Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 2

[Steve Waite]

...I uploaded the film with simpler audio.

[Orinks]

Wow, I love that it says what surfaces you're on while taxiing. Not sure if it did that in the previous version because I never tried it, but that's great.

Also, in the video did I hear it say "in cloud"? Does it speak when you're flying in other weather conditions?

[Steve Waite]

Yes rain and snow is reported.

Nice to know what surface we are taxiing on. Later, we'll know if we are on the centreline.

I'm looking into how to do getting to and from the runway. All ideas welcome.

[Steve Waite]

In-Cloud means within the vicinity or very close to clouds as well. The location of clouds with FSX and P3D are not very specific, because clouds are represented with flat texture sprites and don't have volume dimensions. Low visibility within the cloud is not signalled by the sim. This might improve in the new sims.

Currently, the Way In-Cloud is signalled is when we are within the zone of cloud drawing. Within that zone, depending on settings, clouds are rendered, so we might be in low visibility of the cloud or we might be in clear sky nearby.

[Orinks]

Well, here's my thoughts on the latest preview.

When reporting flaps, it appears we have to have both degree reporting and percentage on. If percentage is not checked under voice settings, degrees is disabled. Is this by design or a bug?

When setting flaps before takeoff, I'm mainly just interested in degrees and it's confusing me when I'm getting two numbers. 0 degrees when up, but I get things like 15 flaps trailing, 19 degrees flaps leading, etc. I just want to be able to set flaps 5, 10, 15 etc.

Also, to add to the tunage of the speech, while the delay slider is helpful, I think I still want the ability to fine-tune it even more by turning off specific things. E.G. turning off Autopilot Functions turns off speaking of all values input into autopilot. I'd like to be able to just turn off the speaking of the VS AP value, for example, but leave AP speed reporting on.

These presets are a great idea, though I think they can be expanded by having them change automatically based on the phase of flight we're in. The ability to do this should be an option, but before takeoff, I like to have the throttle percentage speak so I can put some in before enabling takeoff power. As soon as IF registers I've taken off, I want that off because autothrottle handles it from there.

As for taxi, this is a hard one because I don't know what IF can get as far as reading taxiway data. Our goal, especially when taxiing on Vatsim, is to be able to program a specific taxi path, such as taxi via Bravo taxiway to runway 22-L.

When you squawk Mode C on Vatsim with a client such as vPilot, the controllers can see which taxiways/runways you're crossing and know if you're taxiing as per their instructions. I'm not sure how these clients are getting that data, but perhaps IF can use that data to use pathfinding to automatically taxi?

I am thinking that some hotkeys would need to be established if this were possible, however. In the event that I'd have to hold short at my current location, or when the hold short point is for that runway when you're asked to hold short runway X. So we need a hotkey for hold short, and a hotkey to continue taxi.

As for taxi speed, this could be an aircraft parameter that can be maintained with the autothrottle.

These are my ideas for how I'd like things to be done. If nothing else, IF can provide a way to skip to the runway, as Vatsim seems to be more accepting of that, but if we can create a taxi solution everybody will just be more amazed.

[Steve Waite]

The flaps are reported with equipment checked = up down.

Detailed flaps are in percent when checked, and degrees when you check degrees.

Whatever degrees they are set to is the angle they are at.

The possibility to auto change the selections for the phase of flight was the idea, so far you manually choose them.

The selection enables you to turn off the AP selection, navs, etc. - do you want individual settings, they'll be a lot of checkboxes.

[Steve Waite]

Is it because with "flaps detailed", the flap angle is read out as they are operating? The last angle reported is the angle the flaps have settled to. Trailing and leading flaps are reported. Percent is the default flaps detailed setting, you check the next setting for degrees which is enabled when you selected flaps detailed. Is that not evident in the settings?

[Steve Waite]

Looking at the Mooney cfg we get:

extending-time = 5 // seconds
flaps-position.0 = 0 // degrees, KIAS
flaps-position.1 = 8 // degrees, KIAS
flaps-position.2 = 33 // degrees, KIAS

So that's all there is on flaps, not sure what else can be done. I can delay reporting flaps until no more movement is detected or that movement gets to one of those locations 0, 8, and 33. Whatever is in the aircraft cfg is what we get. IF won't go out on the internet and search for manufacturers data, it is all sim based data and generic systems so all planes work in the same manner.

[Orinks]

Currently, I cannot set flaps to just degrees. There's flaps detail percent or degrees. I have to set percent in order to make degrees checkable. I was hoping to just have flaps detail set to degrees.

If I uncheck percent, degrees becomes disabled. The only way to make degrees checked is to check both percent and degrees.

[Steve Waite]

What you are seeing is "Detailed flaps" checkbox enables detailed flap reporting. That's in percent. That enables the degrees option, So then you can check the degrees checkbox which is an option of detailed.

If you have not checked "Equipment" then you don't get Up/Down. So the aspect is detailed reporting as opposed to up/down.

I can make it work differently, basically leaving boxes enabled. The initial decision was to add detailed flaps and the option for degrees. Also I can report the flaps when they get to stage rather than while they move, maybe that would be better.