Expand the node "Custom
Modifications" in the tree view to the left. Right click the node "Callsigns"
and select "Create New".Please read the online version of this document to ensure you have the latest version.
This tutorial will give a quick introduction on creating your own callsigns, airport names, and aircraft manufactures or models (referred to as modifications, as each entry will result in a modification to the voicepack in Microsoft Flight Simulator). You should be able to complete it in 15 minutes. If you are only interested in using the existing modifications you do not need to follow this tutorial.
You will be guided through the creation of the fictive callsign "Bevelstone". Text in italic contains additional information useful when you are creating your own modifications, but it is not needed to complete this tutorial.
Expand the node "Custom
Modifications" in the tree view to the left. Right click the node "Callsigns"
and select "Create New".
To create airport names you would expand the "Airports" node and right click the "ICAO" node instead. Only experienced users will need to use the "Agent name" node - please see the documentation for details.
To create an aircraft manufacturer or model, expand the Aircrafts node and right click the appropriate node. Please see the documentation for details on the Manufacturer and Model nodes in order to select the right node.
Fill in the basic
information as shown on the screenshot (Identifier, Description, Author, and
Phrase - you will find the phrase below the other fields in the "Voices"
section). Do not set Force Variation (read the documentation for details).
Ignore the error displayed in red for now. To make it easier to follow this
tutorial, please make sure "Pilot 0 (male)" is selected in the list.
For callsigns, aircraft manufactures, and airport agents the identifier should match the word you want ATC to say - it should not match for example the airline name. For airport ICAO entries, the identifier should match the ICAO code displayed in the airport selection dialog of Flight Simulator. Aircraft models use a shorter code, preferable matching the aircraft codes on for example http://www.airlinecodes.co.uk.
The description should generally be on the format "Name (Country)". For callsigns, the name should match the airline name which might differ from the callsign. For virtual airlines, please include the web address instead of the country.
Please make sure the phrase is filled in with title case - do not copy-paste from the identifier as that will give an all uppercase phrase.
We will now start
adding the actual sound. Write "beve" in the filter box, and wait until the
list stops updating. Both entries left will display the phrase "Beverly",
so double click one of them (as they are identical it does not matter which) to
add it to the currently selected voice. Your display should now look as the
screenshot displayed here.
In reality, it will very how well you can find a matching word. You must try different spellings with similar sounds and click though the displayed words to find one that contains the part you are looking for. The filter uses regular expressions that can help you find matches with different spellings, or find phrases starting or ending with a specific letter combination. Please read the documentation for details.
Move the mouse
over the right edge of the displayed wave pattern in the Sound Segments
section (the bottom blue and green control). You will see the curser
change shape indicating that you can move the selection edges. When the cursor
display arrows pointing left and right, click and hold the left mouse button.
Drag the mouse to the left, until you have selected the area indicated on the
screenshot (the selection is the blue area). You will notice the wave file
displayed in the "Markers" section will change as you move the selection.
You can press the play button under the wave pattern (all the way to the left of the control) to hear that the voice now says "Bev". As we have only added one voice segment, the bigger play button over the wave pattern will give the same result.
We will now repeat the
task of adding the rest of the word the same way. First type "vel" in the
filter box and double click the entry with the phrase "Caravelle" (you can sort
the entries by clicking on the column headers). Now type "stone" in the filter
box and double click one of the entries with the phrase "Blackstone". Finally
adjust the selected areas as shown on this screenshot.
In case you add a sound you do not want to use anyway, right click the wave control with the sound and select "Delete". You can also swap the sounds by right clicking one of the wave controls and selecting "Move" Up or "Move Down".
If you click the big
play button over the wave controls, you should now hear "Bevelstone". However
the flow of the word is probably not sounding right - it will sound like
individual sound segments combined (not surprisingly, as that is indeed what it
is). You should now fine adjust the selections, typically making the selections
a bit more narrow to make the segments flow into each other (the more similar
the selected words are, the easier). You can use the small zoom in and
zoom out buttons to the right under the wave controls to zoom in, but this is
hardly ever needed. After some adjustment, your wave controls should look
something like this screen shot indicates (you should specifically notice how
first selection is shorter, and the long "silence" at the end of the sound
segment in the middle is no longer selected).
All the sound segments
are added to the active voice only. To add the similar sound segments to the
other voices right click the voice in the list and select "Copy Sound Segments
to/All other voices". Now select the voices one by one in the list, and
repeat step 6 for each of them. This is needed as each voice has it's own
rhythm.
Some times you will also need to replace some of the sound segments, as they are not pronounced identical for all voices.
You have now created a callsign. Save your work (CTRL-S), update the voicepack (CTRL-U). If you want to be able to select your new callsign from the Flight Simulator user interface, select "Tools/Update airlines.cfg" from the menu. If you do not do this, you must manually change the aircraft.cfg files (please see the documentation for details).
One final step you probably want to perform is sharing your callsign with other users of EditVoicepack. Please refer to the Upload Modiciation Tutorial for details.