Request VLC MFD

[henrik]

I don't know if this has been requested to death, so my apologies if it has.

As we all know, quite a lot of our time in Orbiter is spent waiting for the next thing to happen (especially when talking about people like me who don't use time acceleration). A lot of the time there simply is nothing to be done, so it would be prime time to spend time watching or listening something quite entertaining. Placing a media player on an MFD would be an excellent way to incorporate entertainment in the simulation without having to run it in a window or have another computer at hand.

VLC would probably be the logical choice, since it's open source and supports all kinds of media formats, but it could be anything, really. I assume WMP has good API's to integrate a player into third party programs. I don't know, unfortunately I cannot program.

So, this is just to throw the idea out there. Feel free to enlighten me about possible solutions that are already out there or mock me about how inconceivable my idea is.

 

[Kveldulf]

There is the Orbiter Radio MFD. Haven't tested it with 2010 P1 yet, but it worked fine in 2010 and 06p1. Last I saw though, it doesn't handle requests, but it's something.

 

[garyw]

Use orbiter in windowed mode and launch VLC on the PC?

Orbiter sound also has an MP3 player built in.

 

[Lucy]

There is the Orbiter Radio MFD. Haven't tested it with 2010 P1 yet, but it worked fine in 2010 and 06p1. Last I saw though, it doesn't handle requests, but it's something.

Both versions work fine with 2010-P1, obviously the 2010 version won't work with 2006.

It doesn't handle requests because currently there's no pre-set automated way for the system to handle them, but I guess I can work on that.

 

[mc_]

Alt-tab...

 

[Ripley]

I just found out few days ago that the latest VLC (1.1.4) comes with many goodies.
Try to press CTRL+L to show the "playlist".

There you can find some options on the left: click on "Internet", then on "Icecast Directory", and you can browse through a ton of Web radios!!
So, it's just a matter of running VLC in the background.

 

[Lucy]

Well, VLC would seem to have an API of its own, though it's badly documented.

As a basic implementation it might not be hard to do.

 

[fort]

Placing a media player on an MFD would be an excellent way to incorporate entertainment in the simulation without having to run it in a window or have another computer at hand.

One can do it via chm files ( html/javascript ) enough easily with a swf player but the chm window ( "help" window in Orbiter ) is not very elegant in terms of immersion for that. I do not know if it's possible to associate a swf player to an mfd with, for example, the possibility to choose directly in it and from an external list the video or the audio that you want to view/hear.