Thank you for purchasing Passenger and Crew Experience, or PACX! In this document, we will cover installation, usage, and general knowledge of the product.
This document was last updated for version 1.2.20.0 of PACX on May 3rd, 2022.
To find answers to common questions or to look for community support, visit the PACX forums, located here.
For one-on-one support from TFDi Design, please open a support ticket here.
In order to download your product, sign into your TFDi Design account then access the Client Area. Click on “Software – PACX” under “Your Active Products/Services” and on the right, click "Downloads". If you have purchased the product from Orbx or SimMarket, sign in through their respective clients and download the product. There are two types of installers you can download for PACX.
The PACX installer (pictured below) will install the application, as well as runtime dependencies automatically. It will also ask for your activation code. A guide to finding this is below.
Your activation code can be found via the client area on our website. To find it, go to the client area (located here, once logged in), and click on “Software – PACX” under “Your Active Products/Services”. This will open the management page for PACX and contains your activation code, as well as other online features.
The first time PACX is run, it will go through its first run setup process. During this, it will attempt to install PACXBridge into your simulator(s), ask you about X-Plane usage, and attempt to install FSUIPC and/or XPUIPC if required. Once this process is complete, you will be presented the PACX main interface.
This interface consists of five core elements. The center of wheel is menu button. Left clicking and dragging on the green start/end button will allow you to move the PACX wheel around your screen.
The shapes on the edge of the wheel are buttons used to access other parts of the application. Clockwise, from the left, the buttons are explained below.
The menu will appear when you click the green MENU button. This menu allows you to start or end a flight, open the IFE, access career options, view awards, see past flights and records, or close PACX.
When you are ready to embark on your first career adventure, simply click “MENU” and then choose “Manage Careers” and “New Career”.
Fill in your name, airline name and airline code in the top three boxes. You can then choose the ticket prices for the airline and your service quality. Choosing your reputation lets you set your target customer base, such as Economy, Balanced or Business. Bear in mind that each of these options attracts different passengers and can affect the likelihood and nature of in-flight incidents or complaints and comments.
Restricting your aircraft by rank allows you to fly more aircraft as you progress through the ranks in the airline. Hardcore mode means that every flight will be automatically recorded at the end, slewing and time acceleration will be disabled, and a crash will end your career.
Once completed, you will be taken back to the manage careers page, where you can choose to modify any aspect of your airline, as well as the opportunity to archive a career.
When ready, click menu and start a flight.
On the first page, you will set your flight itinerary.
Selecting “Next” at the bottom will take you to the next menu to choose your aircraft and some other flight settings.
The second page provides a preview of the cabin of the aircraft you have selected, as well as aircraft options.
When ready, click “Next” again to advance to the final page of flight setup.
The final page provides some additional options for in-flight announcements and passenger experience.
Once a flight is in progress, the flight status page becomes accessible.
This page will show upcoming times (departure or arrival), passenger satisfaction and percentage, and conditional information. Conditional information includes responses to boarding status inquiries, emergency or incident status, and items pending response.
Clicking the people icon on the top left will open the cabin view.
This allows you to view the cabin and passengers on the flight, as well as information about them. Clicking a passenger in the list selects them in the cabin and vice-versa. This information is updated in real-time throughout the flight.
The interaction system is what allows you to notify the crew and cabin of various information.
The first box is the type of announcement or interaction. In the example above, we are notifying the passengers of a delay. Depending on the first selection, the boxes below may ask for different information. For a delay, the cause and the length of the delay are required. The passengers will react based on this information.
The type of interactions you can select vary throughout the flight, and depending on what events are occurring. Some events will cause the flight attendant to make a public address; others will not.
Public addresses or emergency operations where you need to reply will not have any sounds, as they come from you, the pilot of the aircraft. Interactions can also be made through vocal interaction with PACX.
The vocal interaction portion of PACX has two primary features. The first is the ability to pre-fill the interaction menu with what it heard from your announcement. The second is to allow playback of your recorded audio through a public address style filter (this is an option).
After PACX has processed your spoken audio, it will open the interaction menu, automatically filling in the menu based on what you said. If it were able to identify the announcement, it would show a preview of what was detected and provide a chance to modify the announcement if needed. When you are ready, or when the auto-accept time has passed, the announcement will be made. Pressing the Escape key while the “Listening” popup is open will cancel vocal interaction.
