mbattison

I agree that World of AI has provided the best AI traffic, in terms of realistic schedules/airline destinations, realistic airline/aircraft types, correct aircraft registrations, high quality models/textures often with multiple liveries, reasonable global coverage and no major problems with frame rates. And it was free! Yes, you have to install each airline individually, and often the same airline gets an upgraded schedule. But - that is the nature of airlines - schedules do change (including aircraft types as well as routes and frequencies). Having an out of date airline or type at your FS airport is almost as bad as not having any traffic at all. Very sadly WofAI seems to be rather dormant, the last package released was now over 4 months ago. Total shame because their packages were the best, by a long shot. However, as I said things start to get out of date, so am looking at alternatives. I have tried many of the other commercial packages available, and they all seem to have pros and cons. For example, Ultimate Traffic 2 offers excellent schedule information, but not all the schedule aircraft appear (I know there's ways of adding models/textures that are not in the default collection, but that's a bit messy). and the aircraft registrations are not correct... What I actually do is use the UT2 timetable schedules to plan my own FS flights, but disable all UT2 aircraft traffic. Paying around GBP 5 twice a year for updated schedules isn't a great problem. Most of the traffic on my FS is from WofAI (and MAIW for military traffic) Other products produce more accurate/numerous aircraft, but often the model quality is poor. I have even briefly tried FS Live Traffic, which even the latest version which is a major improvement, is sadly lacking especially outside USA. Again models/texture quality is poor. So am waiting to hear what is said about Traffic 360 to see if this ticks all the boxes...

Do you find the meatwater files to be slower than the original RC4 files?How do you compare the speed of normal (default) FS speech?

Yes, most are indeed the same voices, but they are played faster, which sounds more realistic. And I agree that they are made more scruffy, in other words, more like real ATC. If you ever listen to real ATC radio, then some of it is very hard to understand. The meatwater sounds are clear enough, without being slow. Even on the fastest slider settings, I could not get some of the original RC4 voice files to sound realistically fluent enough. Default FS ATC also sounds a bit scruffy too. I don't want ATC to be unnaturally clear with each word spoken slowly and precisely. However choice is yours, you can have either have them or not... Yes, you can still display text if you want. There's no change to the actual operation of RC4, just uses a new set of voices.

If any RC4 user hasn't tried these new voice packs, you don't know what you are missing! These are truly amazing. It really does combine the phrases and instructions we are used to with RC4, with possibly the only good thing from default ATC and that is the fluency of the speech. Although I'll miss some of my old controllers in the sky :( this new set make RC4 feel as if its an completely upgraded version. Well done Meatwater!Mark

Hi, Glad that my experience has helped others. Hope you are finding RC4 brings much improvement to your flying experience. It really is one add-on that I can't fly without - that is why at no point in when I was getting errors with RC4/FSUIPC would I EVER have considered flying without RC4, which may have been another solution to the problem. Default ATC and that horrible squelch problem when trying to acknowledge tower for the 20th time; instructions and aircraft confirmations being totally out of sequence; not to mention the incorrect phrases and terminology - you will notice the improvement with RC4 immediately.. Mark

While MSE might be on option, reading what others have said here has prompted me to see what other anti-virus options are available...Noticed that my own ISP provide (on the level I am on) a free virus scan utility which comes with a few other useful things such as advanced disk clean as well as links to disk defrag, network monitor and so on - all conveniently in one neat little box. OK then I see that its actually provided by McAfee - who I've had problems with before when its later versions become too intrusive. :( However this package (BT Net Protect Plus) actually seems to be the bits of McAfee that I actually want (without the unnecessary control elements), and a few other useful bits thrown in. Although its advertised as being free, its actually paid for as its included in my broadband internet, so may try this until (if) I find problems. Certainly works OK with FS/RC, which was the initial problem. :( Certainly learned a bit about the different anti-virus programs out there, and hopefully now found the solution for my system.

MSE does seem a good alternative, I am installing this to see if it is as good as it sounds.

