BVI Mode and staying airborne

[Tyler K 0]

On 7/23/2017 at 0:10 PM, Orinks said:

Hi all,

 

I'd love to get this topic pinned at the top of the forums, since there hasn't been any posts recently and so it completely disappeared from the MCE forum, I had to Google it to find it again.

I want to start flying on Vatsim, but don't have a way to fly Cids and Stars yet. I want to fly with Canadian Air express, but have no idea how to fly cids/stars in props without some kind of FMC...

 

 

What you could do would be to put the topic in your browser's bookmarks list. Just a thought.

[Tyler K 0]

Hello everyone,

 

Have any changes been made for BVI users lately (now that MCE V2.7.2.0 has been released)? As in, are there any new patches that we should be aware of/download?

 

Thanks!

[Orinks 3]

Can one use the demo of GSX with MCE? I downloaded the FSDreamworks JFK and LAX airports to test it out, and every time I try and request a GSX service, it either appears to reset the flight, or MCE tries to carry out the request but nothing actually ends up happening. If I say to request catering, for example, MCE will call GSX ground for it, but catering doesn't arrive. Same can be said for fuel.

Is it the fact that maybe it doesn't work with the stock aircraft and I need something like the aerosoft airbus to take advantage of GSX services?

 

[Tyler K 0]

On 8/10/2017 at 5:55 PM, Orinks said:

Can one use the demo of GSX with MCE? I downloaded the FSDreamworks JFK and LAX airports to test it out, and every time I try and request a GSX service, it either appears to reset the flight, or MCE tries to carry out the request but nothing actually ends up happening. If I say to request catering, for example, MCE will call GSX ground for it, but catering doesn't arrive. Same can be said for fuel.

Is it the fact that maybe it doesn't work with the stock aircraft and I need something like the aerosoft airbus to take advantage of GSX services?

 

As I understand it, from reading the GSX manual, GSX will work with the stock aircraft. The issue might be your FSDT airports, if you have demo versions; the demo versions of the airports will turn off their advanced features after five or six minutes.

[Tyler K 0]

Hi FS++ and others,

 

Would there be any way to allow MCE, in BVI mode, to read items from the CDU on aircraft which come with one (e.g., QualityWings 757, CaptainSim 777, etc)? It is currently possible to press buttons on the unit with voice commands ("FMC one press L Six LSK," "Left CDU press INIT," etc), but it is currently not possible to read what is on the display.

 

Thanks,

-Tyler

[FS++ 707]

5 hours ago, Tyler K said:

Hi FS++ and others,

 

Would there be any way to allow MCE, in BVI mode, to read items from the CDU on aircraft which come with one (e.g., QualityWings 757, CaptainSim 777, etc)? It is currently possible to press buttons on the unit with voice commands ("FMC one press L Six LSK," "Left CDU press INIT," etc), but it is currently not possible to read what is on the display.

 

Thanks,

-Tyler

We never got into digging up that stuff.

It's actually a miracle that we can interface all those aircraft that don't have an SDK (older PMDG aircraft like MD-11, FsLabs A320, captain Sim, Quality Wings, CoolSky, Milviz, upcoming Aerosoft CRJ). No wonder, the competition never managed to interface a single aircraft from those.

Among other things, you need to learn the basics of how aircraft are built in FSX.

Right now, we don't actually know how to read the FMC-CDU content in any aircraft, let alone all supported ones that have an FMC.

Even PMDG SDKs for NGX, 777 and QOTS II, which have some info about CDU, only tell you the color of the text in each cell, whether it's in small font or dimmed, but don't give access to actual text content.

 

[charlie130 196]

6 hours ago, Tyler K said:

Hi FS++ and others,

 

Would there be any way to allow MCE, in BVI mode, to read items from the CDU on aircraft which come with one (e.g., QualityWings 757, CaptainSim 777, etc)? It is currently possible to press buttons on the unit with voice commands ("FMC one press L Six LSK," "Left CDU press INIT," etc), but it is currently not possible to read what is on the display.

 

Thanks,

-Tyler

This is way outside my pay grade and my aging brain, that was brought up in a world of flight decks devoid of any computers on board!

However, from your simulator, could you not somehow grab the screen area around the FMC and use a conversion app to convert it to Asc or Text, then get Microsoft Anna to read it out for you?

OCR link;

http://capture2text.sourceforge.net/

I have no other ideas.

Regards

David

 

 

[taljazz 0]

Greetings to all. I have one quick question about landing at airports with multi crew experience. Since the co-pilot does not handle landing on his own, I was wondering how anyone would go about landing at their destination?

 

Thomas

[zkline 1]

10 hours ago, taljazz said:

Greetings to all. I have one quick question about landing at airports with multi crew experience. Since the co-pilot does not handle landing on his own, I was wondering how anyone would go about landing at their destination?

 

Thomas

If you're referring to how BVI pilots would do so, I'm afraid I don't know of a great solution. The tech required to implement auto-landing in the simulator seems quite aircraft-specific. Itsyourplane and FSXPilot provide alternatives, though without the same flexibility as MCE. I wish I had better news, but at the moment I don't know of a reasonable way to fly realistically.