A “General” type of “Public Address” announcement type exists as well. This is intended to be used when giving a public address via the vocal interaction system that is not one of the other types. It does not have any effect on the passengers (outside of potentially waking them up if they were asleep).
Vocal recognition uses your system default microphone. The recognition quality can be improved by using Windows Speech Recognition training.
The PACXBridge software facilitates direct integration with the simulator and select third party aircraft. To determine if PACXBridge is functioning properly, check to see if the “PACX” menu item exists under the “Add-ons” menu in your simulator.
If PACX is not running, an “Launch PACX” option should be available. This will start PACX directly from the simulator. Once PACX is open, more menu items will become available.
The four menu items will open PACX (if it has been minimized to the system tray), activate the vocal interaction, open the interaction menu, or open the PACX in-simulator HUD.
In addition to its default features, PACXBridge adds additional in-cockpit integration to the following aircraft:
In these aircraft, pressing the appropriate cabin/PA buttons will begin a vocal interaction in PACX, allowing for an immersive public address to be made. PMDG aircraft requires enabling of their SDK data broadcast for in-cockpit integration to work.
PACXBridge also provides native seatbelt sign control to the products mentioned above, as well as many other aircraft, and can display in-sim messages (if enabled).
PACXBridge provides an in-sim overlay called PACX HUD. Via this overlay, you can see passenger satisfaction, estimated departure or arrival time, and a dynamic text field on the right. The dynamic field will show information like in-flight service, flight phase, incident status, or other relevant data.
When the window is large enough, an interaction box will be shown to the right of the dynamic text. Via this box, you can use the up, down, back, next, and send buttons to interact with the passengers and crew without leaving the simulator.
The HUD can be toggled via the in-sim menu (if applicable) or by right-clicking the PACX icon in the system tray and selecting “Toggle HUD”.
PACX simulates an AI flight attendant, as well as AI passengers. This means that actions like in-flight service are performed without pilot input, as they would be in the real world.
Although PACX attempts to monitor and detect the phase of flight to the best of its ability, it will adapt if it determines this is incorrect. For example, if you are in the “boarding” stage, but other software has determined that boarding is complete, proceeding with the flight as expected will cause PACX to skip the remaining boarding process and move on with the flight. This will not have a negative impact on passenger satisfaction. Similarly, cruise altitude changes will be detected automatically.
PACX reads from the default seatbelt sign variable to determine if the seatbelt sign is on or off. Some aircraft do not report this information correctly, meaning that PACX cannot determine the state of the switch. To accommodate those aircraft, PACX offers the ability to control the default seatbelt sign variable via the interaction menu.
An in-flight entertainment (IFE) system is also provided. This can be used to view a flight map and details, access relevant news articles from FSElite, or listen to JetStream Radio.
After a flight, PACX expects the engines and seatbelt sign to be turned off to begin deboarding. Regardless of the seatbelt sign, deboarding will begin 30 seconds after engine shutdown. Once the flight has reached the deboarding stage, the flight can be ended without waiting for deboarding to finish.
After a flight is completed, PACX will present the end of flight report.
This report will show you the necessary flight information, any notable events that occurred, various comments from passengers and a list of your passengers on the flight. As well, it will provide the ability to upload the flight and subsequently view it online.
The settings page offers a variety of options to adjust the behaviour of the application to your liking. From top to bottom, the settings are explained below.
1: 'Mute Audio in External View' is ignored when connected to X-Plane as the feature is incompatible.
PACX offers the ability to earn various awards. Selecting “MENU”, then “View Awards” will display all the awards you can work toward during your PACX flights.
Each award has its own unique badge and is tailored specifically to you. Once you have earned an award, simply clicking on it will take you to the unique webpage for your award, which includes the option to share it.
Every award on the system has the requirements written underneath it.
On the records page, you can choose to show all flights in all careers or narrow it down by career. When selecting the drop-down underneath “Career to Display”, you will be presented with a list of careers to choose from. Depending on whether you choose to show them all, or just per career, the information below will be tailored to what you select.
There are multiple records that you can view through “Record View”:
Ranks:
Unranked - Class: A
This is the default rank within PACX. Every new career will start off with you at this rank. To progress to the rank of Cadet, you need to have completed 1 flight!
Cadet
The second rank in the PACX Career system is cadet. In order to progress to the rank of Second Officer, you are required to have completed at least 5 flights and have more than 5 hours in the air.
Second Officer - Class: B
The third rank in the chain is Second Officer. To be promoted to Senior Second Officer, you need to have completed a minimum of 25 flights with a total flight time of 25 hours.
