I am a new user of RC version 3. I noticed very robot-like voices so I inquired. I was instructed on how to prioritize RC to Real Time. Even so, the voices seem mechanical compared to default ATC voices in FS2002. Not knowing what to expect from Radar Contact, I hesitate to complain, Can any of you veterans tell me what quality voices I should expect and if there is anything I am doing wrong that is preventing me from hearing what I should. Thanks.

I also heard this effect. This is entirely unsatisfactory, IMHO. For those reading this post, the effect is like this:Controller: Niner, backgroundnoise, silence, silence , eight, backgroundnoise, silence, silence, zero, backgroundnoise, silence, silence. Definitely very robot like and irritating.It appears the background noise (part of all radio comms) is embedded in each .WAV phrase. A better way to handle the voices would have been to play the back ground noise constantly while simultaneously squirting out the controller/pilot .WAV phrases on top of the background noise.This is a killer for this application. If this can't be fixed, RC3 will be sitting on the shelf and I'll be a very unhappy purchaser.I have many other problems with this program which I am trying to sort out. For one, RCV3 uses the Adventure Display window. Use of this window incurs a pentalty of 5 Frames per Seconds on my system. In fairness, the M$ transparent options window (where you pick tower, ground etc) also costs 5 FPS. If I uncheck the Adventure Display window's appearance from the Modules submenu, I am left with red text with a lot of red squares separating the words.And in a multiple display system, the main FS2002 loses focus so that you are never able to select the next option ( for example pressing the one key, doesn't start option 1. WX Brief )Larry

Larry,>Controller: Niner, backgroundnoise, silence, silence , >eight, backgroundnoise, silence, silence, zero, >backgroundnoise, silence, silence. Definitely very robot >like and irritating.>>It appears the background noise (part of all radio comms) is >embedded in each .WAV phrase.Listen to the wavs in the RCv30windwood directories 2-10 and tell me which have background noise in them. There is no such thing embedded into them other then how they were recorded. They have only been "radioized" with a more distant sound. The wavs are trimmed exactly where the voice starts and stops.Go to the Flight Deck RCv3 page and listen to what they're supposed to sound like. Then if you're using WinXP, read the thread on changing prioity of RC to speed things up.>This is a killer for this application. If this can't be >fixed, RC3 will be sitting on the shelf and I'll be a very >unhappy purchaser.All you need do is ask for a refund.>I have many other problems with this program which I am >trying to sort out. For one, RCV3 uses the Adventure >Display window. Use of this window incurs a pentalty of 5 >Frames per Seconds on my system. In fairness, the M$ >transparent options window (where you pick tower, ground >etc) also costs 5 FPS. If I uncheck the Adventure Display >window's appearance from the Modules submenu, I am left with >red text with a lot of red squares separating the words. >>And in a multiple display system, the main FS2002 loses >focus so that you are never able to select the next option ( >for example pressing the one key, doesn't start option 1. WX >Brief )This has nothing to do with multiple displays. After fidgeting with AdvDisp and dock it, click anywhere on the FS panel or view to set focus back to it. You can also move Advdisp to another monitor, or use ShowText on another networked system.

I've listened to the .WAV files. They include the normal "back ground" noise one expects on an AM radio channel in the form of subtle noise or bandwidth limitation (you call it Radioized). You may be correct then, that the RC3 programmers do not "add" this noise (distortion) when the .WAV files are played. The Radioization distortion is embedded in the .WAV file.Be that as it may, I have a SoundMax AC'97 V2.2 compliant Analog Devices AD1981 integrated audio chip on a Asus P4PE MB which doesn't work (yet!) with RC3. This chip is (to quote from their website)is :AC'97 V2.2 compliantPC'01 Compliant, full-duplex asynchronous variable audio sample rates Logo certified for Windows

