RALF9636

Majestic Q400. FO never says "maintaining ...". "Out of ... for ..." works.

- double post -

PF3. You can be vectored, fly complete SIDs and STARs or only parts of them. You can set up PF3 for what exactly you want to fly for each flight. Or you can have the free addon SimRandomizer (which works best with Multi Crew Experience but can also be used without it) make a random choice for you according to a preset you created for a specific airport or a type of airport. You can fly into the same airport several times and every flight will be different, for example with different shortcurts / directs within the STAR - like in the real world. Be aware that PF3 does not know by itself about SIDs and STARs or shortcuts / directs. It takes some effort to set it up the way you want, but it is just a minor part of a thorough flightplanning if you've done it a few times. What some consider a deficiency of PF3 plays out its advantages when you want to fly procedures that are totally realistic for a specific airport.

Time to bring this up again - maybe you feel like taking a little break from supporting more and more complex aircraft ... ;-) To sum up this thread, as far as I can see there are three topics still open: 1. Behaviour of the FO after landing. Since it probably is a substantial effort to rework the logic for an automatic request for taxi to parking after vacating the runway, I would be fine if the FO (even in "you have ATC - mode") would just do nothing automatic and only sends the request on my command (and copies it automatically) - just like it is before takeoff. 2. Variations on "as cleared" when checking in during cruise. I'd like to hear something like "Lufthansa 188 at flight level 3 2 0" when checking in. That is what I hear when listening to LiveATC.net as well as by the PF3 AI chatter. I've never heard "as cleared" there. MCE already does it like that when descending (and climbing? not sure about that right now) - but not during cruise. 3. VFR pattern reports by MCE-FO Words like "on final" / "on base" are missing (actually I haven't tested that with the latest build but I assume it is not fixed yet because there was no such announcement). Would be great if we could finally close this.

That also struck me right away. Maybe the Crew Boarding sequence should better be incorporated into the Catering sequence than into the passenger boarding sequence. In addition to that I would like to have the Cockpit Crew Boarding / Deboarding sequence optional. It's kind of weird to see the pilot walking into the aircraft when I am already sitting in my virtual cockpit. Furthermore most addon aircraft have pilots sitting in the cockpit in the outside view and it is even more weird to see the cockpit crew walk outside the aircraft and sitting in the cockpit at the same time. But that's really complaining about first world problems. Thanks a lot to Umberto and FSDT for this massive leap forward in the flight sim environment! Keep it up!

I can confirm that it works so far, both with my scripts that have always resulted in a freeze before and with a combination of spoken commands like a frequency change and "autopilot off". No crashes anymore, instead some clicks are missed. I guess these are the clicks that would have led to the freeze before. I can live with these lost clicks very well. Better to remind the FO of some duties than a crashed sim. Thanks a lot!

I managed to get along without crashes for some weeks by carefully making sure not to overstrain my FO, but today I made a mistake again: On final approach I advised my FO: "going to Tower". While he was changing the frequency I added: "autopilot off". The corresponding two 2d-panels collided - and P3D froze and crashed. So MCE ruined my flight on final approach - kind of worst case scenario. Afterwards I succesfully recreated that situation several times: Say "going to Tower" (or any other frequency) and then say "autopilot off" - the sim freezes and crashes. Any chance you can recreate the problem and look for a solution?

I think we have to distinguish two different phenomenons here. If I understand you correctly, you do not loose your autogen completely even when flying around longer in your dense testing area. The autogen is continously loaded, but keeps popping up in batches. That is what I experience too in dense areas. I also found that nothing helps but keeping the AG distance at medium. Even reducing the AG density to sparse does not help. It is also independent from FPS limits or FFTF settings. I'd love to see Rob do his test video (from the other thread) in the Bay Area with FTX NCA. The other phenomenon is the complete loss of autogen after some time. This can be cured by an FPS limit and an appropriate FFTF setting.

The free Microsoft TTS voices do not come close to the quality of the Cereproc voices. I tried them once - and never again.

I am only using TTS voices. Not so much because they sound less robotic but mainly because they offer more flexibility. Whereas there is a limited vocabulary for the recorded voices, you can make TTS voices say anything - you can even try to mimic foreign languages. I can recommend the Cereproc voices. I think they all are good (it needs to be an english voice of course). I like William but that surely is subjective. They go on sale from time to time, so maybe just pick one or two now and wait for a sale to get even more.

Thank you!

Thanks. So no affinity mask set?

So true. I also posted that a few times whenever this same old discussion came up. Everybody just needs to give his eyes and brain the chance to adapt to 20 or 25 FPS for a signifcant number of sessions before claiming he needs 30 or even 60 FPS for "smoothness".

Thanks a lot for your contribution, Rob. Sorry if I missed it but could you please communicate if you use HT on or off and any Affinity Mask, in particular with the 8700K? And do I assume correctly that all P3D.cfg settings you do not show in the video are at default values? Thank you!

I couldn't agree more on your list of long standing annoyances. I'd just add 8. disappearing cloudshadows depending on angle of view. Btw you probably know that you can to some extent cure No. 4 by increasing TextureMaxLoad, e.g. to 30. But that will worsen No. 6. I think No.7 is a result of No. 2. The buildings are rendered before the "final" mesh has been loaded.