Multi Crew Experience or FS2Crew

[nealmac 260]

So the title says it all. What would you folks recommend?

 

I've looking at buying a good First Officer addon for some time now. However, as I understand it, it seems that FS2Crew is only limited to certain addon aircraft. And furthermore, you need to buy different versions of it for different aircraft. MCE looks like it covers pretty much all aircraft, but isn't as complex as FS2Crew is.

 

Would the above statement be a fair assumption? My main birds are the PMDG 737, the iFly 747, the Aerosoft A320, the Eaglesoft Citation X, the Captain Sim 777 (I had the PMDG 777 but I didn't repurchase after moving to P3D). I also have the A2A Cessna C182, but as far as I know, neither of these addons work with VFR aircraft.

 

Thanks guys.

[rdtv91 73]

It depends what you want:

MCE - Works with most planes and is configurable for you and vast options but always felt the voices were a bit too robotic

FS2Crew - a separate product per aircraft but for that you get a very very polished experience of what it's like to fly as a 2 person crew in that particular aircraft (fs2crew voices are recorded for those specific flows)

[nealmac 260]

Yeah well the thoughts of having to buy seperate addons for each aircraft doesn't really appeal to me. I'd like to hear some people's experience with MCE. Also is it voice activated only? Or can you hit keys to give predefined commands? (Like ProATC). 

[roland_lfor 245]

You should have a look to MCE sub-forum pinned topics. There is a lot of information available.

MCE has a demo mode, so the best thing to do is try.

Some MCE Advantages:

• a single software paid once = All currently supported aircraft + future for free
• Can interacts with ATC and GSX as well.
• No parasitic window interface or buttons
• no strict process flow to follow (agile)

It supports also generic aircraft and VFR as well.

I's voice activated only, but highly configurable: you can create your own command sets, customize checklists...

There is one issue currently due to P3Dv3 with the Majestic Q400 push buttons handling by the copilot.

[nealmac 260]

Thanks for the info Roland, I'm definitely leaning more toward MCE at the moment.

 

I don't currently have a headset. Can anyone recommend me a headset that will work that won't cost too much money? Or can I use the built in mic on my computer?

[glider1 90]

I personally chose HyperX Cloud II Gaming Headset with MCE because it has noice cancelling and is less expensive than the high end and was recommended by another avsimmer. It seems to be a good build quality. Voice recognition benefits from a good microphone but not completely since the Microsoft Speech engine is old technology and imperfect. MCE has built in software that corrects for recognition errors though. I get 80-90% accuracy on commands I speak in MCE (at worst 2 in 10 times it doesn't understand). MCE is an excellent purchase if you are into virtual reality because you can issue commands out of the box without having to press things.

[FS++ 707]

On 3/3/2017 at 2:48 PM, nealmac said:

I don't currently have a headset. Can anyone recommend me a headset that will work that won't cost too much money? Or can I use the built in mic on my computer?

Built-in mike won't do unless you have headphones to route simulator sounds to your ear without feeding the mike with unwanted noise.

There's no need for expensive headsets. Stay clear of those fancy and expensive wireless headsets. They have their issues with signal reliability and battery life.

I'd say, any USB headset around US$20-25 you find on amazon.com will do.

Plug it straight to a USB port, and not via a USB hub.

 

[nealmac 260]

Ok thanks guys.

[WebMaximus 372]

I'm using a Logitech wireless H800 and I'm very happy with it!

Very light and comfortable, great audio quality as well as battery life and should you run out of battery while using it you can simply plug in the included USB cable  which allows you to charge it while using it.

Not very pricey and still you'll have the convenience not being tied to your computer but can move around as you please. Maybe much of a personal thing but I try to stay clear of any cables whenever possible.

To comment on your original question I'm obviously biased as a member of the beta team for FS2Crew plus I have no personal experience with any other similar products.

What I do know though is FS2Crew works really well being a very mature product by now and in a manner probably as close as you can get to real world OPs in a multicrew environment.

The fact it's a separate product for each aircraft also means it is tailor-made where the result is what I already mentioned, a very realistic and well working product.

In the end I think what is the major question is what you're looking for - a more general product that will work with most aircraft or what I've mentioned above.

[Cargostorm 151]

MCE provides much more flexibilty in my eyes - well if you need it. You can create your own checklist, create flows that the FO will check and work out. For example you can define before take off items such as transponder on TA/RA, landing lights on, strobe light on etc. With the scripts you can command the FO by saying "before take off items" and he will do all the items for you - just as in the real aircraft. I have a lot of flows, which helps in a one man cockpit such as after before start items, after start items, taxi items, before take off items, after take off items, descent items, landing items, after landing items etc.

