FS2Crew program enhancement suggestions

[Guest Glidescope]

Hi... I want to start by thanking you for such a wonderful add-on for FSX. I'm enjoying learning all the ins and outs of the program. Its been a pleasure to use. I have a few suggestions for you that I hope you will consider for future releases. I was thinking how nice it would be if the program could make use of the aircrafts current location to provide passengers with position reports (ie: Ladies and gentlemen we're now passing by the city of Toronto, visable off the right hand side of the aircraft). It would also be nice if there was a menu option to obtain weather reports from the various waypoints on your route. Perhaps these could be processed by the copilot as well so that he could make weather related comments (ie: Looks like we're in for some nasty weather ahead. Kansas city reports heavy rain and high winds perhaps we should turn the seatbelts sign on? or Visibility is reported as less than 1 mile at our destination, looks like we're in for an interesting landing). To impleament these additions you could utilize MS built in voice engine (which would also add support for 3rd party voices, such as AT&T natural voices). I think these additions would add some additional life to the program, especially during the cruise segment. Thanks for your time and consideration.Regards,Mark

[byork 2,259]

Hi Mark,Good suggestions and I'm glad to hear you like FS2Crew, but given the current state of the technology I will not use text-to-voice or AT & T Natural voices.AT & T voices are semi-okay, but they still don't sound 100 percent human and they would clash with the other voices.(Half the crew sounds human, the other half sounds semi-human. Not good!)Hopefully in a few years we'll having voice programs that sound 100 percent human. Once we have that then I can do more things like you mentioned.All the best,Bryan

[Guest Glidescope]

Hi Bryan... I would agree with you that if you were going to go that route it would have to mean all of the voices are text to speech. I agree that AT&T Natural voices aren't 100% natural but it would add a considerable amount of speech flexibility (in not having to record hundreds, if not thousands of additional wav files) to have the program verbaly make use of many more FS variables. Personally when you consider what avenues in programming high quality artificial voices open up I think it's a small trade off. But I understand and respect your position. Keep up the good work :)Regards,Mark>Hi Mark,>>Good suggestions and I'm glad to hear you like FS2Crew, but>given the current state of the technology I will not use>text-to-voice or AT & T Natural voices.>>AT & T voices are semi-okay, but they still don't sound 100>percent human and they would clash with the other voices.>>(Half the crew sounds human, the other half sounds semi-human.> Not good!)>>Hopefully in a few years we'll having voice programs that>sound 100 percent human. Once we have that then I can do more>things like you mentioned.>>All the best,>>Bryan>>>

[byork 2,259]

Thanks Mark,Trust me, the second computer generated voices can sound 100 percent human, or even 99 percent human, we'll be going that route. The benefits are definately there.Right now I would say that the best computer generated voices sound about 80 percent human.To use such voices now over human recorded voices would generate a million complaints.Chrs,Bryan