Issues with using MCE and FS2Crew

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

At the beginning I enabled hard mute with NumLock and said:"What's your name?". Even with hard mute enabled, I got an answer:"You can call me William or Bill..." or something along those lines. Also "Cockpit to ground" summons the mechanic even with hard mute enabled. But after a while, while still on the ground doing cockpit preparation, I tried it again but this time no answer from the copilot if hard mute was enabled but mechanic was still answering back even with hard mute. I don't know anymore what to try. I think there are so many variables here that it's hard to track what's going on.

The ideal situation would be that I can communicate with RC4 ATC via MCE, talk to MCE ground crew to operate GSX stuff and have MCE co-pilot only to handle radios. I know that's highly specific scenario so basically and realistically, what I'd like at the end is that if I hard mute MCE, no commands should be carried out from the MCE side, not from co-pilot or mechanics.

BTW, Marko always recites his speech two times at the beginning. Maybe that's intentional.

Also, when I was on approach and talking to FS2Crew (with MCE hard mute enabled) a woman's voice (definitely from MCE) said something a couple of times but I was so busy with flying the approach that I missed exactly what she said - I think she was complaining about something 😄 Well, I don't have a female copilot selected so that probably should not be happening. Maybe it's an indication of some issue.

Also, maybe you missed this question before... In the GSX manual it says:"Relieve mechanic from his duties (never forget that)". I can't find the command for this in the manuals. Whatever I say, nothing works. And after I start taxiing I'm always reminded that I probably killed some of the mechanics, even though I went through push back procedure in GSX and the ground crew appeared to left 🙂 

[FS++ 707]

6 hours ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

At the beginning I enabled hard mute with NumLock and said:"What's your name?". Even with hard mute enabled, I got an answer:"You can call me William or Bill..." or something along those lines. Also "Cockpit to ground" summons the mechanic even with hard mute enabled. But after a while, while still on the ground doing cockpit preparation, I tried it again but this time no answer from the copilot if hard mute was enabled but mechanic was still answering back even with hard mute. I don't know anymore what to try. I think there are so many variables here that it's hard to track what's going on.

The ideal situation would be that I can communicate with RC4 ATC via MCE, talk to MCE ground crew to operate GSX stuff and have MCE co-pilot only to handle radios. I know that's highly specific scenario so basically and realistically, what I'd like at the end is that if I hard mute MCE, no commands should be carried out from the MCE side, not from co-pilot or mechanics.

BTW, Marko always recites his speech two times at the beginning. Maybe that's intentional.

Also, when I was on approach and talking to FS2Crew (with MCE hard mute enabled) a woman's voice (definitely from MCE) said something a couple of times but I was so busy with flying the approach that I missed exactly what she said - I think she was complaining about something 😄 Well, I don't have a female copilot selected so that probably should not be happening. Maybe it's an indication of some issue.

Also, maybe you missed this question before... In the GSX manual it says:"Relieve mechanic from his duties (never forget that)". I can't find the command for this in the manuals. Whatever I say, nothing works. And after I start taxiing I'm always reminded that I probably killed some of the mechanics, even though I went through push back procedure in GSX and the ground crew appeared to left 🙂 

Female voice is probably purser voice.

"Real world crew coordination feature affects presence or absence of co-pilot.

You can get rid of mechanic any time with these commands

ground you may disconnect

ground you may leave

mechanic you may leave

mechanic you can disconnect

etc...etc...

Have found a possible reason for speech reco waking up. Something to do with user playing with MCE UI and testing commands.

To make sure simulated command are recognized, it wakes up the speech engine.

From next patch, won't be able to test any command while Numlock is ON.

Will get back to you tomorrow.

 

 

 

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Does hard mute also effect ATC (even with PTT)? If yes, than I guess there's a similar issue than with the copilot. I got confused at the beginning because even with hard mute on ATC was responding and I thought PTT overrides hard mute but on today's flight ATC is not responding if I have hard mute on.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I also found out that if toggle NumLock on/off than hard mute works properly for a short amount of time but then it stops working again. I wasn't able to determine what exactly makes it not work again.

[FS++ 707]

5 hours ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

Does hard mute also effect ATC (even with PTT)? If yes, than I guess there's a similar issue than with the copilot. I got confused at the beginning because even with hard mute on ATC was responding and I thought PTT overrides hard mute but on today's flight ATC is not responding if I have hard mute on.

Good point. 

Yes, could have been waking up MCE reco.

A new patch has been uploaded today

From now on, once you hard mute with NumLock, you won't be able to transmit to ATC, nor test flows or individual commands in MCE panel.

You'll get an on-screen message (within P3D/FSX scenery window) reminding you about the need to release the lock when you try to do that.

