Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
I agree with you totally. My sentiment was that there have also been many accidents caused by ATC talking in a foreign language (English) to another pilot who also doesn't speak English as a first language. The possible problems which can be introduced by a conversation in effect being translated twice are huge. OK, they may be far less than if everyone was speaking the same language, but it still holds potential for serious errors. It just goes to show that we'll probably never reach an ideal state of affairs with respect to communication. Since the furthest I've flown is 30nm and I don't live in the SE of the UK then this doesn't really affect me at the moment. So I'll shut up ;-) All the best, Matt On 09:06 Mon 29 Dec 2003, David Megginson wrote: Actually, I think that's a serious problem. One of the benefits of using a common ATC frequency (instead of some kind of direct plane-to-plane comlink) is that we can all hear ATC talking to other aircraft and form an idea of what's happening around us. ATC *does* make mistakes, all the time, and almost always pilots catch those mistakes (just like ATC catches ours). If a non-native pilot cannot understand the other chatter on the radio, we lose that safety layer. All the best, David ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Matthew Law wrote: I agree with you totally. My sentiment was that there have also been many accidents caused by ATC talking in a foreign language (English) to another pilot who also doesn't speak English as a first language. That can often be a problem between a controller and pilot who *do* speak English as their first language, when they use non-standard phraseology. For example, there was one accident where the pilot reported that he had lost his vacuum pump and was in the soup, but there was nothing in that report to alert the (non-pilot) controller that there was an emergency: he didn't know that the vacuum pump controlled the primary attitude instruments, and he didn't know that in the soup mean in IMC. If I recall correctly, he vectored the pilot all over the place until the pilot finally lost control and spiralled in. All the best, David ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
David Megginson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matthew Law wrote: I agree with you totally. My sentiment was that there have also been many accidents caused by ATC talking in a foreign language (English) to another pilot who also doesn't speak English as a first language. That can often be a problem between a controller and pilot who *do* speak English as their first language, when they use non-standard phraseology. Do you have to pass an exam on the north American continent for operating the radio ? In Germay we have to own the Restricted Flight Radiotelephone Operator's Certificate (this is _not_ my translation, it's printed on the certificate itself :-) _before_ you are allowed to enter any other examination on your way to the PPL. In this exam you have to prove that you know how to use the standard phraseology, that you can sort of understand what is written in the AIP (which is written in English) and that you know the basics of radio navigation. To be honest: This is typically German because you could include this stuff into the usual theoretical exam as well but anything about radios falls under the responsibility of a different authority which results in an additional exam I myself am learning to fly at a controlled airport (EDLN) which pretty restrictive controllers (!) so we are pretty much used to the phraseology when we leave the flight school. Hey, they even have a nice picture: http://www.eddh.de/info/landeinfo-ergebnis.php?eicao=EDLN Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Martin Spott wrote: Do you have to pass an exam on the north American continent for operating the radio ? In Germay we have to own the Restricted Flight Radiotelephone Operator's Certificate (this is _not_ my translation, it's printed on the certificate itself :-) _before_ you are allowed to enter any other examination on your way to the PPL. The requirement in Canada is almost identical: we have to pass the PSTAR (a written examination) to get our student pilot's permit, and we also need to pass a simple test for the Radiotelephone Operator's License (Restricted), and pass a class 3 medical. A student is not allowed to solo without all three of those. I don't think that they have the same requirement in the U.S., but I haven't noticed that they're any worse on the radio. I'm also based at a busy airport with a lot of airline traffic, so talking with ATC has never been an issue: as a student pilot I could negotiate a complicated clearance long before I could manage a crosswind landing. People who train at uncontrolled strips sometimes seem a little intimidated by ATC, and you'll see some 500-hour+ pilots make a 50 nm detour around controlled airspace (or fly dangerously low underneath it) just to save a couple of radio calls. All the best, David ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Ivo wrote: On Monday 29 December 2003 00:48, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One question, do we allready have an ATC text file with all the necessary ATC talk sentences and airport names so that someone who can speak english quite well can record them to *.wav files? Or we could have multiple people around the world recording the sentences, so we'll hear the right accent when approaching for example New Delhi or Mexico City or Frankfurt. Maybe even bilingual, though I don't know if they use their native language (for example for domestic flights) or that they use English worldwide. I can record all the sound files needed for Slovenia (eg. Flight 1453, Ljubljana Approach, you are number 5 to land, descend to 2000, maintain 220 knots, turn right heading 250, vector's to final...) as I know how to pronounce the names. Just give me the list of needed chunks and I can record/mix/edit them up as well (I'm using Audacity). I only need some detailed info (pauses between chunks, quality, where to send them then etc.). I've done the recordings for Falcon for Balkans theatre two years ago and it went fine, so I got some experience... Heh, besides, you'll have English with Slovenian accent when entering Slovenian airspace, is that cool or what! :). - Matevz ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] ATC talk - languages
