radio menu auto pop up on airfields

[Rongor]

How can we stop the DCS radio menu selection automatically prompting us to request startup/taxi/takeoff clearance whenever we touch any airfield surfaces?

Not only is this annoying in case you entirely don't use the system, for example on many/most MP servers. It also messes up voiceattack scripts you may have set up to access the ground crew.

Simply accessing F2-external view is also difficult if you have to take care for exiting the menu first.

[draconus]

Yep, annoying and unwanted. Requested many times before. And we cannot do anything to stop it.

[AdrianL]

13 minutes ago, draconus said:

And we cannot do anything to stop it.

There is a thread on Hoggit and someone has a mod to stop it 

 

[dmatsch]

"Uzi 1-1 --- ABORT TAKEOFF"

 

Crap!  Again!

[MAXsenna]

@Rongor I haven't tried the mod @AdrianL mentions.

But if you are willing to pay, since you already have VoiceAttack, VAICOM can hide the menus for you (with a ton of other features). But I'm not sure if I should recommend VAICOM at this point, even if I use it everyday, and can't really see me using DCS without it. 

Come to think of it. Even the free version of VAICOM might let you do it. It's free to try anyway.  

Cheers! 

[SharpeXB]

I don’t quite understand why this is such a bother when you can just tap the com key to make it go away. Plus afaik the ATC is being reworked anyways so why worry about it now? It’s realistic in certain situations for ATC to initiate coms with you so I imagine any rework will still feature this menu popping up when it’s appropriate. 

[PravusJSB]

I'm thinking out loud, but... If you look in <install base>\Scripts\UI\RadioCommandDialog\Config\Common\ATC.lua, you will see the structure of the menus, there will be one in there that fits your bill and with the object will be a message enum inside a function call, the function call key is 'command' I think. It might be possible to replace said function call with something null like, function() return end, its a finite machine I think so there may also be the config for the transitions, you may put that null function there. 

** Completely untested, back of cig packet reply! Back up the file first

Let me know how you get on.

Edited July 28, 2022 by PravusJSB

[MAXsenna]

17 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I don’t quite understand why this is such a bother when you can just tap the com key to make it go away. Plus afaik the ATC is being reworked anyways so why worry about it now? It’s realistic in certain situations for ATC to initiate coms with you so I imagine any rework will still feature this menu popping up when it’s appropriate. 

No matter how many times you try to have people eat cake when they have issues not related to you...

[SharpeXB]

27 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

No matter how many times you try to have people eat cake when they have issues not related to you...

Funny thing is having played DCS for ten years I can’t quite understand what this “issue” even is. It must go on totally unnoticed by me. Yes the coms menu can pop up on its own sometimes but a simple subconscious press of a HOTAS button hides it again if I didn’t want it. 

[sirrah]

On 7/23/2022 at 10:59 AM, Rongor said:

How can we stop the DCS radio menu selection automatically prompting us to request startup/taxi/takeoff clearance whenever we touch any airfield surfaces?

Not only is this annoying in case you entirely don't use the system, for example on many/most MP servers. It also messes up voiceattack scripts you may have set up to access the ground crew.

Simply accessing F2-external view is also difficult if you have to take care for exiting the menu first.

Indeed very anoying, especially for helo OPS

Apart from SharpeXB apparently, I don't think anyone wants this automatic radio menu popup

[Northstar98]

On 7/28/2022 at 3:24 PM, SharpeXB said:

I don’t quite understand why this is such a bother when you can just tap the com key to make it go away.

"I don't see why malware pop-ups are such a bother when you can just tap the close button to close your browser".

Unless I specifically ask it to, no menu should ever pop-up by itself, ever - the end.

Especially a menu that shares keys with the different views and if you use mouselook, hijacks the mouse.

On 7/28/2022 at 3:24 PM, SharpeXB said:

Plus afaik the ATC is being reworked anyways so why worry about it now?

And how far away is it and what will it even consist of? The last we heard of it was nearly half a year ago and that was specifically for WWII.

And because it's incredibly low hanging fruit for which a fix already exists, waiting for the ATC rework (which will be a much larger update) just to fix this very annoying functionality is pretty ridiculous.

 

Besides people aren't worrying about it "now" - people have wanted the radio menu to stop popping up automatically for years.

Even better though, in that very same thread, you yourself said that a radio menu that pops up automatically would be annoying:

Quote

[...]

I agree, the menu appearing on its own would be annoying and un-sim like since you’re supposed to control everything in the full systems planes and select the correct radio. Is this behavior limited to the FC3 planes? Or maybe only in the Beta? I’m running Stable.