Also in this patch, you can elect not to use MCE mechanic at all. Add option to [MECHANIC] section in "mce.ini"

[MECHANIC]

NotUsingMechanic=1

 

 

 

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

5 hours ago, FS++ said:

Good point. 

Yes, could have been waking up MCE reco.

A new patch has been uploaded today

From now on, once you hard mute with NumLock, you won't be able to transmit to ATC, nor test flows or individual commands in MCE panel.

You'll get an on-screen message (within P3D/FSX scenery window) reminding you about the need to release the lock when you try to do that.

Also in this patch, you can elect not to use MCE mechanic at all. Add option to [MECHANIC] section in "mce.ini"

[MECHANIC]

NotUsingMechanic=1

Thank you! I will try it tomorrow.
In my situation though, the ideal option would be that the PTT button would disable hard mute for ATC communication purposes, only for the duration when the PTT is pressed since pressing it indicates the need to use speech recognition. Using NumLock to permanently disable hard mute, on the other hand, would indicate the need to use speech recognition for all enabled functions of MCE. But I do completely understand that this is my specific situation because I primarily use MCE for talking to RC4 ATC and may not interest others. Although the mechanics were giving me headaches at the beginning they kinda grew on me and we found a way to get along 🙂 They are very useful for doing GSX stuff, so I'll be keeping them.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

19 hours ago, FS++ said:

From now on, once you hard mute with NumLock, you won't be able to transmit to ATC, nor test flows or individual commands in MCE panel.

I can confirm this is now working!

[FS++ 707]

5 hours ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

I can confirm this is now working!

OK, good.

Since you'd be hard muting most of the time, I suggest you e-enable "Real crew coordination feature" so that Fo can handle ATC.

When you need to talk to ramp agent or ATC, enable MCE reco. When done (wait until Fo has acknowledged ATC if he's in charge of that) just hard mute.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

7 minutes ago, FS++ said:

Since you'd be hard muting most of the time,

That's my last issue as I explained. To talk to ATC now I need to press 2 buttons, NumLock and than PTT. I will look into binding NumLock with PTT button in FSUIPC but I'm not sure it's going to work since PTT needs to be pressed when talking. I don't know how NumLock will behave when being pressed instead of toggled.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Sadly I found out that I already designated a key combination to the PTT button - it's soft mute for FS2Crew. So I'm left with two choices, I use the Real crew coordination feature and constantly hard mute/unmute when talking to ATC in addition to using PTT button or don't use the Real crew coordination feature so I can have hard mute to off all the time and not being interrupted while talking to FS2Crew. I didn't find a way in FSUIPC to designate multiple key combinations to one yoke button - which in most cases wouldn't make any sense - except if you want to use functions from two different addons at the same time 🙂 

[FS++ 707]

14 hours ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

Sadly I found out that I already designated a key combination to the PTT button - it's soft mute for FS2Crew. So I'm left with two choices, I use the Real crew coordination feature and constantly hard mute/unmute when talking to ATC in addition to using PTT button or don't use the Real crew coordination feature so I can have hard mute to off all the time and not being interrupted while talking to FS2Crew. I didn't find a way in FSUIPC to designate multiple key combinations to one yoke button - which in most cases wouldn't make any sense - except if you want to use functions from two different addons at the same time 🙂 

We'll work something out next week.

I mean, see if possible to enable MCE reco with PTT down only, without breaking the whole thing.

which key have you assigned for ATC?

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

5 minutes ago, FS++ said:

which key have you assigned for ATC?

In MCE I assigned a yoke button for PTT.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Out of curiosity, in MCE ATC tab there's an option "Copilot can handle radio if busy". I assume this requires "Real crew coordination feature" to be turned on to work, right?

[FS++ 707]

3 hours ago, Tomaz Drnovsek said:

Out of curiosity, in MCE ATC tab there's an option "Copilot can handle radio if busy". I assume this requires "Real crew coordination feature" to be turned on to work, right?

Affirmative.

Fo is able to read content of RC4 ATC window.

If a reply is overdue after he waiting for you to handle it and the option is enabled, he'll assume you're gone for a loo break or something and will take over ATC.

Obviously, would need the Fo capability.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

I encountered another issue. RC4 voice recognition only works if RC4 ATC window is open. Since there's an option to "auto-hide ATC window" in MCE I would assume that it should work also with ATC window closed.

Until recently I was flying with RC4 ATC window open all the time so I'd know if my commands were recognized, to see the frequencies, etc. Now I wanted even more immersion without ATC window visible. I found out that if the window is not visible than none of my voice commands are recognized. If I show the ATC window and say the exact same thing it's recognized. I tried this many times, always the same result.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Tomaz Drnovsek