Fenix with Self loading cargo, Thinking of buying

[OzWhitey 3,353]

On 5/29/2022 at 6:30 AM, environmental_ice said:

Self loading cargo is dead. I don’t recommend that purchase unless you want an unfinished product. The sounds are meh. I ended up making my own which did improve my experience a ton at the time for the airline I like to fly for but the bottom line is there is no replay value with self loading cargo. Failures/passenger emergencies/interactions are disabled so you largely have a product that is pretending to have passengers and crew without anything dynamic. Every flight will be the exact same as the last. Unfortunately the potential the program never came to fruition 

I don't like it when these types of addons are repetitive, as you develop a sense of deja vu very quickly!

I've been working on a VoiceAttack-based freeware addon to provide highly-variable FA and PNF interaction, which is actually going pretty well. Trying to have any many variations as possible. Current script is big - about 100,000 words - so it's taking me a little while to sort as I've decided to go with wav/mp3 voices rather than the TTS that I was using.

On the MSFS 737, the PNF can currently set things up from cold and dark, do some CDU programming, perform engine starts and run some of the checklists using voice or button control.

I think I'm going to be able to add emergencies to the MSFS 737 as well without too many problems.

Fenix is an unknown at the moment in term of interaction possibilities, but it's a beautiful aircraft so I'd love to be able to control it.

Question: What are the aspects of SLC - particularly with regards to PNF and FA interaction -  that you enjoyed and would actually like to see in a mod?

 

[WestAir 2,522]

10 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I don't like it when these types of addons are repetitive, as you develop a sense of deja vu very quickly!

I've been working on a VoiceAttack-based freeware addon to provide highly-variable FA and PNF interaction, which is actually going pretty well. Trying to have any many variations as possible. Current script is big - about 100,000 words - so it's taking me a little while to sort as I've decided to go with wav/mp3 voices rather than the TTS that I was using.

On the MSFS 737, the PNF can currently set things up from cold and dark, do some CDU programming, perform engine starts and run some of the checklists using voice or button control.

I think I'm going to be able to add emergencies to the MSFS 737 as well without too many problems.

Fenix is an unknown at the moment in term of interaction possibilities, but it's a beautiful aircraft so I'd love to be able to control it.

Question: What are the aspects of SLC - particularly with regards to PNF and FA interaction -  that you enjoyed and would actually like to see in a mod?

 

Passenger events. Drunk Pax. Medical diversions. Late baggage. 

From FSPax I loved that the aircraft state carried over. I loved the report at the end with all the things I did right or wrong. 

From FSCaptain I enjoyed working with the company and dispatcher - getting approval for more fuel and talking over the possibility of weather diversions and if a mechanical issue needs a diversion or not.

Really what many want, myself most of all, is a crew simulator. The modern sim flight deck is very quiet. In reality you work with the FO, Purser, FA's, Gate Agents / Customer Ops, Dispatch, Maintenance, Crew Services, and Ground. Right now we're missing all of that.

It's not a very immersive simulation without those, for me.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

On 5/30/2022 at 6:55 PM, ckyliu said:

Sounds like some of you have learnt the same lesson with SLC as I did with Airsimmer; Never, ever, EVER buy an addon on the basis of promises or intentions, ALWAYS buy based on the current state of the product, because there's no guarantees it'll get updated. Another example would be the Digital Aviation F100 virtual cockpit, we even got to see screenshot of that but it was never completed.

Since the days of FS Passengers, I never really got the point of these addons tbh. Each to their own of course, we all enjoy our sim in different ways, but surely I would be the one making the PAs (they ain't pre-recorded beyond safety demo) and I don't believe flight deck really hear much from the cabin after the door is closed? I remember FS Pax scoring stuff like when music was played during departure and when the food was served, at which point I dubbed it "cabin crew simulator" and concluded it was not for me nor had any relevance to the activities of flight crew.

 

I think there's a middle ground here.

Sitting in an empty sim cockpit with no apparent human interaction takes away from immersion, and is something I've always struggled with.