 

On 7/28/2022 at 3:24 PM, SharpeXB said:

It’s realistic in certain situations for ATC to initiate coms with you

And? What has that got to do with the radio menu automatically popping up? Yes, ATC initiating contact is realistic (at least in an emergency when they need to get my attention)... But that isn't the problem though, is it?

In real life, you don't get a radio menu popping up which hijacks certain controls. It's also pretty difficult to unintentionally transmit a voice message over radio, though is a lot more common in DCS due to the aforementioned control-jacking.

Edited December 26, 2022 by Northstar98
forming sentances properly

[MAXsenna]

5 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

And? That's got nothing to do with the radio menu which controls transmissions from the player, not from ATC.

In real life, you don't get a radio menu popping up which hijacks certain controls.

Haha! So true, let the message be auto played without popping the menu, just like when you're on finals and they tell you to check your landing gear.

[Northstar98]

2 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

Haha! So true, let the message be auto played without popping the menu, just like when you're on finals and they tell you to check your landing gear.

Yep, I'm fine with ATC contacting me - that isn't the problem and is perfectly fine.

And yeah, just like when I'm down on fuel, on final and they clear me to land but don't tell the conga line of AI to hold short, leading to incursion after incursion by them onto the runway.

[SharpeXB]

33 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

And because it's incredibly low hanging fruit for which a fix already exists,

Well it’s obviously not an easy fix it it hasn’t been changed by now. If ED chased down everyone’s petty gripe about the sim they’d never make any progress. Yes a fix exists for this already, a simple button press. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by SharpeXB

[Northstar98]

On 7/28/2022 at 6:03 PM, SharpeXB said:

Well it’s obviously not an easy fix it it hasn’t been changed by now.

I take it someone isn't paying attention? A mod, made a year ago, was posted above that fixes the issue.

There are other reasons beyond difficulty for why issues remain unfixed.

The GBU-24A/B had the wrong warhead for over a year before it was fixed. Do you know how easy said fix was? Changing Mk84 to BLU-109 on a single line of the .lua file - that's it, something that would take seconds to do.

On 7/28/2022 at 6:03 PM, SharpeXB said:

If ED chased down everyone’s petty gripe about the sim they’d never make any progress.

Well, seeing as nobody is asking for every "petty gripe" to be fixed, this response is a straw man. Unless you're trying to say that if ED fixed this annoyance, they'd never make any progress?

Why do you contantly try and torpedo things like this? Especially when you yourself seem to agree with it.

Edited December 26, 2022 by Northstar98
grammar

[SharpeXB]

18 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

Are you seriously telling me that if ED fixed this annoyance, they'd never make any progress?

Well apparently they must feel they have more important things to work on, especially since there’s a mod which does this already. 

[Tippis]

12 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Funny thing is having played DCS for ten years I can’t quite understand what this “issue” even is.

Try reading the OP. It's not very hard.

[cfrag]

20 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

It’s realistic in certain situations for ATC to initiate coms with you

It's really not. I don't know of any routine procedure where ATC initiates coms with you. For a good reason: they don't know which frequency your radios are set to, and there is no guarantee that you have one of your radios tuned to ATC. That's why you always initiate contact, and for example, during control hand-off the controlling (ATC) station instructs you to 'Contact Tower' or 'Contact Ground' etc. You are told to initiate contact with those stations, they do not call you (it's a (to me welcome) simplification in DCS that airfields have approach control, tower, and ground on the same frequency, in reality that's usually not the case. I'm happy that DCS provides this simplification, as fiddling with freqs is one of my least favorite activities during flight). There are, in some countries, emergency procedure where Airfields may attempt to contact you but these do not include routine airfield approach or pattern management. If this subject interests you (it's a really fascinating and fun subject, as it demonstrates how over time we have built a fault-tolerant system of communicating intent and control), here is a really good read. It should get you to about RT License-level of understanding of phraseology and procedures. Highly recommended and fun.

Edited July 29, 2022 by cfrag

[MAXsenna]

Thanks for the link @cfrag! 

[Northstar98]

40 minutes ago, cfrag said:

(it's a (to me welcome) simplification in DCS that airfields have approach control, tower, and ground on the same frequency, in reality that's usually not the case. I'm happy that DCS provides this simplification, as fiddling with freqs is one of my least favorite activities during flight).

The problem with this though is that if you have sufficiently busy airfields with a fair amount of traffic, everything being on one frequency can be a bit of a mess.

It also makes the "contact tower" callout fairly meaningless, same with the Marshall "switch approach" callout.

The good thing is, appropriately configured radio presets makes fiddling with the frequency fairly easy.

