Checklist Reader – Your Voice-Controlled Copilot for MSFS 2024

Checklist Reader – Version 1.0.18.7 This release gives you three things you had to work around before. Checklist Reader can now listen on a microphone of your choosing instead of whatever Windows happens to call the default, so the headset stays free for the radio. Everything the program says gives way to Beyond ATC – not only the checklist being read, but flight monitoring, route monitoring, the tour guide and GSX as well – and a callout caught by a transmission is kept and spoken afterwards instead of being lost. And the map's layers can be set to the aircraft you are flying in a single click, with the first map window of a session already showing the right ones. Alongside that, the lists of voice commands were put right: a command you can read on screen is now a command the program can actually hear. Important: Nothing needs to be done on your side. No checklist content changed and every setting carries over. The microphone selection starts out empty, which means the Windows default is used exactly as before. For hundreds of additional aircraft and checklist variants, download the separate Checklist Library Extensions package; Checklist Reader is the main application that displays and reads that optional library. -------------------------------------------------- NEW: Choose The Microphone Checklist Reader Listens On • Quick Configuration, Microphone Setup, "Microphone device". Pick the microphone you want the program to hear you on. Until now it always took the Windows default, so anyone with a second microphone had to change the setting for their whole computer – and change it back afterwards. • The choice applies to Checklist Reader alone. Your Windows default microphone stays exactly as it is for every other program, so the headset can keep serving Beyond ATC, VATSIM, Discord or TeamSpeak while the checklists listen on a desk microphone. • It takes effect the moment you save. Speech recognition is rebuilt on the new device, no restart needed, and the choice covers everything the program listens to: checklist responses, global commands, Push-to-Talk, the microphone analysis, the speech test and the Companion. • Windows remembers the assignment, so the next start already begins on the right device. The Checklist Reader and Checklist Reader Lite are separate entries, each with its own device. • A microphone that is not there does not break anything. If the device is unplugged or switched off at startup, Windows falls back to the default for the time being, the setting stays saved, and it takes hold again as soon as the device returns. • The new manual chapter "Microphone Selection" covers the whole subject, including how to assign a separate speaker or headset for speech output through the Windows volume mixer. -------------------------------------------------- IMPROVED: Nothing Talks Over ATC Any More • Everything the program says now gives way to Beyond ATC, not just the checklist being read. Flight monitoring, route monitoring, the tour guide and GSX wait for the transmission to end and speak afterwards. Until now only a checklist actually being performed listened for ATC at all – and those four speak precisely when no checklist is running, so in practice they talked straight over the frequency. • A callout caught by a transmission is kept, not lost. It is spoken once the frequency is clear, and where one source had two things to say during the same transmission you hear the newer one: after a call you want the altitude you are at, not the one you passed while listening. Anything that has waited too long is dropped instead of being read out late – about twelve seconds for monitoring callouts, about five for GSX, whose question is only on screen for a few seconds anyway. A GSX prompt released after a transmission is also checked against the page still showing, so it can no longer answer a menu that has closed. • Urgent warnings are the deliberate exception and are spoken immediately, ATC or not. A terrain or stall warning that waits for the frequency is a warning that arrives too late. • A question the program wants to ask you – an unusual condition it would like acknowledged – now waits for the transmission before asking, so the few seconds it listens for your answer no longer open in the middle of a clearance. • The setting is now called "Give way to Beyond ATC". "Auto-pause" described about a quarter of what it now does. Your saved choice is kept, and the voice commands "listen to ATC" and "ignore ATC" work exactly as before. -------------------------------------------------- NEW: Map Layers That Match The Aircraft You Are Flying • Enable All and Disable All were the two ends of a scale nobody flies at. The Filter menu now offers six layer sets for the aircraft classes the program already knows – heliports for a helicopter, seaplane bases for a floatplane, no grass strips for a jet, enroute fixes only where an IFR clearance actually uses them – and applies one in a single click. • A set is a starting point, not a mode. Every entry stays individually switchable afterwards, and the menu only ticks a set for as long as your selection still matches it, naming the active one at the entry. • The first map window of a session already opens on the right set. It is taken from the simulator when connected, otherwise from the selected checklist – which is what makes it work while you are still planning. It happens once per program start and once more after an aircraft switch, never against a window that is already open, and never at