Voice Codec

[Luca Brazza 1279338]

When will this be updated?

[Karwan Ahmadi 1251958]

It`s vatsim, so never

[Luca Brazza 1279338]

It`s vatsim, so never

[Henry Weber]

Im also wondering why arent we hearing about this anymore? Last time we heard something about it was in 2016 or so.

I dont understand why we still have to hold onto fsinn and squawkbox. Nobody uses Fs2002 anymore, and the Fs2004 user base is so small, that almost no dev. is doing something for it.

Time has come to move on and let go of this 2 old clients.

 

We have 2 clients currently that are more or less activley supported, vpilot for FSX/P3D and xsquawkbox for X-Plane. Why not just accept these as the default clients now? Using 1 or 2 clients makes everything easier as we see on the other virtual air traffic network.

Dont know what the status is on swift but its very slow. So why not stick with VPilot and Xsquawkbox for now?

[Johnny Coughlan]

When will this be updated?

 

I dont understand why we still have to hold onto fsinn and squawkbox. Nobody uses Fs2002 anymore, and the Fs2004 user base is so small, that almost no dev. is doing something for it.

Time has come to move on and let go of this 2 old clients.

Edited April 30, 2017 at 09:48 AM by Guest

[Ernesto Alvarez 818262]

you guys dont keep up in the forum lol search, last topic was right around the corner

 

is it that time of the month of again? send me some easy pop Johnny!

[Ryan Geckler]

you guys dont keep up in the forum lol search, last topic was right around the corner

 

is it that time of the month of again? send me some easy pop Johnny!

 

It does show that there is a a definite interest in updating things however... it's not the same people talking about it over and over.

[Daniel Hawton]

The only annoyance is the built in lag... the voice quality is better than real world radios.

[1275389]

The only annoyance is the built in lag... the voice quality is better than real world radios.

I only care about the lag as well. Quality is fine IMO.

[Lionel Bischof 1178908]

The only annoyance is the built in lag... the voice quality is better than real world radios.

How can someone say this with a straight face? The audio quality of real ATC comms is lightyears ahead of what we have currently. Even when listening through LiveATC, which is not ideal, you can already hear a huge difference.

[Bradley Grafelman]

How can someone say this with a straight face?

Fairly easily after experiencing comms in the real world and realizing the interference and/or old radios/audio panels can make it much, much worse (although some people's mics certainly give 'em a run for their money).

[Ryan Geckler]

How can someone say this with a straight face?

Fairly easily after experiencing comms in the real world and realizing the interference and/or old radios/audio panels can make it much, much worse (although some people's mics certainly give 'em a run for their money).

 

Agreed. There's just as wide of a disparity between microphones in the real world as there is on the network. Lag is the issue, not the quality.

[Randy Tyndall 1087023]

Nobody uses Fs2002 anymore, and the Fs2004 user base is so small, that almost no dev. is doing something for it.

Time has come to move on and let go of this 2 old clients.

 

I beg to differ with you. I still have FS2002 installed and use it from time to time on the network. I also have FS2004 and FSX installed and use them as well. FS2004 is my "Go To" simulator and without FSInn I would be dead in the water. FS2004 works very, very, very well for me. I have so many addons for it that I can almost guarantee it beats FSX default...except for the "flat" world so I cannot fly over the poles.

 

There are still developers working with it so I think your statement is a personal opinion not based on fact. Yes, usage is declining, but there is still a pilot base out there, a substantial one I think (personal opinion) that justifies keeping FSInn around until a new client will work with it. vPilot will not!

 

Maybe it's time for a new MITRE Study, although that entity probably no longer exists. Yes, I'm dating myself here.

 

Randy

[Ryan Geckler]

I'd be curious to see how many users still primarily use FS2002 - I can't imagine it's going to be a substantial enough amount to warrant upkeep of a client that supports it. FS2004 is another story, and I don't know the technicals behind why vPilot cannot be used on FS2004, but if such is thing is possible for Ross to do, then ideally we get rid of SB/FSInn and use vPilot.

[Henry Weber]

I'd be curious to see how many users still primarily use FS2002 - I can't imagine it's going to be a substantial enough amount to warrant upkeep of a client that supports it. FS2004 is another story, and I don't know the technicals behind why vPilot cannot be used on FS2004, but if such is thing is possible for Ross to do, then ideally we get rid of SB/FSInn and use vPilot.

I think this picture speaks of itself.

It would be interesting to know how this is on VATSIM though, and if there is still a somewhat smaller user base. As Ryan said, it would be nice if Ross could do some work on Vpilot to make it work with FS2004, so we could get rid of SB/Fsinn and finally move to a better voice codec.

[Randy Tyndall 1087023]

Interesting pie chart and probably representative to a certain degree, but without knowing what this chart is based on renders it somewhat less meaningful until the demographics of the data are known. If this is usage among a specific VA with only 50 members it is less meaningful than a poll of who uses what on what situation, online or offline and, if online, what network or multiplayer server.

 

I don't think, and I could be wrong...I have been many times in the past, that the VATSIM servers track which flight simulator is connected, so any data would have to be user generated by replying to a poll or survey and even then the data could be skewed by who responds and who doesn't.

