Advice on using FS Captain with other addons

[dever23b]

Hello again guys:

I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to "properly"(/"most effectively") use FS Captain with my other software complement and get the most out of what each software excels at.  I really like FS Captain, but I feel like I only use a small fraction of what it has to offer because I don't know how to "blend" everything together properly.

I searched on Google and these forums, and not only did I not find much guidance, but I also didn't find much complaining either. Surely, I can't be the only pilot that flies for a VA with PMDG and FS2Crew; unfortunately, though, it appears I do not have the fortitude to overcome my challenge. Thus, I'm waving my white flag and modestly asking for assistance.

I apologize in advance for the length of this post. I realize nobody likes a novel for a post; however, I also wanted to explain my dilemma clearly in hopes of meaningful responses.

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My situation:

• I am a member of a VA: this creates a route conflict
• I primarily fly the PMDG 737 NGX: this creates loadout, loading, and manifest conflicts
• I use FS2Crew: this creates a FO and FA conflict
• I (currently) use SimBrief: this creates a dispatch conflict

Routing dilemma
My VA's policy on flight legs is similar to that of FS Captain: I can chose my flights, then they are "assigned."  My VA maintains a schedule that mimics that of the VA's real-world counterpart, and my flights must be chosen from among said schedule.  I do, however, have the option to fly the leg at the real-world-scheduled time or whenever else I would like.  What I don't know how to do is get FS Captain to agree with the routes I will potentially fly, so I find myself manually creating every leg.  This seems backwards, and also means I don't get to use the proposed payloads and such that FS Captain would otherwise have ready for me and overall detracts from the "FS Captain experience."  I considered that perhaps FS Captain was meant to be the VA, rather than play nice with one; however, I noticed that there are features designed specifically to allow FS Captain to interact with VAs, so my hypothesis was obviously incorrect. 

• How is FS Captain intended to relate to VAs and what is the recommended process for the interaction to be smooth?

PMDG dilemmas
I fly the PMDG 737 NGX.  Last I read and as far as I know, PMDG is quite territorial about the configuration of their aircraft.  As such, they provide a tool in the FMC to configure the aircraft fuel, payload, and passengers and (unless I'm just behind the times) recommend against allowing any other software to manipulate the aircraft thereto.  It occurred to me that I've been operating on the assumption that this is still the case.  I also find myself confused with how to properly sync PMDG's passenger weight with FS Captain's proposal.  My current "pre-preflight procedure" is to load my aircraft (prior to any other addons), repeatedly select random payloads until I have somewhat reasonable pax & cargo counts, then jot these down and use them for my manual flight creation in FS Captain.  Seems backwards, and again, detracts from the "FS Captain experience."

• Is FS Captain "compatible" with PMDG products, insofar as performing loading of fuel, cargo, and passengers?
  

FO & FA dilemma
I use FS2Crew (Reboot edition, if it matters).  I don't know how to get FS Captain to play nice with FS2Crew, and it sucks.  FS2Crew is a fantastic addon, with objectives vastly different than those of FS Captain, yet it seems like these two clash in a big way.  Here's my problem: if I leave the FO and FA on in FS Captain, I get the experience I really want from FS Captain.  But I also get duplication on almost every single FO sound trigger, as well as several on FA transmissions.  
However, if I disable the FO and FA in FS Captain, it seems like a massive part of FS Captain goes out the window.  The FS Captain feedback seems to be directly tied into FS Captain's "secondary" objectives.  With the features disabled, I lose the ability to communicate progress updates with the cabin (which is admittedly a redundancy with FS2Crew anyway), so it becomes impossible to get the PAXCOM professional flight scoring bonus.  Can FS Captain defer (at least some of) PAXCOM interactions to FS2Crew where applicable? I like how you guys made FS Captain realize when other software is doing stuff (ie: GSX boarding/catering/fueling, pushback & engine start, etc) and execute internal triggers accordingly.
I'm not sure if this is linked to whether the FO and FA are enabled or not, but I also can't get FS Captain to mesh with my boarding process: between FS2Crew, GSX, and FS Captain, my boarding process is a mess.  The Jetway extends and retracts 2-4 times prior to pushback, my main cabin door gets opened & closed enough times to give a door at Grand Central Station a run for its money, and I can't figure out how to get boarding(/deboarding) times anywhere near synced.   

