[simpits-tech] A hard-fought victory!

Sun Nov 18 17:15:56 PST 2012

Hi Ray, great to hear you're trying X-Plane! Even v9 has beat out MSFS in many major areas already, and XP10 will blow it out of the water!

Switching sim software certainly is a big deal, but do not despair if you are using off-the-shelf stuff.....check out X-Plane support for your existing gear. GoFlight, for instance, supports X-Plane last I checked. Not sure about RusCool, but the engine stack probably works with X-Plane too. Vendors are starting to recognize X-Plane's growing popularity, especially with MSFS essentially being dead at FSX now.

If you only want all your nav/comm audio separate (and don't care about using a real audio panel and separating each nav/comm signal), you won't necessarily need custom software. Run a second X-Plane computer networked to your main X-Plane unit. Make all the WAV files related to nav/comm audio on your main PC silent, and do the opposite on the secondary PC (ergo, make silent its engine/environment WAVs). You can even hook your real aviation headset into your PC if you've got one...the headphone part connects directly with a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter. The mic part has an impedance mismatch with a PC. but there is a simple circuit you can make that uses a 9v battery to get things matched up pretty close...there's an old article on FlightSim.com with parts lists and schematics on how to do this.

I'm going to be using an actual aviation intercom, with its mic output connected to the "headset adapter" I built from FlightSim.com's article. With a relay hooked to the PTT side, I will even get the open-mic/zero-squelch effect that a real system gets when you hit the transmit button. :)

Matt

---- Ray <raysot at comcast.net> wrote: 
> Matt,
> 
> I'm very interested in your work on the Linux platform and your sound 
> setup. I am converting my sim over to X-Plane and although I hate to 
> start from scratch as far as converting all my hardware over (Ruscool IO 
> cards, GoFlight radios, FlightIllusion Engine stack), I feel the better 
> graphics and flight dynamics are worth the effort.
> 
> I'd also like to pipe my COM/NAV sounds to a separate system. I'm not 
> too concerned about the subtleties but just having those sounds separate 
> from the airplane would be nice.
> 
> Ray
> 
> 
> 
> On 11/17/12 4:07 PM, dabigboy at cox.net wrote:
> > Hey Cris, I do recall you talking about your audio system a while back. You are doing far more than me! I am basically just hooking everything into X-Plane's "brain" and spitting the data out to the appropriate places (example: rather than having my software look up what navaids are nearby or looking for marker beacons, I just let X-Plane tell me when it's picking up some sort of navaid, marker beacon, etc...ditto for most instrument flags). Seems like your approach is more comprehensive, and also probably better for using the system on multiple sim software packages? Mine is pretty unique to my sim, though I try to keep things reasonably portable and non-specific (but on my audio system, for instance, I don't have any auto-discovery code for the sound cards, they are hard-coded to that specific machine).
> >
> > Btw, somewhat unrelated but I noticed your post about Linux Mint network config issues. Mint is a great distro from what I've seen, but it's very feature-filled and "desktop'ish". What you experienced is exactly the kind of crap I've had to deal with on the more "feature-rich" help-me desktop distros. For the kind of work we're doing, might I suggest another distro? I'm 100% Slackware here, as it is a no-nonsense, vanilla, un-tweaked distro which actually uses a vanilla kernel straight from the tree, no funky distro-specific weirdness. Ditto for most of the included packages as well, there aren't really any special things done to original programs by the Slackware folks. I've heard Arch is good also, DSL is very light weight and simple, and of course there's always Linux From Scratch if you're really intrepid. :)
> >
> > Matt
> >
> > ---- Cris Harrison <phoenixcomm at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Mat
> >> Congrats!
> >> Seems you took a page out of my playbook,
> >> phoenixcomm.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/arinc-410-subsystem-audio-routing  I
> >> have the Morse Code stuff done with a database (all of the radios & navaids
> >> from the FAA; which i take an dump into my mysql db), i can get items from
> >> the db by location and or station id. + tones (inner, outer, etc.), and 5
> >> audio cards running on an un-modified system.. My Audio Radio Audio source
> >> is on a Linux box very easy to do.. I finds all the cards for you, so all
> >> you have to do is use a software patchboard that connects the sources to
> >> the channel + I do slant range calculation  on radios so if you car at NY
> >> - Kennedy you can hear LAX!! in Linux/Unix each card has it's own handle
> >> (just like opening a database). also I have a flight recorder which
> >> is time-stamped  (on the same box) plus it since its part of my RSS or
> >> Radio Sub System it also controls various flags on the instruments via
> >> messages.
> >>
> >> Cris H.
> >> phoenixcomm.wordpress.com<http://phoenixcomm.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/arinc-410-subsystem-audio-routing/>
> >> www.phoenixaerospace.us
> >> www.flite-tronics.com
> >>
> >> On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 3:41 PM, <dabigboy at cox.net> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Thanks! Yep, 5 sound cards.....it's probably possible to utilize a couple
> >>> more ports on each card (for ones that support 5.1 Dolby, anyways) and thus
> >>> get 2 or 3 channels out of a single card, but it's not worth the trouble
> >>> IMO. Plus I would probably be stuck only being able to play out of one
> >>> output per card at once. Much simpler to just stick the "the green port" on
> >>> each card, both channels (left/right) and wire one card per "radio" on the
> >>> audio panel.
> >>>
> >>> I could almost use more, but 5 worked out OK...my audio panel has nav 1/2,
> >>> ADF, DME, and marker beacons...that's 5 outputs, perfect! Of course it also
> >>> has comm 1/2, but I'm going to probably be handling them separately, as I
> >>> plan on using Pilot Edge ( http://www.pilotedge.net/ ) which I just found
> >>> out about...apparently it actually reads the comm freq set in the sim and
> >>> routes audio correctly based on that. Pretty cool! But at any rate, the
> >>> only thing I might need a comm channel for besides that would be for
> >>> pre-recorded "chatter". I can always use the audio on my instrument panel
> >>> PC and wire that to comm 2, for instance, if I want chatter while flying
> >>> offline.
> >>>
> >>> Matt
> >>>
> >>> ---- sander at vpilot.net wrote:
> >>>> Awesome work! Congrats on your victory.
> >>>> 5 soundcards?
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