FS HotSeat 2.2

By Kris Heslop (29 April 2004)

I had my reservations when I read the shpiel about what this product actually does and whether any of it would be worth the bandwidth it was occupying. The website effectively describes FSHotseat filling two holes in the market, firstly basic ambiance, things like sound for the AI traffic and new sounds for your own aircraft, such as APU and button sounds. The architechture of using MP3 files as sound effects also means that the package also becomes your very own in-flight entertainment system assuming you have a stack of MP3's on your hard drive! The second part of FSHotSeat is the psudo-adventure section. Gone is the need for a crude MSFS adventure, here we have a dynamic piece of software that not only provides you with a checklist reading co-pilot but also dynamic cabin announcements, handling agents, operations personnel and as a bonus even a flight evaluation to see how well you are doing as a pilot.

This looks like a little package, a 49 mb download really isn't that huge these days even when you add the 6 mb version 2.2 upgrade it's still pretty tiny. What is included is anything but small; the amount of functionality means there is something here for everyone. The thing that attracted me was the ability to play MP3's without having to task switch between MSFS and Media Player but there is so much more here.

Installation is simple and uneventful so we'll launch straight into the setup. The first thing that struck me was that there is no 'READ ME' file to tell the technologically challenged like myself how exactly to go about preparing FSHotSeat for use. I by chance opened the program prior to opening flightsim and so got the benefit of the on-line help that tells you the steps needed to fully integrate the program with MSFS. I have said it before and I expect I'll say it again, please developers provide an old fashioned manual even if it is in PDF format for us to print ourselves. The on-line help is very clear and concise but if you don't know you need to load FSHotSeat the first time without MSFS then you end up having to shut the sim down once it has all loaded and instantly you are at odds with the software. OK rant over, as I say the on-line help is good and walks you through the setup which is pretty straightforward so all that remains is to coax your PC into action and bludgeon it with yet another add-on.

The best bet in this package is to do the tutorial provided AFTER reading the tutorial from start to finish. I know it goes against everything we simmers stand for but here the old proverb RTFM = Half TFA really is king! You must start with a cold and dark cockpit (no power or engines) for FSHotSeat to properly integrate with the sim but this is made easier by the provision of a pre-made flight with a cold and dark aircraft from which you can exit and plan your flight. It isn't an ideal situation I know but that's the nature of the beast with FS2004.

The tutorial uses the provided Beech Baron on a short flight from Meigs to Milwaukee that takes about 40 minutes to complete. The tutorial text should really be read first so you know roughly what to expect and how you need to go about your tasks. While the tutorial flight is useful it is pretty limited when you are used to flying something about 30 times larger than the venerable Baron so I also did a slightly longer series of flights using the PMDG B737NG which was firstly to demonstrate the compatibility with a complex add-on and also to get a few more of the advanced features running.

When loading freight you get the clunking and grinding of pallets and boxes being loaded while opting for passenger flying results in the sound of throngs of people filing onto your shiny jet and the distant voices of your computer generated cabin crew welcoming people aboard. At first the whole things sound very silly; FSHotSeat uses a text to speech system rather than pasting together a multitude of short sound files as in the FS ATC. The result is an impression of having Stephen Hawking on the flight deck with you. Once you get over the voice sounding rather odd you can start to get into what is being simulated.

Just like real life you have a dispatcher who asks if you will be taking passengers or freight or going empty and then the co-pilot takes over and asks you questions about whether you are happy with the load manifest. Be sure you are as taking off overweight or under fueled will count against you in your de-brief. Once you are ready it's time to set the wheels in motion and with the touch of a preset hot-key combination your co-pilot will start the checklist which you can either action yourself or have him action while you do something more important (like flirting with the purser).

Once you have opted to load the aircraft you must bear in mind that you are now against the clock. The pre-departure time can be set to a more manageable level to reduce your workload but why alter it to a silly amount of time as it will detract from the pressure that you actually bought this package to simulate. In reality most of your cockpit prep would be done prior to passenger boarding but you still have a series of checklists prior to push and start that you must work through, all of which take time so be wary. Passengers will become less happy with your performance as time goes by and a late departure will affect your final evaluation.