[JLove 0]

Ok, I have some ideas with respect to landing with MCE.
Since you say that you will be unable to implement landing support for all supported aircraft (which makes sense, since I suspect automation procedures would be as a rule very aircraft-specific), it might be better to take a more manual approach, with already-existing help, or easier-to-implement help, from MCE.  My questions are:  First, is it possible to set Nav1 to the proper ILS frequency for approach with a voice command, something like:  "set Nav1 111.95."  If not, is there a way to enter it manually?  Secondly, is there a way to descend manually if that cannot be handled by MCE, but still receive altitude, speed, and heading callouts?  Will MCE call out that the localizer and glideslope are alive?  If that is the case, we theoretically should be able to land, as long as we knew the correct steps to perform at the right speed and altitude intervals, and as long as we made sure our heading was correct.  I.e., gear down, flaps being set, etc.  Those occur at given altitudes and speeds.  I'm assuming that if we do those correctly, we should be able to lock onto the localizer and capture the glideslope to land.  And this should work in any supported aircraft, since we're not adding anything highly specialized to MCE, just using its existing functionality.  If MCE doesn't alert us already, we would definitely require callouts to alert us that localizer and glideslope are alive. That seems much simpler to implement as opposed to trying to write code to automate everything.  I really think landing is actually doable, even if it has to be done more manually with just some callouts and adjustments in headings (which the FO already does in terms of navigation) from MCE.  Yes, it would mean that landing would require more learning of procedures, but quite frankly, that's way cooler to me than having my computer do it for me, and it would be able to be done in most, if not all, of the aircraft supported by MCE with what I suspect would be far less coding.  It's got to be much easier to add a callout or two than it does to add a complete automated procedure, and the automated procedure would have to be specific to each individual aircraft, whereas callouts of speed, heading, altitude, localizer, and glideslope would be able to be done no matter what aircraft was being flown, since those are not aircraft specific (10,000 feet is the same whether you're in an Aerobus, a Boeing, or a PMDG; speed is the same as well, no matter the aircraft being flown; the localizer and glideslope are also independent of the aircraft), so those callouts should be global in MCE, and thus easier to implement.  I hope this hass made sense.

P.S.  I saw some mentions about VoxScript in this thread.  My feeling is that in order to use that feature the way it was intended adequately, BVI support is absolutely required.  For someone like me, it is highly difficult, most of the time impossible, to get sighted assistance for that sort of thing.  (It's hard just to get someone to take five minutes to read mail to me, lol).  I actually took a look at the script you sent me to see if there was any chance of creating them manually.  While some of it makes perfect sense, the problem is that the [script] part doesn't make any sense.  E.g.:
[SCRIPT]
right cdu press rsk six
right cdu press lsk one
right cdu press lsk one
I am assuming that these are specific buttons that are being pushed by the FO on the CDU.  So the problem becomes, how would someone blind be able to know which buttons did what on the simulator and in what precise order to push them, and how would we know how to reference them correctly when writing the script?  LSK one means nothing to me other than tat it is a button; it doesn't tell me anything about its function.  I suspect some of the sequences to program automations would become quite complex, and without the information about what button is what, what order they go in for what procedures, and how to reference them, programming any scripts seems impossible.

[JLove 0]

Question:  I went to the Avsim library and downloaded the Aerosoft Airbus Flows and checklist file.  The instructions say the following:

Copy the contents of the folder "ChkLists" to the Main MCE Chklists folder. Usually c/ProgramFiles(x86)/MultiCrewExperience/Chklists.(note the file name ChkLists)
There is no folder named chklists there.  All other instructions seem to be correct.  So why am I missing the chklists folder in the main MCE directory?

[FS++ 707]

12 hours ago, JLove said:

Question:  I went to the Avsim library and downloaded the Aerosoft Airbus Flows and checklist file.  The instructions say the following:

Copy the contents of the folder "ChkLists" to the Main MCE Chklists folder. Usually c/ProgramFiles(x86)/MultiCrewExperience/Chklists.(note the file name ChkLists)
There is no folder named chklists there.  All other instructions seem to be correct.  So why am I missing the chklists folder in the main MCE directory?

There is definitely a <Chklists> folder in MCE installation folder. Usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Multi Crew Experience\ folder.

You don't neeed to copy any checklist to it. MCE has a default checklist for Aerosoft Airbus A320 in there

[Orinks 3]

Hi everyone,

 

I came back to see what was new here. Not a lot has changed in our flightsimming world except... RIP, Its your Plane.

 

I saw Jordan do a flight using MCE+FSX Pilot, and man it is so very limiting with FSXPilot. essentially the first officer becomes a prop just sitting next to you to read dials, hands at his side and kick back. I'm sure the real guys and gals would love to do that. What I mean is, MCE just becomes an info readout with FSXPilot doing most of the flying.

However, last year, I do recall landing manually at an airport, one of the last times I've used MCE. Ben, one of the guys who manages email support, told me the command to descend by changing the climb angle by x degrees. One of the main issues with this method is that, say I look up an airport on flightsimdb and get it's elevation. Say it's... 156 ft. Well, right now there is no way MCE can read AGL altitudes, it will just read the regular altitude as though we were in the takeoff phase.

 

But yes, technically we can land, but with, say, the Boeing 737 there was really no landing checklist like IYP had, so I don't know if I did everything correctly.

 

Not only that, I was relying on the fact that when PF3 cleared me to land, landing at the spot where they cleared me is the best spot. Well, to start my final descent to the ground there, anyway.

 

So yeah, that's all I got. RIP to IYP, and, I'm hoping that someday I can get back into the cockpit and land without the help of an extra autopilot. Particularly because I don't like how FSXPilot speeds up and slows down based on a number of factors. The other major thing when manually landing is adjusting speed when approaching the ground. That's pretty hard to do using voice alone. I could use F2 to do it but that's pretty slow and it takes a while for the plane to really slow.

 

[Orinks 3]

Hi all,

 

So I'm serious about getting back into simming again, and blind friends of mine are using MCE in conjunction with FSXPilot for the landing bits.

 

Only problem? I lost my registration key. How can I get it back?

 

Thanks.

[zkline 1]

Hi,

 

I think you might be able to email support@multicrewxp.com, and they can probably supply you with a replacement key.