Is VoxATC any good?

[moggel 0]

I'm considering buying VoxATC because I'm really drawn to the idea of being able to speek to the virtual ATC. I've been running Radar Contact for several years and I already own PFE (don't use it much though). How does VoxATC compare to these in terms of ATC fidelity and AI?Cheers/Jonas

[Jonahbird 8]

Beware if you run on Vista 64. It will cost you a lot more than you bargained for to get voices that will work with 64 bit.

[Chock 17,769]

Yes it is very good. I bought it, however since I lost the serial number for it that's a minor difficulty LOL, but that's no big deal really, because for the about the same price you can get Multi Crew Experience, which does everything that Vox ATC does and a lot more besides, i.e it has voice recognition for ATC and adds a co-pilot too, it has built-in checklists for most FS aircraft - which are easily customisable - and includes checklists for some add-on aircraft too, including the PMDG B747. Frankly, it blows Vox ATC out of the water, and MCE works in both FS9 and FSX too incidentally, that is with the default ATC and add-on traffic packages too, so it integrates well with FS.A review of Multi Crew Experience is coming up on Avsim soon (written by my good self), but in the meantime, here is a demo I did of the co-pilot feature of MCE which is linked from the - as yet - unpublished Avsim review, this is of me giving the co-pilot voice commands to do an ILS approach, so here is your chance to laugh at my Limey accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA1MdedTk0I...re=channel_pageYou can buy, or get a fully functional time limited demo of MCE here: http://www.multicrewxp.com/Might be giving a bit away since the Avsim review isn't up on the reviews section yet, but I can tell you that it gets considerable praise from me, and I'd certainly recommend trying it, although stand by for it to be a bit of a resource hog when using it with FSX, so make sure you have plenty of RAM. That demo film was done in FS9.Look out for the Avsim review soon.Al

[vgbaron 3,508]

well, your video was nice but it would have been nice to hear the responses. Frankly, listening to the demo on their website, their voice response is AWFUL. If that's what they consider a good demo, I'll pass on this one. Vic

[moggel 0]

Thanks for pointing me to MCE. I was aware of the product but I had no idea it also handled ATC. How does AI work when running MCE? I understand VoxATC generates AI by itself but I have no idea how that works or co-operates with existing AI generators (Traffic X in my case). Any comments on that?Cheers/Jonas

[michal 44]

Frankly, listening to the demo on their website, their voice response is AWFUL. If that's what they consider a good demo, I'll pass on this one.

Yeah, I wanted to see what demos they have available and wasn't impressed. I am not interested in voice recognition that allows to me control aircraft (or a copilot!) by voice - who does it in real life??. But I would be interested in a solid ATC program, perhaps something as in-depth as Radar Contact but with good voice recognition and much better human voices. Their demos tell me absolutely nothing how it can improve on existing ATC addons.

[Chock 17,769]

