PushbackZoomer v1.0
This app is my christmas present to the community but please consider it as in beta stage still!
PushbackZoomer is a tiny little utility, that allows to perform pushbacks just by speaking voice commands!
As you don’t need to configure anything it as the most simplistic GUI ever: the GUI is just a blank window with literally zero UI elements on it. Start it, put it in the background an forget it!
How do you use it? Talk with it! Using the standard audio input, you need to speak a realistic and comprehensive set of voice commands, which trigger step by step an improved pushback procedure. For each command you hear a response via the standard audio output.
Here is a list of supported features:
Freeware Windows 10 app
Distributed via the Microsoft Store, was well as a *.msix file (packaged Windows app) from freeware portals
Zero-controls GUI
The only feedback, that the GUI provides, is the connection state to the sim via SimConnect (GUI in grey = idle / GUI colored = connected)
Minimal resources footprint. By intelligent context sensing, the app only activates voice recognition during phases, when a pushback could occur. For the rest of the flight, the app will be running idle.
Speech commands in english only
Speech commands follow the real world protocol as much as possible.
Freely spoken commands are not understood, but the phrases need to match a set of predefined commands (see list of minimal commands below).
A healthy number of variations is supported both for spoken phrases as well as for the responses.
Depending on the mood of the virtualpushback driver, the conversation will have a different character. For every pushback any of the moods TightLipped, Formal or Expressive will randomly be applied to our virtual pushback driver.
Literally hundreds of millions of different conversations with the pushback driver are possible.
Robust speech recognition, even as non-native English speaker I easily get confidence values of 0.95 or more
Any action can be canceled by saying “no, no, no”, if something was not understood correctly by the speech recognizer.
This is the minimal set of commands:
Ground from flightdeck -> Start the converstion
Brakes released -> Confirmation that the parking brakes have been released
Turn -> Requests a 90° turn to the right or left
Turn by degrees -> Requests a turn by the specified angle to the right or left
Turn facing -> Requests a 90° turn, the direction is derived from the cordinal direction
Stop turning -> Stop turning and continue with current heading
No, no, no -> Cancel started action
Stop pushback -> Terminate the pushback
Brakes set -> Confirmation that the parking brakes have been set
How to install?
Extract all file from the zip into a folder.
System Requirements
The language packs for english need to be installed.
How to use?
Start PushbackZoomer.exe and place the window in the background. Start talking to the pushback drive once you brought the aircraft in the correct state for pushback.