Yes, it's not your job to serve the food. But what about asking the new PNF how they're going, what they think about being on aircraft type x, or anything else that might come up in conversation? 

I think being to interact with the cabin crew is also realistic. Now, I'd be interested to know often they get to sit in the jumpseat these days, but FS Passengers has the right idea by having the FA's join you every once in a while in cruise (I've made it in my mod so they call you on the interphone first, and there's an optional setting so they won't come in unless you unlock the door - I've got that mapped to a switch on my pedestal!)  

[OzWhitey 3,353]

7 minutes ago, WestAir said:

Passenger events. Drunk Pax. Medical diversions. Late baggage. 

From FSPax I loved that the aircraft state carried over. I loved the report at the end with all the things I did right or wrong. 

From FSCaptain I enjoyed working with the company and dispatcher - getting approval for more fuel and talking over the possibility of weather diversions and if a mechanical issue needs a diversion or not.

Really what many want, myself most of all, is a crew simulator. The modern sim flight deck is very quiet. In reality you work with the FO, Purser, FA's, Gate Agents / Customer Ops, Dispatch, Maintenance, Crew Services, and Ground. Right now we're missing all of that.

It's not a very immersive simulation without those, for me.

Great suggestions. I was a keen user of FSPax back in the day, my hesitation with it was that the cabin crew interactions were pretty limited.

I don't know if I've used FS Captain, though I've got a suspicion I bought it a long time ago. Might have to check it out, as I don't know a great deal about how those interactions might sound.

Agree 100% about the flight deck being too quiet. I like adding the visual model of the FO/PNF back in to the cockpit (can do in the 737 with a basic mod), so i've at least got another human there in my peripheral vision.

Atm, I've been trying to work out what the right sort of interactions are with FO, Purser, FA's and ground crew. 

Haven't thought about Gate agents, customer ops, dispatch, maintenance or crew services. Most of what I know comes from simming or being SLF, I need a, ATP to tell me how that side of things works!

re: Medical diversions - ha, that one I do know. I'm a bit of a trouble-magnet, so I've made that call five times on an aircraft. I also know that, even after you fix their supposed ruptured AAA patient that they were going to have to divert for, the pilots still refuse to let you have a go at flying the plane. 🙂 

[Nyxx 6,993]

Am passing on SLC but thanks to David R I now have the best ATC chatter ive even used, never heared one repeat and the clips work of what your comm you have tuned.

FS ATC Chatter. 

Used it for every flight now in the Fenix, love it.

[ckyliu 1,749]

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

Sitting in an empty sim cockpit with no apparent human interaction takes away from immersion, and is something I've always struggled with.

Yes, it's not your job to serve the food. But what about asking the new PNF how they're going, what they think about being on aircraft type x, or anything else that might come up in conversation?

This seems more like an FS2Crew or other multicrew package. Ground agent brings you the load sheet advising loading is completed, cabin crew advise you cabin secure, the cabin also check on your periodically to ensure all is well. You fill in a window for your departure brief to PNF, they read through the checklists and do PNF/FO flows. If you just want to chat planes there's Discord!

Edited May 31, 2022 by ckyliu

[CFIJose 5,485]

1 hour ago, Nyxx said:

Am passing on SLC but thanks to David R I now have the best ATC chatter ive even used, never heared one repeat and the clips work of what your comm you have tuned.

FS ATC Chatter. 

Used it for every flight now in the Fenix, love it.

Excellent! An add-on I've been recommending for years. Kind of the same thing I'll be doing with SLC.

BTW, Pilot2ATC & FS Chatter work very well together.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

1 hour ago, ckyliu said:

This seems more like an FS2Crew or other multicrew package. Ground agent brings you the load sheet advising loading is completed, cabin crew advise you cabin secure, the cabin also check on your periodically to ensure all is well. You fill in a window for your departure brief to PNF, they read through the checklists and do PNF/FO flows. If you just want to chat planes there's Discord!

FS2Crew has a small amount of this functionality, and is mainly useful during the early and late stages of flight. Once you're in cruise, there's nothing much to do until descent - just a couple of single response options (asking for coffee, asking for food). The ground/cabin/FO responses are also identical every time. 

