The connector is the piece that runs on your own computer, next to the simulator. The website decides what should be said; the connector watches the aircraft and decides when — then plays it.
It runs on Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple silicon) and Linux.
What it is actually doing
Once a flight is running, the connector is doing four things at once.
Reading the aircraft. Altitude, speed, vertical speed, position, heading, lights, engines, parking brake — a few times a second.
Working out the phase. Gate, pushback, taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, approach, landing, deboarding. Everything else hangs off this.
Waiting for each announcement to become due. The plan from the website says what has to be true before each announcement runs. The connector checks those conditions against what the aircraft is actually doing.
Playing the audio. Chime, announcement, boarding music, in the right order and at the volumes you set.
How it talks to the simulator
| Simulator | How | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MSFS 2020 / 2024 | SimConnect | Nothing to install |
| X-Plane 11 / 12 | our plugin | Drop it into the plugins folder |
| P3D / FSX | FSUIPC | Uses your existing FSUIPC |
It also handles the case where the simulator is not there: without telemetry the flight still runs on the schedule, and you can trigger anything by hand.
Reading switches from the cockpit — the seatbelt sign, for example — needs more than SimConnect offers, because study-level aircraft keep those in their own variables. On MSFS the connector reads them through the MobiFlight WASM module, which it can install for you. Without it, the seatbelt sign simply isn't read and the announcements fall back to the schedule.
Generating the audio
Announcements are generated on our servers and cached on your machine. That has two consequences worth knowing.
The first play of a new announcement needs a moment. Later plays of the same one are instant, because it is already on disk.
Losing the internet mid-flight is survivable. Anything already generated still plays, and anything new falls back to the local voice.
The local voice runs entirely on your computer and is what the Free plan uses. It never needs the network and never costs a credit.
Running the flight yourself
Nothing is locked. Every announcement can be fired by hand, the current phase can be overridden, and you can jump into a flight already in progress — start the connector at cruise and it works out where you are rather than replaying the departure.
WebDeck puts the same controls on a phone or tablet on your network, so you are not alt-tabbing. There is also a Stream Deck plugin if you would rather have physical buttons.
Voice lets you speak the crew calls yourself instead of the app speaking them, and also lets you talk to the ground crew — see talking to your crew.
Ground services
The connector can drive the ground handling in your simulator by voice, which is switched on under Ground. What it can do depends on which simulator you fly.
| MSFS | X-Plane | |
|---|---|---|
| Driven through | GSX Pro 4.0.6 or newer | BetterPushback |
| Can do | refuelling, catering, boarding, deboarding, stairs, jetway, ground power, lavatory, water, cleaning, de-icing, pushback | the pushback |
| You still do by hand | pick the handling agent when GSX asks | draw the push route in the planner |
On X-Plane the plugin has no way of being handed a route, so the drawing stays yours — the voice does the calling, the go-ahead and the stopping around it. Nothing here needs anything extra installed beyond the plugin itself.
With the switch off, neither is touched and the flight behaves exactly as it does today.
Signing in and pairing
You sign in once and the connector pairs itself to your account. From then on it pulls whatever you have dispatched on the web; you do not re-enter the flight on both sides.
It checks for updates on its own and tells you when a new version is out.
When something does not play
The connector keeps a log of every decision it makes — which announcement became due, which was skipped and why. That log is the fastest way to find out what happened, and it is what we ask for when something looks wrong.
Three things account for most of it:
Taxi and you are at the gate, that is the reason nothing gate-related is firing.
- The phase is not what you think. The connector shows the phase it has decided on; if it says
necessarily where the simulator plays.
- The announcement already played. Each one runs once per flight unless you replay it yourself.
- No sound device. The connector plays through the output you pick in its settings, which is not