Pilot2ATC using VR (in MSFS2020)

[BernieGarrett 1]

Hi all,
As a long-time user of Pilot2ATC I am now attempting to use it in a VR environment with MSFS2020. I suspect it may be too much of a load on the PC system with the sim, speech recognition, chatter, and VR all running concurrently as its not working to date.

System is:

Intel® Core™ i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz
32GB RAM
2 TB SSD
Nvidia Geoforce RTX2080Ti

Two key problems are:

1) Pilot2ATC does not recognize input from the Vive Cosmos Headset mic. Probably too poor quality? It is showing up as the Windows 10 mic input, but not particularly loud, and I can see no way to boost it.

2) After a short while Pilot2ATC just stops working with the sim and falls silent, I suspect due to memory or processor overload. 

So, has anyone got it working in VR, or have any tips on how to configure Pilot2ATC to work with a VR rig?

Cheers and happy holidays all,

Bernie

[glider1 90]

18 hours ago, BernieGarrett said:

Hi all,
As a long-time user of Pilot2ATC I am now attempting to use it in a VR environment with MSFS2020. I suspect it may be too much of a load on the PC system with the sim, speech recognition, chatter, and VR all running concurrently as its not working to date.

System is:

Intel® Core™ i9-9900K CPU @ 3.60GHz 3.60 GHz
32GB RAM
2 TB SSD
Nvidia Geoforce RTX2080Ti

Two key problems are:

1) Pilot2ATC does not recognize input from the Vive Cosmos Headset mic. Probably too poor quality? It is showing up as the Windows 10 mic input, but not particularly loud, and I can see no way to boost it.

2) After a short while Pilot2ATC just stops working with the sim and falls silent, I suspect due to memory or processor overload. 

So, has anyone got it working in VR, or have any tips on how to configure Pilot2ATC to work with a VR rig?

Cheers and happy holidays all,

Bernie

It works well in VR in P3D on a 9700K/32GB/2080TI but I segregate P2A from the sim with an affinity mask so that it is not running on the same primary cores as the sim. That and a good mic is the way to start to get reliable performance. Same to you have a good holiday.

[BernieGarrett 1]

Many thanks.
Yes I did get it working with P3DV5 also, and separating the ATC from the sim processing CPU with an affinity mask is probably worth trying. Good idea.

The mic issue with HMDs has been reported by others, and I know there are audio applications I could use to boost the volume a bit but am loathed to load yet another process into an already heavily loaded system. I have used a separate wireless mic as a work around

i might try taking it up with HTC as it seems a hardware issue with a high-end HMD that should perform better.

cheers

Bernie

Edited December 31, 2020 by BernieGarrett

[joelpacheco 9]

On 12/30/2020 at 11:03 AM, glider1 said:

It works well in VR in P3D on a 9700K/32GB/2080TI but I segregate P2A from the sim with an affinity mask so that it is not running on the same primary cores as the sim. That and a good mic is the way to start to get reliable performance. Same to you have a good holiday.

How do you set the P2A affinity mask? That sounds like a great idea.

[glider1 90]

3 hours ago, joelpacheco said:

How do you set the P2A affinity mask? That sounds like a great idea.

I run a .bat file AFTER the apps are running which switches their AF while they are running. Crude but works.

set AF=240
PowerShell "$Process = Get-Process -Name Pilot2ATC_2018; $Process.ProcessorAffinity=%AF%"

(Note that the command is all one line no carriage return.)

So that batch file will change the AF of the already running Pilot2ATC

AF is a decimal value which converts into an affinity mask by the operating system (W10)

240 = 11110000

so P2A will run on the last four cores of the 9700k.

Then I start the sim and let it have all the cores since if it overlaps with P2A on the backend cores it doesn't matter because the last four cores the sim uses for scenery loading which shouldn't cause stutters (P3D specific).

Cheers

EDIT: the need for affinity masking is becoming less urgent these days as the operating system job scheduler is starting to do a better job of preventing apps competing for the same cores

Edited January 2, 2021 by glider1

[joelpacheco 9]

Thanks Glider1, I’ll give it a shot. I guess every bit helps.