I'd recommend you try the demo, but...Basically, you get a little pop up control panel in FS which you can minimise if you like (and you can minimise and maximise it via voice too incidentally). It will let you choose numerous things that MCE can do; You can have a co-pilot on aircraft that would really have one (such as a 737), or you can have an instructor on smaller GA aircraft. Either way he will monitor your flying and slag you off if you fly badly (that's actually really funny, he comes out with some absolute classics, I even heard him say 'Al, *******! watch your speed!' the other day when I was landing a 747).You can choose what the co-pilot will do, so you can have him monitor everything whilst you fly, or you can limit what he monitors and adjust how picky he will be with various parameters, (i.e you can have him nag you if you are X amount of degrees off your assigned heading, or not at your assigned FL or whatever). He will run through checklists with you, and you can create these yourself in Notepad for a particular aircraft, but there are default ones already in the program if you cannot be bothered to do so. This means any aircraft you have can have a co-pilot go through a checklist with you exactly like the real aircraft, because you simply type it out to create it. The co-pilot will respond to your commands via voice, i.e, if you ask for flaps 25, he will first perform a speed check to see if you are under VFE, then carry out your command, but he will question you if you are over VFE, although you can override his caution anyway and tell him to just do it if you feel lucky.With regard to ATC, you can do several things: You can control it via voice in a manner similar to Vox ATC, however, MCE will let you do that with the default FS ATC, so unlike a lot of other programs, you are not in your own little world, your ATC commands are in with all the FS traffic, which means if you have add-on traffic, that'll be part of your ATC too, so you'll hear your co-pilot say things like 'watch out for that ATR at three o'clock' or whatever. This is more immersive than voice ATC programs which run independently of the traffic in FS. But, you can go further than that. You can tell the co-pilot to handle ATC for you, which is a good feature because you can listen to how he does it and learn from him if you are unsure of what to say when tallking to ATC yourself. That's also much like a real airliner is operated, so if you want realism, there it is.MCE will control all other aspects of the sim, so in addition to asking the co-pilot to do things like 'set go around thrust' via voice, you can say 'show GPS' and the GPS panel will pop up on screen. That works for all menus in FS and any pop up panels too, so you can say, 'show overhead' and you'll get the overhead panel, then you can say 'hide overhead' and it will disappear. This is handy for a lot of things, for example, when you fly a long flight and use accelerated time, you usually have to quickly stop the sim if you get an ATC call, but with voice command, you can simply change the simulation rate via voice, instead of desperately fumbling for the 'R' key to drop the speed down. The nice thing about all that is that it has great voice discrimination too, so you don't have to worry about scratching your chin or coughing into your mike and accidentally lowering the flaps or anything like that!There's a lot more to MCE than what I have listed here, but as you can see, it does a lot of things, but more importantly, it works pretty much flawlessly. That was really the point of that demo film I posted the link to, as you will notice I never had to say anything twice, or adopt a silly robotic voice to be understood, so it's a very intuitive and natural program to use. Yes the co-pilot's voice uses the default MS voice packs, but if you replace those with the AT&T ones, then you can have your co-pilot use pretty much any voice you like.Try the demo, I bet you'll buy the full version if you do, although try it with your favorite airliner to make sure it is compatible with it, as not every aircraft will use all the features of MCE, but even if they do not, the ATC function will always work in any aircraft, so you can view MCE as 'like Vox ATC, but with numerous bonus features'. I personally think it's one of the best add-ons to have come out for FS in years, and I imagine you'll agree with that if you try it, and since there is a free demo, you can do exactly that, in either fS9 or FSX.Al

[Guest jshyluk]

I've had VoxATC2 for a while now, and I like it well enough. My version comes with two AT&T voices, which are very nice on Win XP. I use the voices with other applications, so VoxATC is a bargain for that. VoxATC does generate its own traffic patterns, but it uses whatever models you have available. I did encounter some bumps along the way with Ultimate Traffic, and those never got resolved. To be fair, it was probably due to installing and uninstalling so many add-ons as a Reviewer. After a while FSX begins to give up on too much richness and it insists on a re-install.VoxATC voice recognition is good. The vast majority of the time, it nails the commands on the first go, even tricky bits like "United". I am not a huge traffic junkie, so I leave that aspect of the sim toned down or turned off much of the time. VoxATC is pretty good with mike etiquette, or at least is an improvement on the default ATC. The thing about MCE is that it seems directed at the sim pilot who prefers flying the commercial airliners, and I generally stay away from all of that. I prefer VFR hops and no co-pilot, just me, clouds, birds, and sky. So VoxATC does a decent job with VFR and the $500 hamburger. It is suitable for larger flights and IFR usage. It's mostly stable, memory-friendly, easy to set up and well-supported.Folks seem to prefer Radar Contact, and we'll see about MCE. If you have some spare cash, I would kindly suggest that VoxATC is a good choice. If you are holding onto your next $60 the way my brother-in-law holds onto the plate of pork chops when he comes over for dinner (i.e. you are reluctant to let go unless you are presented with a truly compelling reason to do so), then you might want to look around and ask more questions. There is a VoxATC forum in AVSIM, you can always find more there.Jeff ShylukSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM

[flyerkg 62]

Yeah, I wanted to see what demos they have available and wasn't impressed. I am not interested in voice recognition that allows to me control aircraft (or a copilot!) by voice - who does it in real life??. But I would be interested in a solid ATC program, perhaps something as in-depth as Radar Contact but with good voice recognition and much better human voices. Their demos tell me absolutely nothing how it can improve on existing ATC addons.