In addition, you can adapt the checklist to correspond to the real world counterpart for each particular aircraft that lives in your hangar. By adapting the checklist and flows you will be able to train real world procedures. Nothing FS2Crew can do as far as I know.

[WebMaximus 372]

19 minutes ago, Cargostorm said:

By adapting the checklist and flows you will be able to train real world procedures. Nothing FS2Crew can do as far as I know.

MCE certainly sounds like a great add-on and especially with you being able to modify it any way you like to suit your needs.

As for real world procedures FS2Crew is built on those and tested and verified by real world pilots rated for that particular aircraft type and I know being part of the beta team Bryan always go to great lengths to make sure ever single detail is exactly like IRL. To make an example it can be small things like which fuel pump is used before engine start to feed the APU.

So again, with FS2Crew you will certainly follow the same procedures real pilots do for that aircraft type and you won't have to set anything up by yourself. You can even choose between a number of different SOP sets that will simulate the differences in SOPs that are found from one airline to another one.

Like I said in my last post, my intention is in no way to say MCE isn't a great add-on. I'm just saying that I think what you are looking for should be the main argument for what add-on you'll pick up to make sure you get the product that will best suit your needs.

[nealmac 260]

Thanks for the replies lads. I'm definitely leaning more towards MCE at this stage. I totally understand WebMaximus' point though, regarding FS2C. There's a lot to be said for having seperate products tailored for different aircrafts. But I'm not a real world pilot, and I don't consider myself "hardcore" enough to need a product to be 99.9% accurate. I reckon the the cheaper product that covers pretty much most aircraft will be good enough for my level.

[WebMaximus 372]

20 minutes ago, nealmac said:

But I'm not a real world pilot, and I don't consider myself "hardcore" enough to need a product to be 99.9% accurate.

With that said I would have picked MCE too.

Hope you'll enjoy it

[RALF9636 1,904]

3 hours ago, nealmac said:

Thanks for the replies lads. I'm definitely leaning more towards MCE at this stage. I totally understand WebMaximus' point though, regarding FS2C. There's a lot to be said for having seperate products tailored for different aircrafts. But I'm not a real world pilot, and I don't consider myself "hardcore" enough to need a product to be 99.9% accurate. I reckon the the cheaper product that covers pretty much most aircraft will be good enough for my level.

I wouldn't say at all that MCE is less accurate than FS2Crew. MCE is just as accurate as you want it to be - up to 99.9 % :-).

 

I was a satified user of FS2Crew for years. I changed to MCE mostly because of the PF3-ATC interaction.

At first I used MCE just as I used FS2Crew before. I was able to set up MCE to work almost exactly like FS2Crew. But meanwhile I went far beyond that. The versatility of MCE is just incredible. It took me some weeks or even months to realize what is possible with MCE. Now I have flows by which the first officer not only controls the aircraft functions but also talks to ATC, handles various addons like GSX and FSCaptain or saves the situation after arriving at the gate.

 

To me there are two main differences between FS2Crew and MCE regarding the First Officer interaction (apart from that MCE also offers support for ATC software):

 

1. In FS2Crew all flows and checklists are already built in. That means that you don't have to work out your own flows and checklists. But on the other hand it also means that you are not able to change these flows and checklists. 

MCE does come with some templates for flows and checklists (for a lot of aircraft) but you will want to setup the flows and checklists according to your needs and likings. That requires some own efforts - but it is a lot of fun when you realize what is possible.

 

2. In FS2Crew all phrases are prerecorded as a whole. That means that all phrases sound naturally. That of course is only possible because of the limited number of possible phrases in FS2Crew.

In MCE you have two choices: Prerecorded voices or TTS voices.

With prerecorded voices phrases are composed by prerecorded parts of the phrases. That offers a great variability of possible phrases but the composition of prerecorded parts might make it sound robotic sometimes to some people (including me - others might say it is not robotic at all).

With TTS voices the possibilities of phrases are unlimited. You can make MCE say anything you like. There are some very good TTS voices available (Ivona, Cereproc) that almost sound like a natural voice (don't try it with Microsoft's Anna).

 

 

[Chock 17,769]

They are both good products. An advantage of MCE is that it is a 'one stop shop' for all your aircraft. That being the case it may require you to tweak it to suit a particular aircraft, but that is actually really easy to do. So i guess that makes it more value for money in some respects.

FS2Crew is on the other hand all set up and ready to go for your particular aircraft the product is for. So what you are paying for is something which you don't have to set up yourself in any way and which is more finely tuned to a specific aircraft.

Personally I like both of them for their relative merits and I say that from the standpoint of having had involvement with both of them: I did the review of MCE for Avsim when it first came out years ago, and I did some of the pilot voices for the FS2Crew B737.