 

Of course we also have aerodromes in DCS which should be uncontrolled IRL (making the automatic popping up of the communications menu doubly wrong) but have their own towers in DCS (namely Rota and Tinian on the Marianas - control is instead handed over to Guam's ARTCC (which provides TRACON for the aforementioned airports).

Edited July 29, 2022 by Northstar98

[cfrag]

Just now, Northstar98 said:

The problem with this though is that if you have sufficiently busy airfields with a fair amount of traffic, everything being on one frequency can be a bit of a mess

Indeed, that's usually why they are separate irl. I have the lingering suspicion that this is in DCS in part because of it's Flaming Cliffs heritage, where there were few (any?) other players on the same airfield/freq, and changing frequency was also not a thing. Although I have to admit that I've not yet happened upon a MP server that was so congested that RT with ATC became a burden (in sharp contrast to that *ç%*!!! early warning bird that constantly talks over everything)  

2 minutes ago, Northstar98 said:

It also makes the "contact tower" callout fairly meaningless, same with the Marshall "switch approach" callout.

It does right now. I'm still hoping that when ED revises their ATC procedures, they respect a 'simple coms' option for lazy people like me who allow the modules to auto-tune to the relevant stations upon hand-over. This could happen with a 'Contact Tower' or other comms command that tunes your active radio to that freq when simple coms are enabled. Yeah, I am that lazy. 

[Northstar98]

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Indeed, that's usually why they are separate irl. I have the lingering suspicion that this is in DCS in part because of it's Flaming Cliffs heritage, where there were few (any?) other players on the same airfield/freq, and changing frequency was also not a thing.

I guess so, though if you ever try the mission builder in an FC3 aircraft, everybody is treated as being on the same frequency - the AI contantly steps on each others comms, you won't be able to get a word in edgeways. Of course that's not the ATC in this case, but given this, I guess it's a good thing that the AI doesn't interact with ATC at all.

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Although I have to admit that I've not yet happened upon a MP server that was so congested that RT with ATC became a burden

True, though I feel in SP, it's merely due to the AI not interacting with ATC at all (in itself a problem), I figure if they did, then having more realistic frequency separation would definitely be useful (if you've ever played the other sim, the difference is definitely noticeable).

2 minutes ago, cfrag said:

It does right now. I'm still hoping that when ED revises their ATC procedures, they respect a 'simple coms' option for lazy people like me who allow the modules to auto-tune to the relevant stations upon hand-over. This could happen with a 'Contact Tower' or other comms command that tunes your active radio to that freq when simple coms are enabled. Yeah, I am that lazy. 

I feel that the easy communications feature would facilitate that, which should automatically adjust your frequency depending on who you want to talk to.

[draconus]

38 minutes ago, cfrag said:

it's a (to me welcome) simplification in DCS that airfields have approach control, tower, and ground on the same frequency

It was good enough for 90s sim or as FC3 comms but compared to great DCS aircraft complexity, flight models and scope it's really sorely lacking. Even more surprising was the new ATC done for the SC (2020!) which FC3 aircraft have nothing to do with. Unfortunately the new ATC is still in plan phase. Community for years are creating their own ATC in missions and provide services like LotATC in MP as workarounds.

[cfrag]

Just now, draconus said:

[ATC procedures are] really sorely lacking

Indeed. It would be great if I was, for example, at Batumi and first contacted ground for radio check, startup and taxi, and at hold-short was instructed by ground to contact tower for departure.  I'd love that. What I would also love is the OPTION (via 'easy comms', thank you @Northstar98, gold fish memory here) to have the game auto tune my active radio when I properly initiate contact to a station. DCS ATC procedures need improvement. I'd *like* some of the procedural tedium to be optionally removed.

[Northstar98]

On 7/29/2022 at 12:26 PM, draconus said:

Even more surprising was the new ATC done for the SC (2020!) which FC3 aircraft have nothing to do with.

And even there it's lacking. Better than land based sure, but that's a pretty low bar:

• Still has the automatic communications menu popping up (so Sharpe is doubly wrong about waiting for an ATC overhaul to fix it - we've had one overhaul (-ish) and that didn't fix it).
• The AI don't interact with it at all, though the ATC does a better job of managing the airspace than land based ATC (though again, pretty low bar).
• There are some missing callouts (though some rely on other functionality - like IFF).
• The player voice doesn't actually reference instruments in the cockpit, leading to discrepencies in altitude (even with the pressure set as told by Marshall) and fuel state (at least in the Tomcat).
• There's only one voice for each service and only one player voice (which sounds kinda like the tower voice spoken through a voice modulator).
• Only uses one callsign ("Courage", which is the callsign for the Stennis, see this post for the other callsigns and TACAN identifiers).

Edited August 2, 2022 by Northstar98