Onboard sound and you're expecting perfection? Please. Why do you think the vast majority of major PC manufactures elect to install a seperate PCI sound card and not utilize the onboard sound found on most current mobos? It can't be for cost reasons obviously. The damn things are more trouble than the're worth and that goes for onboard video as well. Go to your local PC store, find a machine with a SB Audigy and surround speakers and run the demo. If you can't discern between this sound and what you have coming out of your PC now then I'll personally refund your $44, ok?'On the issue of the ADVDIS window loosing focus, couldn't the programmers just move the focus to the ADVDIS window when an option was offered in the ADVDIS window? It's really an irritation to have to click the panel to be in a position to input a selection into the ADVDIS window. Pressing keyboard key "1" hoping to choose option 1, for example, must be preceded by a mouse click on the panel. Very awkward'Then you're doing something wrong. The only time this focus issue should occur is at initial startup when you first enter FS after starting RC. Once you've clicked anywhere on the main FS panel and made FS the active window, Adv Display will accept all keystrokes. There is absolutely no need to have to click anywhere else again.What I think you're doing, or rather not in this case, is docking the Adv Disp after you have positioned it. You must dock the display. Right click on the display and select 'dock'. Then right click again and select 'save'I've just counted up and I've successfully run Adv Disp and RC on 52 aircraft. The only niggle with using Adv Disp is the disappearing act. Easily remedied by a quick look left or right with the POV on your joystick. I don't even notice it now.I do hope you sort things. RC really is worth the expense of a decent soundcard ;)

quick clarification. advdisp does not accept any keystroke. it is an output only "device"for keystrokes to work, fs200x must have focus. if advdisp is docked, it will never have focus. if advdisp is run in window'ed mode, then you should never click it, and give it focus.

>So please tell me why I should have to adjust the priority >of the RC3 task to get acceptible audio? (I don't know if >this will work, I haven't tried it yet). >As has been pointed out in other posts, FS2000/2002 "hogs" almost 100% of the CPU's processing power when it is running. This is a limitation of FS's basic design, as well as a limitation of the Windows platform itself... it makes it very difficult for an add-on which must deal with real-time audio to function smoothly. The only way around the problem is to force a higher priority for the add-on (ie: Radar Contact). I have written automation and real-time audio playback software for the commercial radio broadcast industry, and I can assure you that it can be incredibly difficult to implement smooth, glitch-free audio playback on a Win 98/2000/XP platform when two different programs are both trying to use audio resources simultaneously. Most commercial radio automation systems run on "stripped down" versions of Windows, in which many standard features (like Internet Explorer) have been removed or disabled because of their adverse effect on the split-second timing required for smooth audio playback. >After all, ATC Simulator V1.5 works fine here as well as >the ATC comms within FS2002. Other games are also fine. >ATC Simulator (or other games which have audio playback) are stand-alone programs. They don't have to fight for audio processing power with another running application which hogs most of the computer's processing resources.The reason that FS2K's own internal ATC audio is so smooth is that the audio "engine" is a running process WITHIN FS ITSELF. The only way that the developers of RC could have achieved that would have required them to have access to the source code of FS2K... not something Microsoft is likely to allow.The problem is compounded by using integrated motherboard audio instead of a separate soundcard. With a stand-alone audio card, most of the time-critical audio processing takes place in dedicated hardware DSP chips. With MoBo audio, the DSP processing is emulated in software - which again, requires CPU resources that are limited when FS2K is running.This is a problem similar to the situation which used to exist in the early days of the IBM PC. Before the advent of the 486 CPU, computer buyers had to make the choice of buying an optional math co-processor chip for their machines. The purpose of this chip was to handle math operations on floating point numbers (ie: numbers such as 3.1415926). Floating point math takes many, many more processing steps than simple integer math (using whole numbers) which the CPU can do with little performance hit. Without a dedicated hardware math co-processor, floating point operations had to be emulated in software, which really bogged down math-intensive programs.The FSUIPC program does permit add-ons like Squawkbox and FSNav to interact with the internal processes of FS2K without much performance impact.... but this is only useful for parameters like aircraft position, speed and altitude. It provides no means for external audio to interface smoothly with FS2K's internal audio.>On the issue of the ADVDIS window loosing focus, couldn't >the programmers just move the focus to the ADVDIS window >when an option was offered in the ADVDIS window? It's >really an irritation to have to click the panel to be in a >position to input a selection into the ADVDIS window. >Pressing keyboard key "1" hoping to choose option 1, for >example, must be preceded by a mouse click on the panel. >Very awkward. >This should NOT be happening. It would indicated that you have not properly "docked" the ADVDIS window.In my system, I made the choice to use a second computer to run Radar Contact. This elminates all of the problems with "resource hogging", and makes the RC playback as smooth as silk. I personally believe that a second PC would be an excellent investment for ANY serious flight simmer, as the aux computer can also be used to run add-ons like Squawkbox, Roger Wilco, Whazzup, FSMeteo etc. without any frame-rate hit on FS2K. This does not have to cost an arm and a leg - in most places one can easily find a perfectly adequate computer for this purpose on the used market for well under $200.Jim Barrett