So I guess I'm aiming to hit the checklist functionality, but also allow a lot more crew interaction - like FS Passengers in that regard, but more varied. With FS2Crew the Fas never check on you, just respond to your coffee requests. FS Passengers had the FAs randomly appearing on the flight deck and saying a couple of sentences, and they also did do things like complaining about the teperature, reporting medical emergencies etc

To get the full FS Passengers experience (reacting to G forces etc), I'd need to get the plugin working to capture the exposed simconnect variables. MSAgent doesn't seem to be under active development unfortunately so unless anyone is good at programming in C# (I think), that bit is going to be hard.

Discord is fun, but I don't think any random person is likely to want to be my FO!

[WestAir 2,522]

2 hours ago, OzWhitey said:

Atm, I've been trying to work out what the right sort of interactions are with FO, Purser, FA's and ground crew. 

Haven't thought about Gate agents, customer ops, dispatch, maintenance or crew services. Most of what I know comes from simming or being SLF, I need a, ATP to tell me how that side of things works!

Variation in the checklists, small talk, and random events, etc is something I'd absolutely love to see and would support with my wallet. Especially if it had a lot of the old FSPax features.

Getting the company side of things down will be a challenge. Every carrier runs differently. I can tell you how things worked at my airline back when I used to fly (left in 2016) but our ops was unique to us and different from Cactus or LUV or a European carrier or an Asian carrier. This community has pilots from every airline, though, and we'd be happy to work with you on every detail if you had a dedicated thread for it or something. You might even find someone who knows C# and wants to jump on board.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

50 minutes ago, WestAir said:

Variation in the checklists, small talk, and random events, etc is something I'd absolutely love to see and would support with my wallet. Especially if it had a lot of the old FSPax features.

Getting the company side of things down will be a challenge. Every carrier runs differently. I can tell you how things worked at my airline back when I used to fly (left in 2016) but our ops was unique to us and different from Cactus or LUV or a European carrier or an Asian carrier. This community has pilots from every airline, though, and we'd be happy to work with you on every detail if you had a dedicated thread for it or something. You might even find someone who knows C# and wants to jump on board.

Variation in the checklists is something that is actually really easy. Here's an example of what the 737NG before start checklist looks like.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Begin Integer Compare : [FO] Equals 22
    Set integer [PauseBetweenChecklistSteps] value to 1
    Play random sound (from directory: {VA_SOUNDS}\ATP_Pack\0 FO Responses\Pilot_22_Amelia\Before Start Checklist\1 Initial Response - suppress repeat)
    Pause 1 second
    Play random sound (from directory: {VA_SOUNDS}\ATP_Pack\0 FO Responses\Pilot_22_Amelia\Before Start Checklist\1 Line full - Flight deck door - suppress repeat)
    Pause a variable number of seconds [PauseBetweenChecklistSteps]
    Play random sound (from directory: {VA_SOUNDS}\ATP_Pack\0 FO Responses\Pilot_22_Amelia\Before Start Checklist\2 Line full - Fuel - suppress repeat)
    Pause a variable number of seconds [PauseBetweenChecklistSteps]
    Play random sound (from directory: {VA_SOUNDS}\ATP_Pack\0 FO Responses\Pilot_22_Amelia\Before Start Checklist\3 Line full - Passenger signs - suppress repeat)
    Pause a variable number of seconds [PauseBetweenChecklistSteps]
    Play random sound (from directory: {VA_SOUNDS}\ATP_Pack\0 FO Responses\Pilot_22_Amelia\Before Start Checklist\4 Line full - Windows - suppress repeat)
    Pause a variable number of seconds [PauseBetweenChecklistSteps]
    Set integer [UseTTSFO] value to 0
End Condition

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I've done here is set an integer to select the first officer, and then run the voice files specific to that pilot. Each step of the checklist can have an unlimited number of vocal response variations.

