VOXATC and P3d V5

[cbd80 3]

7 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

Presumably one could just amend the registry entries for vox instead...?

I thought of that but I couldn't find any Vox reg entries that pointed to P3Dv4. I think Vox just uses the registry to find the location of the P3Dv4 installation and the rest is done in the software.

I guess you could try and edit the P3Dv4 entries to match the paths of v5?

Edited April 21, 2020 by cbd80

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

2 hours ago, cbd80 said:

I guess you could try and edit the P3Dv4 entries to match the paths of v5?

That's what I suggested further up in this thread as one of the options, but your approach of using symbolic links is less risky. Whenever I can avoid registry editing, I do so. I don't think there's a need to edit any of the VOXATC registry settings, as your method points everything to P3d5. Editing the Internal Workings registry entry would still not force VOXATC's Indexer to search correctly for P3d5 SimObjects and BGL files. And for all I know, it could cause the VOXATC licensing to stop working.

[Gridley 257]

On 4/17/2020 at 9:08 PM, jabloomf1230 said:

I just thought of one other testing option for the adventurous souls among us:

1. Move the two VOXATC GAU files and vast.cfg from the P3d4 gauges subfolder to the same folder in P3d5.
2. Move the VOXATC SimObjects from the P3d4 SimObjects/Misc subfolder to the same folder in P3d5.
3. Move an aircraft that has VOXATC enabled in panel.cfg from P3d4 to P3d5.
4. Run P3d5 and enable the VOXATC gauges from the menu.

This will only work if your SimObject and scenery libraries are very similar in both P3d4 and P3d5, as the Indexer isn't being run first. It would be better to test this out on a plain vanilla install of both sims. There will be obvious mismatches, but at least VOXATC might run.

 

On 4/18/2020 at 1:13 PM, cbd80 said:

Using the above suggestion as a starting point I have got VoxATC working in P3D v5.

I have also got the Indexer and the Panel tool to work by tricking them into thinking they were still looking at v4.

I achieved this by creating a folder junction/symbolic link between an empty 'Prepar3D v4' folder and the new 'Prepar3D v5' in each of the following locations:

• C:\ProgramData\Lockheed Martin
• C:\Users\Chris\AppData\Roaming\Lockheed Martin
• I:\Lockheed Martin

I must say so far I'm very impressed with the performance of v5, it is leaps and bounds ahead of v4.

Chris, did you create soft or hard symlinks? 

I'm thinking it might be possible to create a temporary link leaving the v4.5 files in place, running the indexer and panel tool, then rmdir the symlinks to restore p3dv4.5 functionality.  Thoughts?

Scratch that...it seems the link folder can't exist to create the link.  Let me know if I'm doing this wrong!

Edited April 21, 2020 by Gridley

[cbd80 3]

18 minutes ago, Gridley said:

Scratch that...it seems the link folder can't exist to create the link.  Let me know if I'm doing this wrong!

If I’m understanding your situation correctly, you need to rename your original Prepar3D v4 folders. I named all mine _ORG at the end.

Then I used a soft link i.e. mklink /J to make a new Prepar3D v4 folder that points to v5.

[Gridley 257]

1 hour ago, cbd80 said:

If I’m understanding your situation correctly, you need to rename your original Prepar3D v4 folders. I named all mine _ORG at the end.

Then I used a soft link i.e. mklink /J to make a new Prepar3D v4 folder that points to v5.

Hi Chris,

Thanks - the "Prepar3D v4" folders need to be gone, not just empty which is where I was confused - as your solution for renaming solves perfectly.  /J was what I was looking for.  If someone wants to keep both v4.5 and v5, symlinks could be created that point to the important folders so that both can be maintained.  I will try to write that up in the next few days or post a batch file to accomplish that and easily switch back and forth.

I just flew an ATC flight using VoxATC in P3Dv5 and it worked well.  Not perfect.  As mentioned, most commands need to be repeated twice.  The first can be just a single word, but the second is recognized.

I'm not sure AI is being injected properly. I need to verify as I just recently installed my AI traffic into v5.