• How can I get FS Captain to play nice with FS2Crew?  These two addons are too useful in their own, distinct ways, to be incompatible.
• How can I best get FS Captain to match up with GSX boarding times/actions?
• Can I configure FS Captain to "know" when I make cabin announcements through FS2Crew, accept those triggers for PAXCOM scoring?

Flight planning dilemma
I currently use SimBrief to generate my flight plans, primarily because:

1. It easily exports my flight information to VATSIM and my FS software/addons
2. It prepares fairly accurate (OUT/IN) times that I can use when I manually create the flights in FS Captain

Crappy reasons, I know.  My point is: I'm not married to my current flight planning solution; I just use what I use because it's free, easy, and very, very helpful.  However, developing my flight plan information has been a redundant mess for me.  First I get my leg from my VA.  I select the leg, commit it, take note of the routing and recommended cruise level, then I go to SimBrief and prepare the flight so that it will create flight plan files and prefile on VATSIM for me.  Then, I basically discard everything SimBrief gives me and start all over in FS Captain-- manually creating the flight, putting in all the numbers for a third time, and then using the OUT/IN times from SimBrief as my departure and arrival times for FS Captain.   It's all kinds of backwards, and completely destroys the "FS Captain experience" for me.  I'm clearly going about this all wrong, but I don't know what the right way is.

• What's the better way to do flight planning and sync it with FS Captain?

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FS Captain strikes me as a program that emulates a flight ops scenario.  It seems like I should be drawing most of my information from FS Captain in order to prepare for my flights.  Unfortunately, thus far I feel like I've been "bastardizing" FS Captain to bend to my flights and ultimately using little-to-no features of the software.  

Any advice or assistance you can provide that would help me to be able to utilize more of FS Captain without "going against the grain" as much would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for all the great work

[peter]

Hi Dever,

I am flying for a VA with about 20,000 scheduled flights, use PFPX for flight planning, used to fly the NGX, sometimes even with FS2Crew, and got everything working nicely with FSCaptain, even when using the economic mode of it. Here's how I deal with it.

VA: FSCaptain is designed to play nicely with VAs. Some people use it as their own VA, but of course the interaction with other pilots would be missing. You can create a schedule in FSCaptain that matches that of your VA. In addition, you can create a list of nodes that matches the charter destinations of your VA. If your VA supports this, you can use FSCaptain as an ACARS system for your VA. In my VA, the IT manager created a script that exports the schedule in FSCaptain format, so I didn't have to enter all 20,000 flights by hand. He also wrote a script that can import FSCaptain flights. The internal flight numbers in FSCaptain will be different from those of your VA, but you can specify a flight number for the export option.

PMDG: their products are compatible with FSCaptain (Dutch and Travis spent a lot of time to make that happen). I personally a
almost always load payload and fuel using the PMDG tools and then select "manual load" in FSCaptain's FCDU.

FS2Crew: I haven't used it much because I have an accent and FS2Crew tends to not understand me. However, you can remove certain callouts in FSCaptain using the options file. You could also cherry-pick what you want to hear by removing all sound files that you don't want to be played from the sound folder (back up the folders).

Flight Planning: without the economic mode, I would simply use Simbrief to create a flight plan and then commit to this flight in FSCaptain. My personal strategy is to use FSCaptain's administrator to generate a flight and payload for me. I then use PFPX or Simbrief to plan this flight, using the payload numbers generated by FSCaptain. I then import the flight to FSCaptain, adjust fuel and ETE according to my gut feeling, and then commit to it. The gut feeling factor is as follows: if you took good care of the FSCaptain configuration files for your airplane, then the numbers generated by FSCaptain are pretty good and you don't have to make a lot of changes. If not, then I take the time in the air from PFPX and add 5-15 minutes for taxiing at each airport depending on their size.