From: Matthew Law [EMAIL PROTECTED] My sentiment was that there have also been many accidents caused by ATC talking in a foreign language (English) to another pilot who also doesn't speak English as a first language. It's a lot worse than that, for simultaneous use of languages, actually. Taking the Californias as an example: * American, a derivative of English, used by locals (changes by state) * English, used by visitors from the UK, with different terminology * ICAO, a subset of English with restricted vocabulary and grammar * FAA, a merging of American and ICAO into something for U.S. controllers * Mexican, a derivative of Spanish, used for domestic activities in Mexico * Far east english, the vocabulary of American with a _very_ strong accent Mexican is not used in the U.S. airspace (except for some types of emergency). The only one of those _I_ can reliably speak and understand is the fourth one. I can usually manage the first one, until someone uses a colloquialism etc, but the other three are simply an emergency waiting to happen to someone. It is not funny (except in retrospect) to be sharing airspace with someone whose accented english is so unintelligible that the only way to understand the transmission is to watch what the aircraft does and think it through. Similarly, having someone in a UK accent announce a maneuver, after which there is a long silence on frequency till someone finally asks what's that? and gets back the official ICAO description which is equally unhelpful to all. I know for a fact that I cannot speak ICAO; I'd have to take the course first. It's very hard to avoid using grammar and/or vocabulary that is not approved. I'm tempted to say that the international pilot community would benefit most if FGFS were very fluent in ICAO and, when we type or speech recognize pilot responses back to the simulator, the ATC module rejects noncompliant usages. As far as catching mistakes is concerned, most problems will still be detected. Also, in many cases where multiple versions of english are in use at once, there is more than one user of each version on frequency at any given time. That enables someone else to spot the developing situation and announce it. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Tuesday 30 December 2003 17:50, Matevz Jekovec wrote: Heh, besides, you'll have English with Slovenian accent when entering Slovenian airspace, is that cool or what! :). - Matevz Yes, that sounds great. :) Best Regards, Oliver C. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On 03:15 Mon 29 Dec , Ivo wrote: Or we could have multiple people around the world recording the sentences, so we'll hear the right accent when approaching for example New Delhi or Mexico City or Frankfurt. Maybe even bilingual, though I don't know if they use their native language (for example for domestic flights) or that they use English worldwide. According to the ICAO, all ATC comms should be in English. Quite rightly however, most controllers use their native tongue unless talking to international flights. This sounds like a cool idea but the work involved is immense. The majority of it is non-technical (recording sound samples etc) so it could end up being much more authentic than MS FS if we were to use our diverse user-base :-) All the best, Matt. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Matthew Law wrote: According to the ICAO, all ATC comms should be in English. Quite rightly however, most controllers use their native tongue unless talking to international flights. Actually, I think that's a serious problem. One of the benefits of using a common ATC frequency (instead of some kind of direct plane-to-plane comlink) is that we can all hear ATC talking to other aircraft and form an idea of what's happening around us. ATC *does* make mistakes, all the time, and almost always pilots catch those mistakes (just like ATC catches ours). If a non-native pilot cannot understand the other chatter on the radio, we lose that safety layer. All the best, David ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Ivo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Or we could have multiple people around the world recording the sentences, so we'll hear the right accent when approaching for example New Delhi or Mexico City or Frankfurt. I think that I won't approach Frankfurt within the next years but theoretically it should be easy to record English spoken ATC in Germany. TWR will speak German or English as you like - simply attach a recorder to the intercom. Unfortunately the C150 I am currently training on has only two headphone jacks :-) Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Matthew Law writes: On 03:15 Mon 29 Dec , Ivo wrote: Or we could have multiple people around the world recording the sentences, so we'll hear the right accent when approaching for example New Delhi or Mexico City or Frankfurt. Maybe