Feature requests for the FS++ chaps

[Dr Vesuvius 22]

Alright, so far I'm still loving MCE. But there are a couple of enhancements that I'd really like to see. I know the FS++ chaps visit this forum occasionally so... hello chaps! Here's a couple of requests/suggestions for you.

 

1) At the moment, it's possible to choose which sound device the recorded voices are output to. But TTS voices all seem to be fixed to the Windows Default Sound Device, along with any played sound effects. It's strange, because I've even got my standard windows TTS directed to the second sound card along with the Copilot voice, but the MCE TTS still gets routed to the main soundcard. Would it be possible to direct the TTS voices to the same sound device as the recorded ones? Or even better, maybe allow the user to configure where voices and sound effects are routed independently (kinda like FSX does with ATC and SFX)?

 

2) Some of the recorded purser speech is quieter or louder depending on whether she's supposed to be in the cockpit or further back in the cabin. I think you get the same effect using a TTS voice as well. Would it be possible to unlock this functionality for use within VoxScripts?

 

3) At the moment I have the copilot voice through an external speaker - not a recommended configuration I know, and I'm getting him having fits as he hears is own voice, interprets it as a command and replies, then hears his reply as another command and replies to that etc etc. But would it be possible for him to not listen to his own voice? Something as simple as squelching the mic input while his own voice is playing would do the trick, if proper noise cancelling would be too processor intensive.

 

4) Oh and a fully implemented scripting language for VoxScript, with typed variables, If/Then conditionals and looping would be nice. No rush, by the end of the week would be fine.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read

 

Chris

AKA Dr Vesuvius

 

(note: one of these requests is 83% less serious than the others. Can you tell which one?)

[BoHill 1]

1) At the moment, it's possible to choose which sound device the recorded voices are output to. But TTS voices all seem to be fixed to the Windows Default Sound Device, along with any played sound effects. It's strange, because I've even got my standard windows TTS directed to the second sound card along with the Copilot voice, but the MCE TTS still gets routed to the main soundcard. Would it be possible to direct the TTS voices to the same sound device as the recorded ones? Or even better, maybe allow the user to configure where voices and sound effects are routed independently (kinda like FSX does with ATC and SFX)?

 

[Chris have you set your headset/2nd sound card properly in Windows TTS setup (advanced tab) to direct Win7 TTS output to your headst/2nd card?]

 

Since I'm on the verge of taking the MCE plunge, this issue is a major concern for me. Currently, using the FSX options in Settings>Sound, I have my Sounds set to the Default Primary Device (my external speakers) and the Voice set to the Default Communications Device (my headset). This allows me to have the ATC voices, and MS Win7 TTS Anna on AISmooth, through the headset, while all other sounds output through the speakers. Of course, I thought MCE would offer the same, and I assumed we could select whether to hear the MCE copilot, TTS, or recorded voices through the voice headset or not.

 

Alpha117, please clarify this issue; it will be so appreciated. Thanks!

[FS++ 707]

Alright, so far I'm still loving MCE. But there are a couple of enhancements that I'd really like to see. I know the FS++ chaps visit this forum occasionally so... hello chaps! Here's a couple of requests/suggestions for you.

 

1) At the moment, it's possible to choose which sound device the recorded voices are output to. But TTS voices all seem to be fixed to the Windows Default Sound Device, along with any played sound effects. It's strange, because I've even got my standard windows TTS directed to the second sound card along with the Copilot voice, but the MCE TTS still gets routed to the main soundcard. Would it be possible to direct the TTS voices to the same sound device as the recorded ones? Or even better, maybe allow the user to configure where voices and sound effects are routed independently (kinda like FSX does with ATC and SFX)?

 

2) Some of the recorded purser speech is quieter or louder depending on whether she's supposed to be in the cockpit or further back in the cabin. I think you get the same effect using a TTS voice as well. Would it be possible to unlock this functionality for use within VoxScripts?