FSCaptain can provide you with pretty good information for a lot of your flight data. However, it is not a fully-fledged flight planning tool such as Simbrief or PFPX. If you want to rely on FSCaptain alone, then I would suggest the following:

- get a real-world route from flightaware.com or similar sites and create a flight plan
- Make sure your airplane is correctly configured in FSCaptain
- import the plan to FSCaptain and let it take care of the rest.

I sometimes do that, but I enjoy PFPX/Simbrief too much to do this very often. The main purpose of FSCaptain is to make
you a better pilot by making sure that your actions will have consequences. Everything else can easily be combined with
or replaced by other addons.

Cheers,
Peter

[Travis]

Dever,

How is FS Captain intended to relate to VAs and what is the recommended process for the interaction to be smooth?

As a summary, FSCaptain's intent is to simulate the workings of an Air Transport Airline from the Captain's perspective. A Captain is hired to fly an aircraft (possibly with some payload) from A to B. And to be on-time. And to not fly recklessly or break rules. And to not upset any passengers by keeping them fed and content.

In this regard, FSCaptain's main thrust was to provide a professional take on what would normally just be a flight in a simulator. That quickly grew into a focus to provide an "aviation" perspective where FlightSim was just about simulating a flight.

FSCaptain grew into a "check the weather for things that the simulator doesn't handle out of the box" add-on, which lead us into introducing our Hazard Pack of items that will continue to grow....

In many ways, the initial thrust of FSCaptain encompassed the structure of a VA. You have an airline, a set of flights, a (single) pilot, and flight results.

Some initial Captains also belonged to a VA (neither Dutch nor I were in a VA) and so Dutch began the process of allowing an export of FSCaptain flight data to these VAs. Peter has brought us more insight to the needs of VAs and is driving changes in that regard. We are welcome to any possibilities to more easily work with any VA - we just need to know what the needs are, and then to see how best to test our changes.

Peter's given you some answers which I trust are accurate.   Please follow up to us with any questions those answers may lead you towards.  

If you could provide your VA's schedule files (if they're easily readable) we could guide them into an FSCaptain compatible schedule format. (There seems to be a myriad of VA software, so we need to "interface" with as many as possible....)

As to routing, you mention that you manually create an FSCaptain flight. How?? Do you use the Specify Flight Details screen of the Administrator, or something else?

Does your VA give you a PAX count or a payload to carry? Or is it just "leave A at mmmm and arrive at B at nnnn?"

I feel that you could use the Specify Flight Details screen of the Administrator to specify many details for a flight - departure ICAO and time, arrival ICAO and time, payload, PAX, service level, flight number, etc. I think that would be the best tack for you to take for now. Please elaborate on any details and feel free ask any questions you have on this.

A future feature of FSCaptain - to ensure compatibility with our upcoming FSCompany - will read a data file generated by an external program to "lock in" certain details of such a flight. Much more detail would be allowed (the external program could specify how many First / Buisness / Economy passengers for instance.

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Is FS Captain "compatible" with PMDG products, insofar as performing loading of fuel, cargo, and passengers?

Yes in vague terms....

About the PMDG aircraft and loading, I only own the JS4100 and 747 (I'm old ) but it seems that the 737/777 have their own requirements in how to load their aircraft. And that's okay; it's their aircraft.

For such a "picky" aircraft, FSCaptain has the Suppress Auto-Load and Suppress Auto Payload options, as well as the Simulate Load option.

So in theory you can take your 777 for instance and have it not autoload payload nor fuel, but to simulate the loading of the payload. That would allow you to start your flight, key in your numbers to your PMDG FMC, and then have FSCaptain simulate loading hundreds of passengers in the time it would take to do so.

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Time is a very critical issue in regards to passenger flights for one reason.  As humans, we're mostly impatient. 

Have you ever taken a passenger flight, and have been seated and have realized that all other passengers have been seated... only to have to wait before moving to the runway because of some its-not-clear-at-the-time reason???

I have.  And I can recognize that such might be an issue which would make some PAX "complain."

Now for 1.7.0 and earlier, this will not be a factor.  But for future versions, if the airline or airport does not give you clearance to leave the gate, the timer won't start.