even bilingual, though I don't know if they use their native language (for example for domestic flights) or that they use English worldwide. According to the ICAO, all ATC comms should be in English. Quite rightly however, most controllers use their native tongue unless talking to international flights. This sounds like a cool idea but the work involved is immense. The majority of it is non-technical (recording sound samples etc) so it could end up being much more authentic than MS FS if we were to use our diverse user-base :-) In reply to all, Currently the only ATC voice is English female speaking the non-country-specific FlightGear default ATIS, with airport names from most of the UK and the base scenery recorded. For me, the main bottleneck involved in extending this is recording, editing and indexing the sound files. If, as it seems from this thread, there is interest from others in doing some recording and editing that would be just great - I'd be happy to code up support for additional voices as a matter of urgency if folk were producing them. At the moment ATIS is the only service with a phraseology that can be easily read - just look in default.vce in the ATC dir in the base. The numbers are byte position into the sound buffer of the phrase start and byte duration of the phrase. Note that some words are run together to make phrases using underscores - currently those phrases are hardwired in. Ultimately I'd like to separate the phraseology out from the intent into xml files (Alexander Kappes started this), such that for a given intent, eg turn right heading 220, or give the weather as part of an ATIS transmission, the phraseology for a particular part of the world is looked up first, followed by the most appropriate sound file. That way sound authors could modify the phraseology without access to the code. Once again, the production of some sound files would spur progress with the code. If anyone is seriously considering doing a sound file for a given service (tower, ground, approach, ATIS currently, I'd add UNICOM if someone was recording it) then give a shout and I'll post the phraseology currently needed, and I'm sure the real pilots will add some as well, and I'd code support for it as necessary. If someone wants to do a locale specific ATIS with different phraseology that would be great as well - I'd code support in quickly. As for recording the stuff, currently we're limited to 8bit, 8KHz, mono, at which setting the voice is noticably deteriorated in quality. I believe that Bernie is working on improved sound support, so it might be worth mastering and editing at higher quality, indexing by time rather than byte location, and converting to low quality and byte position at the end. I've been cutting and pasting each phrase from the original to a new file to compress the finished sample as much as possible - it's still 5meg+ and that's at low quality for a fairly limited phraseology (interactive services like tower etc will need a lot more than pre-recorded services like ATIS). You need to produce a corresponding .vce file to go with the .wav file so the ATC system knows where to find a given phrase - see the description of the .vce file indexing a few paragraphs up. Selecting the correct voice sample for each country will be easier once country codes have been added to the airport records as proposed by David Megginson, but I could do a hack based on ICAO code for now. Note that if we get samples for multiple controller voices for the majority of countries at high quality this will easily exceed the current base package size! I don't forsee that being a problem for a while though... Cheers - Dave ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On 12/29/03 at 2:34 PM Martin Spott wrote: Ivo wrote: Or we could have multiple people around the world recording the sentences, so we'll hear the right accent when approaching for example New Delhi or Mexico City or Frankfurt. I think that I won't approach Frankfurt within the next years but theoretically it should be easy to record English spoken ATC in Germany. TWR will speak German or English as you like - simply attach a recorder to the intercom. Unfortunately the C150 I am currently training on has only two headphone jacks :-) Ugh, what's the copyright situation as regards using recordings from the airwaves? Cheers - Dave ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Monday, 29 December 2003 18:35, David Luff wrote: Ugh, what's the copyright situation as regards using recordings from the airwaves? I wouldn't even bother wasting my time trying to use real recordings. - You need controlled recordings - voices that deliberately have very little inflection, no slurring, etc. - You need that controller to pronounce every possible word that will be required. Even if you listen to one real world controller he'll never pronounce all the airport names for you while on duty. Paul ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Monday, 29 December 2003 19:51, David Luff wrote: As for recording the stuff, currently we're limited to 8bit, 8KHz, mono, at which setting the voice is noticably deteriorated in quality. I believe that Bernie is working on improved sound support, so it might be worth mastering and editing at higher quality, indexing by time rather than byte location, and converting to low quality and byte position at the end. I've been cutting and pasting each phrase from the original to a new file to compress the finished sample as much as possible - it's still 5meg+ and that's at low quality for a fairly limited phraseology (interactive services like tower etc will need a lot more than pre-recorded services like ATIS). You