The checklists used are pretty generic and certainly don't cover the more advanced features that are present in the complex add-ons on the market. There is no mention of FMC set up or anything like that. Also you need to be aware of what switches on an add-on panel actually correspond to the FS switches. I got stumped with avionics master switch until I worked out that the PMDG package needs the APU or ground power to be on bus to activate the FS avionics and thus pass the check. If you do get stumped and your first-officer (F/O) keeps repeating the same check you can override it by pressing SPACE and confirming the check manually.

The F/O will call into ops when you are secured for departure and request clearance from the office while you get your own clearance and taxi instructions from MS ATC. Once all of this radio chatter has subsided you can opt for a pushback truck, which will be announced by the F/O, and you will even hear the 'pud-pud' of the engine and the various clunks as it hooks up to the nose. Pushback without authorisation will result in points being knocked off your evaluation so keep your ear on the ops radio or you'll miss it and not be 100% sure if you can push or not.

Taxi is pretty uneventful until you close on the hold short when you must ask for the before takeoff checks. These are your final set of departure checks normally but FSHotSeat has also included a 'takeoff checklist' as well which is a little annoying. Regardless of this perhaps it is a good idea to let the F/O handle the checks here as you are busy driving the plane! By allowing him to run the checks you build your CRM (Crew Resource Management) points all of which go towards your final evaluation as well. The F/O will offer other help on the taxi out such as telling you which aids are in use for the first waypoint and offer to set them up for you; he'll even announce the ident after you've heard the Morse code.

As you come to a halt at the hold it's perhaps a good time to look at the Advanced AI Blast that is heavily plugged in the release notes. This software provides new sounds for AI aircraft so you actually HEAR them spool up, land, shut down, etc. The sound is pretty good. You should be careful with the volume knob though; unfortunately they couldn't fit a set of ear defenders down the download line! The sound is in stereo so you'll hear the sound pass as the aircraft do. This does increase the ambiance but having sat at the hold in an airliner's pointy end for real for 700 hours of my life (so far) I'd say that the sound is a little loud for my liking. Luckily there is a volume slider for all of the separate sounds in the main menu so you can scale it to your own taste.

The V-speeds are a little problem with some of the add-on aircraft. They are very high for the B737 stating 160+ kt for V1 and 170+ for V2. The default aircraft seem more sensible so I'll put this down to inaccurate decoding of the more complex AIR or MDL files but I'm not a programmer. If you know your calculated V speeds are right then use them rather than relying on your F/O to call them. Short of that your F/O can be a very useful chap (or chapess) although I suspect they aren't type rated as they only give you one stage of flap for take-off which is simply not enough for most larger jets. Simple answer is to set it yourself and say no when the F/O asks you if you want flap.

Once airborne the F/O will offer to retune radios and reset headings etc., which is great if your aircraft is using the MSFS autopilot but he can be told to set the heading and it simply doesn't do anything in the bespoke autopilots of both the PMDG and PSS aircraft. Still nice of him to ask, he sets the radios up nicely though. He will also remind you to run the various checklists if you have forgotten and announce the raising of flap and gear as they come up.

All through this busy time in the cockpit you will get all the cabin announcements in the rear, including the cheesy safety briefing and its accompanying 'advert style' music. Once established in the cruise the F/O will periodically jump in with a fairly limited amount of small talk and 'humorous aviation anecdotes' which while nice are somewhat tiresome after an hour or so. In order to relieve the boredom of the cruise you can crank up the tunes and turn on the integral radio in the shape of FSHotSeat's integral MP3 player. Assuming you've set FSHotSeat up in the main menu with your Mp3 folder and a name for your 'radio station' it'll start up and play complete with DJ and ads. What is nice is that the DJ will read the MP3 tags and so announce each song artist and name when it plays. There is also an option to have news feeds that results in the DJ reading the news from your choice of news websites. Very clever once you get past the 'Stephen Hawking' voice.

The cruise also gives us an option to look at the flyby view that has been included. With FSHotseat running the tower view is replaced by a flyby view which is infinitely better than the tower view purely because it is more exciting than looking at a pixel sized spec which is what the tower view always ends up being. As with most other things in FSHotseat, the flyby view is fully adjustable with distance, length of fly-by, etc. The flyby simply repeats over and over when selected. This is certainly a view that will be used to admire aircraft external models and even as a video tool for those into making flightsim videos.

