Multi Crew Experience Quick Guidemulticrewxp.com/MCE how to.pdf · Multi Crew Experience Quick...

FS++ Simulations Index 10/03/2011

FS++ Simulations Index 10/03/2011

Multi Crew Experience Quick Guide

Table of Contents

What is Multi Crew Experience 1

How does it work 1

What you will need 2

Working with MCE (i.e. Multi Crew Experience) 2

The user interface 3

Hardware Requirements 9

Software Requirements 10

How to interact with virtual co-pilot 10

Using MCE with other speech based applications 10

Support for Go-Flight modules 11

Using MCE with PMDG series for FS9 12

Disabling voice-over 12

Limitations 12

Troubleshooting 13

What is Multi Crew Experience?

Multi Crew Experience is a serious attempt to put speech recognition technology at

work, in an attempt to provide a better overall experience in the world of flight

simulation. Of course we are not talking about real intelligence. Your co-pilot won’t

be able to tell jokes for example, at least not in an unpredictable manner. But believe

it or not, a lot of what goes on in the cockpit is not only predictable but also

compulsory. It would be mayhem if pilots were allowed to use just about any word

that comes to mind to get things done. In fact they have to stick to a very rigid

vocabulary. And thus, call items in the flight deck by their conventional aviation

terms. This is at the heart of good crew co-ordination. Multi Crew Experience, as an

application, builds on that paradigm. And it works quite well. There are of course a

few differences with the real world. For example, the co-pilot, unlike real human

pilots who after all are humans, and can occasionally let standards slip, will be there

day or night, 24 hours a day if you want always responding with same efficiency as

your PC hardware will allow.

How does it work?

To achieve this, we have selected Microsoft SAPI ™ as the underlying technology to

handle the speech recognition aspect. While some might find the speech synthesis a

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little too robotic, we do think it is more than adequate. Future versions might include

human like voices. In addition, should you want better voices, there are plenty

available from third party companies, like Cepstral, AT&T, Acapela, just to name a

few.

What you will need

Another constraint due to the technology involved is that you will need Windows XP

either Pro or Home version, Windows 7 or Windows Vista as operating system. Not

to mention a decent hardware base. See system requirements for minimum hardware,

and minimum software for details. A good quality sound card and microphone are a

must.

Once your system meets the criteria described above, you will be able to appreciate

the presence of DC (the Digital Co-pilot). He is most welcome when you are trying to

handle those heavies while at the same time fiddling with the keyboard. In fact one

the aims of this software package is to limit the use of the keyboard as much as

possible. You want the gear to be retracted? Why do you have to concentrate on the

keyboard to find letter “G”? Simply say “Gear Up” and the co-pilot will do it for you.

Working with MCE (i.e. Multi Crew Experience)

If you are a real world pilot or aspiring to become one, you will feel right at home.

You will be able to use your airline company checklist for rehearsal. One limitation is

that the current level of PC flight simulation is such that not everything you do in a

real cockpit is replicable. There is no way to reset a breaker for instance or switch a

firewall off. But we are getting there…

For others, it will take some effort to familiarise yourself with aviation terminology,

before you can appreciate the value of this software.

If you are running Microsoft Flight Simulator X, be aware that when you start the

simulator after installing this application, you will come across these two warnings.

This warning is just that FSX is going to load our module, called “FsInsider.dll”, and

you must click “Run”. Otherwise, our application will not be able to retrieve data

from the simulator



Then comes the second screen

Simply click “Yes”, to make sure our FsInsider.dll, gets loaded every time the flight

simulator starts.

The User Interface

When it came to designing the application, we had the following considerations in

mind:

• The interface had to be simple, and easily accessible during flight, even

though you will rarely use it, because the bulk of the software lies in its

invisible part. The stuff that runs in the background.

• The user interface should not distract the pilot.

• Should be optimised to use as little computer resources as possible in order

not to affect the simulation frame rate.

• It had to be modular so that you can use some features and not others if you

wish to.

• While the application is speech enabled we might as well do without tool

tips and give text to speech help where appropriate.

When you run the flight simulator in full screen mode, the user interface will be

hidden. But don’t worry, as your trusty co-pilot is still there in the background,

waiting for instructions.