 

3) At the moment I have the copilot voice through an external speaker - not a recommended configuration I know, and I'm getting him having fits as he hears is own voice, interprets it as a command and replies, then hears his reply as another command and replies to that etc etc. But would it be possible for him to not listen to his own voice? Something as simple as squelching the mic input while his own voice is playing would do the trick, if proper noise cancelling would be too processor intensive.

 

4) Oh and a fully implemented scripting language for VoxScript, with typed variables, If/Then conditionals and looping would be nice. No rush, by the end of the week would be fine.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read

 

Chris

AKA Dr Vesuvius

 

(note: one of these requests is 83% less serious than the others. Can you tell which one?)

 

1) Have you tried the supplied “Assign sound device” tool?

 

Click Start->All Programs->Multi Crew Experience->Tools->Assign sound tool.

You can direct the output to any device you like. Same applies to microphone. The only sounds that cannot be re-directed are the custom sounds played via VoxScript or VoxKey.

 

2) Just add a command like “purser proceed to cockpit” to a script, and the voice will become louder once he/she enters the flight deck.

 

3) Not possible I’m afraid. Picture this…

You’re right in the middle of speaking a command, the FO suddenly utters something, and the recognition is disabled. The result, a lot of frustration.

 

Also MCE is fully multi-threaded. That means every command and actions it entails (including the spoken sentences) happen on different threads. This enables features like confirming on the fly without the need to repeat commands, execution of checklist while talking to ATC and asking FO to perform things. It’s hard enough to get this symphony working because of the dreaded potential multi-threading lockups and racing conditions.

 

You can still have the FO voice come out of the speakers, but you need a directional microphone with noise cancelling capability. Try adding some foam padding to your mike. Eventually move your speakers around.

 

If still no-go, you can try this.

 

Record a minute or two of the typical ambient noise experienced during a simulator session.

Play that sound in a loop.

Create a brand new speech profile, name it something like “noisy” and make it active.

Train the new profile all while the background noise is played in a loop

 

That will help the speech engine filter out the background noise.

4) No problem, do you want it delivered today or tomorrow? With or without cheese?

[Taipan 30]

Can I add some more feature requests to this post to keep the forum clean (rather than starting a new feature request post).

 

Some things that were missing when I was setting up the quality wings checklist, these would be great to have in recordings, plus a few quirks that could be ironed out:

1. The number 4 is cut off, I can hardly hear it. Eg "Set generators 1 and 4"

2. The last "4" is spoken as "5" in this checklist item: "1. 5. 0. KNOTS AND SET 2. 4. FLAPS"

3. The last item on a line tends to be not spoken if it is an individual letter or number.

4. Recording of these words would be great:

-Elevation

-Aerodrome

-Airport

-TOGA

-JETWAY

-STAIRS

5. Problems with speaking some numbers. For example if the checklist says "170 KNOTS AND FLAPS 18" then he says "One zero knots and flaps one". He is skipping the numbers seven and eight. It does work if I make them individual digits, but eighteen, one seventy etc would sound good.

6. A feature request that would be very powerful: A Notation on the checklist (eg * star) could indicates the F/O will perform this item. In that case the item won't be read but will be performed by the F/O. This would be a great feature to allow us to create flows all in one place. The feature is already there for the F/O to check the status and question if we have done it correctly (if the plane is supported) - so he could do the action if he knows how.

7. In a future version can it be changed to default the checklist to be per PLANE, not per Livery? There are so many liveries to go through and save them all. Accu-feel, EZCA, and some other addons do this and it works extremely well.

8. Full support for Quality wings Bae 146 collection Copy my checklist and you can focus programming VC control.

 

NOTE: I'm using Jean-Claude as copilot voice.

[Dr Vesuvius 22]

Sorry for the delay in responding, I have been "Out of the cockpit" for a long weekend :-)

 

1) Yes I've used the "assign audio device" tool. As I said, the recorded voices (Andy, Trav & chums) all come out of the secondary sound device as assigned. But the TTS voices don't, going instead to the Windows Default Device.