There's no technical issue with setting another integer to manage different company-specific SOPs, and you'd reuse the voice files that are common. I'm working on getting the Boeing SOP sorted first, but after that company-specific changes shouldn't be hard to implement.

In terms of variation - for the before start checklist, I used 21 separate voice files (unique to the FO) for the first line, for example, with one chosen at random.

I've been distracted from the flows and checklists for the past week working on the random small talk. My FO is getting better at telling jokes, and now gets upset if you tell her they're not funny!

What sort of small talk topics would you be hoping to see? I'd certainly be interested to get your thoughts on any and all of this. Feel free to pm me if you like.    

[FPVSteve 36]

Hello everyone - I am the developer of SLC and normally I do not comment on this type of thread because ... well, it tends to open up a can of worms. But I feel like I probably should in this case.

I want to draw attention to alanj44 in this case as a prime example of the issues that I, as a developer, face. This is not a sympathy-seeking post - I know I'm at fault in terms of the deadline but I'm also genuinely working on releasing SLC as quickly as I can. Believe me, no-one wants this update out more than me at this point.

The simple fact is that the v1.6 update is due for release and is a significant upgrade to the v1.55 release that is currently available. I have been working constantly on it for months now - not only in building functionality, scrapping things that didn't work and redoing them, but also managing support for customers and running the company in terms of taxes and similar responsibilities. This is why I also, as Alan semi-correctly pointed out, recently brought my wife onboard - to manage the accounts and paperwork that I do not have the time to deal with on top of development responsibilities.

My failing with this update release has been one of miscommunication and over-optimism in terms of the timescale. I should not have announced a release date I wasn't 100% sure I could meet, because I have hung myself out to dry when the deadlines were not met - all the while working my backside off to try to get the application updated and released. There is no worse feeling then being accused of being a fraud when you're trying your best to push a new release. It's demotivating, sucks your energy out and...  unfortunately there are a very vocal minority who seem to take great delight in not only pulling developers such as myself to pieces when they do not meet such a "deadline", but then extrapolate their thoughts into false narrative that serves their opinions further - look at the huge post Alan made above. None of it fact, yet all of it down on "paper" and being "liked" by people who take it as gospel. It is a lose, lose situation here - all I can do is work and prove otherwise by releasing the application. 

It is for this reason that I temporarily closed the Discord server - not because I thought it was a brilliant idea or that I wanted to hide from anyone or "kill the community", but because it was impossible to continually deal with things like the above while still working on development - it was not a good use of time at all. I would spend an hour talking to a single user only to have someone else start another thread 15 minutes later making weird accusations based on their misunderstandings and then the same thing would happen on random obscure forums. Sometimes the best course of action is to say "you know what, I know the software needs to be released - I'm going to simply work on it and not argue with anyone any more". Otherwise that arguing becomes your entire life - and then there's YouTube comments start, other Discord servers kick off etc ... it's a pointless exercise. So I chose, rightly or wrongly, to shut it off for the time being. 

Unfortunately that has an unintended consequence with that as well ... "he's disappeared!" "he's ripped us off!" "it'll never come out!".

Look - I could make excuses all day but I'm not going to - I screwed up. And for months now I have been working to put it right by sitting writing code - which is why I'm excited for the release of v1.6 not only for it to come out but for people to realise I wasn't actually pulling a fast one on them and am 100% committed to the project. In fact, it is my full-time job at the moment - I just cannot release it broken and I cannot spend my time arguing about missed release dates when there is still work to be done.

It is my intention to release SLC v1.6 as soon as possible. I have a couple of remaining bugs to fix in the new pilot scoring system, some write-ups to do in the user manual explaining the new features, some website updates and some tutorial videos showing how new features work - oh, and a compatibility issue with the Fenix A320 (it reports 20 degrees pitch and 29 degrees roll at all times via FSUIPC, which isn't exactly ideal).  Once v1.6 releases I will be publishing an updated roadmap on the website for the continued development. And it will be being continued as there is much more to be done.

All the best and I hope this post is received the way it is intended. I profusely apologise for the delay to anyone who reads this post and is waiting on the software to release - it's coming, and I hope you like it when it arrives.