The user interface has 6 separate tabs where you can make adjustments. Session

free settings are saved and restored the next time you start the application. Some

tabs can be disabled under certain conditions. Or you could elect to disable some.

Say for example that you do not want the ATC feature because you want to use a

different application for that matter. So be it

The 6 tabs are:

• General

Here you can enable or disable a particular feature of the

application, as well as select other options.



• Command

Through this tab, you can re-assign voices to crew members,

and also tweak the speech recognition engine.

Vista or Win 7 users will notice that the change buttons appear

inactive. By default only “Microsoft Anna” is available on

Windows Vista or Win 7. To talk to Ground engineer, you will

need an extra voice at least. There are dozens of commercially

available third party voices.

Start looking for voices at this link:

http://www.nextup.com/

Once you have more than one voice installed on your system,

you can click change to assign the voice you want to the

crewmember you like.

When it comes to co-pilot, the voice you select, will determine

his or her name.



• Checklist

This page allows you among other things to view, print and

even change the checklist you want the co-pilot to read. What

about using your airline one. It has to follow a certain format

albeit simple one.

• ATC

Here you can make some adjustments to ATC feature options,

assuming you elected to use the feature. If you have installed a

joystick, you can assign a particular button, to use as push-to-

talk, when transmitting messages to ATC.

• Monitor

Here you can make your co-pilot as alert or as lazy as you want

depending on what you want him to monitor. You can bet that

he will hardly miss a malfunction or failure when you give him

the full go ahead. Real pilots are trained to perform visual scans

to try to spot trouble points. But they will not come anywhere



near to what DC (the Digital Co-pilot supplied) can do. He

never gets tired.

• Simulator From this page, you can customize the level of control you

want to have on the Microsoft Flight Simulator user interface.

If you wish, you could control the entire range of menus and

dialog boxes in the flight simulator window, simply by saying

what you see on the screen. This feature, however, has only

been tested on the English version of FS. And because it relies

on speech recognition technology, it is not currently possible to

provide this feature on non-English versions of FS.

It is also possible to tweak the Flight Simulator for a better

overall experience

Tweak FS config, will add a few lines to fs9.cfg or fsx.cfg to

try to optimise performance of the simulator. The original file is

saved and restored when option is OFF.



There is an additional seventh tab (“About”), but it is only for information purpose.

At the right top corner of the User interface there are three buttons you can click. One

to close the application, one to minimise and maximise the window and one to request

speech help about a topic.

At the very top of the user interface lays the message area. You will see relevant

information displayed there now and then.

MCE Context menu:

When you right-click anywhere on the user interface, a context menu will appear,

showing some more options available.



Hide control Panel: Click this to hide the MCE user interface. The menu will then

change to “Display control panel”.

Use Screen Narrator: Particularly useful for blind pilots. When this option is enabled,

you will hear voice feedback about most actions you perform on the user interface.

You will also hear “New ATC options” when the FSX or FS9 built-in ATC menu

changes.

Show Commands in FS: When enabled, whatever is recognised by the speech engine,

will be displayed in red font within the flight simulator top left corner scenery

window.

Use Radio Static noise: When enabled, you will hear a squelch sound followed by a

background static noise throughout your ATC transmission, when pressing the

assigned joystick button or DEL keyboard key.

Force UI to Main screen: If running a multi-monitor set-up, this will allow you to put

the user interface back to the main screen.

Force flight mode: Useful for those extremely rare occasions where somehow MCE

thinks it is still in “Dialog Mode” when it’s obviously not, and consequently refuses

to handle flight related voice commands. By clicking this option, MCE will be forced

to “Flight Mode”.

Exit: Click this to close MCE application.

Note: This context menu also appears when you right-click the MCE icon in

Windows tray (right bottom of main screen)



Hardware Requirements

Our application does not need the fastest machine around; in fact it uses very little

resources, as it is only using the command and control side of speech recognition, as

opposed to the dictation capability. And on its own it could run on a 500 MHZ

processor and 128 MB of RAM.

Because it’s running alongside another resource hungry application, which is the

flight simulator, it is wise to state the following.