thanks jim on a very informative post. i hope this clears up some questions on this topic.

i went to the asus site, and searched for ad1981, no hits.i search on soundmax, and came up with 96 soundmax drivers. you didn't mention your OS, or your driver version, but maybe one of those 96 drivers will fix your problem.the last time i tried to help someone with their driver issue, it was a disaster, so proceed at your own risk. backup your system, take a system restore point (if you are using xp), and adequately protect your configuration. but maybe an updated driver will fix the problem.

Here's a link to the SoundMAX chip at AD.http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Datash...87AD1881A_0.pdfI wrote a little program which basically "plays" (one right after the other) all the RC30 .WAV files using the Windows API call PlaySound(.wav,0,0) The cadence mimics what I hear on the local aero freqs. Very natural speech as the program "plays" through the entire directory of .wav's. So then I fired up FS2002 to load the system. The cadence didn't change at all ...until I paused (with the P key) FS2002!The second I pressed the P (for Pause key) the cadence or rate of playing the .wave phrases slowed by half. Just about the same effect that I was complaing about. Press Pause again, I hear engine sounds resume and FS2002 ATC chatter starts and plays normally( I happened to be tuned to Advisory frequency) and the rate of "play waves" resumes to completely normal. Why?I think I'll try increasing the priority of RC30 next.Here's the guts of the pgm (C#) FYIThanks for the many informative posts. I certainly agree that RC30 is worth having. I went to the 188 page manual last night and feasted for two hours! Super manual. I'll probably fight this for a while and then break down and get an audio card. (Or steal the SB out of my wife's puter ;-)LarryMy System: WinXP Pro. Asus P4PE MB with SoundMax integrated audio, 2.4 GHZ P4 not over clocked, 1 GB DDR PC27000, nvidia GeForce TI 4600 (LeadTek). ...[DllImport("winmm.dll")] public static extern long PlaySound(String lpszName, long hModule, long dwFlags);...private void button1_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e){ FileInfo[] fileInfoArray; string dirName = ""; if(openFileDialog1.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK) { dirName = Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(); } DirectoryInfo dirInfo = new DirectoryInfo(dirName); fileInfoArray = dirInfo.GetFiles(); Application.Exit(); foreach (FileInfo file in fileInfoArray) { PlaySound(file.FullName,0,0); }}

Larry,At least it's getting narrowed down. That's always a good sign.

Dean-I spent several years dealing with irq conflicts and driver problems with a soundblaster live card. After removing it and using the onboard sound chip on my motherboard not only did my performance get better, but my problems in this realm left for good. That is why I at least use the onboard.I at least haven't had any troubles with anything except Rc-and I still firmly think the problem is caused by using visual basic which is after all slow. The pause is probably caused by the vb running the code to look for, load, and play another wav file. I think tweaking the running priorities somehow helps this to the level it is acceptable.A happy on board sound card user :-)http://members.telocity.com/~geof43/Geofdog3.gif

Geof,Tom made an error in the announce forum. The acceptable image size is 400x60x10k. You can increase your image size again. ;-)