Senior Second Officer
As a senior second officer, you have put considerable time into your career already! To complete your promotion to First Officer, you need to complete 50 flights with 50 hours in the air.
First Officer - Class: C
The rank of First Officer signifies you are halfway through completing the official "rank" structure in PACX! To be promoted to Senior First Officer, you are required to complete 75 flights and have 75 hours in the air.
Senior First Officer
To achieve your promotion to Captain, you are required to complete 100 flights in total, as well as having over 100 hours of flight time!
Captain - Class: D
The promotion to Senior Captain comes with a further increase on requirements, as you begin to near the end of the career path! To be successful in promotion, you should complete 150 flights and have a total of 150 hours in the air!
Senior Captain
As you continue to climb the ranks, the promotion to Master Captain takes place upon completion of a minimum of 200 flights and 200 hours of flight time. By this point, you have spent over full 7-days of real time on expanding your career!
Master Captain
The final rank in the chain is Master Captain. The official rank system stops at this rank, but for every flight you do, you will work towards achieving your ace ranks! To be promoted to Ace I, you need have completed 250 flights and have a total of 250 hours in the air.
Ace - Class: E
Upon achieving Ace, you have completed the PACX career system, but the progression does not stop here! You will keep progressing in Ace levels for every 10 flights and 10 hours you complete! Congratulations, and well done on achieving the rank of Ace!
Aircraft Rank Classes (Hardcodre Mode)
Class A:
Every pilot flying with a PACX Career will be able to fly Class A aircraft. Default aircraft in the PACX Airplanes file at rank Class A includes: ATR 42, ATR 72, 717-200, CRJ-100/200/700/900/1000, DH8D, ERJ-135/145/170/175/190/195, MD-81/82/83/87/88, Fokker 50/70/100 and the Saab 340.
Class B (Second Officer+):
Aircraft included by default in PACX with a rank restriction of Class B includes: the A318-321 series and the B737 series.
Class C (First Officer+):
Aircraft included by default in PACX with an associated rank restriction of Class C includes: A300-200/600, A330-200/300, 707-120/320/420, 727-100/200, 757-200/300, 767-200/300/400, DC-3, DC-6 and DC-9.
Class D (Captain+):
Aircraft restricted in PACX to Captains+ include the: A340-300/600, A350-800/900/1000, A380-800, 777-200/300, 787-8/9/10, DC-10, L-1011, L-1049 and the MD-11.
Class E (Ace+):
The only aircraft in the ace restriction rank is the legendary Concorde. No other default aircraft has this restriction.
If you wish to add your own aircraft to PACX or adjust the restrictions, you can do so in the Airplanes folder! Feel free to share the changes with us in Discord!
Adding Data to PACX is simple, and takes little time. This guide will outline how to add aircraft (along with their respective seating plan), adding new airports, adding new flight comments to your flights and adding new names that passengers can use when you start a new flight. Each of these parameters are edited via their respective .xml files. Take note of the the location of each file. The PACX installation directory, by default, is C:\Program Files (x86)\TFDi Design\PACX.
Adding New Aircraft
Each aircraft PACX uses has its own .xml file in the Airplanes folder. The aircraft tag (<Aircraft>
) has a name value, which represents the name of the aircraft. Each aircraft will also need a cabin. Each cabin needs a door, a crew seat and a passenger seat in order to be classed as a valid aircraft.
The location of custom aircraft cabins has changed in PACX version 1.2. They were previously stored in the PACX installation directory but are now stored in a folder in Documents\PACX for ease of editing.
Each aircraft will have the same .xml format initially.
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
Note: PACX cabins support multiple floors, so if your aircraft has more than one floor, you would add another <Floor>
tag.
Inside each floor tag, you can add rows to the aircraft. This is done by adding a <Row>
tag inside the desired floor. Within each row, you would then add the contents for that row. The grid system functions top to bottom, left to right. For example, our aircraft will have a door on the left side, so we will need to have a crew seat, 3 empty cells, then a door cell. Do not add a door for each door of the aircraft. Emergency doors would be used for boarding, which is not realistic.
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
<Row>
<Cell Type="CrewSeat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="3"/>
<Cell Type="Door"/>
</Row>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
Note: Rows and cells support a count parameter, which is optional and reduces the amount of xml needed to create a cabin.
After creating the first row, we will create the first class section of the aircraft. We will add a new row tag with a count of 4, to create 4 rows of first class seats. Each row of this first class section will have 1 seat on each side of aisle.