need to produce a corresponding .vce file to go with the .wav file so the ATC system knows where to find a given phrase - see the description of the .vce file indexing a few paragraphs up. Why are we using wave files in the first place? Yes I know that they don't require decompression which saves CPU cycles but Ogg Vorbis compression is excellent and it's GPL. This not only goes for ATC but for all sound files. High quality sound files for aircraft need to be long so that they can have varying sound patterns in them but still don't sound repetitive. Paul ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Paul Surgeon wrote: Why are we using wave files in the first place? Yes I know that they don't require decompression which saves CPU cycles but Ogg Vorbis compression is excellent and it's GPL. No reason. Someone needs to do the work to integrate plib (which provides our sound loader) with libogg. An even better addition would be libjpeg integration for texture files. The textures are a much larger chunk of the base package size than the audio files are. Some of the sharp edges in the instrument faces might not compress well, but the terrain textures surely would. Andy ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] ATC talk: Speech to Text
For the ATC talk, could be possible to considering the use of Text-to-Speech (TTS) technology? This tool could provide FG with the ability to speech (talk) whenever message the tower controller desires to comunicate to the planes, simply reading aloud predefined sentences from a text file, without being limited to have prerecorded messages, or incur in copyrights violations as suggested before. New messages could be added as easy as adding new sentences to the supporting file. As stated early, the official language for communication is English (as per ICAO conventions), and fortunately the English language is always available for whatever TTS engine the FG team choose. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
Andy Ross writes: An even better addition would be libjpeg integration for texture files. I doubt if that will ever happen http://sjbaker.org/steve/omniv/jpegs_are_evil_too.html But I agree we shoul dbe using texture compression Best would be a OpenGL supported format like S3TC but older cards don't support it. We could work around this by using a software decompressor when hardware S3TC wasn't available. But just switching to PNG would make a substantial reduction in the package size and would not add much to the load time Norman ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Monday, 29 December 2003 20:59, Norman Vine wrote: But just switching to PNG would make a substantial reduction in the package size and would not add much to the load time The PNG compression is not as good (size wise) as jpg but it's lossless which is great were we need to retain original image quality. In one test I found that jpg can get a compression ratio of about 9:1 without any noticable artifacts on scenery textures. (90% quality in GIMP) The same texture file compresses at about 2:1 using PNG. Maybe not ground breaking stuff but certainly better than raw image files and it's free of any patents. Paul ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:48:10 +0200, Paul Surgeon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Monday, 29 December 2003 18:35, David Luff wrote: Ugh, what's the copyright situation as regards using recordings from the airwaves? ..wherever banned, that's moot. ;-) I wouldn't even bother wasting my time trying to use real recordings. - You need controlled recordings - voices that deliberately have very little inflection, no slurring, etc. ..one way is have everybody read thru and record all the phraseology, I think we should be able to come up with good localized ATC, both accented ICAOese English, and native. ;-) - You need that controller to pronounce every possible word that will be required. Even if you listen to one real world controller he'll never pronounce all the airport names for you while on duty. ..I found an ATC sim to throw in, too. ,-) -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Mon, 29 Dec 2003 21:28:22 +0200, Paul Surgeon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Monday, 29 December 2003 20:59, Norman Vine wrote: But just switching to PNG would make a substantial reduction in the package size and would not add much to the load time The PNG compression is not as good (size wise) as jpg but it's lossless which is great were we need to retain original image quality. In one test I found that jpg can get a compression ratio of about 9:1 without any noticable artifacts on scenery textures. (90% quality in GIMP) The same texture file compresses at about 2:1 using PNG. Maybe not ground breaking stuff but certainly better than raw image files and it's free of any patents. ..the patent was filed on October 27, 1986, so worst case, its just another 3 year gif kinda boycott. ;-) -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] ATC Talk
On Monday 29 December 2003 00:48, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One question, do we allready have an ATC text file with all the necessary ATC talk sentences and airport names so that someone who can speak english quite well can record them to *.wav files? Or we could have multiple people around the world recording the sentences, so we'll hear the right accent when approaching for example New Delhi or Mexico City or Frankfurt. Maybe even bilingual, though I don't know if they use their native language (for example for domestic flights) or that they use English worldwide. --Ivo ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