all when the aircraft cannot be identified: a guess would throw away a deliberate selection. -------------------------------------------------- IMPROVED: Flight Map View Buttons And Follow Modes • Center Aircraft now switches the follow mode to Lazy, so the aircraft stays in the picture instead of sliding straight back out of it. Pulling the view onto the aircraft and then leaving the map standing still was a contradiction – until now you had to change the follow mode by hand every single time. • Center Map does the same when no track has been recorded and it falls back to the aircraft position. Centred on a recorded track it stays static, as Fit Track and Fit Sights always have. • A follow mode you picked yourself is respected – Live stays Live – and these automatic switches only apply to the running session, so the map still opens with the mode you saved in the drop-down. -------------------------------------------------- FIXED: Voice Commands That Were Listed But Could Not Be Heard • Sixteen commands were printed in a wording the program does not listen for. "Stop watching the route" was missing the "please" the recognition waits for, and "please watch my flight" was never a phrase at all – the program listens for "the flight". Flight monitoring, route monitoring, the ATC switch and the aircraft systems were all affected: you could read a command off the Companion panel or the command overview, say it exactly as written, and nothing happened. Every phrase now shown is the phrase that works. • Five entries that had no command behind them at all were removed. "Run a full systems check", "check all systems" and "give me a full systems report" were three further names for the systems scan, and "that is intentional" and "we are aware" were never recognised anywhere. The friendly wording stays as the name of the command; only the phrase you speak has been corrected. • The manuals carried the same invented synonyms and a flight-monitoring phrase that had been renamed long ago. Both language versions now quote the working commands. • The hotkey editor offered the same broken phrases for its suggestions and now offers the working ones. -------------------------------------------------- IMPROVED: The Companion's Command Lookup • The same phrase is no longer listed twice. Two internal lists both named the monitoring commands, so Route Monitoring showed four entries for two commands, and a handful of engine questions appeared once per aircraft class. The awareness list went from 88 entries in 16 topics to 65 in 10, without losing a single command. • The topic filter now opens with every topic in view. The More/Less button only appeared after you had already clicked a topic, so until then nothing suggested there was more to see. -------------------------------------------------- IMPROVED: The Quick Configuration Window • The window opens noticeably larger, so a full device name fits on one line instead of being folded into the next. • A divider you drag now stays where you put it. Every tab used to reset its divider whenever the window changed size – and switching tabs is a size change – so adjusting one never survived. Your position is also remembered when you close and reopen the window. • The dividers start in sensible places and are calculated from what is actually on the tab. On the Mode tab the divider used to sit across the content and hide the lower half of it. • Long entries in drop-down lists are no longer cut off. Device names, voices and aircraft were laid out over two lines inside a single-line field, so the second half simply disappeared. This affected lists throughout the program, not only this window. -------------------------------------------------- IMPROVED: A Support Package That Answers The Microphone Question • The support package now contains a microphone report of its own, "microphone.txt". The microphone is the most common source of trouble, and until now a support package described it only as it looked at startup. • The report is written the moment you create the package, so it shows the situation as it is right then: whether Windows permits microphone access at all – for the computer, for your account and for Checklist Reader specifically – which device is assigned to the program and whether that matches the setting, every capture device including the disabled and unplugged ones with mute state and input level, the device the program actually receives, and the installed recognizers against the language you configured. • Its first block names the cause in plain words. Each problem produces exactly one finding, so an unplugged microphone is not also reported as a mismatched assignment. • The short form is written to the startup log in every session, which means a plain log file carries the answer too. -------------------------------------------------- Community & Support The Checklist Reader is an actively evolving project, and feedback is always welcome. Join the community on Discord: https://discord.gg/EchPmVtueY For further support: simflightchris@gmail.com -------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer This release references third-party products: Beyond ATC and FSDreamTeam's GSX Pro. Checklist Reader and Checklist Library Extensions are independent projects and are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the developers of Beyond ATC or FSDreamTeam. These integrations are provided as-is to support your use of those products alongside Checklist Reader. All checklist content is for flight simulation only and is not approved for real-world aviation.