How do we communicate with each other?

[Pikey]

There's simple communications options in the menu.

 

TARS - ok for relatively small amount of units, but set up the entire air, ground and naval battlefield with hundreds of radio types and you will see what I mean, unless its got a lot simpler since I left the Signals.

[Pikey]

Every internal voice comms i've met that was provided with the game was always shunned for private dedicated external 3rd party VC. Dunno why....its so common tho.

[Dejjvid]

The only thing ED should do is to provide a way for the TARS team to detect when a user is in a vehicle, and what frequency the user has set. And frequency isn't even mandatory, it can be set with TARS. So if TARS can detect when a user is in a vehicle, they can add it.

 

Don't waste resources on built in voice comms. Teamspeak and Ventrilo has been polished and refined for 10 years. No way that ED can quick fix a solution that out performs TS3/Vent.

 

And btw, I'm quite confident that TARS's already exists for CA. ExcessiveHeadspace is a tester IIRC.

 

Edit: btw, IVC for Falcon is a proof that game developers shouldn't develop VC software. When it works it's quite good. But there's a high probability for a FUBAR moment.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Dejjvid

[pbishop]

 

Edit: btw, IVC for Falcon is a proof that game developers shouldn't develop VC software. When it works it's quite good. But there's a high probability for a FUBAR moment.

 

This you may not know, but IVC is actually TS3. No joke.

 

As for the rest, the demand is obviously there. I see no harm in showing that there is one (I'm talking about TARS here, just to specify, not in game VOIP). Especially when it is already proven to work, and has no impact on performance or resources. This will be by far less appealing to those that play single player, or in public un-organised games.

Edited June 5, 2012 by pbishop

[Kaiza]

I am not sure if you guys have seen this but....

 

In other news, my goal is to have a generic frequency set that the combined arms JTAC and people who want to act as ATC will be able to use. Part of the latest development effort has been focused on getting that ready.

 

http://forums.eagle.ru/showpost.php?p=1471572&postcount=654

[112th_Rossi]

Player to Player communication

 

Hypothetical scenario:

 

Multiplayer game is being played with some A10 players and some JTAC players

 

A10 wants some tasking info, how does he go about communicating with the real JTAC player in the abscence of comms such as teamspeak?

 

Integrated voice com would be amazing.

[winchesterdelta1]

Old fasion smoke signals like the Native Americans did :p

[WildFire]

The moderators* are probably gonna come on and tell you two things:

 

This question has been discussed and mostly answered, they dont like it when you start new threads about the same thing.

 

Secondly use the search function. In the case your answer was on the first page of DCS:CA but if it werent there you could have searched and found it. The search function is on the top toolbar next to quick links.

[112th_Rossi]

TARS is fine, but its an extra layer of setting up, tweaking etc. Integrated voice coms in game would make things much more accessible and straight forward.

 

This sim already has an elitist/snob contingent as it is which scares off potential players who might have a lot to contribute to this community.

 

Basically the less hoops a player has to jump through to get into the game and have a good time the better.

[159th_Viper]

 

Basically the less hoops a player has to jump through to get into the game and have a good time the better.

 

Quite correct - important that one caters for the lowest common denominator. As Wags stated, on release there will be no support for integrated comms. This does not however mean that the idea is not being entertained - we'll just have to wait and see :)

[112th_Rossi]

Quite correct - important that one caters for the lowest common denominator. As Wags stated, on release there will be no support for integrated comms. This does not however mean that the idea is not being entertained - we'll just have to wait and see :)

 

I hope so. The game (see Sim) is moving in a great direction and I am genuinely excited. Personally I prefer multiplayer over single player so I would love to see some development from the standpoint of accessibility (that does not mean dumbing down). A lot of devs talk about accessibility, which is a by-word for reducing the complexity requirements. I'm not suggesting that (just thought i would pre-empt anyone who might be thinking i am), but a flourishing multiplayer community nurtures the single player aspect im sure.

 

TARS like integration in DCS would be absolutely amazing

[WildFire]

While I agree that ease of use is something to be hoped for, I also think about why they dont logically.

 

Most people already use TS and therefore using TARS is your own option, as well as TS as a whole. Its everyone's choice. Another reason is TS has very little overhead when it comes to using cpu resources which makes it optimal. Related to this is the amount of data added when integrating the voice in-game. If it were not able to be created in a separate core then the cpu would have even more resources forced upon it. Needless to say since most of the game runs on a single core it is true that the cpu is always going to be the bottleneck for this particular game. Anything they can keep out of the engine to minimize cpu usage is ok in my book. So while it may be easier to have integrated comms it is most definitely not the best option, especially when you can run TS on any core using affinity.

 

Perhaps when this game becomes multi-core fully capable it'll be the best option, but as of now I just cant see it being so.

