Hi there, working on rounding out my home cockpit currently and I’ve entered the audio phase. FWIW, my cockpit is enclosed, and so to me my first inclination was to put in some sort of 5.1 surround sound system (since I hear that’s what MSFS supports). But after sleuthing around the message boards I have seen lots of posts from people saying headphones with a Dolby Atmos headphone plugin is MEGA immersive.
I’m not opposed to headphones, not one bit…in fact I prefer it because my hearing isn’t the greatest in the world, and headphone will really help me pick up on all those extra details. HOWEVER, the big kicker, I always fly on VATSIM when I fly. Been wracking my brain (and continuing to search the forums) as to how that would work. I know MSFS has that headphone simulation setting so that it deafens the sound when ATC audio comes on, but that only applies to the in game ATC correct? I’m just having a hard time trying to determine how I can get the best of both worlds here.
Obviously option 1 would be just do a 5.1 surround setup in the cockpit, and then use a headset for Vatsim communication, sort of makes the most sense. But (to keep the wife happy) if I could have it run all audio through headphones that’s just an extra bonus. My only solution I can think of with that, though, is I’d have to just crank the output volume in vPilot way up so it’s louder than the game sound in the headphones. Just curious what everyone else has done that’s in a similar situation as me. As usual, much appreciated!
I don’t know if this could help you, but I use a head set with MSFS and Vatsim.
In Windows sound mixer you are able to set the relative volume of both applications.
So I have MSFS ATC disabled and for me this sounds as real as it can get. I have all the sim sounds: aircraft, environment, and the (sometimes busy) chatter of the ATC. There is no interference between these.
To mimic the real life scenario where the sim sounds come from the speakers and the ATC through the head set would mean that I would have to crank up the volume of the speakers quite a lot to overcome the isolation of the head set cups, so that I don’t do. In that scenario you could work with a separate microphone like in the olden days.
Hope this helps a bit.
I have a similar but also entirely different situation to you. I also plan to use vatsim with my home cockpit setup and I want to use a headphone/speaker setup to get a slightly more immersive sounding sim. In my case I plan to directly plug my headset into my PC, and run my audio from vpilot through my headphones, then run the game noise through the speakers so it’s split audio.
This could work for you too if you want to use headphones, but this is just my thought on the entire topic.
be careful here, with Vatsim you need have only Vatsim audio in your headphones (with mic) because then you hear ATC and other pilots +/- clear. Mixing other sim audio in headphones put you to problem with no clear Vatsim audio transmissions and this can be big problem. I have simply sim audio inside my TV speakers and Vatsim audio in headphones, this is best solution.
Yeah, this is similar to what I was thinking about doing, but like @GhostlyFrend mentioned I’m thinking I may have to have the audio so loud on my speakers to hear past my headset, it may not make sense. I’m almost thinking maybe I just run the game audio (engines/etc) through my headphones (get the Dolby Atmos app everyone says so that it at least sounds the best it can), and then play with the volume so that I can hear it, but it’s not too loud…just like in real life. Then set my vPilot audio so that it is plenty loud to where I have no issue hearing VATSIM transmissions through. I think I’ll try that for starters. Thanks guys!
All good, you can always tweak the sensitivity of your microphone to pick up noises but ofc when you are transmitting you might be able to hear engine noises. (call it realism ) Probably a better idea to balance the volumes and just using headphones, though. My situation is different to where I’m using the oculus quest 2, the speakers are RIGHT next to my ears, this means it’s much quieter than the use case of speakers from a distance.
That is how I have the audio set up in my sim pit. Environmental sounds through the 5.1 sound system, and ATC/Vatsim through my Corsair cordless headset.
I manually adjust volume to get the best balance depending on the airplane I am flying. (my speaker system has it’s own volume control
If you go the route of external 5.1, keep in mind you can use a headset with “open” headphones which are very good at letting external sound in, so you will be able to hear both speaker and headset sound.
But should be no problem with mixing both MSFS and vatsim audio on good quality headphones. The strategy though would be decreasing MSFS volume, not cranking up vatsim. BTW, the MSFS headphone simulation muffles the sound all the time in the cockpit, not just when ATC speaks to you.
FYI the “headphone simulation” in MSFS doesn’t only kick in when ATC talks, it’s active all the time when enabled. It simulates headphones as the name implies So the engine sound is much lower.
I use that setting with vatsim.
Everything in headset.
In vPilot you can also turn up audio a bit, I have mine at +5 to ensure it’s a bit louder than everything else.
) Probably a better idea to balance the volumes and just using headphones, though. My situation is different to where I’m using the oculus quest 2, the speakers are RIGHT next to my ears, this means it’s much quieter than the use case of speakers from a distance.
So the engine sound is much lower.