Steve

 

 

 

[WestAir 2,522]

I for one appreciate the update. I said in my first post; a thick skin is needed in the FS industry.

People are going to be factually incorrect, and they're going to be aggressively vocal with their untruths at the same time. It's impossible to get everybody on the same page, with the same understanding. 

I think we both know you'll be seeing a lot of positivity when 1.6 drops. I'll be one of those giving it. Speaking of, it would be great to also have a dedicated place to share new voice packs when that happens, especially with the new audio triggers and events. 

[Snuffleupagus 327]

Good to see it’s not dead! I think most in the community would just like to be updated every so often if something is still under active development. I don’t necessarily think missing a deadline is much of a big deal (for me anyways) as long as the developer is open and communicates. No need for a discord or anything like that, the simple website news section worked great! 

[ckyliu 1,749]

3 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

I have been working constantly on it for months now - not only in building functionality, scrapping things that didn't work and redoing them, but also managing support for customers and running the company in terms of taxes and similar responsibilities...

My failing with this update release has been one of miscommunication and over-optimism in terms of the timescale. I should not have announced a release date I wasn't 100% sure I could meet... There is no worse feeling then being accused of being a fraud when you're trying your best to push a new release. It's demotivating, sucks your energy out and...  unfortunately there are a very vocal minority who seem to take great delight in not only pulling developers such as myself to pieces when they do not meet such a "deadline", but then extrapolate their thoughts into false narrative that serves their opinions further - look at the huge post Alan made above. None of it fact, yet all of it down on "paper" and being "liked" by people who take it as gospel. It is a lose, lose situation here - all I can do is work and prove otherwise by releasing the application. 

It is for this reason that I temporarily closed the Discord server - not because I thought it was a brilliant idea or that I wanted to hide from anyone or "kill the community", but because it was impossible to continually deal with things like the above while still working on development - it was not a good use of time at all. I would spend an hour talking to a single user only to have someone else start another thread 15 minutes later making weird accusations based on their misunderstandings and then the same thing would happen on random obscure forums. Sometimes the best course of action is to say "you know what, I know the software needs to be released - I'm going to simply work on it and not argue with anyone any more". Otherwise that arguing becomes your entire life - and then there's YouTube comments start, other Discord servers kick off etc ... it's a pointless exercise. So I chose, rightly or wrongly, to shut it off for the time being. 

Unfortunately that has an unintended consequence with that as well ... "he's disappeared!" "he's ripped us off!" "it'll never come out!"...

All the best and I hope this post is received the way it is intended. I profusely apologise for the delay to anyone who reads this post and is waiting on the software to release - it's coming, and I hope you like it when it arrives

Understand your viewpoint Steve, but you also need to appreciate most of us have memories of FS developers that just disappeared and ran with the money (I'm not naming names but I mentioned a few earlier in this thread) releasing half-baked products that never got fixed, and countless projects that were either vapourware or got stuck in development hell.

Interacting with users can be a depressing timesink for sure, but if you go AWOL without warning then you will get rumours flying about that can be detrimental to your sales. I think it best to publish an update every month or two, but not read or respond to any comments - that way you keep customers informed without losing hours arguing. People are generally happy if they know you're working and they're not forgotten about. Also basic hotfixes will earn you a lot of goodwill, as MS/Asobo learned the hard way - users get really annoyed at struggling with a problem for weeks they think you can or have solved in a few hours.

There's a balance to be struck. I appreciate PR and people skills are not everyone's forté. But just a bit of news now and then, a blip on the heartrate monitor if you will, should make things easier on you.

Edited June 29, 2022 by ckyliu

[KL Oo 700]

21 hours ago, FPVSteve said:

Hello everyone - I am the developer of SLC and normally I do not comment on this type of thread because ... well, it tends to open up a can of worms. But I feel like I probably should in this case.

.......

Good to hear form you Steve and I for one do appreciate the update. Now prove us all wrong (myself included) and get it out the door.

Edited June 30, 2022 by KL Oo