[blkspade]

Teamspeak does have an sdk/plugin that would allow for TS integration directly with game. There are a few games whose built-it voip is just TS built-in. Of course I do believe those games also have Dedicated-Server support that helps facilitate voip on the back-end. Though that in itself would be awesome for so many other reasons.

[112th_Rossi]

While I agree that ease of use is something to be hoped for, I also think about why they dont logically.

 

Most people already use TS and therefore using TARS is your own option, as well as TS as a whole. Its everyone's choice. Another reason is TS has very little overhead when it comes to using cpu resources which makes it optimal. Related to this is the amount of data added when integrating the voice in-game. If it were not able to be created in a separate core then the cpu would have even more resources forced upon it. Needless to say since most of the game runs on a single core it is true that the cpu is always going to be the bottleneck for this particular game. Anything they can keep out of the engine to minimize cpu usage is ok in my book. So while it may be easier to have integrated comms it is most definitely not the best option, especially when you can run TS on any core using affinity.

 

Perhaps when this game becomes multi-core fully capable it'll be the best option, but as of now I just cant see it being so.

 

Allow me to politely disagree on some points. The sim runs on all cores, but as a single thread.

 

I can accept that the sim is unable to fully utilise the features that come with a mult-core architecture, but you speak as if, when programming a piece of software, the developer picks a 'core' for a process to run on. This is not neccesarilly true.

 

There is no need to pick a core for a specific task. I speak from a software development perspective (as I am employed as developer myself). From a design standpoint you would create threads out of tasks. Normally such tasks are Asynchronous so do not require to be in sync with the rest of the application. Voice communication is a good example of a task which could be asynchronously processed. Multiple cores simply help the processing of multiple threaded applications.

 

Although I appreciate that the ED team have bigger fish to fry, it's definitely not impossible. I also accept that TS running as background process is the best way to go for now.

 

Should you set the CPU affinity of an application, what you are doing is just denying the applications ability to utilise other cores for processing its threads. In most cases it's better to just leave the affinity alone.

[doveman]

Teamspeak/TARS are probably used more (not just by DCS players) but it might be worth looking at Mumble's Link Plugin as well.

 

I don't pretend to understand much about either method, so hopefully it's OK to link to this thread where someone is working on a Mumble Link Plugin mod for ArmA2, which should give some idea of what's possible and involved. http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?135701-WIP-Mod-for-Mumble-s-link-plugin

 

I know with the Project Reality mod for BF2 they have a customised version of Mumble to download, so perhaps that's one way of avoiding the setup being overly complicated for users.

 

Either way, whichever method is used the main thing is that the control of comms, channel switching, etc is totally integrated into DCS, so that there's no need to switch to TS or Mumble to change channels (even using an Overlay, considering that they tend to cause issues). I believe TARS already has this covered anyway.

 

It may well be that the advantages of using an external app like TS, mainly that it can be updated to use newer codecs without DCS itself needing to be modifed, outweigh any advantages from having voice comms totally integrated into DCS. Another advantage of something like TS is that players can communicate in a lobby even without using the in-game radios, which allows for discussion about which roles they are going to take, planning strategies, technical assistance, mentoring/teaching etc.

 

EDIT: This page about Mumble Link might be more informative http://mumble.sourceforge.net/Link

Edited July 2, 2012 by doveman

[vJaBoG32]

Hm it´s a pitty. CA is good for JTAC, but as long TARS dosn´t work it´s useless. In MP engagement everyone uses TARS. There is no need for a perfect Radio like in the A10, just one single transmitted channel (e.g. emergency 121.5) will do!

[shagrat]

Hm it´s a pitty. CA is good for JTAC, but as long TARS dosn´t work it´s useless. In MP engagement everyone uses TARS. There is no need for a perfect Radio like in the A10, just one single transmitted channel (e.g. emergency 121.5) will do!

Maybe a set of 3-4 Frequencies on VHF FM (30.0, 40.0, 50.0) to be selected. That should be perfect! :thumbup:

[vJaBoG32]

Right! VHF Fm is currently used very poorly in our wing (JaBoG 32).

[Scorch]

I may be thinking of TARS, but I thought there was a specific voice comm. package made for aviation simulator use that actually sounded like a radio complete with squelch break. Am I mistaken?

 

Thanks!

[shagrat]

I may be thinking of TARS, but I thought there was a specific voice comm. package made for aviation simulator use that actually sounded like a radio complete with squelch break. Am I mistaken?

 

Thanks!

I think you should Google TARS and watch the videos on YouTube. it is much more than just sound like radio comms. It uses the in game references of positions etc. to simulate distance degrading radio quality. it checks for obstacles... so you can't radio through a mountain... and most important it controls TS3 in a way that only pilots on the same frequency can actually talk and hear one another... and in addition you get a squelch break! :D

[shagrat]

It seems we have a solution here:

http://forums.eagle.ru/showthread.php?t=104800

 

...he did mention they implemented voice encryption with the KY58:surprise:

If this works flawless it is the answer to our prayers.