Inconsistent Ambiance Sounds

[julianlockwood]

Enjoying this product a lot. The plugin sounds are far superior to the defaults that ship with X-Plane, and the immersion level is greatly increased with the environmental ambience. I have noticed that airport ambience sounds are inconsistent at some payware airports (and missing completely at some locations on those airports). Perhaps this is because ortho photos are overlaying the default mesh? Aerosoft's Altenrhein is an example.

[sundog]

SoundMaxx relies on X-Plane's built in navaids system to determine where airports are. I don't know much about how to create new airports, but I could imagine some of them being created in an inconsistent manner that might throw that off. If you're within 1 nautical mile of where X-Plane thinks the closest airport is, and you're near the ground and outside the plane (or inside with the engines off and door or canopy open), you should hear ambient sounds. If you're within 2 nm of a VOR beacon, then you get "large airport" sounds instead.

 

Glad you're enjoying it!

[julianlockwood]

Thanks for this info Frank. I did a little more testing and I found that the airport ambiance sounds are present at this particular airport (LSZR) when initially starting at the airport. However, if I switch to the X-Plane free camera mode and "fly" due north away from the airport to a point across the bay where the airport sounds are replaced by the water sounds, and then I "fly" back to the starting ramp, the airport ambiance sounds become intermittent at various locations on the airport. If I re-load the airport from scratch, the sounds become consistent again at all locations on the airport.

[jimbim]

Hello together,

 

I have one question regarding following statement:

 

 

(or inside with the engines off and door or canopy open)

 

Can you tell me which dataref is used by SoundMaxx as trigger for starting ambient sound as soon as the door opens?

 

I am asking this because I want to create a small FlyWithLua script that starts the ambient sound as soon as the engines of the B757 are off. For this, I would set the required "door open" dataref.

 

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Sebastian 

Edited July 24, 2015 by jimbim

[sundog]

That would be awesome.

 

SoundMaxx considers the door to be open if either sim/cockpit/warnings/annunciators/cabin_door_open or sim/cockpit2/switches/canopy_open is not 0.

Edited July 24, 2015 by sundog

[jimbim]

Many thanks! I will play a bit with these datarefs tonight!

 

 

Greetings,

 

Sebastian

[jimbim]

Works like a dream and is exactly what I wanted to have :-)

 

For now, I implemented it for the CRJ2

if AIRCRAFT_FILENAME == "CRJ200.acf" then	dataref("door_open", "sim/cockpit/warnings/annunciators/cabin_door_open", "writable")	dataref("eng_state", "sim/flightmodel/engine/ENGN_running", "readonly")	function ambient_sound()		if eng_state == 0 then			door_open = 1		end	end	do_every_frame("ambient_sound()")end

So, many thanks for your help! Great support!

 

Greetings,

 

Sebastian

[jimbim]

Hello again :-)

 

I have another idea...

 

If you could tell me which dataref tells SoundMaxx if my view is outside or inside AND if there is a dataref for the ambient volume, I would change my script that if I am inside, the volume could be reduced by let's say 30 or 40% automtatically.

 

Now I reduced the volume of the ambient sound that it does not get too lound in the cockpit. It works great, however it is reduced from the outside view as well which is not perfect :-)

 

Cheers,

Sebastian

[sundog]

Hm. Well, I could dig up which datarefs we use to see if you're outside, but the SoundMaxx controls aren't exposed via datarefs I'm afraid. So there's no way to adjust them from a script.

 

Do you think ambient sound should be around 30% lower when inside in general? If so that's good feedback, and certainly something I can work into any SoundMaxx updates we might do in the future.

[jimbim]

Let's say it like this:

 

My main reason for buying Soundmaxx was to get rid of the silence at the Aiports. When I discovered that I had not any sound while sitting in my CRJ or 757 at the gate, I was a bit disappointed. So I wrote my little script to trick it.

 

As I am not a real pilot, I have no Idea if you can hear any ambient sound from inside the cockpit. So I cannot say if it matches reality or not to have it 30 or 40% less than normal. But for me, the most boring with x-plane is that nothing happens at airports. It is silent, nothing moves. 

 

Ok, there are things happening in the community and spreading bit by bit which makes it better and better:

- Autogate

- GroundTraffic

- Ground Service ( I saw a preview video of Jardesign I believe)

- AND SoundMaxx with it's ambient sounds.

 

So maybe you can make it as an option to enable ambient sounds even inside the plane. Maybe reduced by a percentage. Then everyone can choose to enable it or not. In general you can keep your logic to say if door or canopy is open or view is outside enable ambient at set volume. If view is inside and ambient sound option enabled - enable ambient sound at set volume minus 30%. If option is disabled and view inside fade it out. The perfect solution would be an additional slider to set the inside volume by your own. Then the difference between inside and outside would be users choice.

 

The way I fly is 98% inside the cockpit, so I am quite happy with my script. It also plays very nice in the 757 with it's own ambient sound and with the horn of the autogates. However, this work around is not easy to use for everyone else...

 

Many thanks again,

Sebastian

[JohnMAXX]

I agree with this perspective, yes it might not be 100% accurate in comparison to the real world but I think having this option will add more depth to the Sim and another layer of usefulness to SoundMAXX....

Thanks for sharing your thoughts...