Lately, when I have the option for AI ATC on it hasn’t been doing anything. I usually like to get cleared for takeoff and and it to the AI. But now the radio just seems to go dead.
Same here. It dd it for one leg of the flight and then stopped.
Did you enabled or disabled the AI ATC assistance in a middle of a communication cycle? This usually happens when your ATC assist kicks in, then you turn it off in a middle of a conversation cycle because you don’t want it to, then you manually finish the cycle yourself.
The next time you turn on the AI ATC assistance again, it won’t work because the cycle was already broken.
Usually when this happens, you have to restart your flight session. If this happens again, make sure you complete the full conversation cycle. For example, the ATC assistance starts an IFR clearance inadvertently. At this point, don’t turn it off. Let it finish until the other ATC responds, and your copilot responds back with the readback, and the other ATC acknowledge it. When that happens you can turn off the ATC Assist, this would make the AI complete that full cycle. So when you want to start the next conversation cycle (ie. Taxi clearance) it knows that it’s free to do the next cycle and does it.
Otherwise, if you turn it off in the middle of the cycle, and manually complete the communication yourself. The next time you turn on the ATC assist, it will think that it’s still in the middle of the previous cycle, but it can’t respond anymore because the options are no longer there because you already done it manually.
The sim also isn’t designed to do a multi-legged flight. So once you complete a full flight in a session, the AI can’t assist you in the ATC anymore because technically, you have completed a full flight.
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I have the same problem when using atc assistance after the Session I always have to Manually deactivate and activate it for the next flight in the menu otherwise it will stay turned on but somehow not working.
Thanks for the detail explanation. Sounds like an issue that needs to be resolved.
Indeed it is, but I can’t think of a way to fix it that’s easy to do. If they did design the ATC assist to work within a cycle, to fix it, they need to rework the entire ATC system. From a software development perspective, it’s not a bug fix, but a improvement rework. And that is just waiting for a team who’s free enough to do the extra work unpaid.
For now, it is what it is, and as long as you keep track of all your ATC cycles, they always work.
The ATC system is due to be re-worked by the team at Working Title this year. Should be much better than what we currently have. In the mean time, here’s what’s worked for me. This method requires a cold and dark start. Before doing anything, open up the “pilot icon” at the top and turn off AI Co-pilot ATC. Now you can go ahead and hit the battery to on, and go through the normal start-up procedures. When ready for avionics, open up the “pilot icon” at the top again and turn the AI Co-pilot ATC to the ON position. He’ll ask for the clearances, push back and taxi instructions. In my experience, I rarely lose ATC using this method.
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The problem with that method is that because currently there’s this weird behaviour that when you start a flight cold and dark, there’s a moment within a fraction of a second that all the systems are actually powered up before it immediately powers down. Inside the cockpit you can hear the instrument beeps or if you’re outside, you’ll hear the sound of Engine/APU shutting down.
At this brief moment, the sim thinks all the electrical systems are operational including the radio, so the AI ATC Assist kicks in to ask for the initial clearance. But since the next second all the systems are shut down as if it’s cold and dark, the radio goes off too, so the sim immediately breaks this conversation cycle as the radio cuts off. Then you get the issue that I explained above.
So instead, you can also go to the General Options under Assistance → Piloting. All the assists are permanently set up there. So as long as this is set to Hard/True to Life before you set up a flight, the AI ATC assist should be off by default at the start. So even with the weird power down behaviour at the start of the flight, the ATC assist never kicks in, and you can continue your start up sequence until you’re ready for the AI copilot to take over the ATC comms.
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Sounds like I should just stick to not using ATC as I did in FSX until we have something better to try.
I’ve never had that situation happen. That’s is indeed weird.
Check out this video, the moment I press Ready to Fly, it starts with engines and electrical on and immediately shuts down.
If the ATC Assist is on at this fraction of a moment, it will start asking for clearance then cuts off because the electrical went off. Like in this video. You can’t prevent this one because you can’t open the assistance menu from the toolbar before you press Ready to Fly. By that moment, it would be too late. But this one I got a bit lucky and didn’t break the cycle.
Nice find on the issue.
I’m just flying a C172 and it’s not experiencing that bug with the electrical system.
I started turning off AI radio to start to prevent unwanted pushbacks. After acknowledging clearance for take off I hand back to AI.
That seemed to work okay for a bit but recently it’s just gone silent. It’s not all bad as I don’t hear a constant “Jet Blue expedite your climb to xxxx feet” ever 1.25 seconds. Either something is wrong with MSFS ATC or JetBlue pilots don’t know how to climb. They also seem to miss their approach 9 out of 10 times.
That’s the problem with live traffic. The ATC is having its own simulation, telling air traffic to either climb or descent depending on their flight plan. However, the real world aircraft don’t follow MSFS ATC instructions for obvious reasons, so they follow the real ATC instructions, so if the real ATC instructions is telling them to hold altitude in a holding pattern, the real aircraft follow suit. And that data feeds back to the MSFS Live traffic system, making the air traffic do a holding pattern and hold its altitude.
Since the ATC in MSFS is separate, it thinks that the aircraft is ignoring their instructions, so therefore they keep asking them to expedite their descent.
I have my battery switch assigned to a toggle on my throttle (Warthog). I always make sure it’s in the Off position before planning my flight. Wonder if that’s the difference maker as to why I don’t have the same issue you do?
Maybe, I don’t have any battery bound to any of my controls as I turn on the battery manually inside the cockpit. (well, technically my FS2Crew first officer does it).
Great explanation. Software wise it sounds like an easy fix once they get to it.
I was getting an anxiety attack over the expedite climbs.
There’s only two options, really… Either use the Live Traffic to only Spawn them with their flight plan loaded, then simulate them offline as if it’s an offline AI. No further data communication with the server anymore at this point. The drawback is that it won’t be as realistic as the real life position of the aircraft. But the advantage is it doesn’t break immersion as it will have its own logic within the sim.
Or, remove expedite command from Live Traffic that continuously stream their position.
I’m more inclined towards the first option.
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