Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 2

[Orinks]

We need a setting on the voice settings page specific to each aircraft that disables ground callouts for aircraft that have a gauge to call out those for landing.

I still like IF doing it though for props and others that don't have them.

[Steve Waite]

HSI: CDI and GSI
Horizontal Situation Indicator
Course Deviation Indicator
Glide Slope Indicator

There are some good descriptions on google.

On the Voice settings page, this is early days and here are a few selections, not much so far. The voice and how to manage it is in flux and experimental. Thanks for all the comments, any are welcome.

The first speed checkbox is airspeed - the second Speed checkbox is for Vertical Speed ( a typo in the program misspelled calls the same description for both). The screen reader description on the second speed box is wrong - it is for VS it should say Vertical Speed.

Since there are a few aircraft and some addons do some speaking. I can put a setting on the aircraft page for speech settings on a per aircraft basis if there are many. We shall see what the requirements are then look at that since there's more to come yet and with assistance functions thrown in there too.

[jfayre]

Hi,
In playing with this yesterday, I'm wondering how close we are to being able to use the built-in autopilot functions from the sim and avoid FS Tramp? I know we might still need Tramp to get us to the proper runway, but it occurs to me that this may be about the only thing we need it for soon. Well, maybe for flying sids.
If the CDI is read out, I should be able to adjust headings right from the sim using ctrl+shift+H and the plus and minus keys. Also, adjusting altitude can be done by pressing Ctrl+Shift+z and then plus or minus to increase or decrease the value. Same with airspeed, vertical speed, etc.
If I use ATC to get me to a point where I can set the GPS to nav mode, how far can I get? Will the existing callouts allow me to land? As I understand, the IF waypoints can pretty much get me down to the ground.
Incidentally, the nav/gps switch doesn't have a defined hotkey by default. I needed to set one in the sim settings.
Will the speech module read waypoints yet?
Thanks Steve for all your work on this!

[Orinks]

So I streamed a flight last night that was pretty successful minus the flare but that's not IF's fault. Had an amazing approach and landed very hard 8 feet off the line, but IF definitely helped me know when it was time to get ready for approach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTr-7Xcc4KY

[Orinks]

jfayre,

I can provide some insight into what you're asking.

We will need Tramp to fly sids/stars, as Tramp is a doable gateway into what an FMS does with sids/stars. Those waypoints don't go in the flightplan, but are flown separately by the FMS and Tramp is our only option for getting that experience currently. IF will only put one waypoint of a sid or star into the plan because it's the FMS's job to fly the previous/next parts of it. Tramp does that.

Likewise, since the sid/star waypoints aren't in the plan IF won't read when you cross them. When you cross your first plan waypoint IF will read it after your sid is done.

Tramp's waypoints will get you to the ground yes, but if you are using something like ActiveSky you need to go in and change the weather information to reflect the winds so that IF chooses the right runway. IF Weather is nice, except when you're flying along and the plane gets pushed from behind by a strong wind and causes an overspeed. When I use IF weather, I like the idea of random weather, (I have it on in weather settings) but not at the expense of that happening.

So yes, we need Tramp to fly sid/stars/approaches, especially approaches with just a localizer and no glideslope. Those are back course approaches.

As for callouts, yeah, IF currently does a nice job at call out AGLs when landing, but also mentions other things like GSI and other bits of information that is potentially useful, but the most important thing there is either the IF callouts, or listening to the aircraft ones.

HTH.

[Steve Waite]

To avoid winds, which IF will give you normally, have a go at turning down wind severity in IF weather - select wind severity -6 for example will tone down everything to do with wind hopefully. The second list box on the weather page.

[Steve Waite]

Beware of thermal lift over airports, especially with lots of tarmac on a sunny day, could cause problems with flare. Might be a good idea to tone down thermal lift and sink to minimums for an easier landing.

[Steve Waite]

What I might do is choose Computed approach and Initial Departure Fix. The GPS route to final will be 90/60/30 and 45/45 selectable from the other approach settings on the mission page. Those are GPS waypoints so will be called out.

With computed approaches, each section is the computed distance at your speed, selected in the aircraft params and section times in the Mission page. So we find the final leg is five minutes, preceded by up to four three minute sections.

Ideal Flight is calling out the GPS notification of passing waypoints on the plan, so the GPS won't see waypoints in the FMS STAR or SID. SID/STAR accommodates routing for when things are less than ideal, go arounds, waiting, slotting in to a queue. A complication I feel that is not required for landing and navigation practices. Mainly found in planners that only have access to an AIRAC. IF has access to the sim navigation, fsAerodata, and the AIRAC of choice.

What can be achieved quite simply is an option to call out any waypoint passed over, if that would be helpful. So long as IF indexer has met those waypoints in the data, they can be spoken of when flown over.

[Steve Waite]

Improvements so far - VSpeed calls are now simple, detailed, or off. When selecting the Voice settings during the sim the confirmation of setup won't be read out when closing the form, uncheck the sim setting pause on task switch if you want the sim to continue. The sim rate reads correctly now, but only reads out up to 4x.

Several have reported feedback to suggest that there's no affect of lag or problems on the sim or the PC when IF reads out. That's because IF is a true multi-tasking program.

[Orinks]

IF voice does lag a bit I guess simply because of the fact that this is Sapi we're using and not sent directly to a screen reader...

For example, When I turn on the parking brakes, turn on the AP master switch, etc, the speech I get is not instantaneous. While not really an issue for those switches, the issues comes when i was messing with the altitude and heading bugs. Pressing dash/equals there's a delay when moving those, speech wise.

I'm using Seroproc Megan if that matters any.

Also for the record I love IF's go to approach feature. I use it to practice ILS landings now that we have speech to tell us when nav1 has the localizer, however the only way I know if the glideslope has been captured is when IF starts reading information about the GSI. Even then, I'm not sure if that necessarily means that I have captured it. When it says 0 percent GSI I'm pretty certain at that point.