To run Multi Crew Experience you will need the following minimum specs

For Windows XP:

• Pentium III @ 1000 MHZ or AMD Athlon 1000 MHZ processor.

• 512 MB RAM.

• 16 bit sound Blaster capable sound card.

• Good quality microphone.

To get a better crew co-ordination with Multi Crew Experience you will need the

following recommended specifications:

• Pentium IV at 1.6 GHZ or AMD Athlon XP 1700+ processor.

• 1 GB RAM.

• Full duplex 16 bit sound Blaster capable sound card.

• Good quality with noise cancelling microphone.

For Windows 7 or Windows VISTA:

As minimum specs, we expect you to be running:

• Pentium IV at 1.6 GHZ or AMD Athlon XP 2000+ processor.

• 512 MB RAM.

• 16 bit sound Blaster capable sound card.

• Good quality microphone.

To get a better crew co-ordination with Multi Crew Experience you will need the

following recommended specifications:



• Pentium Core Duo, core 2 Duo, or AMD Athlon 64 X2.

• 1 GB RAM.

• Full duplex 16 bit sound Blaster capable sound card.

• Good quality with noise cancelling microphone.

Software Requirements

Supported operating systems are:

• Windows XP Professional or Home editions English or foreign editions.

• Microsoft Windows Vista All English Versions

• Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate, and Enterprise editions, for non-English

versions.

• Microsoft Flight Simulator X, or Flight Simulator 2004 (a century of flight

edition).

• Any combination of the above ( example, German edition of Windows XP +

Flight Simulator X any edition( German, Spanish, English…)

How to interact with virtual co-pilot

The interaction with the virtual co-pilot is through open microphone that means you

don’t need to press any key to give commands.

In contrast, to talk to ATC, you need to either press a pre-assigned joystick button, or

the <DEL> (delete) key of the keyboard. You must hold down the joystick button or

the “delete” keyboard key throughout your transmission.

Bear in mind, that the <END> key of the keyboard has been designated as some sort

of microphone mute button. So if you want to temporarily disable all recognition, hold

down the <END> key.

Incidentally, if you are a fan of TeamSpeak or IVAO, you will find this useful, as the

only thing you will have to do, is assign the <END> key in those applications for

interaction with online players, therefore avoiding accidental recognition of speech

intended for remote players.

Using MCE with other speech based applications

Ideally MCE should run the speech engine in a mode called “Inproc”.

The speech engine would run inside MCE, and you wouldn’t get those silly situations

where Windows 7 or Windows Vista speech bar kick-in, tries to interpret “Start

engine one” as “Start notepad” and things like that. You won’t be seeing disruption

from Windows own recognition. All voice commands are directed to the simulator.

However, because we understand you may need to run other speech based

applications, we have made an option available so that the speech engine can be

shared if it needs to.

Go to MCE user interface <Command> tab



Turn OFF option “Exclusive access to Recognizer”, then restart MCE.

In Shared recognition mode, MCE will work alongside any other speech based

application.

Support for Go-Flight modules Starting from Version V2.2.1 the ATC feature of MCE, enables seamless integration

of go-flight modules, especially on VFR flights. You just dial the frequency of the

tower, MCE takes care of the business of sifting though the ATC menu to set you up

on the intended station, and you are ready to transmit. The search process could take

from 5 to 15 seconds, therefore please be patient.

For the feature to work, please open mce.ini at this path:

For Vista & Windows 7, 32 Bit or 64 Bit

C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\Multi Crew Experience\mce.ini

For Windows XP 32 Bit or 64 Bit

C:\Documents and settings\your_user_name\Application Data\Multi Crew

Experience\mce.ini

Open the file mce.ini using notepad, and look at the following section

[GO-FLIGHT]

Use=0

TimeOut=3000

If the section is missing, manually add the 3 lines above, just before the

[CHECKLIST] section.

Change “Use=0” to “Use=1” to allow MCE to monitor the go-flight module



Timeout (3000 milliseconds by default) is the time that needs to elapse before MCE

considers that you have finished dialling. It can be set from 2000 to 5000 milliseconds

Save mce.ini

Using MCE with PMDG series for FS9

In order to use MCE with the PMDG series of aircraft B737/600/700/800/900 and the

queen of the skies B747-400, you need to replace the following files in \FS9\PMDG\

folder “737Kbd.ini” and/or “747400Kbd.ini” with the ones provided in C:\Program

Files\Multi Crew Experience\Support\ folder.

