is it true that the voices in RC are robotic sounding or do they sound better than MS stock voices?? reason I ask is I am thinking of purchasing the program as I want a more immersive ATC experience. Thanks for any input you can give!

Hi Nigel,I've heard the expression 'robotic' used several times but no-one has given me a satisfactory explanation of what they mean by it. We used real people in the recordings and I then 'radioised' the sounds to make them sound as though they were being transmitted across the airways. That's how they would sound in a real aircraft.Obviously there are a lot of separate wavs in commands issued to the pilot. The RC program concatenates these and then plays them and hopefully the impression is of a human talking to you.They sound different to the stock FS voices but I find those quite unrealistic. They don't sound as though they are being transmitted. Have you ever heard real ATC transmissions? You might be surprised how unclear they can be. They're certainly not hi-fi!Many people shared your concerns before they bought RC4 but once they'd readjusted to our sounds the concerns seem to dry up. Search the forum and you will find few messages about voice quality. What you will find is plenty of praise about the realism of the product.I hope that puts your mind at rest.

Thanks for the response. I am currently taking VFR lessons right now and I was a flying crew chief/avionics specialist in the AF for sometime and I did ge tto sit in the flight deck on several occassions with my Dave Clarks on and listen in....I do agree that real ATC transmissions are very unclear and they do sound robotic at times. I do think the stock MS voices sound unrealistic but there is a human feel to them...a slight one but its there!In any case, I took the plunge and bought RC and I am anxiously awaiting its arrival!

Hi Nigel,Hopefully our recording will have a touch of humanity to them. I can only vouch for myself of course ;-)Download the manual and read it before the CD arrives. Twice should be enough. :-hahCheers,

>I've heard the expression 'robotic' used several times but>no-one has given me a satisfactory explanation of what they>mean by it. Ray, I think what they mean is that often the voices, although human, do sound as though they are doing what they, in fact do - speaking phrases that have been "stitched" together. Sometimes there is a very good flow to the words but often the "joins" are very obvious.Having said that, it only bothered me for a couple of minutes and I don't notice it at all now - and they are much better than the MS voices which sound monotonous.Iain

Hi Iain,Thanks for explaining that. I agree that some voices can sound a little disjointed when many individual wavs are concatenated and played. JD has really improved this by allowing the user to vary the gap between each spoken wav. When we heard it for the fist time in the team we were very imppressed.Without massive investment in time, effort and resources it would be difficult to improve them much more but as you point out once you make the transition the RC voices quickly become very acceptable.Thanks.