Feedback on VOIP

[SickSidewinder9]

I just get a nightmare buzzing sound when I try to test my mic or effects.  I see the volume slider bouncing.  So, unusable.  It's not my setup because SRS works fine.

[SignorMagnifico]

Looks like the hotfix didn't fix voice chat. Game crashes in the main menu trying to test my microphone. I'm unable to hear others on comms.

[Se1ko]

I have only had limited success with VOIP, as it would seem common with many others. I am sure in time it will be sorted.

What I find is that the change to the Call Radio Menu function which is used for AI comms, air refueling, ATC, etc is now made more difficult than it should be.

In the past it was just a matter of selecting the communication menu (which by default was "\" ) then selecting the command you wanted to use and, as long as you where on frequency, it would transmit. This was good as it didn't require extra key binds to controllers and got what you need to have done, done.

Now the communication menu (for me anyway) doesn't work as it once did and am trying to find ways of using the "Call Radio Menu" (MIC Switch FWD/AFT) command with controllers that are already at the limits of what can be bound to them.

It would seem that the current thinking is that you can either have VOIP or comms menu, but you cant have both. At least not easily.

I use Helios, so I tried creating touch screen push buttons to bring up the menus for each comm. This works but I have found with different aircraft you get different behaviours. The F-15E will key the mic immediately upon selecting a radio using the MIC Switch FWD/AFT and wont unkey it until you have selected a command from the radio and it has broadcast it. In the F-16 you can select the radio menu, choose your command and only then will the radio key and transmit the call, then unkey itself. This is more of what I would expect.

There seems to be no common logic to the core feature.

I have also found that sometimes the old "command menu" will work if you have first used the new radio call menu.

The old command menu worked just fine and was not complicated to use. This new feature, while I can see the benefits, seems not have been thought out too well and makes doing simple radio tasks somewhat overcomplicated for people that use AI aircraft, or do a lot of work with AI assets in the game.

As I see it the radio command menu was always an abstraction feature that sensibly fulfilled a requirement of the game, but the change in functionality now pushes the users that want realistic-as-possible controllers into something that isn't very realistic.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Se1ko

[SickSidewinder9]

Also, what is with the yellow highlighting?

[rob10]

1 hour ago, SickSidewinder9 said:

Also, what is with the yellow highlighting?

You can now assign keys (or a rotary) to move up and down the menu and select it.  The yellow highlight shows what is currently selected.

I have (had) my Function keys mapped to middle OSB's on my WinWing MFD's for easy access for comm's menus, but with the new options I have a rotary bound to move and down the menu and depress on it to select.  This is great for AAR since you don't have to look down to find the right F button to press if you have to "ready pre-contact" again.  I think it would also make life easier in VR (but I'm 2-D).

[towsim]

Yesterday, we made another test to use frequency-based voice communication in DCS. We experienced the following with tree members in the group:

After the configuration was done, we started the test on the FA-18 radios. On the first trial, we could get into contact on the desired frequency with the exception of one member. We noticed a fluctuating member indication in the “Blue Coalition” menu display. Members appeared in gray and sometimes in bold white. The other two had contact as expected. All members could see the PTT indication in red or green while talking on the frequency. Even the disconnected member could see the PTT activity (to avoid questions, we made it sure, that he was on the right frequency).

To avoid interferences with other voice communication software, we started the second test without TeamSpeak in the background. The result was almost the same. Almost means, that nobody could establish contact on any common frequency. Since we had at least contact once in the first test, and we did no change in the DCS configuration, we could not determine any logical reason for this behavior.

My question is: Is there any magic configuration or handling we missed?  Did anybody experience the same troubles?

 

[SickSidewinder9]

On 10/29/2023 at 12:33 PM, rob10 said:

You can now assign keys (or a rotary) to move up and down the menu and select it.  The yellow highlight shows what is currently selected.

I have (had) my Function keys mapped to middle OSB's on my WinWing MFD's for easy access for comm's menus, but with the new options I have a rotary bound to move and down the menu and depress on it to select.  This is great for AAR since you don't have to look down to find the right F button to press if you have to "ready pre-contact" again.  I think it would also make life easier in VR (but I'm 2-D).

I don't like it, but I guess I'll get used to it.

[Masterdoddy]

A small request from me. Can the PTT colours which surround the box indicating status be made to completely colour the box and not be an outline? I have severe red/green colourblindness and I because it is such a thin outline I can't differentiate them. 

I am also having issues where we can't seem to get the voice chat to work reliably. It seems to be random if we can hear each other or not (after setting frequencies, volume, etc.). Not being able to see the colours is making it hard to diagnose why because I can't tell my friends what i'm seeing. 

[Morpheus]

Hello, I am testiing Voice Chat on L-39.   My friends have unbearable sound in the headphones when they receive them. So for the moment we're not using Voice Chat until we have a solution to this problem, and as we can't edit the radio options included in the modules, we can't test the different filters. 

[zulubravo]

Problems I have encountered using voice chat feature on OB 2.9 and 2.8:

1. Me and my friend can hear eachother in room mode but not in radio mode(while transmit& receive ,red&green square-indicator IS working properly). We only hear static noise for half second.Even if we are parked next to eachother. Then we change server and it works. Conclusion, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work.

2. After some time chatting in private room (room mode) I begin to hear my own voice with delay and some static in background. Hearing my delayed voice back makes it very difficult to talk except short answers like yes,no, numbers,etc

3. In radio mode I can hear other people talking intermittently (or breathing, typing keyboard, clicking,etc) while sqare-indicator remains yellow ( means no one transmiting on the radio).

