Re: [Flightgear-devel] That blaring voice...

[Skip E. <sk...@sw...>]

I am a pilot, instrument rated. Started flying when I was 14. When I 
start my Piper Comanche I power on the avionics master which starts the 
radio stack but I receive nothing at that time. My number 2 Comm is set 
to the field ATIS and I select it on the audio panel to get the 
information and check the radio. I then de-select Comm 2, select Comm 1 
and switch it to ATIS just to ensure the radio is working. I then switch 
Comm 1 to the advisory frequency, clearance delivery, or whatever is 
next on the agenda and proceed. All this is on my checklist.


Having the radio talking before I am ready and before I select it is 
poor cockpit resource management.


I would prefer the initial help announcement and any automatic radio 
chatter be suppressed.


For what its worth.

Skip Egdorf


On 9/30/24 3:13 PM, Josh Davidson wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> By all means, your approach of adding something to QT is a good idea 
> to me.
>
> Maybe I have failed to explain properly.
>
> I can't speak for every IRL pilot. But when I was in flight training 
> (rip... I am now too ill to continue), what we would do is tune ATIS 
> into comm2 and leave comm2 MUTED until we needed it. Then we unmute, 
> listen to him, and then mute it again when done.
>
> So yes, we do "turn off" ATIS.
>
> And, cannot "adjust frequency" because FlightGear tunes it by default 
> unless you override it (like my planes do). So, you're left with 
> starting the sim to blaring ATIS, when you're in the middle of 
> power-up or whatever.
>
> It makes no sense.
>
> Plus, the thing is reading out instructions for AI airplanes, or even 
> telling me I am cleared for takeoff, callsig (lol, the default?) all 
> in that harsh, irritating voice.
>
>  *
>     If you want to not hear the text-to-speech at *all*, ‘just’ set
>     the ATC volume to zero, surely?
>
> I do not think this "fake ATC" should be enabled by default. It makes 
> no sense. I would wager that 99/100 people who use flightsims want an 
> interactive ATC such as VATSIM, the FlightGear MP/Mumble/FGCom, or 
> RedGriffen ATC. They do not want to hear some random ATC blaring in 
> the background in an annoying voice while they're just trying to start 
> their plane up.
>
> So I think this "fake ATC" like any other ATC option, should be an 
> opt-in, not an opt-out.
>
> When the sim is started, there should be no blaring voices.
>
> --
> Josh Davidson
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* James Turner <ja...@fl...>
> *Sent:* Monday, September 30, 2024 15:02
> *To:* FG Developers List <fli...@li...>
> *Subject:* Re: [Flightgear-devel] That blaring voice...
>
>
>> On 30 Sep 2024, at 18:20, Josh Davidson 
>> <jos...@ou...> wrote:
>>
>> If flightgear implements some sort of run once that asks that, no 
>> objections.
>>
>> But this default blaring voice should be off by default
>>
>> It's essentially a very very poor screen reader and I challenge to 
>> find a single other piece if software that puts such a thing on by 
>> default.
>
> We can certainly make such a question part of the first-run sequence 
> the launcher does, and yes in principle the current launcher UI is 
> accessibility enabled because it’s built on Qt. Of course our main 
> in-sim UI is completely invisible to a screen-reader of any kind.
>
>>
>> However my objection is mostly with the read commands for ATC and 
>> ATIS. Because they don't stop. They keep blaring.
>>
>
> This seems odd to me: the system only plays the messages you would 
> hear with the corresponding frequency tuned .. and in the case of AWOS 
> / ATIS, it’s of comparable quality. If you were seated in the 
> aeroplane, you wouldn’t ’turn off’ ATIS or similar, you’d either 
> adjust the volume, or change frequency … so why is what FG currently 
> does, different? We certainly don’t want to default our COM radios to 
> volume=0, and we do want to make COM stations play the best 
> approximation of ‘real’ audio we can, so I don’t see how we could do 
> better?
>
> If you want to not hear the text-to-speech at *all*, ‘just’ set the 
> ATC volume to zero, surely? And then you’re relying on reading the 
> on-screen text, of course. Given that setting is in a dialog labelled 
> ’sound’, I would say it’s not exactly hidden, and not an unreasonable 
> default?
>
> Kind regards,
> James
>
>
>
>
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