But if you have clearance to depart, and for whatever reason don't depart in a reasonable timeframe, you'll incur a new PAXCOM penalty.

Now if you're engaged in something safety-related such as undergoing Ground De-Icing, that time won't be applied.

But if you're simply "wasting passenger time" then you may have some complainers on-board for your flight. 

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How can I get FS Captain to play nice with FS2Crew? These two addons are too useful in their own, distinct ways, to be incompatible.

Earlier I mentioned FSCaptain wanting us to not break rules. Some rules are hard and fast. Some rules are entirely optional. Many of the "rules" require knowing the state of certain aircraft systems - lights, belts & smoking signs, and barometer settings for instance.

Many third-party aircraft have their own "state-tracking" for these systems that don't use the FS9/FSX standards, and so the idea of an "aircraft systems interface" was born. There's no in-simulator system to handle a cabin crew, so we have our own internal system.

Now, how to get FSCaptain to work well with FS2Crew? That's difficult for me to answer mostly because I only own the FS2Crew Default 737 and the PMDG 4100 versions, and I'm not aware of how much more recent versions work. The versions I own didn't have a lot of cabin crew interaction that I recall.

I will offer an option to have our FOs make advisory / warning callouts even if they are otherwise muted. But first, there's the voice difference. So you'd have to say "FS2Crew is my FO. That FSCaptain FO voice is my "Jimimy Cricket Conscience."

I have the same issue with my FO controller - Multi Crew Experience. In there I have a Text To Speech voice controlled female FO... and Dutch, telling me if I do anything wrong.

So, since I don't know how FS2Crew works in regards to its cabin service modeling, I'm a bit stumped as to a direct answer, although we're willing to work towards a common goal. So if the two of us are somewhat compatible in what we seek to model (starting service, pausing/resuming service, stopping service) then it's possible to co-exist. One of us would need to offer allow external control or to advertise our status, and the other would need to be aware of such an offer and to take control or be aware of the other's status.

Such would require one of us to either allow control from a third party, or to seek out any other party's current status and then to adapt.

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How can I best get FS Captain to match up with GSX boarding times/actions?

Ah - FSDT's GSX and FSCaptain.

FSDT decided against having a public API which would allow control of their services. And that's okay - doing so did not fit their programing and business models. But they did agree to export their services' status - which only needed a small amount of negotiation. That's why we're aware of what they can do, can't do, and are doing.

But there's no way to know "how long will this take?" because they don't export that data.

So any non-GSX program can know that GSX is offering "boarding," or is conducting "boarding," or has completed "boarding." But we can't know "how long will boarding take?"

Now FSCaptain prides itself as being a Jack of All Trades, and Master of a Few.... We admire the complexity of our boarding / deboarding times that Captains can control, as well as the detail which we bring to ground de-icing procedures. (We consider many different factors of current conditions as well as possibly offered de-icing facilities.)

But we want to work well with GSX, or any other ground service add-on. So we're willing to either adapt (given enough data) or to allow for adaptation of others.

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Can I configure FS Captain to "know" when I make cabin announcements through FS2Crew, accept those triggers for PAXCOM scoring?

As noted earlier, we would need to know FS2Crew's status in this regard or to allow control of our status by others.  (Is there an FS2Crew API?  Or would they be willing to adapt to an API we would develop??)

And for your final questions, I'll take this overarching one....

What's the better way to do flight planning and sync it with FS Captain?

1. If you have an external weather engine, run it and get the METAR/TAF data downloaded.
2. Using the weather data you have, use a flight planning software (I use AivlaSoft EFB, others use FlightSim Commander, PFPX, Plan-G, Simbrief, or others) to generate a PLN file.
3. Run the FSCaptain Administrator and go to the Dispatch tab.  Enter from where you want to fly from and select your aircraft.  Go to the Specify Flight dialog and enter your destination.  Include any scheduled times, weights, flight numbers, etc. (Either of these could come from an VA or from your FSCaptain airline.) You can enter as much of this data as you require.  Press Ok to return to the Dispatch tab.
4. Press List Flights, and if you've specified a specific destination, you'll be given the flight you've asked for. Select it.
5. Now load the PLN file into your FSCaptain Administrator's flight. Ensure FSCaptain has loaded the correct external weather. Then go through the remainder of the FSCaptain Dispatch process.

