Dual USB Headset on single PC?

[Bernd Boruttau]

Dear community,

I am currently planning the technical side on participating in the upcoming ctp together with a friend as copilot. We would be sitting in front of the same PC with some sort of pilot flying/pilot monitoring workload sharing (not! remote shared cockpit).

The main question I have is how do we organize audio/headsets?

• We have a single sim (x-plane) and therefore only a single x-pilot instance running.
• We have 2 USB! headsets
• We have 2 monitors with speakers but no external speaker.
• We have multiple ways of realizing the PPT button (on the yoke, via keyboard, via a separate second numpad like device)
• We have a laptop fo charts and stuff

The Problem: the single x-pilot instance can only handle a single audio device attached as input and/or output but I would like us both to have headsets.

Idea 1:

Using a single headset mic and monitor 1 speakers as output (the other monitor would output the sim sounds).
We would then have to hand the headset over if one of us needs a short break.
We would use the numpad device for PTT and hand it over as well.
I currently dont know how well we can understand ATC on the monitor speakers (having a first testflight this weekend).

Idea 2:

We could run a separate Audio for Vatsim client instance. I dont know if this is even possible/legal as the AFV client only shows up in the ATC software section.
With this Setup I would hope to even assign a second PTT button????

Idea 2A:

Using a stand alone AFV Client on the laptop. Therefore also having a second ptt button.

Idea 3:

There is some magic piece of software that accepts the input of both headsets and channels it into one virtual device which then connects to x-pilot. And the other way around splits the signal coming from x-pilot to be used by 2 separate devices.
This setup would still require a PTT button hand over.

 

Conclusion

I would prefer idea 2/2A but dont know if this is legal on vatsim (dual connect) or if it can work this way.

Could somebody please shine some light onto this or might give an idea for a better place to look for a solution?

 

Happy flying
Bernd

[Lauri Uusitalo]

This should still be valid: