General Question "Wheels up, wheels down, ..." in replay

[Catweazle]

Hi, Orbiter folks!

I was just wondering whether I made some mistake or this was normal:

When I replay a record of an Orbiter vessel taxiing around on a spaceport areal, or just while lowering speed on the runway just after touchdown, the voice (using Dan Steph's Orbiter Sound 4.0) annoyingly keeps saying "wheels up, wheels down, wheels up, wheels down,..." although the vessel (I used XR2 Ravenstar) keeps on the ground.

I realized that the vertical speed shown in the hud varies between +0.1 and -0.1 m/s when the vessel is taxiing (even at low speed), and according to + or -, the voice announces "wheels up" or "wheels down". Obviously these minimal changes are somehow misinterpreted as liftoff and touchdown.

Curiously, this occurs only in the replay of a recording, not when I'm actually steering the vessel.

Is there a possibility of some fine-tuning, so that such minimal variations are ignored? So far, I couldn't find a solution in the manuals or in this forum. To be honest, after unsuccessfully searching for terms like "replay" "record", "wheels up", etc., I don't really know how to look for anything helpful. :shrug:

Thanks for any suggestions!
Catweazle

Hey, not to forget to mention this in my first post here:
Orbiter is absolutely great!!
Thanks to Martin Schweiger, and to all the other people having contributed. :thumbup:

 

[Tommy]

This is caused by the way recording and replay works. When recording, the vessel's position and attitude are recorded at regular intervals, or whenever there is enough movement to justify it. During playback, every time the position and attitude get set it moves the vessel by a practically insignificant amount - however, that amount is mathematically detectable and results in the vessel losing "landed" status, then regaining that "landed" status. This is what causes the repeated "wheels up, wheels down" during playback. Fixing this would require some time and effort that could be better spent elsewhere, like the new ground contact model used in the beta (which, for all I know, actually solves this problem as well - haven't tried the beta yet).

In other words, it's a very low priority problem that affects few users and doesn't "break" anything.

 

[blixel]

I've always hated this problem myself. When you record a playback of a flight, and you then want to record video of it, the "wheels up, wheels down, wheels up, wheels down" is really irritating.

The way I work around this problem with the XR2 is to disable the callout notifications. Take a look at %ORBITER%\Config\XR2RavenstarPrefs.cfg and look for LiftoffCallout and TouchdownCallout. Set those lines like this:

LiftoffCallout=
TouchdownCallout=

...then you won't have the problem when you watch your playback.

Another thing you can do is to create a custom xrcfg file so that you don't have to edit the default XR2RavenstarPrefs.cfg file. For example, copy XR2RavenstarPrefs.cfg to a file called XR2NoCallouts.xrcfg.

Then edit your XR2NoCallouts.xrcfg file and set the LiftoffCallout and TouchdownCallout lines like I mentioned above.

Note that if you use an xrcfg file, you'll need to edit your scenario file and replace XR2-01:XR2Ravenstar with XR2NoCallouts:XR2Ravenstar

This is the best solution in my opinion so that you don't have to edit the original XR2RavenstarPrefs.cfg file.

 

[Tommy]

Another workaround would be to replace the sound files in Orbitsound with blanks - but of course you won't get ANY "wheels" callouts after that.

 

[Catweazle]

Thanks a lot for your answers to my question!

I'm well aware that this is indeed a very-low-priority problem since it only occurs in the playback. I'll try your suggestions for those occasions when I want to show the playback of a landing to somebody...

Catweazle