 

This is, however, getting somewhat off the topic of the voice codec, although pertinent to one of the reasons the current codec is being used.

 

I have used vPilot with FSX online and had absolutely no issue with it although I did miss my FSINN "radar screen" to know what aircraft were near me. It was FSInn's bells and whistles that attracted me to it in the first place. vPilot is more user friendly, of that there is no doubt, yet I have to say I have had absolutely no troubling installing and using either one despite all the posts in both sections of the forum that are inundated with people who cannot get both vPilot and FSInn to work. The reason I feel I have had such good success with both is that I read and follow the installation instructions and docomeentation word for word and item by item. I never presume that the install process for one application is the same for all applications. Just because I once saw a white horse doesn't mean all horses are white.

 

Anway, it would nice to know the demographics of the offered chart.

 

Randy

[Ross Carlson]

I don't know the technicals behind why vPilot cannot be used on FS2004

 

vPilot uses the SimConnect interface provided by FSX and P3D. FS2004 has no such interface.

 

Our savior for being able to drop support for SB and FSInn will be swift.

 

Also, vPilot runs outside of the sim, which means it is not an option for users which run FSX in full-screen mode. Again, swift will be the answer there.

[Henry Weber]

Interesting pie chart and probably representative to a certain degree, but without knowing what this chart is based on renders it somewhat less meaningful until the demographics of the data are known. If this is usage among a specific VA with only 50 members it is less meaningful than a poll of who uses what on what situation, online or offline and, if online, what network or multiplayer server.

 

Sorry I forgot to mention but its from Aerosoft, they do their polls several times a year and this was the last one.

This is the topic on the Aerosoft forum: http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/115546-annual-poll-on-platform/&

[Arthur Melton]

leave FSInn alone I use it all the time in FS2004.

[Daniel Hawton]

The only annoyance is the built in lag... the voice quality is better than real world radios.

How can someone say this with a straight face? The audio quality of real ATC comms is lightyears ahead of what we have currently. Even when listening through LiveATC, which is not ideal, you can already hear a huge difference.

 

As someone who controls rw, I can easily attest that the coms on VATSIM (except lag) are far more clear than anything I ever work with... especially my remote communications sites. Comparing LiveATC to what I hear on VRC, sorry, I have to disagree .. and this is when I'm not sitting on position at work .. which is worse than VRC by a long shot.

[Ross Carlson]

leave FSInn alone I use it all the time in FS2004.

 

FSInn will eventually go the way of the dinosaur ... it has been abandoned by the developer and it contributes to the lack of progress on the network. As soon as there is a suitable replacement (and yes, "suitable" is a subjective term), AND we advanced our technology to the point where abandoned clients no longer function (such as a voice codec update) then FSInn will cease to work.

[Arthur Melton]

By that time then I may be ceasing to work lol. Art

[Jonathan Fong]

As was suggested in a previous thread discussing this issue, what's the issue with developing a simple 'voice client' application which can connect to VATSIM and whose sole purpose is to connect to voice? It wouldn't even need to be that complicated - you could forgo pulling the frequencies from the sim and simply enter them in manually in the client with something like a dropdown menu or scroll wheel (less realistic, I know, but much easier to program than code to pull radio data from all the major sims). It could be made to pull geographical data from VATSIM (sent from the main pilot client - SB or FSInn) to determine radio frequency ranges and such.

 

In regards to changing the codec itself - I believe Ross has previously suggested that a hybrid system could be used (and wouldn't be difficult to implement) where for a period of time (say, a month or two) both codecs, new and old, would be accepted by the server, along with automated PMs being sent to each user each time they log in to remind them to either update their clients to the latest versions compatible with the new codec or download the new voice-only client to allow them to talk on the new codec before the hard switchover date where only the new codec would be used.

 

Any way we do things, there will always be a few people who likely won't get the memo, possibly due to low activity on the network and not seeing public announcements or reading PMs, but it's a risk to be taken and we'll always get some of them regardless of how we do things. One thing's for certain though - whether the issue is lag, quality, or both, our network desperately needs a voice upgrade.

[David Zhong]

A separate voice client would not be able to retrieve the controller info, which contains the voice channel information for each controller, unless it created a second connection. Such a client would not be able to pull any data from the main pilot client as you suggest without modification to that client.

 

The hybrid system is being investigated, but I would caution making suggestions on the difficultly of such a solution without an understanding of how the server software and codec software work.

[Ross Carlson]

I haven't thought this through yet, so it may be a terrible idea for reasons I haven't considered yet, but I wonder if we could create a an app that would be a combination of a proxy server and voice client. FSInn would connect to the proxy instead of connecting directly to the network. The proxy would then connect to the network on FSInn's behalf. It would also handle connecting to the new voice server architecture.

 

Since the app wouldn't know what frequency the radios were tuned to in the sim, it could show a list of in-range controllers and allow the user to manually select which one to connect to via voice.

 

I'm not sure if this would work for SB3 because I don't remember if SB3 lets you enter your own server address, but if it doesn't, we could add "local proxy" to the list of servers downloaded from the VATSIM data servers.