 

BoHill - in answer to your question, yes I have configured the Windows TTS voice to come from the secondary card, which works with other apps and the standard windows narrator. Which makes it all the more bizarre that MCE routes the TTS voice back to the default.

 

FS++ chaps - if in fact the Assign Sound Device should also be affecting the TTS voices, I think I'm ready to break out the B-word on this issue, because that's certainly not the behaviour I'm seeing.

 

2) Purser proceed to cockpit.... check. I'll try that. Is there a way to make her go away again? :-)

 

3) Technical limitations understood. My headset mic is supposed to be directional and noise cancelling, but it's still picking up the speaker output. There are a couple of things I'm going to try, including a conference desk mic with active circuitry to cancel out sounds routed to its own speaker output (I can have the mic sat a foot in front of the speakers and they won't feedback/echo at all)

 

4) While you correctly spotted the less serious suggestion, I can't help but dream of what would be possible with just the ability to set variable flags and then run conditional statements based on them.

 

IF TravIsAboard = TRUE THEN

say "Oh no, we're all going to die."

ELSE

say "Hope the new guy works out better than the last one."

 

(A slightly less trivial use might be to keep the cabin announcements appropriate to the situation.. "I'm sorry Captain, but we can't do the boarding announcement until all the passengers have boarded." or "Why have we got a turbulence warning when we haven't taken off yet?")

 

But I have an idea how much work adding "just" that capability would be. Like I said, it's just a pipe dream.

 

Dr V

[FS++ 707]

Sorry for the delay in responding, I have been "Out of the cockpit" for a long weekend :-)

 

1) Yes I've used the "assign audio device" tool. As I said, the recorded voices (Andy, Trav & chums) all come out of the secondary sound device as assigned. But the TTS voices don't, going instead to the Windows Default Device.

 

FS++ chaps - if in fact the Assign Sound Device should also be affecting the TTS voices, I think I'm ready to break out the B-word on this issue, because that's certainly not the behaviour I'm seeing.

 

2) Purser proceed to cockpit.... check. I'll try that. Is there a way to make her go away again? :-)

 

Dr V

 

1) When running the assign sound tool, it should automatically open the Windows speech recognition panel and set SAPI to use a specific device. Is this happening?

 

Make sure before you start either MCE or FSX, your headset is plugged-in. Otherwise MCE may revert to the default device. Same applies to the "Voice" output in FSX sound panel.

 

2) Good idea. Forgot about it. Will work something out. Any suggestions for sentences to get the FA out of the cockpit are welcome :lol: "get the hell out of here" not allowed!

 

 

Cheers

[Dr Vesuvius 22]

1) When running the assign sound tool, it should automatically open the Windows speech recognition panel and set SAPI to use a specific device. Is this happening?

 

No it isn't. It brings up a single dialog window to choose Audio Out and Audio In, then closes as soon as I click OK. It's worked fine for the recorded voices (Trav, Clive, Stella, Yvonne etc) and they're all routed to the correct sound device, along with the narration voice.

 

I've also manually gone into the Windows control panel and set the SAPI TTS voice to use the secondary card. This works fine for other apps & the windows built-in Narrator. MCE is the only app that insists on routing TTS through the default device.

 

I can work out how to reconfigure everything to come from the speakers I want simply by setting what's currently my secondary sound device as the Windows Default and shuffling everything else around it, and that's probably what I'm going to wind up doing. But purely for the sake of getting to the bottom of the problem, here's the full breakdown of my setup and the behaviour I'm seeing.

