Sound can provide important sensory cues in a flight deck environment. The avionics software ProSimA320 provides satisfactory aircraft exterior sounds, but the interior cockpit sounds is much to be desired. Ambience environmental sounds of the cockpit, such as contractors, gyroscopes, static inverters and subtle alert tones are missing from the suite.

A look at the ProSim-AR development team finds no audio engineer employed by the company. The lack of detailed cockpit audio with the avionics package is no surprise – ProSim-AR other products (ProSim737, ProSimB38M) also do not have this offering. Fortunately expanded bus gate options have been available since ProSimA320 version 1.40 and 3rd party audio can be added and implemented to provide greater immersion.

Tutorial

Audio can be incorporated into ProSimA320 by using 3rd party sound effects or other commercial simulation packages (check the license usage first).

The following sound packages and audio files should be considered:

• Blue Sky Star
• FTSim+
• Simphonics (thank you Ted)
• Standby Horizon Gyroscope (enabled with essential bus power), Soarbywire recording (CC BY usage)

Start first by disabling the Relay 1, 2, 3 and 4 sounds in ProSimA320 – they sound nothing like the audio you hear in an Airbus flight deck.

Audio can be added with the ‘Audio Addons’ dialog box in the system application. There are also fade in, and fade out options. ProSim Audio crossfades the audio allowing for a seamless blending of different sound files. Once you have added the audio files, go to the ProSim Audio application to enable the sound and restart the program.

Audio can be triggered with the expanded gate options. Select the avionics sound you would like to configure under Combined Config, Audio, Switch. Sound can be triggered with the APU starting/stopping, packs flow, bus battery power, and DC essential power.

ProSimA320 is now configured to trigger flight deck sounds appropriately providing greater immersion to the simulator.