Hi RayThanks, I notice a message now appearing at the bottom of the AVG8.5 window "AVG Free edition 9.0 is now available - to stay protected you will have to upgrade your version" !! :( However AVG8.5 is still receiving updates, so I would presume up to date protection is still provided. Unless a way of working with AVG9.0 and FS/RC is found I will be sticking with AVG8.5 until if/when it isn't supported for updates then I may look for alternative anti-virus programs.Years ago I used to use McAfee, however gave up on this as the later versions were becoming too protective and starting to cause more problems than they solved. At one point a long time ago, I even tried Norton (think a trial version was supplied with some other software I purchased), but it took total control of my system - even changing the toolbars as I remember, and I had difficulty doing almost anything. Might be excellent protection, but if you can hardly use PC to actually do anything - then bit of an overkill. Bit like only going out house wearing radioactive suit just in case you get sun-burn. It wasn't an easy task to remove all traces of Norton from my system believe me, however learned then that there needs to be a balance between virus protection, and able to use your PC for what you want to use it for.After the AVG message telling users of AVG8.5 that they must upgrade to stay protected, will be interesting to see if others do - and whether they can get FS/RC to work. Time will tell.Mark

Hi RayI was thinking along those lines too... I too had been using the free AVG8.5 and never got a problem (nor had ever to add any files or paths to be excluded), and upgraded to the free AVG9.0 within the last week or so, and that's when the FS/RC problems started - or was that purely a coincidence??I had previously tried switching off the "resident shield" within AVG9.0 (this effectively disables most of AVG - and even triggers the Windows message about no firewall being detected on the system) - but still got the error problems when running FS. So I was starting to wonder whether this was an AVG problem or not.Anyway I've rolled back from AVG 9.0 to 8.5 and tried my flight again..... NO PROBLEMS AT ALL :( And that was flight of over 1 hour, plenty of time to allow the error message to appear if it was going to.So therefore I too am now convinced that AVG 9.0 is the problem, clearly its a lot more protective than previous versions, and much tweaking would be necessary to ensure FS/RC (and other applications) worked properly. I noted that AVG has a forum, rather limited - needless to say AVG official support seems to be reserved for their paid-for version.I'm going to stick with AVG8.5 for the time being, until I know of a definite fix with AVG9.0 and FS/RC.** Yes - I had also noticed that Window Defender seemed to stop for some strange reason lately, hadn't connected that with AVG9.0. Hopefully another problem solved then.Thanks Ray - and JD - for your help and assistance on this problem.Mark

Hi JDThanks, tried speaker options with aircraft callsign and voices screen etc... that worked WITHOUT problems. Likewise the log files also saved OK - unless the error was caused by the log saving rather than a normal RC save.I will try other options.Mark

Changed the exclusion to "c:\program files\rcv4". I thought I was getting somewhere as I even managed to get airborne, until the error 75 appeared again, about 5 mins after takeoff.Is there any way I can test RC4's save routines from the RC4 application itself, rather than load up and start a flight, to see if it is able to save to the specified folder? If so, I may be able to check different settings on AVG quicker to find out where the problem lies.Mark

Hi JDI have tried the following things, within AVG.1. Adding RCV4.exe (by browsing to the application file) to the "Potentially Unwanted Programs Exceptions" list. Error 75 still occurs.2. Adding RCV4.exe to the "Resident Shield - Excluded files" list. Error 75 still occurs.3. Adding the path where the .flt files are saved to the "Resident Shield - Exludes directories". Error 75 still occurs.4. Disabling Resident Shield - which is effectively turning off the main elements of the anti-virus program. Error 75 still occurs.Although as I mentioned in my email, I thought that AVG could be the cause of my problems, as it has recently ugraded from versio 8.5 to 9 - this was about the same time as the FS/RC problems started; but as far as I know how to, I have allowed RC4 sufficient access to do what it needs to do.Mark

I'm using AVG 9.0

Hi jdThanks, will send the three logs created that ended in error 52. Please note I am running XP.Mark

Hi JDUnfortunately still receiving the error 75 problem, even though the path has been set correctly.In fact the full error is "RUN TIME ERROR 75, RADARCONTACT.FSUIPC.RCV4.CODE"RegardsMarkHi JDI have tried same flight again, this time creating a log...This time the error changes to "Run-time error 52: Bad file name or number".This has happened on THREE successive flight attempts - I'm getting nowhere! :( Your help would be most welcome.RegardsMark

Yes, however I have redefined the path, just in case for some reason it has lost the path to the folder it was originally pointing to. Will advise if the problem continues.Thanks for your helpMark

Indeed that is something that would make ATC extremely realistic!! Brings back memories of the "Captain Speaking" in the bygone days of FS2002 - unfortunately that program had other limitations, but the local accents as well as the very realistic commands (pre RC4 days) made for truly incredible flying...I'll look out for the volunteer requests and would be happy to contribute.. :(

Hi allUsing Windows XP (SP3), FS2004, FSUIPC 3.93.Having been using RC4 for few years, 100s of flights. However am now repeatedly getting Error 75 messages, and RC4 quits. I've checked other replies on this forum but all refer to Vista etc...Any help on what might be going wrong? Let me know what other information you need, this error happens at different locations, sometimes on ground sometimes in air.ThanksMark