 

My full setup

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

FSX

Sound Device 1 - SB Audigy (Windows Default, selected as the "Sounds" device in FSX)

Sound Device 2 - onboard Realtek HD (configured as the "Audio Out" in the MCE Assign Sound Device tool, and as the SAPI TTS output in Windows Control Panel)

Sound Device 3 - Logitech USB headset (Windows Default Communications Device, selected as the "Voice" device in FSX)

 

So FSX generated sound effects go to the Audigy (1) and FSX generated speech goes to the Logitech (3). MCE generated sound effects (cabin doors & sounds played via VoxScript) also go to the Audigy (1). MCE generated speech using the recorded voices (Trav, Clive, Stella etc) goes to the Realtek (2). MCE generated speech using SAPI TTS voices (and I've tried several voice fonts) go to the Audigy (1), ignoring both the windows SAPI setting and the MCE "Audio Out" setting.

 

Things I have tried/checked

i) all devices are definitely plugged in before FSX and MCE start (can't get more plugged in than on the motherboard!)

ii) running the MCE Assign Sound Device before starting FSX and MCE

iii) running the MCE Assign Sound Device while MCE is running (actually doesn't take effect until MCE is restarted, as you might expect)

iv) Manually setting the Windows SAPI TTS voice output in Control Panel

v) Change the MCE Audio Out device to the Logitech headset (3). Curiously this works fine, MCE plays all voices, including TTS through this headset. Curiouser and curiouser.

vi) Change the Realtek (2) to be the Windows Default Communication Device (which is what the Logitech(3) normally is). Result - MCE plays SAPI voice through the Audigy

vii) Change the Realtek (2) to be the Windows Default Device (which is what the Audigy (1) normally is). This is the only configuration in which MCE will play the SAPI voice through the Realtek (2). The problem is that it also plays all its sound effects through this as well which spoils the sound picture I'm trying to build up.

viii) with the Realtek set as the Windows Default Device as in vii, set MCE to use the Audigy as its Audio out. MCE now routes all voices including SAPI through the Audigy (1) while playing sound effects through the Realtek (2)

 

So, I can't see a clear pattern there, except that MCE will not use the onboard Realtek sound device for SAPI voices unless it's also set as the Windows Default device. But for everything else it seems to route correctly to the device selected in the MCE Assign Sound Device tool.

 

Since this seems to be a very hardware specific problem, I'm happy to just chalk it up to one of life's mysteries and work around it, but it is bizarre isn't it? Or is there something obvious that I'm missing?

 

(as an aside, I also discovered that Trav is still able to overhear his own voice even if played through the Logitech headset. Some "noise cancelling mic" that is!)

[BoHill 1]

MCE is the only app that insists on routing TTS through the default device.

 

Now that I am a full purchase registered MCE owner, I ran similar setups as noted by DrV (using my Creative Labs setup) andI concur totally with his findings. Likewise, I can run all sound Fx through my external speakers and most all voices (FSX ATC, MS Anna, MCE Announcer, and MCE recorded) through the headset. However, the TTS voices selected within MCE always play externally only and cannot be forced to play through the headset as so noted by DrV. Thus, it appears that there may be an extra internal "switch" inside MCE which is over-riding any other settings for TTS voices.

 

Perhaps, this is not a major deal since the non-headset "ambiance" may be preferred for the cabin crew at times. Still, it is odd and it would be nice to have the choice of how to hear the cc. Thanks much!

[FS++ 707]

_{BoHill & Dr V}

 

 

_{There are rare occasions where the tool doesn’t seem to be doing anything. That’s usually when the selected input and output in the two list boxes are actually the ones used.}

 

_{Make sure you didn’t assign a specific audio device in Windows for TTS voices.}

 

_{Try this.}

 

_{With all your sound devices connected (including headset), start the “Assign sound” tool.}

 

_{Select a different sound device from the “Sound in” list as well as “Sound out” list.}

 

_{Click OK.}

 

_{At this point you should refrain from using the mouse or keyboard, as the tool will be executing the following script automatically.}

 

_{Brings up the Windows Speech Recognition Panel.}

_{Automatically selects <Advanced> audio button, then selects the correct input that SAPI will be using for speech recognition.}

