August 21, 201312 yr Moderator Ah okay, i'm trying to find a way to play live atc through my headphones without running a processor heavy program in the background as i'm currently on the one PC. James, Do you have a smartphone? You can get the LiveATC app, and listen through a separate pair of earbuds; of course it'll mute the PC sound a little, but that can be a plus for tender eardrums...
August 21, 201312 yr James, Do you have a smartphone? You can get the LiveATC app, and listen through a separate pair of earbuds; of course it'll mute the PC sound a little, but that can be a plus for tender eardrums... Hey. I listen to FS through headphones not speakers so cannot. I have installed Audacity which lets me hear line in from my phone through my pc headphones and this seems to not use much processor so i think i have found the solution. I shall check out the liveatc app though! James Bennett
August 22, 201312 yr Commercial Member Maybe VLC player is lighter on processor. It is. Uses about half the memory of iTunes to boot. I hadn't even thought about the LiveATC streams - this Lua script that I'm developing... omg does it work good with Live ATC.... Something about being able to flip over from my playlist to a LiveATC feed, all from within the cockpit, from the com radio, is pretty exciting. :lol: I hope to share something with you all soon. I spent quite a bit of time with it today, mostly wrestling with interfacing with iTunes. I've got it to the point where I can: - play music from the main library - play music from a choice of playlists - play a web stream (which I didn't even think of using for LiveATC!) - play a single track - control volume of the playback separately from the music/feed, also through the com2 radio. Things I may yet do: - mute / un-mute the playback volume based on whether the sound for com2 is on, or even if com2 itself is off. - display current track, artist, feed, time, etc on a floating window in the cockpit which can be an option in the script - have the ability for the music to auto-mute or turn down in volume if the ATC window pops up. What I wasn't able to do, that I spent far too much time today trying, was playback of all music from a single artist or album. Which really doesn't matter too much to me anyways, since one could just as easily set a playlist up for those tasks, and play that instead. All this is done on individual com2 frequencies, which you can configure (as many as you want) in the script. This does require a registered copy of FSUIPC, and the current Lua script is for iTunes. Since I have about 400 albums and many playlists set up in iTunes, plus it has a fairly complete COM programming interface, it was my first choice. From what I understand, VLC has a very well documented COM interface as well, so it will be my number two choice, as it has far less bloat and works far smoother with internet feeds. I'm rather pumped about the LiveATC thing. That's just too cool. :lol: Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
August 22, 201312 yr Commercial Member Errr... so much for VLC. It doesn't provide the programming interface I need to interact with it. :( Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
August 22, 201312 yr Errr... so much for VLC. It doesn't provide the programming interface I need to interact with it. :( That's a shame, maybe check their website to see if there's a developers version or toolkit for it? They have this on their own site: https://wiki.videolan.org/Developers_Corner James Bennett
August 22, 201312 yr That's a shame. What about WinAmp ? I wonder if this gauge (which plays MP3s and WAVs from inside FS9), would also work this FSX ? http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2803/fs2004-am-fm-radio-cd-player-gauge/
August 22, 201312 yr Sounds very interesting this little app under development! Looking forward to more news! Martin Jensen
August 22, 201312 yr I wonder if this gauge (which plays MP3s and WAVs from inside FS9), would also work this FSX ? http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/2803/fs2004-am-fm-radio-cd-player-gauge/ This (FS9) gauge caused lock-ups and 0.5 FPS in FSX for me, so I do not recommend downloading or trying it! (was worth a try though).
August 22, 201312 yr Moderator This (FS9) gauge caused lock-ups and 0.5 FPS in FSX for me, so I do not recommend downloading or trying it! (was worth a try though). That was the FS 9 gauge I had in mind originally, but I could never figure out where the associated mp.3 files were, or how to change them! Any other ideas for listening... keep throwing them out here!
