FS2002: How do I change AI traffic engine sounds (inside ATC vs outside)?

FS2002 AI engine sounds – what’s “inside” vs “outside”

In FS2002 the AI aircraft don’t use a special “AI sound set” out of the main \SOUND folder the way you’re thinking. What you hear is driven by the individual aircraft’s sound.cfg (in that aircraft’s folder), and FS just switches between “internal” and “external” views based on the entries in that sound.cfg.

So the job is really: edit/replace the sound set for the AI aircraft model you’re hearing, not hunt for one magic WAV in the main FS2002 sound folder.

Step-by-step

1. Pick an AI aircraft you’re hearing (example: an AI 737).
2. Go to that aircraft’s folder under:
   ...\FS2002\Aircraft\AircraftName\

3. Open its sound folder and look for:
   sound.cfg

4. In that sound.cfg, you’ll see sections that reference WAVs for external vs internal (typical names are things like “_ext” and “_int”, but the naming depends entirely on the author).
5. Replace the WAV files that are referenced there (or point the cfg to your new WAVs).

Important notes

• A lot of AI packages use aliased sound to save space. If you open the AI aircraft’s sound.cfg and it’s basically just an alias line, then you need to edit/replace the sound set it’s aliasing to.
• The “inside sound (what you hear on ATC)” description is a bit misleading: ATC itself is just voice. The engine sound you hear while talking to ATC is simply the internal cockpit view sound of whatever aircraft you’re currently in (or whichever view you’re using), not a special ATC sound.

To point you to the exact entries…
Can you paste the contents of the AI aircraft’s sound.cfg you’re working with (or at least tell us which AI package/aircraft it is)? Once I can see whether it’s aliased and what the section names are, I can tell you precisely which WAVs are acting as “inside” and “outside” for that set.