There are options in the main menu to do all manner of things from advance the current music track to getting the latest weather. When so commanded the F/O will go and get any information he can for you. You can request the latest weather en route, the latest arrivals weather for your destination, your punctuality report and other such useful stuff, which can break the monotony of the cruise. The F/O will do various announcements telling the passengers where you are and even pointing out landmarks etc. If you get really bored you can even go for a wander and leave the aircraft in the hands of the F/O who will dutifully fly the flight plan and handle the radios; no longer will you come back to find a cancelled flight plan due to lack of response on your behalf.

Hotkeys also give you access to the TCAS and weather radar, which are all displayed in an unmovable window on the left side of the screen. The TCAS is what you would expect and works roughly the same as most other TCAS systems within MSFS. The weather radar is quite basic; the idea of having true weather radar should be quickly re-assessed. All you get is a circle of shading around an airfield, the color and density of the shading tells you of the severity of the weather but short of that you can't really clean much from it. One gripe of this is the seeming inability to turn the TCAS and weather windows off once they are on. I found the only way was to click on the windows, which annoyingly minimises the sim and displays the main FSHotseat program, requiring you to re-select the sim from the taskbar to get back in. It is however nice to know and you can thus avoid any turbulence and so not upset the passengers who WILL scream if the aircraft gets shaken about in the air!

Descent and approach is again a myriad of checklists run by either the F/O or yourself. Again letting the F/O take some of the workload is helpful for you and also improves your CRM rating at the end. The F/O will ask if his planned runway is correct and if not, once you have put him straight in the menu system, will tune and ident the radios ready for the approach. As you descend and the rad-alt comes alive you will get the rad-alt voice calls from the bundle's GPWS system. This is good for some smaller aircraft but becomes an irritation if the panel you are using already has GPWS included; basically you get two calls at the same time. There are options to disable these functions should you so desire or indeed enable them on aircraft that wouldn't normally have them. How many Cessna 172's have you seen with TCAS and weather radar?

Various calls are made by the F/O on the approach and landing, including the final landing checks, which in most cases should be done by the F/O as you will have your hands full. Once back on terra firma, taxied to the gate and engines shut down the F/O will run through the shutdown checks and then contact ops. They will inform you of your performance, stating the happiness of the passengers, passing comment on your flying skill and of course your punctuality. The F/O will then make his comments known telling you if he was happy with your flying skills and CRM. This is all recorded in a permanent log within FSHotSeat for you to look back on. You should in theory be able to see any improvements or deteriorations and so be better able to hone your flying skills and increase your challenges.

I have to say I was sceptical about the need for such a product in the FS market, the need for another naff co-pilot providing program didn't seem to be there as so many had tried and failed in the past. What FSHotseat has done is provide much more than just one product. You can have the option of just the basic MP3 player and ambiance creator or the full-blown multi-crew commercial operation or something in the middle. The generic checklists make it possible to use this package with pretty much any add-on aircraft without any modification so it really is a plug and play package.

It is not without fault and I suffered at the hands of an annoying hiss for several flights before it magically disappeared. The voices can be irritating as can the F/O's constant rambling and bad jokes, but then again as an F/O myself perhaps that is our lot in life. Overall this is a big package for a relatively small price tag, I personally would buy it purely for the radio function which is much more than just an MP3 player, the ability to have news read to you while flying means you can peak your head out of 'flight sim world' without having to worry about your virtual crew and passengers feeling neglected. If only the developers could get it to read my e-mails as part of the deal then I could simply leave FS running permanently.

One big criticism of the package is its need for FS ATC in order to run all the advanced functions. It uses the flight plan created within the 'flight planner' and often refers to you needing to get clearances. Failure to do so will result in a detrimental score on your evaluation. This is no problem if you can stomach the MS ATC and often use the flight planner but for those wishing to use multiplayer it is severely limiting. Because multiplayer mode in FS inhibits the ATC function you will end up with only the free flight mode thus missing out on the virtual F/O, cabin announcements, weather radar and TCAS, etc. There are some ways to work around it but these become tiresome and can be intermittent.

In this day and age where there is a package for almost every possible need in our flightsim community the developers have been very clever and found several cracks to fill rather than looking for gaping holes. This is a package that you didn't realise you needed until you've played with it. Because of this FSHotseat is available as a fully functional free download for you to try. The demo is restricted to a 90 mile radius of Chicago but will no doubt give you enough of a feel for the package to realise that it can make a difference to your flight sim experience.

FSHotseat is available from www.fshotseat.com as a free download. Registration for the full product is $34.95 (around £20).

Kris Heslop
boxjockey99@hotmail.com