Hi all, mainly for Ross.
Thought I’d drop you a line about a problem us blind pilots have been having for a while whilst on vatsim in msfs.
In p3d, talking flight monitor (the addon we use to access instrumentation and much more) had the ability to read simconnect messages. This meant it could read messages on frequency and private messages that came through automatically which was useful. However, as the methodology in msfs changed, Vpilot messages are no longer output through tfm, and we have to tab over to Vpilot to read unicom messages or to check pm’s. Whilst this is absolutely doable, it is a little more time consuming and can be tricky during critical phases of flight. Talking flight monitor is linked below although you may already be familiar with it:
https://www.talkingflightmonitor.com/
Anyway, we were wondering as a result of this problem, if there was any potential to look into options to have Vpilot output messages to screenreader to help out in MSFS, and in thinking about this we came up with several possible options for how it could be done.
One option would be to use the available ‘tolk library’, which speaks text through the screenreader you have in place. This could be used to send messages directly through to the screenreader from Vpilot.
I would say this option seems quite promising.
Another option might be to Send broadcast messages that C sharp can pick up, some kind of message carrier format that would lead to the messages you receive essentially being published so that an addon like talking flight monitor could access them itself and send them through to the screenreader as some kind of log. Here we essentially have talking flight monitor as a go-between, similar to how it was in p3d.
I would say that this seems a little more difficult to pull off, but I’m no expert.
Having an option, or perhaps a hotkey, to turn such a mode on would be great.
If you choose to go with the option that would require the use of TFM, or if you need more info on the tolk library, let me know and I can put you in touch with the devs of TFM who will know far more than I in terms of the coding particulars.
Appreciate the time,
Declan.