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Internet Multiplayer Voice Communications: Part I
By: Peter 'Fighterjock' Waddell Date: July 20th, 1998 In the real world, you wouldn't think about leaving the ground in an aircraft if your radio wasn't working, much less go on a combat mission. Yet here we are in the online simulation world doing it all the time. Yes, we can peck words out on the keyboard to our wingmen and teammates, but this is at best a less-than-perfect solution to the basic problem of team communications. It was 1918 before the RFC (Royal Flying Corps) got its first radios. They allowed the skipper to broadcast to the rest of the wing, but their long antennae (trailed out the back of the plane) had to be retrieved as soon as they reached patrol altitude for fear of having it caught by a propellor during a dogfight. Of course, radios have come a long way since then and have long been a basic component of aerial warfare. So where are we today in the online simulations environment? Still pecking on the keyboard whenever we're not heavily committed to the fight. So really our methods of communication today are comparable to those available back in 1918. When things get really hot, you simply can't afford to take your hands off the controls and start trying to type a message to your buddy - No matter how bad you might need his assistance! Now, with the advent of the "Internet telephone" we no longer have to suffer our fates quietly. For about the last six months, various groups, squadrons, and individuals who play multi-player sims on the Internet have been playing around and trying to apply this new technology to their respective environments. My multiplayer sim of choice is Fighter Ace, where I belong to a virtual squadron, Le Musketeer Escadrille. We usually fly in an "arena" where there are up to thirty planes in the air at the same time. This can get pretty hectic at times and it's very hard to maintain a good degree of SA (Situational Awareness). Sometimes it can get extemely frustrating. For instance, when you have two enemy aircraft on your tail, you are diving for home and your wingman is nowhere to be seen. You know he's there somewhere, but this is no time to take your hands off the controls and type a message. You're too busy jinking your aircraft and trying to keep out of the enemy's stream of bullets. You're thinking, "Where is that *&^%#@% wingman! I wish to heck I had some way of getting his attention over here!" This scenario is played out daily on the multiplayer flight simulation servers all over the world. So when the Internet telephones showed up, it seemed natural to do a little experimenting with them for our virtual cockpits. As it turned out, at just about the same time a net pilot named Paul "Wazoo" Wasserman had had the same idea and was doing some testing of his own. He had found a little program called SpeakFreely that he successfully used with his Longbow 2 squadron in multi player. I mention this because a lot of the people who are using voice comms at present are doing so because of the excellent research he did and - in true netizen fashion - shared with the rest of us in the from of an FAQ he wrote. Anyway, depending on what you are flying you CAN run voice comms now. Right up front I must add there are a bunch of provisos, and mostly that is what this article is about. Hopefully I can help steer you around some of the pitfalls you are likely to encounter if you are adventurous enough to want to try "Vox Comms" in the first place. Warning: This is probably not for the faint of heart. It's very unlikely that you will damage any hardware fooling around with this, but your system software (Win95) could very easily get buggered up. So if you are not comfortable with this eventuality, then either forget it or have a professional do it.
There are, at present two ways I know of to do voice, and they are both hardware solutions. One way is the two sound card method, probably the least expensive but most time consuming and potentially frustrating. The second way is the one card PCI 3d card, this is defiantly my preferred method, even though the two card scenario does have some advantages over it. The first thing you have to know is what your system is capable of. For the two card method, you will need an extra ISA or PCI card slot on the computer's motherboard. Those are the basic requirements. Once you have established that you do have an extra slot or slots you will need the appropriate card for it, PCI or ISA full duplex, if you have both I'd recommend going with the PCI. Either can be had for about $20 if you look around a bit. And you will need a headset with boom microphone. If possible you will want the noise canceling type, but this is not required and I use a $10 headset with boom mic that seems to work just fine as long as you tune your software correctly. Something that I have learned through hands on experience, is that whatever types of cards you have, you should probably have at least one Sound Blaster brand card as they seem to have more IRQs and DMA's available than most cheap SB clones. And they are more flexible overall for these settings. So rule of thumb is to have at least one good card for your default or main sound card. In addition, you will want to install it and have Windows recognize it first. Only then will you want to put in the other card. This is not a hard and fast rule though, because if the cheap card has only one IRQ to use it may be taken by the default card so you may have to put that one in first instead. Once you have managed to get the two cards recognized by Win95, you will want to go to the control panel under the System icon, in Device manager, and look for conflicts. You will have at least one, there will be two game ports (Joystick plugins) one will be automatically disabled by Win 95 already but it is better to go in to Sound, Video and Game Controllers and double click on whichever one has the red "X" on it. This will bring up the Properties dialog box and you should check the small window where it says, "Disable in this hardware profile", the other box will be checked by default, you can leave it or not, doesn't really matter unless you have more than one hardware profile. Control panel | System | Device manager | Sound, Video, and Game Controllers is where you will do most of your trouble shooting if you need to.
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