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Multicrew Program

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Guest Mower

Hmm, I been around this community forever and never saw that item...will check it out, thanx.\EDIT...oh yes I have seen that a few years ago.If you run FS Passengers or FS2Crew (as I do) then this is not a good option IIRC.

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Yup, I reviewed it for Avsim and submitted the review a few weeks ago, but it has not been put up in the reviews section yet because Robert, (the Avsim Reviews Editor), was on holiday. It's very good, and there is a free demo available. Expect the review here on Avsim very soon.Incidentally, nobody can 'have seen that a few years ago', because it's a new product - it only came out of beta in December last year, and only went on sale at the start of this year.Al


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

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Guest Mower

Ah, okay then I recall seeing something similar before.Anyhow, Chock: can it run alongside FSP or FS2C?EDIT: nevermind, found it in the FAQ...Q: How does it work?A: Multi Crew Experience builds on Microsoft SAPI 5

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Yup, I reviewed it for Avsim and submitted the review a few weeks ago, but it has not been put up in the reviews section yet because Robert, (the Avsim Reviews Editor), was on holiday. It's very good, and there is a free demo available. Expect the review here on Avsim very soon.Incidentally, nobody can 'have seen that a few years ago', because it's a new product - it only came out of beta in December last year, and only went on sale at the start of this year.Al
This program intrigues me Alan. Can you give me a quick overveiw on its operation. I would run the program in conjunction with PMDG MD11 &747x MyTrafficX ASA and PFE. I run Vista 64. What I am after is a voice recognition application that is able to use keystroke commands via a particular program using voice prompts. For example \ in PFE is a readback key. I would like to give a voice command to activate that key thus give a readback response without touching any keys.Tanks for your response in advanceAndrew

Andrew Dixon
"If common sense was compulsory everyone would have it but I am afraid this is not the case"
 

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If you run FS Passengers or FS2Crew (as I do) then this is not a good option IIRC.
Actually, you might be able to run FS2Crew MD-11 Edition alongside MultiCrew or any other voice program, and simply use it to issue voice instructions to the autopilot.In fact, that would generally be pretty good and realistic because generally speaking if you're the Pilot Flying (PF) and the autopilot is not on, you would generally ask the PNF to verbally set the autopilot.In fact, in the next version of FS2Crew we're strongly looking at adding voice integration because we want to be able to model just such interaction, among other things.Your only big problem with traditional Voice Command programs (and there are a lot out there, such as VOX, Multicrew, Voice Buddy, Flight1's Cockpit Chatter), is that their ability to interface with anything other than Default aircraft is often very, very limited.This is because the super complex like the PMDG stuff use their own custom variables, etc., that 3rd parties don't have access to. So far example you could issue a voice command saying "APU OFF", but the voice program can't talk or interface with the PMDG aircraft, so nothing will happen.This why FS2Crew has to use simulated mouse clicks in order to get the FO to interact with most of the switches on the plane.It's the only way we could get our simulated FO to "interface" with the PMDG.Cheers,