Also, when I run the indexer, it pauses on this file, then rapidly skips to completion....

Best,

sg

Edited April 22, 2020 by Gridley

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

sg,

Look at the Internal Workings\Voxatc\p3d 4 subfolder in your USERDATA\appdata\roaming folder. You should have a bunch of DAT files that comprise the database created by the Indexer. The real massive file is bglflightplans.dat. Mine is > 1GB in size. If it's small, then the Indexer did not parse your AIG flightplans. The scenery bgl files parsed by the Indexer are contained in bglcatalogue.dat. The Indexer makes backups of this file which are numbered. Look for size differences between versions of this file that were created using P3d4 and P3d5. Of course if you have less scenery in the P3d5 installation, then the dat file will be proportionally smaller in size. aircrafttypes.dat also has backups and can be analyzed for aircraft in the same fashion. The rest of the dat files you can ignore for now. Post if you have any questions.

My Indexer even in.p3d4 always paused on a different OBX file than that one.

Jay

Edited April 22, 2020 by jabloomf1230

[Gridley 257]

12 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

sg,

Look at the Internal Workings\Voxatc\p3d 4 subfolder in your USERDATA\appdata\roaming folder. You should have a bunch of DAT files that comprise the database created by the Indexer. The real massive file is bglflightplans.dat. Mine is > 1GB in size. If it's small, then the Indexer did not parse your AIG flightplans. The scenery bgl files parsed by the Indexer are contained in bglcatalogue.dat. The Indexer makes backups of this file which are numbered. Look for size differences between versions of this file that were created using P3d4 and P3d5. Of course if you have less scenery in the P3d5 installation, then the dat file will be proportionally smaller in size. aircrafttypes.dat also has backups and can be analyzed for aircraft in the same fashion. The rest of the dat files you can ignore for now. Post if you have any questions.

My Indexer even in.p3d4 always paused on a different OBX file than that one.

Jay

Thanks for this info, Jay - very helpful.  However, the P3d5 bglflightplans.dat file is about 1GB in size, and the bglcatalogue.dat is similar to the backups at about 30mb.  I'll have time later today to test more and see if the AI is working but this is encouraging.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

2 hours ago, Gridley said:

Thanks for this info, Jay - very helpful.  However, the P3d5 bglflightplans.dat file is about 1GB in size, and the bglcatalogue.dat is similar to the backups at about 30mb.  I'll have time later today to test more and see if the AI is working but this is encouraging.

I think that the first phase of the Indexer shows what scenery files it is reading. When the progress bar stops , I think that the next phase begins, which is reading SimObjects and then creating the database files.

[KevinWRay 0]

Well, I will wait till the MJC Dash 8 Q- 400 and PMDG 777 are updated to function correctly before I go to P3DV5!  V4.5 is working great for me currently!

[Gridley 257]

Does VoxATC use simconnect to inject AI? I think that might be my issue....

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

1 hour ago, Gridley said:

Does VoxATC use simconnect to inject AI? I think that might be my issue....

Yes, but the legacy SimConnect version should already be installed if you have P3d4. And you also need FSUIPC6.

[Gridley 257]

I reinstalled simconnect from the p3dv5 redist folder and now I have AI!  I must have disabled it when relocating my p3dv4 folders to create the symlinks.  I didn't wait long enough to see any actually moving, but the gates were populated with traffic by VoxATC...now if only I didn't have to say everything twice!

Thanks for your help all!

Best,

sg

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

As an experiment, try using the First Officer option and see if that works correctly for your installation. 

[Gridley 257]

3 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

As an experiment, try using the First Officer option and see if that works correctly for your installation. 

FO works perfectly no delay (and responds quite quickly). 

I tried remapping my PTT button, made sure there's no other assignments in controls...all looks nominal. The process I need to do is press PTT and say one word, then release and hold again, speak the phrase needed and VoxATC picks it up perfectly.  Odd.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

I can't rember offhand what is the default value for the maximum number of controller responses. It might be two. It's possible that VOXATC is not understanding you at all and stops at two responses.