Thanks for looking into this anyway, not being in the airline industry (other than the one on my desktop computer), I wasn't sure who actually decided on a flight diversion. As such if it is the pilot [or possibly the airline itself as you mention; I had forgotten that they will likely have considerable say on such matter], then yes RC4 does allow pilots to chose destination airports to fly to. Although I have never done this before, perhaps my correct procedure would be to check destination weather (I use AS6 so this is easy), and then make decision on whether or not to divert. It is VERY rare that I get RC4 holds requested, {"Weather" is selected on the Holding options}, but if/when this occurs that could be a good time to chose alternate.Thanks again..

Thanks... of course I was making the assumption that what happens here in UK, happens worldwide - not always the case.Here we often get a fair amount of weather related diversions, but of course I'm not sure whether this is entirely the controller's decision, or some sort of agreement between pilot and controller. It may be the other situation I mentioned that controller gives pilot a choice of divert or long hold, then the pilot decides dependant on various other factors.Weather or other reasons, I would suggest a probability of around 1-2% of flights to be diverted (or at least given the choice of diversion or an extended hold). I certainly wouldn't expect flights to be diverted on a regular basis, but knowing that it does happen sometimes, albeit very rarely, would add to the realism. Although I'm suggesting purely random flights, it would be even more realistic (although possibly much more difficult to program), if the divert probability increased when bad weather was reported at original destination, especially low visibility or storm conditions.Thanks again for looking into this.

I note in the pre-flight set-up menu for RC4, there is an option to add alternative destination airport(s). Also some of the add-on flight planners (I use FS Commander 8.4) have these features too.I also note that in the RC4 text window (on the "next" pages), there are options for pilot to request diversion to the alternative airport (if one has been selected on the set-up menu) as well as emergency diversions to the nearest available airport.However what would increase realism on future RC version would be the controller requesting that the aircraft diverts to the alternative airport, could be due to eg weather, heavy traffic or other incident at original destination. Perhaps controller could even give pilot the choice - keep with the original destination but face a possibly long hold/stack pattern, or fly instead to the alternative. Controller could then vector aircraft to the new airport, rather than having to set up a new flight plan etc. mid flight.Obviously the percentage of times that this would happen ahould be kept very low, thankfully doesn't happen too often in real world, but it certainly does happen. If pilot didn't want that option to occur (ever), then simply the case of not entering an alternative airport in the set-up.As RC4 already caters well for pilot requested diversions, I don't see that it would be too difficult to add controller requested diversions.

I actually quite like the traffic advisories, however I've noticed that in RC4, I sometimes get advised of traffic at a distance greater than 10 miles. But as AI traffic is only visible (with aircraft labels) when the aircraft is 10 miles or less from your own aircraft, often I can't see the mentioned traffic to acknowledge.Unlike default ATC, there is no equivalent of "DON'T have the traffic in sight". And as controller will continually ask for acknowledgement, I usually have to lie to the controller and say I've seen the other aircraft when I haven't.

RonExcellent!!! I didn't know that the 1 + 2 keypresses could be changed by altering the SELECT 1 or 2 key assignments. TBH I had no idea what Select 1(2,3,4) keypresses were supposed to mean.Anyway like you I have used the same combination of CTRL + NUMERIC 4/2/6 for pushing back and turning (although I noticed that the original assignments being overwritten referred to adjusting the tilt of landing lights - not one I can say I've had to use :) )I also prefer to change views using the joystick where possible, using the Joystick hat control to pan around, and also have joystick buttons mapped to cycle views forward and backwards, reset zoom to 1, and maximise view. However the numeric keypad still functions as normal, when used without holding CTRL, should I wish to use the 8 directional view keys there at any time.And I can still continue using single keypresses 1,2,3 etc to communicate with RC4.Problem solved! Thanks again for that piece of knowledge.RegardsMark

Thanks, however I assume that means that I would need to use CTRL+SHIFT+1 or 2 each time I was selecting RC options eg to change frequencies or select options. This could be more difficult especially on approaches for landing when there is often quick ATC(RC) communications required.As far as I can see the default pushback left/right options are one of the few FS keypresses that cannot be changed (or mapped to joystick etc); as a pushback is normally carried out only once per flight, then it would make sense if possible to make this a multi-key press.

On the subject of pushing back from gate, is there a way of using RC4 and still being able to turn left/right during the push? Normally one would use keys 1 or 2, after SHIFT+P, however with RC4 in use the 1 and 2 keys are interpreted as different instructions.Any help would be welcome.