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Okay. Basically it does a few things, and is designed so that you 'cherry pick' the features you want. A little pop up control panel appears in FS which you use to select what you want (you can minimise this if you don't want it in view). It works in FS9 and FSX incidentally too. The main features are:You get a virtual co-pilot, you can talk to him and ask him to do stuff, with phrases such as 'set take off thrust' 'set autopilot heading 150' 'flaps 25' 'raise the gear' etc. But the nice thing is that you don't have to be very precise with what you say, as the program will recognise most common sense variations of phrases. For example, you can say 'Nav One, one two one decimal seven five' and he'll set 121.75 on the NAV 1, but you could just as easily say 'one hundred and twenty-one point seventy five Nav one' and it would work just the same. This is true of almost everything you can get him to do, so it doesn't take ages to get into using it, you can pretty much fire it up, do the voice training (takes ten minutes to do that) and then you're in business.The co-pilot will run through checklists for you, and you can use the ones which are included for aircraft by default or create your own (most types of aircraft are included, including a specific checklist for the PMDG 747). But even if your favourite aircraft does not have a checklist included by default, you can create one yourself, and that's really easy to do, because you simply type it out in Notepad following the format of a template, assign it to whatever FS aircraft you like and you can then have it pop up in the cockpit for you to go through with the co-pilot, you can adjust and fine tune it with FS running too, so you don't have to restart FS to try things out. It's very easy to create custom checklists and you can put anything you like on one and it will work with the co-pilot reading it out and you responding as you set the switches, so if you crave realism and want to include obscure real world check items, such as checking the fire axe is properly stowed in the cockpit, then you can do so. You can have the co-pilot cross check stuff with you too, to ensure both displays are the same and stuff like that.The co-pilot can also monitor your flying as a real co-pilot would, and his monitoring levels can be customised. So you can have him ###### at you about everything and be really picky, even if you are 20 feet above your assigned flight level, or you can have him take a relaxed attitude and only monitor certain things (and pretty much everywhere between those two extremes). This is good stuff, because he will do things like perform a speed check to ensure that you are below VFE if you ask him to extend the flaps, and he'll question you if you ask for him to do that sort of thing when you should not, although you can override his caution (you are the captain after all).You can talk to ATC via your PC microphone (that's the default FS ATC, so MCE works with any traffic add-ons you have installed, and the co-pilot will see it all too and warn you about traffic conflicts and stuff like that if you like). It's quite flexible in how you do stuff, there are options where you have to be 'spot on' with your responses to ATC, or you can relax the rules a bit and miss out callsigns etc, or, you can cheat and simply say 'ATC one' or something like that, and it will implement whatever option one is on the pop up FS ATC window. Alternatively, you can have your virtual co-pilot operate ATC for you, and you'll hear him conversing with the controller. This is good because it emulates the real world, where the 'pilot not flying' works the radios. It's also good in that you can learn the proper FS ATC responses by listening to what he says.MCE also works as a voice activation program for the FS interface too, i.e. you can simply say 'show GPS' and it will pop the GPS on screen for you, say 'hide GPS' and it will disappear. This is great, because it means you can pop panels up when in the Virtual cockpit without using buttons or the menus. That voice commands works for every pop up in FS and all the menus too, so you can bring up the throttle or the overhead with voice commands if you like, but you can also work everything else in FS via voice too, so saying 'increase simulation rate' will turn accelerated time onto X2 rate, say it again and you'll get X4 rate etc. Basically, if you can say it, it will do it, and if you can say it to a co-pilot, then you can say it to the MCE co-pilot and he will do whatever it is you want with the possible exception of going to get you a coffee.Now the bad news: Not all features work on every aircraft (although the developers are supposedly trying to fix this with plug ins for particular aircraft). This is basically because many add-on aircraft use sub routines outside of FS, and since MCE controls FS, it has no way to access sub routines running outside of it (the PMDG MD-11 is one such aircraft which uses such sub routines for a few things). What this boils down to is that not all MCE features work on every add-on aircraft. The voice activation of all the FS stuff, such as the ATC, and getting the co-pilot to work it is fine on any aircraft, as is the control of the FS interface for popups etc. But some add-on aircraft sub routines mean that the autopilot is more sophisticated than the default FS autopilot (as are some other features which are not default features of FS but added to sophisticated payware aircraft), so you can find that you ask the co-pilot to alter the heading on the MCP and he does it, but he does it to the default FS autopilot, which is not the one your fancy add-on aircraft is actually using, because it has a sub routine controlling a more sophisticated one running in concert with FS. Consequently, you have to work the MCP yourself on some add-on aircraft. This is a minor bummer but to be honest, all the other features of MCE more than make up for the fact that you might actually have to flick the odd switch yourself - after all, you are supposed to be the pilot.That's a very quick and dirty guide to it, look out for my review coming up on Avsim soon, but in the meantime, here is a youtube film of me telling the co-pilot of the default FS9 737 to do stuff in order to bring the plane in for an ILS approach. unfortunately the FRAPs program I used refused to record what the co-pilot was saying, but I can assure you when I was saying stuff, he was responding to me, and the film does demonstrate that it has excellent voice recognition capabilities. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA1MdedTk0ITry the demo (it's fully functional and works I think something like twenty times or for ten days, something like that anyway), I think you'll like it, I cerrtainly did, and if you read my review on Avsim when it gets put up, you will see that I was very impressed with it indeed, but whether it will suit what you want to do with your favourite add-on is why you should test it for yourself.Hope that helps - Al


Alan Bradbury

Check out my youtube flight sim videos: Here

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Guest Mower

I've already lost interest in this product. Already using -- and very happy with -- Radar Contact, FS Passengers X and FS2Crew.