August 22, 201312 yr That was the FS 9 gauge I had in mind originally, but I could never figure out where the associated mp.3 files were, or how to change them! Any other ideas for listening... keep throwing them out here! Yeah, that's where it locked up for me! .... To associate (or locate) the MP3s, you're supposed to be able to right click on the 'FM' (choose 6 tracks) and the 'AM' (locate another 6 tracks) buttons, and browse to them. But right clicking on those buttons caused a huge hang and 0.5 FPS! ...... As far as I could see it had no probs playing a CD I had in my drive. But I wanted it for WAV/MP3s not CDs. :smile:
August 22, 201312 yr Moderator Yeah, that's where it locked up for me! .... To associate (or locate) the MP3s, you're supposed to be able to right click on the 'FM' (choose 6 tracks) and the 'AM' (locate another 6 tracks) buttons, and browse to them. But right clicking on those buttons caused a huge hang and 0.5 FPS! ...... As far as I could see it had no probs playing a CD I had in my drive. But I wanted it for WAV/MP3s not CDs. :smile: Dave, I can play the CD, but clicking on the AM buttons did nothing. I didn't get a lock up or FPS drop; just can't get the .wav files to work! Alan
August 22, 201312 yr Me, i don't need no radio to play music. I sing songs myself. Try it, more fun ! B) Can't help it. Immidiately after take-off i get the urge to sing, or ateast hum... certainly after the usual tribes and tribulations of 'normal' life. I guess sim flying makes me unmistakingly happy. I even used to fly and checkout area's and cities that are mentioned in songs. ( Is this the way to Amarillo by Tony Christie, Man of constant sorrow by Bob Dylan( i'm going back to Colorado), Baltimore by Randy Newman, Memphis by Chuck Berry, Tallahassee Lassie by Freddy Cannon, Twenty-four miles from Tulsa by Gene Pitney, Kansas City by various artists, to name but a few ( not forgetting White Cliffs of Dover, Very Lynn) and apotheose with Route 66 by Rolling Stones ( i followed the whole route :smile: ) Pity Drzwiecky Design New York X runs terrible on my system. I know the song by heart. B) It's just fantastic to virtually get a glimpse of cities and places that are mentioned in songs i've known just about all my life but never had the chance to visit them for real. Certainly now with sceneries getting more beautiful than ever. Believe me, singing or humming along with a backline of P&W's, Wright's or Merlins makes for an extra dimension in virtual flying. And don't come on board with " i can't sing" , nonsense, everybody can sing. :smile: Well goes from St. Louie down to MissouriOklahoma City looks oh so prettyYou'll see Amarillo and Gallup, New MexicoFlagstaff, Arizona don't forget WinonaKingman, Barstow, San Bernadino Would you get hip to this kindly tipAnd go take that California trip Get your kicks on Route 66 cheers, jan Jan
August 22, 201312 yr Commercial Member Me, i don't need no radio to play music. I sing songs myself. Try it, more fun ! My wife frowns on this for some reason at 2 am. :rolleyes: So it turns out VLC isn't done yet. I think I've figured out a way to communicate with it. It's a pain in the butt, but so far there's hope for it. Definitely not as easy to work with as iTunes, nor is it as full featured in the two-way communication. I really dislike winamp - there's no way I'm going that route. There's a few other options out there, but most of them are extremely user unfriendly, with very little likelyhood of anyone ever using them. So I do beleive that the two options that I'm going to write scripts for are iTunes and VLC. On a side note, the method (TCP, Luasockets) that I'm using to communicate with VLC looks like it would work over a network... Jim Stewart Milviz Person.
August 22, 201312 yr Great work so far Jimmy. Fair enough about WinAmp. (I've never used it, just heard of it, as a possible option). Isn't iTunes really heavy on the CPU ? I personally think it's probably only worth you putting the work in, if a suitable "low load" music playing option can be found. (AFAIK VLC indeed has a very low load; shame it's proving a pain in the butt!). I'm only one user out of hundreds (maybe thousands) that would love what you are trying to create here; but I personally wouldn't use it if it emplyed iTune running in the background - just because I've tried that on my PC, with FSX running, and there was a significant performance hit. Keep up the brilliant work and R&D though!
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