 

_{The selected audio devices will be written to the mce.ini (in AppData folder) file}

 

_{When MCE starts, it enumerates audio devices using DirectSound (DirectX). The crew voices, be it pre-recorded or TTS, will be directed to the selected audio out as found in mce.ini, or the default device if not assigned.}

 

_{You can check which audio device is assigned for Crew voice output by looking at the <About> tab of the user interface.}

 

_{Could also be related to Creative labs device and its drivers.}

 

_{The only sounds that cannot be directed right now are the custom wav files you add under Voxscript. For that you’ll have to set the device of your choice as default Windows audio out.}

[Dr Vesuvius 22]

Make sure you didn’t assign a specific audio device in Windows for TTS voices.

 

Bizarrely and somewhat counterintuitively, this is the answer. I changed the Windows SAPI TTS voice output back to "Use preferred device" instead of specifying the Realtek and now MCE is able to output the TTS speech to the Realtek.

 

If it was a case of the Windows setting overriding the MCE setting I could understand it, but there's no denying this fixes the problem, and I can live with the Windows TTS coming out of the main speakers. The important thing is I can now have all my MCE cockpit voices through one device and the ambient sound effects through another while the ATC chatter is confined to the headset. (It might still be nice to be able to route the different voices to different sound devices though. Like having the mechanic or the ramp co-ordinator, who a pilot would normally talk to via radio - coming through the headset along with ATC while the FO and purser are on the cockpit speakers.)

 

Now more importantly, about that full-blown scripting language....? (kidding! :-)

 

Dr V

[FS++ 707]

It might still be nice to be able to route the different voices to different sound devices though

 

It's a good idea, but there is so much to do now with interfacing various aircraft, that it would be difficult to implement in the short or medium term.

Especially when the "assign sound tool" has been working OK for the last 2 years.

[Dr Vesuvius 22]

True enough, and to be honest I'm not sure if enough users would be using a multi-soundcard setup to make it worth the effort anyway. Still, that's why they call it a "wish" list.

 

Thanks for your time.

 

Dr V

[BoHill 1]

Make sure you didn’t assign a specific audio device in Windows for TTS voices.

 

FS++, thanks for your kind advice. However, after more reflection and use, I actually prefer my present setup with all voices (except MCE selected TTS voices) coming through my headset which includes ground crew, ramp co-ord, and even MS Anna (which I use for AISmooth). So, the only external speaker voice is if I choose a TTS voice via MCE.

 

By the way, do you have any idea why my MCE TTS voices drop-down menu only shows the third party TTS voices that I have installed separately as TTS within MS Win? I do not see any "MCE" TTS voices listed in the MCE dropdown.

[FS++ 707]

FS++, thanks for your kind advice. However, after more reflection and use, I actually prefer my present setup with all voices (except MCE selected TTS voices) coming through my headset which includes ground crew, ramp co-ord, and even MS Anna (which I use for AISmooth). So, the only external speaker voice is if I choose a TTS voice via MCE.

 

By the way, do you have any idea why my MCE TTS voices drop-down menu only shows the third party TTS voices that I have installed separately as TTS within MS Win? I do not see any "MCE" TTS voices listed in the MCE dropdown.

 

MCE doesn't ship with TTS voices.

 

The package includes 2 sets of high quality recorded voices. And you can of course download the free extra voice packs (FO Clive, FO Jean-Claude, and soon FO William) via the forum link.

 

The list box in MCE user interface will show any 32 Bit third party TTS voices installed on your system.

 

Also, MCE being a 32 bit application (just like FSX) it can only work with 32 Bit voices, even when operating under Windows 7 64 Bit.

[BoHill 1]

Ok, I understand now; I have TTS CereProc voices which are sounding really fine as the Purser coming through my external speakers since she/he usually (always?) opens the cockpit door to tell me anything directly.

 

Thanks much for your attention; that's excellent!