Unless you specify a fuel weight or payload weight, FSCaptain will create its own to fit the flight profile that it estimates....

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FS Captain strikes me as a program that emulates a flight ops scenario. It seems like I should be drawing most of my information from FS Captain in order to prepare for my flights. Unfortunately, thus far I feel like I've been "bastardizing" FS Captain to bend to my flights and ultimately using little-to-no features of the software.

As written earlier, FSCaptain wants to be a "Jack of all trades" so we are willing to bend to the requirement of other add-ons.  We only need to know their current requirements and expectations.

Now it is possible with some of the newer FSCaptain features, that a required VA flight may seem impossible to make. But we've planned for that....

From version 1.7.0 onwards, we offer each Captain the ability to not honor any airport which is currently deemed "closed" or "private use" or not able to sustain any Customs requirements in force in the modeled portion of the real world.

As an example, ten years ago you could make a real world flight to/from KATL and KPFN.  But several years ago, KPFN closed and a new regional airport in the area opened for flights to KATL.  (This new airport is not part of the FS9/FSX default airports.)  So if you were to fly with the FSCaptain option "RESPECT_CLOSED" as enabled, you could not make flights out of the box to or from KPFN within FSCaptain.

But what if your VA has flights to/from KPFN?? This is why FSCaptain has the option to take any of our restrictions and to allow each Captain to modify them.

So in theory you could make your VA flights to KPFN, but I could not have any flights offered to/from there as I do not have a VA requirement. Etc....

It's all part of trying to be "Jack of all trades...."

[Travis]

You had mentioned doors opening and closing. If you have a PAX flight and FAs on your aircraft, the FA's will open and close the #1 door.

I can see where that would affect GSX if they were still boarding PAX while we had finished. We would close the door and they would start dinging for you to open the door.

So for the "next" version I'll check to see if GSX is boarding PAX and not close the door until they're finished.

We don't do anything with jetways however. There's no way to test for their status, or even if one is present....

[dever23b]

Sorry it took me so long to reply. It's been a busy week.

Peter & Travis: I appreciate the in depth responses!

I'll download the 1.7 beta. Peter's dinged me a few times for using the "pretty old"/outdated 1.6 version -- I apologize. I was sticking with the posted "stable" version, because I figured that's what you all would expect me to be on if I was asking for support. Is there a reason a newer version hasn't been marked "stable" if that's what you guys are preferring people use?

As it pertains to VA schedules, I'll have to do some looking into this and follow up. My VA does not assign PAX or payload information, which is why I'd like to try to leverage FS Captain's features thereto if possible. As for the schedules, they seem to make a point to keep their schedules synced with real-world ones; I haven't had any issues with attempting to fly a route that FS Captain doesn't think is valid.

For FS2Crew interfacing ... do you guys already have a channel of communication with them as developers? Or, what would I need to do? I mean I can certainly go ask around in their forums, but it just seems like I wouldn't be much assistance to the process as a "middle man" versus the developers discussing things directly.

I'll follow up on this thread after I've used the beta version for a few flights. Perhaps some of my frustrations have been addressed already.

[Travis]

Sept 1, 2015 23:37:16 GMT -5 dever23b said:

Peter & Travis: I appreciate the in depth responses!

I'll download the 1.7 beta. Peter's dinged me a few times for using the "pretty old"/outdated 1.6 version -- I apologize. I was sticking with the posted "stable" version, because I figured that's what you all would expect me to be on if I was asking for support. Is there a reason a newer version hasn't been marked "stable" if that's what you guys are preferring people use?

Dever,

When I post a new build, I "hope" that it's stable.  If it's not, someone will let me know very soon....

It may be, it may not be.  Responses will tell me what all of you see....

Some of the items that I include are more "logging" bits that give us greater insight.

