS9 and the PMDG747 then RC will not increase the burden significantly.<Vista requires more memory than XP. Whereas XP can happily run with 1Gb of RAM, Vista seems happier with a minimum of 2Gb. Programs will still run but the swap file will be used more often. That will slow down performance. If your laptop can take another 1Gb of RAM it's something to consider.<>I doubt it's possible unless you were prepared to wipe the HD, buy a copy of XP and reinstall everything. But even then depending on your brand of laptop they are heavily customised so I would recommend you stick with Vista.Radar Contact does not use large amounts of memory and I think you would be able to run it. If you find that performance is not good enough then I'm sure John Dekker would listen sympathetically.If you would like to discuss RC further I suggest you post a message on our forum here http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=135Hope that helps.


Ray (Cheshire, England).
System: P3D v5.3HF2, Intel i9-13900K, MSI 4090 GAMING X TRIO 24G, Crucial T700 4Tb M.2 SSD, Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, 32Gb Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000Mhz RAM, Win 11 Pro 64-bit, BenQ PD3200U 32” UHD monitor, Fulcrum One yoke.
Cheadle Hulme Weather

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Thankh you very much for your input and advice, it is much appreciated. Im going to go do some looking through that forum thet you provided.Thanks again.


 Intel I7 12700KF / 32 GB Ram-3600mhz / Windows 11 - 64 bit / NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060TI / 32" Acer Monitor, Honeycomb alpha/bravo, CH rudder pedals, Tobii 5, Buttkicker, Logitech radio panel. 

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Not to hijack the thread but a few words on ProFlight Emulator. I am part of the beta-test team and I helped to define the procedures for the Trans-Atlantic ATC portion of the sim.ProFlight does offer some flexibility when flying SIDS and STARS because they are customizable and can be defined and named. The is also flexibility on how ATC handles the SID/STAR as part of your flightplan so it exceeds RC4 in the way this is implemented.ATC chatter in Proflight is VERY fluid, and it would seem to be less resource intensive that RC4. ATC interaction is a bit more interactive with AI Traffic and includes the ability for the copilot to "read the terminal map" as it were (copilot will assist with turn-by turn instructions as in real life so the Pilot Flying will not have to taxi, watch out for traffic and try to read the terminal map also...a very nice thouch).Proflight DOES however, have regional accents and dialects that also apply to aircraft from different countries. You will not be vectored into London Heathrow by a controller with a Southern USA accent, and Air India will not contact center with a New York accent..this REALLY does add to the dynamic of the ATC simulation (I believe RC5 should include this functionality also)The authors of PFE have taking the original out of the envelope that was developed for FS98 and added many features. One of the drawbacks is in the names of centers and airspaces. PFE is confined in this aspect to the original PF FIR boundaries so you may be asked to contact a center with no name or be stuck with NY Center all the way to the northern tip of Canada.PFE IS a serious alternative to RC4 and both have their drawbacks and advantages.

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I recall reading that some of the regional voice sets of Proflight are an extra purchase option. Is that still true? I'm just curious (this is not a criticism about the audio methods used). The RC developers waved off using synthesized voice sets due to the quoted costs of licensing fees assessed by suppliers for each application sold for each regional set I believe. I do not know the details and there are certainly pros and cons regarding this.RC4 has a table of voices defined for each FIR region. When correct regional voicing is available (pre-recorded .wavs) they are put in that table otherwise defaults are used. I am talking about interactive AI communications, not prerecorded random chatter.RC4 has a set of about 19,000 .wav phrases that must be recorded and processed ("radioized") for each regional sounding controller voice. 17,000 .wavs comprise phraseology for each pilot voice. These waves are assembled on the fly according to communication needs (scripts) and then delivered to audio.RC5 also has terminal procedure planning functions in development along with a host of other user requested features. RC5 is taking a long time to release because of several structure changes requiring recoding so that it is still quite aways from release. These changes from a coder's view means that it is almost a complete start over. The purpose for the restructuring is to be able to fix bugs and from a development viewpoint fairly quickly implement new features in incremental releases responding to user input.Today, however, RC4 does allow flexibility in how SIDs and STARs are handled as long as the waypoints are in the flight plan (as many planners provide them during export). There are user choices per session of "as filed" SIDs - mandatory if the first waypoint is within 30 nm. - and flexible departures to override this. Arrival altitudes can be hard or advisory, or the user can choose to navigate his own procedure within the approach jurisdiction.

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