Localized ATC please

[Guest]

http://blogs.msdn.com/tdragger/archive/200.../31/521131.aspx

[JSkorna 137]

For anyone who thinks this should take a few days or weeks:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4665254.stm"It took him 11 days to record 11,593 phrases and sounds which could then be broken down and reassembled by a computer to make new words. Engineers then spent five months processing the recordings so the computer would be able to recognise it and translate them into words using English pronunciation."Hope this helps,Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/Active Sky V6 Development TeamActive Sky V6 Proud SupporterHiFi Beta TeamRadar Contact Supporter

[Guest tdragger]

Don't forget the place names. There's about 5,000 of those--per voice.

[Guest tdragger]

It's not the software, it's the time. We've got tens of thousands of dollars of hardware and software but it literally takes weeks to record and edit everything.

[Guest]

Ok ok, but in FSX(!) theres some new text to speech system(?) So you only need to convert the text phrases (automatically using a program) and not worry about recording everything. I like this idea alot since you can (easily?) customise the phrases to your own liking by simply changing the text. Smart thinking ;)

[Guest may05amad]

We are all very disappointed that the microsoft FSX team think that the future FSX consumers ( however they are ) do not pay attention to localized ATC.I believe that ALL FSX consumers would like to hear proper voices and accents when flying in a specific continent , even those unable to make the cessna airborne....I'd rather see no birds flying in the FSX sky than having an american accent ATC when flying over Nigeria... The FSX community.

[brucets 94]

Maybe local simmers could volunteer their time and voices to make the recordings?? Or how about the online controllers of VatSim and similar organizations worldwide?? Or how about actual real life controllers worldwide??I think proper (or close) ATC accents would improve the experience immensely.

[Guest grapesh]

IMO, the localized ATC is as hard to complete as the world AI traffic, and it should take some organized effort (again, like PAI) to produce the global voicepack coverage on contributions from many international users. We need a tool from MSFT to assign voices to particular towers and control areas. As for the audio recording, I don't see why you need a high-end home studio: ATC comms are always of crappy quality in real life.=S.V.=

[mgh 89]

More relevantly see:http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimul...mbledvoices.aspwhich explains more about how the ATC phrases are created. My understanding is that each voice currently has 5287 .wav files requiring 19.9Mb. That's more than 50,000 for a voice pack of 10 voices. The .gvp file that contains the ATC voice information is 195Mb -containing the packed .wav files for 10 voices.Claims that this could be created from scratch in 2 days or even 2 weeks show a total lack of understanding.

[n4gix 4,955]

>Don't forget the place names. There's about 5,000 of>those--per voice.LOL! Yes, I indeed forgot to include the place names in my calculations, which of course makes the process even more time consuming than I indicated... ;)

[n4gix 4,955]

>We are all very disappointed that the microsoft FSX team>think that the future FSX consumers ( however they are ) do>not pay attention to localized ATC.That is not what was said! Re-read the entire thread, because you evidently missed what was actually said... ;)

[Wolfko 0]

I remember an ATC based adventure programm called ProFlight 98 and its successor ProFlight 2000. These programms used many, mayn more phrases than the current MSFS ATC does and it used literally hundreds of different accents from all over the world. Even US-accents were split into regions. e. g. South, deep South etc. And there were even more than one voice per region recorded.An this gem of a programm was created by just one person (with the help of others though who spoke the phrases). This was more than 5 years ago, when technology was not as advanced as it is today. So it seems localized ATC could be done with reasonable workload and time consumption!And BTW, what's about Radar Contact? Aren't there not also different accents modelled?Wolfgang

[tgibson 11]

Hi,As I remember ProFlight98 used around 400 wav files per voice, and included no place names whatever (all spoken as the ICAO code letters). Also, the files didn't include the markers required in FS. So it was a much smaller project and could be done with freeware sound editing software.Someone (else) did create a utility that automatically split the spoken wav file into the separate ones, though. I think this is the real reason that other voices became available.Hope this helps,--Tom GibsonCal Classic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.comFreeflight Design Shop: http://www.freeflightdesign.comDrop by! ___x_x_(")_x_x___

[moggel 0]

>And BTW, what's about Radar Contact? Aren't there not also>different accents modelled?Yes, radar contact includes difference accents, mostly British and American but there's one or two German as well I believe. JDT keeps releasing additional voice packs all the time. I love Radar Contact (4) myself and use it all the time but the package also doesn't bind the difference voices to their proper regions. That possibility is non-existent in FS9 but I suppose RC could implement that feature anyway seeing it doesn't utilize any of FS9's ATC features to do its job. Maybe we'll see that feature in Radar Contact 5? With that feature in place I doubt any simmer, caring about ATC, will bother with the one built into FSX. We'll just have to wait and see.../Jonas