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Okay. Basically it does a few things, and is designed so that you 'cherry pick' the features you want. A little pop up control panel appears in FS which you use to select what you want (you can minimise this if you don't want it in view). It works in FS9 and FSX incidentally too. The main features are:You get a virtual co-pilot, you can talk to him and ask him to do stuff, with phrases such as 'set take off thrust' 'set autopilot heading 150' 'flaps 25' 'raise the gear' etc. But the nice thing is that you don't have to be very precise with what you say, as the program will recognise most common sense variations of phrases. For example, you can say 'Nav One, one two one decimal seven five' and he'll set 121.75 on the NAV 1, but you could just as easily say 'one hundred and twenty-one point seventy five Nav one' and it would work just the same. This is true of almost everything you can get him to do, so it doesn't take ages to get into using it, you can pretty much fire it up, do the voice training (takes ten minutes to do that) and then you're in business.The co-pilot will run through checklists for you, and you can use the ones which are included for aircraft by default or create your own (most types of aircraft are included, including a specific checklist for the PMDG 747). But even if your favourite aircraft does not have a checklist included by default, you can create one yourself, and that's really easy to do, because you simply type it out in Notepad following the format of a template, assign it to whatever FS aircraft you like and you can then have it pop up in the cockpit for you to go through with the co-pilot, you can adjust and fine tune it with FS running too, so you don't have to restart FS to try things out. It's very easy to create custom checklists and you can put anything you like on one and it will work with the co-pilot reading it out and you responding as you set the switches, so if you crave realism and want to include obscure real world check items, such as checking the fire axe is properly stowed in the cockpit, then you can do so. You can have the co-pilot cross check stuff with you too, to ensure both displays are the same and stuff like that.The co-pilot can also monitor your flying as a real co-pilot would, and his monitoring levels can be customised. So you can have him ###### at you about everything and be really picky, even if you are 20 feet above your assigned flight level, or you can have him take a relaxed attitude and only monitor certain things (and pretty much everywhere between those two extremes). This is good stuff, because he will do things like perform a speed check to ensure that you are below VFE if you ask him to extend the flaps, and he'll question you if you ask for him to do that sort of thing when you should not, although you can override his caution (you are the captain after all).You can talk to ATC via your PC microphone (that's the default FS ATC, so MCE works with any traffic add-ons you have installed, and the co-pilot will see it all too and warn you about traffic conflicts and stuff like that if you like). It's quite flexible in how you do stuff, there are options where you have to be 'spot on' with your responses to ATC, or you can relax the rules a bit and miss out callsigns etc, or, you can cheat and simply say 'ATC one' or something like that, and it will implement whatever option one is on the pop up FS ATC window. Alternatively, you can have your virtual co-pilot operate ATC for you, and you'll hear him conversing with the controller. This is good because it emulates the real world, where the 'pilot not flying' works the radios. It's also good in that you can learn the proper FS ATC responses by listening to what he says.MCE also works as a voice activation program for the FS interface too, i.e. you can simply say 'show GPS' and it will pop the GPS on screen for you, say 'hide GPS' and it will disappear. This is great, because it means you can pop panels up when in the Virtual cockpit without using buttons or the menus. That voice commands works for every pop up in FS and all the menus too, so you can bring up the throttle or the overhead with voice commands if you like, but you can also work everything else in FS via voice too, so saying 'increase simulation rate' will turn accelerated time onto X2 rate, say it again and you'll get X4 rate etc. Basically, if you can say it, it will do it, and if you can say it to a co-pilot, then you can say it to the MCE co-pilot and he will do whatever it is you want with the possible exception of going to get you a coffee.Now the bad news: Not all features work on every aircraft (although the developers are supposedly trying to fix this with plug ins for particular aircraft). This is basically because many add-on aircraft use sub routines outside of FS, and since MCE controls FS, it has no way to access sub routines running outside of it (the PMDG MD-11 is one such aircraft which uses such sub routines for a few things). What this boils down to is that not all MCE features work on every add-on aircraft. The voice activation of all the FS stuff, such as the ATC, and getting the co-pilot to work it is fine on any aircraft, as is the control of the FS interface for popups etc. But some add-on aircraft sub routines mean that the autopilot is more sophisticated than the default FS autopilot (as are some other features which are not default features of FS but added to sophisticated payware aircraft), so you can find that you ask the co-pilot to alter the heading on the MCP and he does it, but he does it to the default FS autopilot, which is not the one your fancy add-on aircraft is actually using, because it has a sub routine controlling a more sophisticated one running in concert with FS. Consequently, you have to work the MCP yourself on some add-on aircraft. This is a minor bummer but to be honest, all the other features of MCE more than make up for the fact that you might actually have to flick the odd switch yourself - after all, you are supposed to be the pilot.That's a very quick and dirty guide to it, look out for my review coming up on Avsim soon, but in the meantime, here is a youtube film of me telling the co-pilot of the default FS9 737 to do stuff in order to bring the plane in for an ILS approach. unfortunately the FRAPs program I used refused to record what the co-pilot was saying, but I can assure you when I was saying stuff, he was responding to me, and the film does demonstrate that it has excellent voice recognition capabilities. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA1MdedTk0ITry the demo (it's fully functional and works I think something like twenty times or for ten days, something like that anyway), I think you'll like it, I cerrtainly did, and if you read my review on Avsim when it gets put up, you will see that I was very impressed with it indeed, but whether it will suit what you want to do with your favourite add-on is why you should test it for yourself.Hope that helps - Al
Thanks very much for such a comprehensive and thorough answer. I have plenty of food for thought!Abndrew

Andrew Dixon
"If common sense was compulsory everyone would have it but I am afraid this is not the case"
 

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