Crew Chief Settings

Crew Chief is your AI helper. Ask him how to do something, where a field is, or to set things up for you, and he answers in text and by voice. See him in action on the Crew Chief page.

Asking Crew Chief

• By voice: hold the Crew Chief Push To Talk key (default R), say your question, then let go. The screen shows "Crew Chief listening", then "thinking" and "speaking".
• By typing: type your question on radio channel 6 (the help channel, "Chief"), or type .crew followed by the question, for example .crew set course for A12.
• Short commands such as "gear up", "flaps down", "full throttle", "autopilot" or "open the bomb doors" run at once without the AI, and Crew Chief tells you your own key for it ("Gear up. That's your G key."). Short commands never fire, aim or bail out.
• If an answer did not help, say "that didn't help" (or "wrong answer"), or type .crewbad with a short note. It is logged so the help can be fixed.

The settings

Open them from Options > Preferences > Crew Chief. They are saved in settings\crewchief.cfg.

• Enable voice commands (push to talk): off, and the talk key does nothing.
• Enable voice playback: Crew Chief's spoken voice. Untick it to make him silent; his answers still show as text.
• Enable AI (ask anything): off, and Crew Chief only runs the short commands (gear, flaps and so on); questions get "Crew Chief's AI is off".
• Show Crew Chief text on screen: his lines fade in at the top of the screen in the arena too.
• Name keys in answers (off for VR): answers name your own keys.
• Volume and Speed (0.9x to 2.0x) of his voice, and the voices to use (click a voice to hear it).
• Mic setup: opens the Windows microphone settings.
• Reset lessons: the getting-started lessons play again.

Turning Crew Chief off

• Stop him talking (text only): untick Enable voice playback.
• Turn the AI off: untick Enable AI (ask anything).
• Turn him off completely: untick all three: voice commands, voice playback and AI.
• Stop the lessons: tick Don't show any lessons on the Getting started panel.

Getting-started lessons

The first times you reach a place (the main menu, picking an arena, the tower, the hangar, your first flight, flying with the mouse, vehicles, your parachute, gunnery) Crew Chief explains it. The Getting started panel lists the lessons: tick a lesson to hide it, click its name to hear it again, or tick Don't show any lessons to hide them all and close the panel. Reset lessons in the settings brings them back.

Microphone and requirements

• If Windows has no microphone set up, or blocks it for games, pressing the talk key opens the "Crew Chief: microphone" window; Open setup goes to the Windows setting.
• Voice needs 64-bit Windows. Crew Chief's voice also needs the 64-bit Visual C++ runtime (the installer adds it); without it he answers in text only. "Crew Chief can't hear you: voice is not installed" means the voice part is missing.
• Voice is English only.
• Crew Chief needs you logged in. "Crew Chief is not ready yet" or "Crew Chief is not on" means he cannot be reached right now; try again in a moment.