Hello,I have VoxATC. So far it doesn't appear to allow you to control the aircraft by voice recognition, just ATC interaction. It's fine for me but the 2 voices get pretty old when you get passed from different controllers and you keep hearing the same voice. The one limiting issue I have is that when flying from KFAT Fresno, CA I will request Rwy 29L as a GA aircraft and VoxATC will only clear me to Rwy 29R so I end up waiting behind commercial and Air National Guard AI where in real life, I would have been given the shorter inside runway. So I am curious to know how MCE handles multiple runways. Keith

[michal 44]

So I am curious to know how MCE handles multiple runways.

My understanding is that the area of specialty of MCE is voice recognition but it doesn't add any ATC "smarts" besides what is available in default ATC, in other words the quality of your ATC system logic is not going to get improved.

[flyerkg 62]

My understanding is that the area of specialty of MCE is voice recognition but it doesn't add any ATC "smarts" besides what is available in default ATC, in other words the quality of your ATC system logic is not going to get improved.

Michael,Thank you very much. I might decide to use MCE eventually.Keith

[lfishe 2]

Hello,I highly recommend PFE for ATC. I use Voice Buddy with PFE, and I also use Voice Buddy to assign headings, speeds, altitudes, turn on Autopilot, and many other things with my PMDG 747. PFE is a real like ATC that I talk with using the proper phrases and frequencies, not select 1, etc.. It also has the option of the co-pilot dealing with ATC, radio comunications, and autopilot. Perhaps the two program could complement each other with the shared feature of the MCE program. Lynn

[Guest rap777]

Yes it is very good. I bought it, however since I lost the serial number for it that's a minor difficulty LOL, but that's no big deal really, because for the about the same price you can get Multi Crew Experience, which does everything that Vox ATC does and a lot more besides, i.e it has voice recognition for ATC and adds a co-pilot too, it has built-in checklists for most FS aircraft - which are easily customisable - and includes checklists for some add-on aircraft too, including the PMDG B747. Frankly, it blows Vox ATC out of the water, and MCE works in both FS9 and FSX too incidentally, that is with the default ATC and add-on traffic packages too, so it integrates well with FS.A review of Multi Crew Experience is coming up on Avsim soon (written by my good self), but in the meantime, here is a demo I did of the co-pilot feature of MCE which is linked from the - as yet - unpublished Avsim review, this is of me giving the co-pilot voice commands to do an ILS approach, so here is your chance to laugh at my Limey accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA1MdedTk0I...re=channel_pageYou can buy, or get a fully functional time limited demo of MCE here: http://www.multicrewxp.com/Might be giving a bit away since the Avsim review isn't up on the reviews section yet, but I can tell you that it gets considerable praise from me, and I'd certainly recommend trying it, although stand by for it to be a bit of a resource hog when using it with FSX, so make sure you have plenty of RAM. That demo film was done in FS9.Look out for the Avsim review soon.Al

Hi Al!Thanks but it does seem to have a problem with accents ( i am from austria)I am already down to 30 tries and have not been able to get ONE responds to ATC! I like the idea of MCE though and hope they can work this out. In the meantime I am happy with VoxATC which works EVERY TIME even with accent!I would also suggest some sort of tuorial flight in the demo with the EXACT wording required for ATC!This is not a critic but feedback for a potential customer!Regards Alfred

[BartEnder 2]

I am already down to 30 tries and have not been able to get ONE responds to ATC!

Alfred, You should try to launch Speech recognition in Vista's Control Panel. Do a full learning and Vista will hear You much better.BTWlfishe - do You say, that PFE recognises voice? I was thinking not, that is why I have not bougth this one

[vgbaron 3,508]

Jeff - I agree about VOxATC. I also have it and took me a while to get voices to work with XP64 but more than acceptable. Also have Voice Buddy and altho I like it well enough, I find I don't use it that often. I'm not an airliner junkie.I love Radar Contat but don't use it any longer because it defaults to the speakers and there's no way to assign it to my headset. Unfortunately, JD says this won't change in version 5 so I'll pass on that upgrade.Vic