Q: What is Multi Crew Experience?

A: Multi Crew Experience is a new add-on to the award winning, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, and FS2004® software. It adds the missing elements, like crew coordination, interactive checklist reading, realistic ATC operation, call-outs and warnings against deviation from standards, as well as extras, like user interface voice control.

Q: Who may benefit from this application:

A: Anyone who wants to make the home flight simulation experience as real as it can get. Trainee pilots can use it as a tool, to practice multi crew interaction and ATC phraseology.

One of the bad aspects of home flight simulation, is that it makes you breed bad habits, like trying to fly a B747 on your own, or looking for keyboard key strokes to interact with ATC.

For non native English speakers, this constitutes a great practice tool. If you are seeking an international career, as an airline pilot, you must interact well with other crew members, in English. What better tool to boost your confidence!   

Q: How does it work?

A: Multi Crew Experience builds on Microsoft SAPI 5® outstanding technology, that brings speech recognition, as well as speech synthesis to the windows® platform. We have choosen a modular design, that allows you to use, some, or all the features, according to your needs. This makes it easier to integrate. It will also play nicely, when used alongside other third party add-ons. It is fully multithreaded, and was designed with performance in mind. 

Q: What are the system requirements?

A: The requirements are the same as those specified for running Microsoft Flight Smulator X, or Microsoft Flight Smulator 2004, depending on which simulator version you use, plus a decent sound card( even onboard one) as well as a headset with good quality microphone.

Q: Does it need FSUIPC?

A: No, there is no need for FSUIPC. Neither there is need for Simconnect. We have developed our own DLL, that runs inside the flight simulator process, and provides our application with the kind of information it needs.

Q: Does it require an English version of Windows?

A: No, this application has been tested, and expected to work on almost any language localized version of Windows XP Home or professional.

For Windows Vista or Windows 7, English version, it will run on any edition.

For Vista or Windows 7 localized versions, like Spanish or French, you will need Vista, Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise, to be able to download and install the free Microsoft English language pack. The alternative is to use a free third party tool called Vistalizator, that would help you run MCE under any operating system and Language.

Q: Do I need to be a native English speaker to use the software?

A: Although it helps, the answer is no. You will be surprised to learn about the poor grasp of the English language among real world pilots around the world. Though you need to know what heading, speed, altitude, flaps...mean. We are talking 200 to 300 words overall.

Q: Does it run on Windows XP 64 Bit?

A: The answer is yes. There are other products that claim they cannot run on Windows XP 64 bit because of lack of speech engine on that platform. There is no truth in that statement. The real reason, is that those add-ons are written the easy way in Visual Basic.Net. They cannot run on XP 64 because nobody else has written a translation layer for their program to work. Those type of add-ons tend to turn your flight simulation experience into a slide show.

Q: Will there be a trial version?

A: Yes, you can download and try out for free, our fully functional software for 30 runs or 4 days whichever occurs first. After the trial period is over, the most exciting features will stop working, but you will keep the ability to control many aspects of the simulator user interface by voice, like displaying and hiding panels, zooming, eye point adjustment etc...

Q: Are you planning to set-up a forum for this product?

A: No, we don't have time for that, as we are too busy programming. We are in fact handing you the product, to make your own judgement. Having said that, if you are the kind of flight simulator fanatic, who cannot live without the raves and rants about a specific product, you will probably be pleased to hear, that so far, we have identified at least one independent forum related to our product. forum link

Q: Can I use MCE with a networked Radar Contact setup:

A: Yes, but because MCE has no way of finding out if RC4 is running or indeed installed, you need to make a few changes to the mce.ini configuration file. Open the file C:\Users\your_user_name\AppData\Roaming\Multi Crew Experience\mce.ini using Notepad. Look at the section titled [ATC], and change things to look like...

[ATC]
UseRadioNoise=1
SecondaryNeedAtcWindow=0
atc1=1
atc2=0
atc3=1
atc4=1
atc5=0
UseRadarContact=1
IgnoreRC4Registry=1

Save the file.

The next time you start MCE, it will prompt you to provide the RC4 installation network path. Please do so, and it will be saved.

In a networked scenario, you must make sure Radar contact is started first, flight plan loaded, and "Start RC" button pressed, before attempting to start MCE.

Q: I have built a very strong simulator rig over the years, is there a possibility MCE might mess-up my configuration?

A: The answer is No. MCE installs to the Program Files folder, and the only file we put in the simulator folder is fsInsider.dll. To completely un-install and go back to your original configuration, un-install MCE via Windows Control Panel, and manually delete fsInsider.dll from FSX folder and/or FS9\Modules\ subfolder. We don't even install any .NET framework, because MCE is written the hard way, in native C++, for best performance.

If you have used the Tweak FS option, you can perform one more step if you wish.

When you run the wizard first time, the original fsx.cfg and fs9.cfg files are saved.

Make sure "show hidden files and folders" is enabled

On Windows XP:

For FS9: Go to: C:\Documents and Settings\User_name\Application Data\Microsoft\FS9\
You should find fs9.cfg, and fs9-original.cfg.
Backup fs9.cfg if you wish, then delete it. Rename fs9-original.cfg to fs9.cfg

For FSX : Go to: C:\Documents and Settings\User_name\Application Data\Microsoft\FSX\
You should find fsx.cfg, and fsx-original.cfg.
Backup fsx.cfg if you wish, then delete it. Rename fsx-original.cfg to fsx.cfg

Windows Vista or Win 7:

For FS9: Go to: C:\Users\User_name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FS9\
You should find fs9.cfg, and fs9-original.cfg.
Backup fs9.cfg if you wish, then delete it. Rename fs9-original.cfg to fs9.cfg

For FSX : Go to: C:\Users\User_name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FSX\
You should find fsx.cfg, and fsx-original.cfg.
Backup fsx.cfg if you wish, then delete it. Rename fsx-original.cfg to fsx.cfg

Bear in mind, that as a precaution we save the original config files, mainly for situations where people are using multi-monitor set-up, and the tweaks don't work for them, so we can get them to normal quickly.
In reality you can safely delete these (fs9.cfg and fsx.cfg), and they will be recreated the next time you start the sim. But you would have to set simulator options like screen resolution, etc...
In fact the entire FS9 folder can be deleted, and it will be recreated. Useful sometimes when the sim fails to load, instead of doing a complete re-install.

The same applies to FSX. However, for this particular sim, you would need to save dll.xml and exe.xml files, as they contain the list of add-ons FSX must load on start-up.

Q: Do i have to be online to use this product?

A: No, this is a desktop application. Therefore you don't need an internet connection to use it.

Q: Are there any better voices to use with this product?

A: There are literally dozens of voices that could enhance the experience with this product. Be aware, that while for 32 Bit platforms, almost any SAPI 5 compatible voice will do, on 64 Bit platforms, you will have to confirm with the vendor. If you are interested start looking here for third party voices

Q: What is this "DIALOG MODE" thing?

A: Whenever a flight simulator dialog box is displayed (weather dialog, aircraft dialog, etc), MCE switches to "DIALOG MODE", a state where only commands to interact with dialog boxes are enabled. You will not be able to interact with co-pilot in that mode. As soon as the dialog is closed, MCE will revert to "FLIGHT MODE". If for some reason, MCE is stuck in dialog mode, right click the user interface, then select "Force Flight Mode" option in drop down menu.

Q: Does MCE interface with Radar Contact?

A: Starting from Version V2.0 you can interact with Radar Contact ATC entirely by voice.