I have been flying the virtual skies with an immense pleasure in company of my trusted MCE Co Pilot who has an outstanding talent to reply and execute all my commands (99.9% successful recognition rate), so is my collaboration with the cabin and ground crews!!! Great job gentlemen!!!

 

Now for my very few repetitive difficulties:

• ATC clearance: I seem to have a very low (if any) recognition rate for my initial request for the ATC clearance, I have been using the same exact sentence since day one and it was working fine until... well, until it changed for what it is today (I am unable to point to any particular change or MCE version). When I repeat my clearance though, it works with no problem at all, 99% would be the rate, just that initial call, I tried changing the sentence, but no joy. The overall recognition rate with ATC would rarely fall below 80% which is not a problem (real world ATC communications are far from 100%!)
• When I wish to change my flight level in flight, say request 310 instead of 330, my FSX ATC window freezes empty and I never get any reply from ATC. Please note that I tried many ways including the old fashioned, select 2, select 5 (manually on the keyboard and with voice), none would work. ATC continues nagging me with the altitude I should be flying at, showing that "they" don't get the message at all. I also want to point out that such a request cannot be "considered" by FSX if wrongly timed, I am aware of this and would always wait until ATC gives my cruise level as per agreed ATC flight plan before sending my request.

Has anyone else experienced these two challenges and eventually found a way out of them?

 

Thank you again for what is an incredible product FS++!

I have been flying the virtual skies with an immense pleasure in company of my trusted MCE Co Pilot who has an outstanding talent to reply and execute all my commands (99.9% successful recognition rate), so is my collaboration with the cabin and ground crews!!! Great job gentlemen!!!

 

Now for my very few repetitive difficulties:

• ATC clearance: I seem to have a very low (if any) recognition rate for my initial request for the ATC clearance, I have been using the same exact sentence since day one and it was working fine until... well, until it changed for what it is today (I am unable to point to any particular change or MCE version). When I repeat my clearance though, it works with no problem at all, 99% would be the rate, just that initial call, I tried changing the sentence, but no joy. The overall recognition rate with ATC would rarely fall below 80% which is not a problem (real world ATC communications are far from 100%!)
• When I wish to change my flight level in flight, say request 310 instead of 330, my FSX ATC window freezes empty and I never get any reply from ATC. Please note that I tried many ways including the old fashioned, select 2, select 5 (manually on the keyboard and with voice), none would work. ATC continues nagging me with the altitude I should be flying at, showing that "they" don't get the message at all. I also want to point out that such a request cannot be "considered" by FSX if wrongly timed, I am aware of this and would always wait until ATC gives my cruise level as per agreed ATC flight plan before sending my request.

Has anyone else experienced these two challenges and eventually found a way out of them?

 

Thank you again for what is an incredible product FS++!

 

Regarding ATC very first ATC clearance request...

 

This has been reported via e-mail. Hopefully fixed in latest release (2.5.6.2). Not sure what version you're running, but you're advised to upgrade to the latest and confirm if the issue is still there.

 

Regarding ATC request for a different altitude....

 

It could be one of those FSX inherent glitches whereby the content of the ATC window disappears when you hide th ATC window following specific requests.

 

We know for example that even without using MCE at all, when running native ATC and receiving squawk code and you are expected to acknowledge, you should never attempt to hide the ATC window. You would loose the text altogether.

 

Because of this flaw, MCE carefully avoids hiding the window under those circumstances. There are a couple of other instances where this happens too.

 

Not aware of this happening when making requests for a different altitude. You never know.

 

To verify the theory, disable option "Auto-hide ATC window" and see how it goes.

Some additional input following your (fast as usual) reply Gerald:

1. I am running the latest version of MCE, so that issue regarding the initial ATC clearance is indeed still there
2. For the change of altitude, when making another flight yesterday, I requested a lower altitude when on my flight level. It was never granted and was ignored by FSX ATC. When switching to the next frequency I did not contact it on purpose so as to be free to accelerate the flight and when reaching my TOD after a (compressed) 10 hour flight, I contacted the ATC and was automatically granted the lower flight level... This has nothing to do with MCE I believe but seems to be an FSX problem.
3. Last small glitch I experience regularly with ATC/MCE, the level of recognition is close to zilch when I confirm the next frequency: "Switching to 123.45, call sign", "over to 123.45, call sign" etc... One out of twenty times it works!

Thanks again and best regards,

Last small glitch I experience regularly with ATC/MCE, the level of recognition is close to zilch when I confirm the next frequency: "Switching to 123.45, call sign", "over to 123.45, call sign" etc... One out of twenty times it works!

 

May just need a tweak to the relevant speech grammar.

Using my Norwegian-type English I have found out that my computer is not able to tell my "to" from "two" (I guess my-"too"s would confuse Clive too, but I have not tried it very often).

 

Consequently I try to avoid MCE-statements that includes "to". Ie. "Set heading two-one-zero" would work fine, but "Set heading to two-one-zero" is likely to fail for me.

 

Kai