If any Captain points me to an area of code where I can add a "log this odd/silly bit here..." then I'll do that. Serendipity sometimes makes someone elses' bit of logging show me something that you're having problems with. Serendipity....

By reading the Release Notes, it should be evident what areas that I have (or lack) confidence in.

Sept 1, 2015 23:37:16 GMT -5 dever23b said:

As it pertains to VA schedules, I'll have to do some looking into this and follow up. My VA does not assign PAX or payload information, which is why I'd like to try to leverage FS Captain's features thereto if possible. As for the schedules, they seem to make a point to keep their schedules synced with real-world ones; I haven't had any issues with attempting to fly a route that FS Captain doesn't think is valid.

For FS2Crew interfacing ... do you guys already have a channel of communication with them as developers? Or, what would I need to do? I mean I can certainly go ask around in their forums, but it just seems like I wouldn't be much assistance to the process as a "middle man" versus the developers discussing things directly.

We don't have a pipeline to Bryan, since none of us use the FS2Crew products on a consistent basis. I would be happy to ping Bryan for some insight (or you can do so as you are more relevant, CCing me if you like).

Sept 1, 2015 23:37:16 GMT -5 dever23b said:

As it pertains to VA schedules, I'll have to do some looking into this and follow up. My VA does not assign PAX or payload information, which is why I'd like to try to leverage FS Captain's features thereto if possible. As for the schedules, they seem to make a point to keep their schedules synced with real-world ones; I haven't had any issues with attempting to fly a route that FS Captain doesn't think is valid.

This seems possible. While we can accept weights / payloads / fuel loads, we do not require such. Just knowing that you want to fly a/c B208 from AAAA to BBBB is good enough. Adding times, PAX & Cargo loads, departure and arrival times are just icing on the cake....

[hardmanrb]

Aug 27, 2015 1:15:07 GMT -5 dever23b said:

How can I get FS Captain to play nice with FS2Crew?  These two addons are too useful in their own, distinct ways, to be incompatible.

I'm currently using FSCaptain along with FS2Crew for the Majestic Q400 Pro. I have never enabled either the FO or FA since I've used FSCaptain and decided yesterday to enable the FA. I can see it opens a whole other side to being busy in the cockpit not to mention the additional scoring. Got dinged for not letting Heidi know to get ready for takeoff.    I also had to reprimand her for closing the door while we still had 13 minutes of boarding left but she got me back with the repetitive safety briefs and announcements. So this got me thinking, how can these two work together?  Idea... Why can't there be an option for the FA as already coded plus another FA option that only uses those options already under the ACARS "Comm"? From my experience the cruise part of the flight is what FS2Crew usually does not cover.

[peter]

Hi Rick,

I am using this combination (Q400, FS2Crew, FSCaptain) very often and it works great. The trick is to start FSCaptain somewhat later. I usually do that around 12 minutes before FS2Crew is done with boarding. If FSCaptain is faster with loading, you then can simply shorten the time in FS2Crew.

As far as I know, there is currently no option to avoid having two safety briefings, but your suggestion is really good

Cheers,
Peter

[hardmanrb]

Peter,

I'll give it a go but one of the issues I usually have is when firing up FSCaptain with doors already open (PMDG 737/JS41) it did not recognize it and would not allow me to load without closing then reopening. As a side note I noticed a drastic drop in FPS with the FA enabled. What was weird is I had to drop the screen resolution down to the monitor's native resolution (1980x1080) from running the sim with NVidia Control's DSR factor of 2.0 (2715x1527) to get FPS back up enough to complete the flight. Any thoughts on those? Thanks for the feedback and hopefully there can be a doable yet a very easy way to code to be more flexible! The work being put into this program is amazing. For that... a big thanks!

[Travis]

Rick,

"Doors" are something that I've pushed off until the next version of FSCaptain. It's just that more things keep being added to this version which is delaying work on other things.... 

We have a complete plan on how to address external door types - all four of them (crew, passengers, cargo, service). We hope to have such control available on the aircraft/override level, and on the airline/general level if you don't want anyone mucking around with your passenger doors, then we won't touch them!