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
<Row>
<Cell Type="CrewSeat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="3"/>
<Cell Type="Door"/>
</Row>
<Row Count="4">
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
</Row>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
Note: Please make sure that your cell width (in this case, our cell width is 5) is as close to aligned as possible. This will prevent some issues where cells are unreachable.
We have now created the first class section of our aircraft, we will add a wall separator so first and economy class are separated.
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
<Row>
<Cell Type="CrewSeat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="3"/>
<Cell Type="Door"/>
</Row>
<Row Count="4">
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell Type="Wall" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Empty"/>
<Cell Type="Wall" Count="2"/>
</Row>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
Now that we have created a separator between first and economy class, we will add the economy class, which will be 23 rows of economy class.
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
<Row>
<Cell Type="CrewSeat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="3"/>
<Cell Type="Door"/>
</Row>
<Row Count="4">
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell Type="Wall" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Empty"/>
<Cell Type="Wall" Count="2"/>
</Row>
<Row Count="23">
<Cell Type="Seat" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Empty"/>
<Cell Type="Seat" Count="2"/>
</Row>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
To complete our aircraft, we will add a bathroom row, another crew seat and door and 3 galleys at the back of the aircraft.
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
<Row>
<Cell Type="CrewSeat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="3"/>
<Cell Type="Door"/>
</Row>
<Row Count="4">
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Seat"/>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell Type="Wall" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Empty"/>
<Cell Type="Wall" Count="2"/>
</Row>
<Row Count="23">
<Cell Type="Seat" Count="2"/>
<Cell Type="Empty"/>
<Cell Type="Seat" Count="2"/>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell Type="Bathroom"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="4"/>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell Type="CrewSeat"/>
<Cell Type="Empty" Count="3"/>
<Cell Type="Door"/>
</Row>
<Row>
<Cell Type="Galley" Count="3"/>
</Row>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
We have created our aircraft, all that's left is giving it a name and ensuring the .xml file is called the same!
If your aircraft does not load, look at your %localappdata%\PACX\log.txt file for the error.
You can also restrict an aircraft to certain career ranks by including a "RankClass" attribute on the opening <Aircraft>
tag. For example:
<Aircraft Name="XXXXXXX" RankClass="C">
<Cabin>
<Floor>
</Floor>
</Cabin>
</Aircraft>
Editing file: <PACX Installation Directory>
\Assets\Airports.xml
In this file, you will find every airport that PACX recognises as an airport. Each airport has 9 values that need to be entered to be recognised as a valid airport. Ensure that each Airport is inside the Airports tag (before the </Airports>
tag). These nine values are:
Note: Optional values should still be added, but kept with empty xml data
A valid airport will look similar to the following:
<Airport Ident="EGLL" Name="London Heathrow Airport" Latitude="51.4706" Longitude="-0.461941" Elevation="83" Continent="EU" Country="GB" Region="GB-ENG" Municipality="London" />
Editing Flight Comments
Editing file: PACX Installation Directory>
Assets\FlightComments.xml
In this file, you will see all the comments that passengers are able to use in the flight report. Flight comments are designated under different types. Ensure that each FlightComment is inside the FlightComments tag (before the /FlightComments>
tag). The type of flight comments are:
Variables can also be used in the comment. The only current variable is {CAREER}, which will be replaced in the comment as the career airline name. If no career is selected on this flight, it will be replaced with "this airline" instead.
A valid flight comment will look similar to the following:
<FlightComment type="EconomyBelowExpectation">Somehow, {CAREER} managed to disappointed me.</FlightComment>
Information About Names
Unlike earlier versions of PACX, names are now generated from a large list of region and country-specific first and last names. This largely eliminates the need to edit them as the vast majority of common names from around the world are included and will be selected dynamically based on where you are flying.
PACX also provides web-based options for sharing-related features. It is on the same page that the activation code is found. At the bottom of this page, there is an option to hide your name from the flight reports.
As PACX uses FSUIPC as its simulator connection, WideFS and/or XPWideClient will allow it to communicate across multiple computers. The process for configuring PACX to work across a network is as follows.
An example of the Settings.xml file is provided below.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PACX>
<Settings>
<NetworkIP>192.168.0.3</NetworkIP>
<NetworkPort>9000</NetworkPort>
</Settings>
</PACX>
Be sure to replace “
192.168.0.3
” and “9000
” with the appropriate data.