VoxATC X UK Review

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This is a review of VoxATC UK by Jessica Bannister-Pearce.

When FS2004 was released on to the market, the one thing I really looked forward to was the ATC section. ‘At last a chance to fly like the real pilots’, I thought. ‘I’ll be able to talk to FS just like the real world’. Sadly, my expectations were dashed when I finally discovered that ‘Talking to ATC’ simply meant pushing buttons on the keyboard. Still, it was a move forward. But I was disappointed none the less. FSX did little to help matters along. What I was missing was a chance to talk back. I know that you can fly online and talk to real life virtual controllers, which is great. But I don’t really play well with others. I’m simply not a people person, even in the virtual world. Thank Goodness for VoxATC.

Voice Set-up panel. I have no idea who Mike is though!

Listen Very Carefully; I will say this only once

Thanks to speech recognition software, it’s now getting to the point that we can control our computers just like on Star Trek (although a Tea, Earl Grey, Hot still comes via the old method, My Partner) and the advances made mean that products like VoxATC are now a serious option.

The program itself comes in various flavours depending on location and price. The boxed version will cost you the best part of £80, but with that you’ll get four high quality voice sets. One US male, one US female, and the same for the UK, to talk to. For £50 you’ll get just the US version with the two high quality voice sets. Perhaps the best value version is the download. It costs £25 and contains no voice sets, but instead uses Vista’s own Voice set (Microsoft Anna). For users of Windows XP, you can download a copy with voice recognition included at no extra charge. The version I’m using is VoxATC X UK. This is so-called as it includes all the phraseology we use within Europe (‘Decimal’ instead of ‘Point’ when describing radio frequencies for example). However, if you do fly in North America, the program will quite happily revert to the US regulations.

Setting the Joystick

Getting Started

Unlike many add-ons, you simply cannot load up and go. VoxATC needs setting up before we even touch the aircraft. Looking in the VoxATC X folder in the Start Menu reveals a mind-boggling array of sub-programs. The important ones are varied, but for now we’ll start with the Voice set-up program. This is a real simple program where you can chose the voice set for the controllers as well as the pilots you’ll hear over the radio. For the rich among us, this is where you can play with the shiny new voice sets on the DVD. For the downloaders, this is a bit of a waste of time as only one voice will be heard (Microsoft Anna), so I wouldn’t bother with this program if I were you.

The Joystick Set-up program allows us to assign the various buttons required to work the radio. (‘Push to talk’ button along with ‘assign Ident’ and ‘display toggle’). You can also set these for the keyboard if you haven’t got enough buttons on the Joystick to spare.

The VoxATC Indexer scans your FS directory to make sure it knows what’s there. Whist the VoxATC Panel Set-up will install VoxATC in selected aircraft. This is great if you’ve added a new aircraft since installing VoxATC, as every aircraft needs to have the display panel installed as part of their 2D cockpit.

The main program you’ll need to use is of course the VoxATC Settings. This is the one you’ll use most often, mostly because you’ll need to run this each time you want to change you ATC Call sign. This is the first choice on the menu, and you can chose from GA, Student GA, USGA and finally Airline style call signs. Be warned, you cannot use the spacebar when entering call signs, be it GA or Airlines, and all airline call signs are required to have a set of numbers after their call sign.

Below this option are two check boxes for Enroute hold and Enroute Traffic instructions. Checking either of these will make VoxATC throw up random holds and traffic avoidances whist you’re in the air. As a rule, I leave them unchecked as the traffic instructions often ask you to avoid an aircraft that is simply not there.

You can also set the traffic density on the slider below these options, although I’m not sure that it makes a difference when compared to FS’s own traffic settings unless one or both of the check boxes above are checked.

The Main Settings panel

The last two sliders are useful for setting both the volume of the speech playback as well as the speed. Too fast and you’ll miss you’re instructions, whist too slow and you’ll fall asleep.

The final choices are to do with font colours and styles.

The last of the menu choices are somewhat useful. The SID & STAR set-up and SID & STAR Wizard sections I’ll come to later. The ATC Aircraft Type Name Editor is just that, whist the Flight Plan Trainer is useful.