There are many versions of FS2Crew and I only have two old ones (default 737 and JS4100). So we would need a matrix of what each FS2Crew FA does versus our FA, just to get an idea of how we could divide up the resources for perhaps the aircraft level of operations.

We've dropped a couple of notes to Bryan over the years about a few items and while he's nicely responded to our inquiries with a "let me think about it" form of response, there's never been any engagement.  I would suspect he's too busy with his work to consider our issues.

As a side note I noticed a drastic drop in FPS with the FA enabled. What was weird is I had to drop the screen resolution down to the monitor's native resolution (1980x1080) from running the sim with NVidia Control's DSR factor of 2.0 (2715x1527) to get FPS back up enough to complete the flight. Any thoughts on those?

I've no idea whatsoever.... (Btw, I only run in 1080 format - I'm unsure how to increase such....

Enabling an FA only has certain simple "IF.THIS.THEN" checks while on the ground, and only a few more such checks take place during a flight. Nothing that would affect the FPS on a "drastic" level.

Let's keep this channel open.  Perhaps the FA's roles can be best divided at the airline level... or perhaps we can move the FO's roles to the aircraft level.

Certainly the "door / exit" handling must be done at an aircraft level....

Regards,

[Travis]

One other thing. Some special aircraft don't use the standard simulator door signals, so such aircraft would need new interfaces.

If there are aircraft which don't respond to simulator status changes (nor signal their state) then we would need to make interfaces for them. We can't purchase license for all aircraft, and even for the aircraft we have we may not be current....

[hardmanrb]

Travis,

For info I tracked the FA announcements in FS2Crew (button) for the Q400 and here is what I found.

Preflight
At 4 Minutes Remaining the FA will make her Cabin Welcome Aboard announcement.
At 2 Minutes Remaining the cabin door will close (FA). The FA will tell you the cabin is ready to go.
Startup and Push back
After both engines are running and when the "After Start Checklist" is called, the FA will give the Departure Safety Brief.
Approaching the takeoff runway and after calling the "Before Takeoff to the Line", the FO tells FA's to be seated for departure. (There is no response by the PA)
During descent
At 8000 ft FA gives Landing Preparation Brief
After calling "After Landing Checklist", FA gives arrival brief.

Totally understand about the "more things" your incorporating in this program! Thanks to all for entertaining this idea. I think it could be one of those win wins.

[Travis]

Rick,

That's truly noted, although we have no way to track any FS2Crew's timings since we know of no LVAR-based counters....

Our next release will have a "global" option to opt-out of any exit/door handling. In future versions, we will expand this to airline- and to aircraft-specific handling.

Also, future versions will have global-, airline-, and aircraft-specific handling of FA generic audio suppression that would be similar to the current FO audio suppression values....

Regards,

[Travis]

After looking at the FA's roles, I can divide them into these types of audios:

• Boarding & deboarding ambience with PAX
• Crew interactions
• Pre-OFF PAX announcements
• Post-ON PAX announcements
• In-flight PAX announcements

That latter one can be divided into several types - belts on/off, normal climbout, electrical items can be used, descending, emergency from the cockpit, we're diverting, prepare for landing.

Then there's "this is a refueling stop".

So the choice here is to group these into no more than three categories to be disabled.

The crew interactions need to remain - it would seem goofy to signal the FAs to do something and not have a response.

We could just go with the three types of PAX announcements, but some of those in-flight announcements such as the belts, the emergency and the diversion simply seem to need to remain.

Then how to deal with the PAX interactions?  Are they harmless enough, or should they be lumped in with the PAX announcements?

All input is welcome - I'm looing to shoehorn this into the aircraft configuration for the current build, so decisions need to be made very soon.

Regards,

[hardmanrb]

Travis,

I think it would be just fine to have the audios lumped into two categories. Ground and inflight (>10Kft or configurable) as a start. The only other real conflict I see is the doors. Maybe in the Aircraft Characteristic tab in the administrator under "Inop Systems" or under "Crew & Duties" and option to disable door handling? Thanks for looking into this. Talk about customer service! Wow!