14 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

Another timing issue:

When told to turn to Tower (when taxiing towards the runway for takeoff) the FO says "switching Com1 frequency..." and immediately does so - before the handoff command by Ground is finished. So that command gets cutoff by the freqeuency Change. After that the FO confirms the frequency Change - already on Tower frequency.

Instead he should first confirm the handhoff and after that change the frequency.

This has already been identified. It has to do with captions sometimes changing too quickly. They'll need to be queued and the latest can be saved while Fo is working on the previous one.

Just now, DrumsArt said:

Thanks to you and team for the great work Gerald !

Regards,

Richard

You're welcome.

Thanks for the accolade.

We do appreciate everyone's contribution in this thread.

It would be time consuming to perform dozens of flights with different sectors, callsigns. This will help speed things up, so we can move to other things. TFDi 717 is waiting for a crew. Aerosoft CRJ just around the corner, not to mention X-Plane needing support for more and more aircraft.

10 minutes ago, FS++ said:

Thanks. Didn't know about that option.

 

yes, timing issues are expected (but will be mitigated) because FO has to "estimate" how long it would take controller to speak that entire caption (and this in itself varies from one voice to the other) before replying.

There is a specific new option for that. In "mce.ini", under [ATC] section, add this entry

PfePerCharSpeedDuration=45

the above is the default value when option isn't there.

Set it to "50" or "55" if FO is too quick to reply, or 40 or lower if he's taking too long.

There is another option for FO voice read back. As the PTT is simulated and its duration must be estimated, he may look like he's holding the PTT for too long before sending hotkey.

There is this option

MceFOPerCharSpeedDuration

Depending on the used MCE voice, may want to adjust it. 

It may not be necessary though if you don't mind the odd 3 to 5 seconds delay before Fo appears to have released PTT and finally sends the hotkey.

 

 

Thanks. I will experiment with these values.

For me it is more that the PTT sound stops too early, when he is still talking. That probably is connected to my timing issues.

I noticed another (timing?) issue: When the FO takes his time to readback a command and ATC issues another command to an AI aircraft in t he meantime, the FO then reads back that command for the AI aircraft.

So, do I understand correctly:

MCE does not know when ATC and FO stop talking and therefor

- "PfePerCharSpeedDuration=" controls the time between the beginning of the ATC command and the response of the FO.

- "MceFOPerCharSpeedDuration=" controls the time between the beginning of the FO response/request and the sending of the PF3 hotkey.

 

And could you please elaborate on how these values work (absolute time spans? or factors to increase/decrease a timespan already calculated by other means?).

 

 

30 minutes ago, DrumsArt said:

For the rest it's just magic !

 

 

It is!

 

48 minutes ago, FS++ said:

PfePerCharSpeedDuration=45

the above is the default value when option isn't there.

Set it to "50" or "55" if FO is too quick to reply, or 40 or lower if he's taking too long.

 

 

That did the trick for me concerning the clearance issue

Richard

The Edit function is always out so, I add that I set the PfePerCharSpeedDuration=55

Richard

35 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

 

Thanks. I will experiment with these values.

For me it is more that the PTT sound stops too early, when he is still talking. That probably is connected to my timing issues.

I noticed another (timing?) issue: When the FO takes his time to readback a command and ATC issues another command to an AI aircraft in t he meantime, the FO then reads back that command for the AI aircraft.

So, do I understand correctly:

MCE does not know when ATC and FO stop talking and therefor

- "PfePerCharSpeedDuration=" controls the time between the beginning of the ATC command and the response of the FO.

- "MceFOPerCharSpeedDuration=" controls the time between the beginning of the FO response/request and the sending of the PF3 hotkey.

 

And could you please elaborate on how these values work (absolute time spans? or factors to increase/decrease a timespan already calculated by other means?).

 

 

Correct on the assumptions.

In theory, it's a number in millisecs that will be multiplied by the amount of characters in a given caption. And to play it safe, Fo will add 5 seconds to that before replying even if the caption is very short.

Not worried about this one. It's more likely that FO would have seen another instruction such as ClearnceFreq <> GroundFreq, in which case he acknowledged the new command (and Tuned freq) before the previous one was done with.

Once those captions are queued, it should work better. We'll have a replacement "mce.exe" next week.

What is the Default value for MceFOPerCharSpeedDuration?

Quote

You need to disable the "PF3 mute key"

 

This looks like a problem to me. I have had it several times that an AI ATC communication was played by PF3 while the MCE-FO was talking to ATC as well.

The PF3 PTT hotkey (I guess you mean that one) is there to avoid that.

So instead of disabling that hotkey MCE should send that hotkey everytime just before the MCE-FO starts talking to ATC.

Would that be a problem? 

9 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

What is the Default value for MceFOPerCharSpeedDuration?

Default value is 30, as tested with Latest recorded voice FO Robert. Other FOs may require a different values.

 

1 minute ago, RALF9636 said:

 

This looks like a problem to me. I have had it several times that an AI ATC communication was played by PF3 while the MCE-FO was talking to ATC as well.

The PF3 PTT hotkey (I guess you mean that one) is there to avoid that.

So instead of disabling that hotkey MCE should send that hotkey everytime just before the MCE-FO starts talking to ATC.

Would that be a problem? 

I don't think it will be a problem enabling it. I was just initially trying to get you to use default settings which are the ones used for testing.

Now that you found out why the captions were not read, feel free to enable it. When FO simulates PTT, he just plays background noise. There is no simulation of DEL key being pressed.

Roger regarding AI. We'll try to filter them out in next update.

 

 

 

I already activated the PF3 PTT hotkey again and it seems to do no harm.

That alone doesn't help of course, because - as you say - MCE so far does not send this key when transmitting.

BTW the PF3 PTT hotkey does not have to be the DEL key. It can be any key; it will work as it should as long as the same key is assigned to the MCE PTT button (via FSUIPC).

 

3 hours ago, FS++ said:

This has already been identified. It has to do with captions sometimes changing too quickly. They'll need to be queued and the latest can be saved while Fo is working on the previous one.

Not sure if this really is because of changing captions. The handoff command usually is only one caption.

To me the problem is that the FO immediately switches the frequency as soon as he sees a frequency in the caption. And only after that responds to ATC.

It should be the other way round.

 

What I mentioned earlier:

This now also happened when switching to Tower for landing. The problem is not only the above (switching frequency before responding) but also that there should be no switching to Tower at this point. I was still more than 40nm away from the airport.

The switching to Tower should be postponed somehow until the aircraft is on final approach. If that is not possible automatically, the switch to Tower should only be initiated by the user with "request landing clearance" (similar to "request takeoff clearance").

 

The handoff to Ground after landing of course had the same problem with first changing the frequency and then acknowledging the handoff.

But then the FO did not make contact to Ground autonomously, only after I said "let's request taxi".

Just to confirm: Is that intended?

 

14 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

The handoff to Ground after landing of course had the same problem with first changing the frequency and then acknowledging the handoff.

But then the FO did not make contact to Ground autonomously, only after I said "let's request taxi".

Just to confirm: Is that intended?

 

It wasn't intended. That case would need to be handled separately sine MCE can detect when you just landed.

In this case, he's wrongly obeying the "no ATC initiative on ground" and waiting for your instructions.