Also make sure all your B737 installations are using the latest service packs

http://www.precisionmanuals.com/pages/downloads/updates.html

At this time, you are expected to own both B737/600/700 and B737/800/900

packages for the feature to work.

Disabling voice-over

Those of you who get annoyed by the voice over stating transition between “Flight

mode” and “Dialogue Mode”, can disable that by switching relevant option OFF in

mce.ini file

For Vista & Windows 7, 32 Bit or 64 Bit

C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\Multi Crew Experience\mce.ini

For Windows XP 32 Bit or 64 Bit

C:\Documents and settings\your_user_name\Application Data\Multi Crew

Experience\mce.ini

Make sure “EnableAnnouncements=0” and save the file mce.ini.

Limitations

This application will help the keen flight simmer to operate the

multi-crew aircraft in a more realistic way. But by no means

does it claim to do everything by the book.

It you are eager to use Microsoft Flight Simulator as a learning

tool, you might as well go the extra mile, and get used to do

things the way the professionals do it.

How many times have you been holding the joystick on final,

and desperately trying to find that F7 keyboard key to extend the

flaps? Needless to say, this breeds very bad habits, and makes



later transition to the real world of flight training painful to say

the least.

Troubleshooting

We would like to point out, that a good microphone

calibration, along with minimum user training, is

paramount to the smooth operation of Multi Crew

Experience. And we will never say this enough. So please

fine tune your mike, as a first step, before investigating

further.

Windows 7 & Vista users:

It is very important to disable Windows UAC (User Account

Control). Slider set at the bottom of the scale. A system re-

start is required for changes to take effect.

Windows 7



Windows Vista

If you experience problems with this application, please try the following first.

• Make sure your system meets the minimum hardware and software specs

requirements above. This is a highly optimised application, and no effort

was spared to make the experience as smooth as possible. But the fact is,

this application has to contend for system resources with another processor

intensive, memory hungry beast, called a flight simulator.

• Make sure you are using a decent microphone.

• If your sound card is less than 4 years old, you should be OK, but this is not

an absolute rule.

• Go to windows control panel, double click “speech” then configure your

microphone properly.

• Make sure in the “Text to Speech” tab that at least, all three (Mike, Sam,

Mary) voices are available if you are running Windows XP, or Microsoft

Anna at least if you are running Windows 7 or Windows Vista.

• Make sure you have the matching “fsInsider.dll” in your simulator folder.

Dll should be present in FSX folder /and/or FS9\modules\ folder. If missing

manually copy it from unzipped downloaded package.



If for some unknown reason you cannot start MCE, please proceed

as follows...

Click Start->All Programs->Multi Crew Experience->Tools->Restore factory

settings. Click “Yes” when prompted to confirm

Start FSX or FS9

Create new flight.

Select default B737

Save flight

Load flight, and wait until ready to fly

Start MCE.

All the above in this strict order

If you don’t see an English US language in your panel (refer to next screenshot),

chances are you are running a non-English edition of Windows.

In that case there are two possible scenarios.



You are running a localised edition of Windows Vista or Win 7 Ultimate or

Enterprise editions

In that case use Windows Update to install the English language pack.

You are running a localised edition of Windows Vista or Win 7 other than the

Ultimate or Enterprise edition.

In this scenario, the only way you can install the English language pack, is to use a

third party tool called “Vistalizator”.

Go to the following website: http://www.froggie.sk/usage.html

Download and install “Vistalizator” program first. Click “Vistalizator” to

download and install that program first.

Download the appropriate MUI packs suitable for your Windows version

Do not try to run the MUI pack directly, as it would not allow you to install

additional languages unless you are running Ultimate or Enterprise edition of

Vista. Or Win 7.

Instead, load English language through “Vistalizator” program, once the latter is

installed.

You may also want to read the installation manual.

We wish everyone a very good Multi Crew Experience.

The FS++ team.

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