DickB

Last evening I made a tiny (tiny) change to one of my aircraft config files, which resulted in FSX crashing at the Free Flight screen. Reversing the change had no effect. Nor did restoring the whole old SimObjects folder. Nor did deleting FSX.CONFIG and letting FSX build another one. Nor did anything else I tried. I was beginning to get that old sinking feweling which precedes a complete FSX re-instal. But fortunately I recently installed Acronis True Image 2012 and have been using it regularly to back up the system. So I pointed it at the latest backup and asked it to restore, which it did. 30 minutes later I was back up and running. Magic ! Now all I've got to do is remember what I changed/added since the last backup :-)

That looks very nice Pe11e. Perhaps when you're done with these you could rework the FSX autogen buildings. They've been bugging me for years. Far too white and bright for starters.

There are times when I wish it would ! If I have a head cold it's pointless me trying to talk to ATC :-)

Although MCE (as the name suggests) majors on providing communication with virtual crew members, there are many (including me) who use it solely for talking to FSX or RC4 ATC. I fly exclusively VFR without any crew, so I disable all that stuff. I also use FSX ATC, which I find perfectly adequate for the kind of flying I do. I did look at VoxATC a while back, but apart from the fact that it is clearly aimed more at serious airline pilots, I found it too rigid in its phraseology (you need to be pretty much word perfect, to the point that it offers you scripts to follow), whereas MCE allows you a lot more latitude.

It can be diffocult getting your transmission in at busy airports. There are a couple things you can do to help: The freeware package EditVoicePack (EVP) can be used to speed up the default FSX ATC phraseology and give you more gaps. Also, your PTT input is not processed until either you release the PTT button or it times out. So you can hold the PTT button down until there is a pause in the ATC chatter and then release it to get your input processed. You can also extend the PTT button timeout. I can't remember what the default is, but you can extend it to maximum 30 seconds by adding: PTTTimeout=3000 to the ATC section of your mce.ini file. (Note that there are two mce.ini files on your system. The one you need to change is (for W7) in the Users\<<yourid>>\appdata\roaming\Multi Crew Experience folder.) This is how I run and it works fine.

You only need to copy airlines.cfg if it has been modified e.g to add new airline names created via EVP.

I've done this a couple of times, but I've done it by saving the original .evp files (EVP modifications) when I made them and then Importing them individually via EVP on the new system. This can take a while if there are lots of them, but it works. I also believe there is a Backup/Restore facility in EVP to do this in one go, but I've never used it. Both of these options assume you backed up before you had the problem. If you didn't, then I THINK you should be able to copy across the two files which EVP modifies, which are airlines.cfg and usenglishbig.gvp. Not sure where they are, but they shouldn't be too difficult to find. Back them up first of course ! EDIT: Apparently usenglishbig.gvp can be usenglishsmall on some versions of FSX. In either case it should be in the /sound folder

MCE also talks to RC4 should you ever get bored with pressing buttons :smile:

Certainly worth reporting to ORBX. I believe they have a Service Pack in preparation addressing a list of reported issues.

MCE offers a full function free trial version, so you can try for yourself. And their support (via email) is excellent.

If you're happy with FSX default ATC terminology and voices (not everyone is), then Multi-Crew Experience allows you to talk to that very easily and naturally instead of selecting the options.

Mmm - not that then. But there are loads of very experienced and helpful folks on here - maybe someone else can guess at the problem.

When you say 'thrown about', do you mean up and down, or just veering off to the side (probably the left) on take-off or in the air ? If the latter, then in FSX go check Settings/Realism. It's probably your P-Factor setting is too high. This will cause your (propellor) aircraft to pull to one side when you advance the the throttle. This happens in real life, but by default it's generally set too high in FSX to be realistic for light aircraft.

I didn't know that Hook - I must check it out. Although most of the time I fly without a keyboard :unsure:

You can indeed assign a hotkey to any view. But then you come to the next problem (again, if I remember correctly), which is that although the hotkey will snap to the required view, if it happens that you had panned that view last time you used it, you will get the panned view, not the initial setting. And for the VC view, I wanted to snap to the original forward view. But then I'm just picky :rolleyes:

I can't help feeling there is an easier way to do it, and that I misled myself all those years ago. I'm inclined to take a fresh look at it, but I'm also considering moving to OpusFSX Live Camera for my views (and other stuff), so I might see how that works first.

Thanks Fielder - that's not what I expected. I'll have to revisit that ! I agree - that should work. Bit of a chore though !

I believe that changing the eyepoint in the aircraft.cfg will change the position (for that aircraft only) of any camera view defined with origin=Virtual Cockpit. So typically it is likely to change VC panel views, co-pilot view etc. It won't affect any external or 2D views.

But that has other effects as Fielder reports above. The only way I found to change the F9 view for a specific aircraft was as described at the top of this topic. If there is an easier/better way I'd love to find it !

Fielder - glad you have a solution that works for you. Question: does that method allow you to switch back to your chosen VC view using the Virtual Cockpit View shortcut (default keystroke F9) ? If it does, I may adopt it too. But my recollection is that operating that control gives you the original VC view, not the 'new' one that you have created.

I remember trying that too, and I believe it created another view that you could cycle to, but FSX didn't recognise it as the default VC view. That was the difficult part. The specific GUID seemed to be the key.

Mmm. I remember trying that, and for some reason that didn't work for me. Not sure why. Maybe I needed to change something else in the VC definition. But it should be an easier solution to the current request.

I spent a lot (a lot) of time on this a couple years back. Here's what I found, and the method I use as a result (there may be others !) I don't have any of the apps that allow you to define other views (e.g. EZCA or OpusFSX), so this is with default FSX. The default VC view seems to be controlled from the Virtual Cockpit view defined as CameraDefinition.002 in cameras.cfg with a GUID of {C95EAB58-9E4A-4E2A-A34C-D8D9D948F078}. This is common to all aircraft, and is the view you will get if you select the VIEW_VIRTUAL_COCKPIT_FORWARD control .You can add InitialXyz and InitialPby statements to this definition, but the changes will affect all your aircraft. Which is probably not what you want ! If you merely copy this view definition into your aircraft.cfg for the specific aircraft you want to change, that won't work either, since FSX will only allow one view in the system with that GUID active. And the GUID is what is important - it seems that is hard-coded into FSX as the VC view. So what you have to do is: Back up cameras.cfg and your aircraft.cfg(s) so you can back out to the originals Copy/Paste the Virtual Cockpit definition from cameras.cfg to the aircraft.cfg of the aircraft you want to fly. Change the CameraDefinition.nnn number to one that doesn't already exist in the atrcraft.cfg Add the appropriate InitialXyz and InitialPby statements Remove or comment out the original Virtual Cockpit definition in cameras.cfg Doing this works. The downside is that you have to add this definition to every aircraft you want to fly - not a problem for me, as I only fly one or two types, but a real pain if you fly a full hangar.

Hi theskyisthelimit - see my PM.

That's not entirely true. Radar Contact isn't a pre-req for MCE. It interfaces with FSX ATC too. And it is not 'just pressing buttons through MCE voice commands' (although you can use it that way if you want to). You speak to ATC using ATC phraseology. Give it a try. It's free.