Loading this program up enables you to practice a full flight of ATC messages without the flight. The one problem I have with this, though, is that you can only load files from flights that have been saved and not directly from the flight plans. This means you have to at least run FS, load the plan and get to gate before saving the flight and then going back to the trainer program. It seems such a shame when, If you’re anything like me, your hard drive is littered with flight plans. Still, if you want to use the program, that’s the rule.

Once you’ve assigned a call sign, you can click on the flight plan training button. This will load up windows own Speech recognition voice training program, but with the instructions you’d get from ATC during your flight. By going through the plan like this, you’ll help the computer better understand your accent, (my Welsh accent caused some misunderstandings at first), so it’s worth the effort. If you just want some general training, however, you can also select that from the menu as well.

The easy way to learn to speak!

Come in number 6

With everything set, we can now head to our aircraft. So, after loading up FS and heading to the gate, it’s time to don the headphones, adjust the mike boom and prepare for start-up. To begin, VoxATC needs to be turned on, as it were. For that we’ll need to go to the 2D panel to enable the program. Opening the 2D reveals the VoxATC window with your call sign. Clicking Enable starts the program. Be sure that you’ve set the Speech recognition voice to Microsoft Anna (US) or the program will fail if you’re using the downloaded version. Once it’s up and running, you can display the VoxATC window anywhere by using the button you specified in the joystick set up program. From here you’ll get all your instructions, including what radio frequency to tune to. Each response is displayed in front of you, so you never have to worry about what to say, or getting the read back instructions wrong. From there on in, just follow the instructions and have a great time remembering to use your ‘Push to Transmit’ Button when replying to ATC calls.

Your on screen instructions await. Just remember to push and hold the button

Don’t forget to tell SID!

SID’s And STARS are really important to pilots and ATC. And one of the good things you can do is to add a SID or STAR to a flight plan within VoxATC. This, of course, has the advantage of giving us the correct ATC instructions. There are two choices to choose from to enter the data. Just make sure you have all the relevant data in front of you.

The first choice is the SID & STAR set-up program. Again, you’ll need to load a flight, rather than a flight plan. To be honest, this program scares me a little, because it seems so difficult to use, requiring Latitude and Longitude settings for waypoints as well as transition and altitude instructions.

The SID & STAR wizard does pretty much the same thing, just in steps to help ease you along. To be honest, I didn’t find either program helpful. Both were intimidating and both seemed to lack all the detail required for the SID’s or STAR’s to work affectively, plus you are limited to using only one SID or STAR, so if you are using real weather updates, you won’t really know what approach you’ll be assigned until you get close. It’s a nice idea, but I don’t think it works.

The SID & STAR Set-up screen. Not for the faint hearted

Bugs!

VoxATC is good at what it does. However, it doesn’t mean there aren’t a few bugs to spoil the fun. You won’t see most of them, as I think some are location specific. Some of the big bugs I’ve seen have included instructing aircraft to take off on runways not in use due to wind (using 09L when 27R is in use) or, worse, using both runways at the same time. (I’ve landed at Heathrow on 27R as a 737 took off on 09L towards me). Also, ATC seems to have a murderous streak to it every time I fly into Vancouver over the Rocky Mountains. It always, without fail, descends me into the mountains. So it seems to be completely unaware of the terrain within Flight Sim. It also, at times, will crash whist on approach or simply for no reason at all.

Perhaps the most annoying bug really isn’t VoxATC’s fault. I cannot get it to say Air Canada right. I get Air Canarda every time, despite it referring to other company traffic and Air Canada. I guess it’s a problem with the speech recognition in general and the English language on the whole.

Despite all these annoying bugs, I still use it.

Conclusion

VoxATC X is a useful bridging point between flying with FS’s own ATC to flying with VATSIM or similar. It works well as a training tool to help find you feet in the strange world of SID’s, STARS and such. But the bugs in the program do tend to let it down somewhat. But, as I said, I still use it. If they can get all the bugs out of it, this will be a real amazing program. As it stands, it’s still a must have for that total immersion experience. Lets hope it just gets better with time.

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