4. Sometimes me and my friend can't see/find eachother in room mode while on same server.

 

[Tisor]

We cannot make it to work. We fly 8-10 people on our squad and on the room mode we all cannot see everyone (someone is always missing the rest).

If we test individually, it works 1v1 but when joining more people someone is always out the thing (and not always the same one)

We tested both using our dedicated server and serving via DCS directly. No difference.

[Vakarian]

Yesterday we have tried VoiceChat in our group.

On a first attempt we used it via dedicated server. There we couldn't see each other in any of the rooms. When in cockpit, we could see the radios light up when people were trying to talk, but no voice made it over except those transmission end sounds.

Next, we tried via in-game hosting. There we could see each other in the rooms, but either talking there or in cockpit no voice made it through. We could see the radios change indication colors when people are speaking, but zero voice.

For our setups we have tried: TURN servers on/off, ensured VoiceChat is enabled in the server/host and all the clients, ensured audio devices are selected instead of using "default".

 

Is there anything else that's missing that could help in troubleshooting? I've even tried port forwarding the default TURN protocol port, but by the looks of it that shouldn't be necessary as TURN is supposed to help with the NAT issues.

[Flappie]

Important: in DCS, ensure your master volume is different from 0 (cog wheel in the VC window).

I've retried VC myself yesterday evening with 3 friends: it worked as expected with two of them. The third friend could only see the yellow square turn red or green, but he could not hear us, and we could not hear him either. It's a known bug, and devs are still working on it.

One thing you can try is disabling SRS completely to see if that changes anything.

[Nahen]

Voice Chat loads the servers beyond the norm. Whenever you enter the server where VC is running, the first few dozen or so seconds to over a minute will result in FPS drops and even freezes - especially in F-15E module. After turning off VC on the server, everything loads immediately and without any FPS drops. The memory usage graphs on the server also decreased and "evened out". We have found the cause of FPS drops and freezes on the server for the last several days. In short, it's a waste of time to use it - it consumes so much of the server and client hardware resources.

Edited November 6, 2023 by Nahen

[Vakarian]

3 hours ago, Flappie said:

Important: in DCS, ensure your master volume is different from 0 (cog wheel in the VC window).

I've retried VC myself yesterday evening with 3 friends: it worked as expected with two of them. The third friend could only see the yellow square turn red or green, but he could not hear us, and we could not hear him either. It's a known bug, and devs are still working on it.

One thing you can try is disabling SRS completely to see if that changes anything.

Oh yeah, that's the first thing we checked. Volume was 50% on my end at the start, later it was 100% and we ensure it was 100% on all clients. Didn't help.

 

Will try later today again with more of us and we'll try disabling SRS too to see if it helps.

[Vakarian]

Now I kinda feel like an idiot, but also feel like this could be highlighted in the voice chat guide or at least in FAQ as I haven't seen it there.

We got the VoiceChat working after I stumbled on the thread here by accident: 

In there I saw that VoiceChat needs 10309 port and as soon as we got that port open, VoiceChat started to work without any issues. No need to disable SRS (as is logical).

 

[Flappie]

Strange, I thought the separate Voice Chat port was a thing of the past...

Anyway, thanks for your feedback.

[Vakarian]

Yeah, that's what caught me up too. From what I've read on TURN protocol, that's what is supposed to help with the NAT issues and "automagically" make networking work. Why it worked after this port forwarding, I have no clue. If you get any feedback on this from the devs, it would be nice to know.

[ACS_Dev]

We also had a lot of issues when I was trying to run on a single port. I had briefly posted a lengthy rant on this before I found the post about 10309. My friends are reluctant to try it again but 2 of us tried it since with no apparent issues. I have hope that porting 10309 solves the problem but even if it does, I feel that it should have been made more visible with the rollout of 2.9. They had one shot to really make an impression with the userbase and distinguish themselves from SRS, and at least for us that impression was thoroughly negative because of my not knowing about 10309.

[Silver_]

There were 8 of us in my flight group and we opened our ports on the router to try, no luck either. Some saw each other and others didn't, others of us saw everyone. In the end we have opted for SRS. I dont know what is the problem.

[Flappie]

@Vakarian Devs confirm VC now uses the same port as DCS (e.g. 10308 if using default DCS port). WebRTC, on which VC is based, uses any available port, but since it's a peer-to-peer solution, it has nothing to do with the server ports (more info about WebRTC here: https://webrtcforthecurious.com/docs/03-connecting/).

EDIT: however, I'm reading now what TURN servers are and... hmm, I'll keep reading until I understand how VC works with a TURN server.

https://webrtc.org/getting-started/turn-server

Edited November 8, 2023 by Flappie

[Tarres]

Last test with 9 clients was a curious failure. I, as a server, only saw 3 other members but the other 8 were able to saw and talk each other without problems.

[Tricky11]

Well after a few weeks testing our squadron is going back to srs. VC is so inconsistent whether it works or not. Sometimes it starts working if you swap to a different slot. It maybe working fine for a while then some other members change slots and then we can't hear them or vice versa.

[Zone5]

My results are pretty unimpressive so far. My son and I have managed to get the F-14 intercom working, but only in "MIC ON" mode--PTT works on his end  but not mine (yes, bindings are done). Transmissions between any other aircraft basically don't work. PTT turns red outline, or sometimes yellow outline, but no audio. Occasionally (and apparently randomly) he can hear me even so, or I can hear him, but it isn't consistent enough to actually sort out what is happening. Nice to know I am not crazy (at least about this! ).

 

[Fresh]

It has been working for me. But I could not get MIDS VOC A or MIDS VOC B to work on the Hornet.

It would be great if the lobby also had the option to be tied to a frequency in game as it were, so that LOTatc could be used.

Thanks,

Fresh