I’m fairly au fait now with MSFS, mainly for VFR iuse n helicopters. I’m using the HP Reverb G1 as my HMD with WMR. I’m aiming to do everything possible in the sim in the same way as in real life with the Guimbal Cabri G2 I fly at my local airfield. So far so good. My next step forward is to mimic real life comms with audio ATC. I’ll be using the HMD’s earhones to receive from ATC and ithe HMD’s in-built microphone to speak to ATC; I believed both these things are possible and I’ve managed to get ATC messages through the earphones. But I can’t find any directions for making the microphone work. Please can you tell me how to proceed?
Not sure what you’re expecting to achieve here. There’s no voice recognition of any kind in MSFS.
Thanks for your quick response. I said what I was hoping for and why. Seems you’re saying my belief is wrong. If so I’m disappointed; and a little surprised that this MS masterpiece is so fundamentally lacking. Surely lifelike ATC is a fair expectation especially when such things as VOX ATC have been around for so long. Do you think that this is worth me reporting as a problem?
It’s called VATSIM www.vatsim.com
Your best option is to create a wishlist topic and hope it’s considered for FS '24.
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They’re asking to be able to talk to the in-game ATC via voice recognition.
I’d never heard of VoxATC but there’s a thread on it here. Supposedly being beta tested in June but nothing of note since then.
not in-game, but there are a few ATC apps out there which enable some sort of speech recog ATC. I think BeyondATC will have this.
But for built in ATC, you can go through pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of threads commenting about how bad the in-game ATC is. Can’t imagine the shenanigans it would pull with a human player trying to talk to it.
I can see it now
Player: Dulles delivery United 1277 Looking for IFR to Miami
Dulles Tower: United 1277 please contact approach 127.2
Player: But…i haven’t filed…
Washington Center: United 1277 climb and maintain cleared to land 27 right
Player: wh-
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Well everyone, thanks for your inputs. What I’m after seems not available in MSFS just now. I’ll read all your comments more carefully tomorrow hoping to see a way forward that I can try. I’d be very interested in further comments. In real life some pilots say that ATC is just a nuisance and they avoid it where they can. In my experience I find the controller’s watchful eye reassuring and helpful with lookout and navigation. I’d love to have that in the sim.
VATSIM. What you want is VATSIM. Coverage might not be consistent but at least you’d get to talk to someone
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Yes that does help, along with TalonCGMAL; I’ll check my settings and look into VATSIM. Fingers crossed. Thanks also BeardyBrun for the wishlist suggestion.
This issue now seems to have been sorted out. Thanks for all your comments everyone. It seems that my initial assumption was wrong and MSFS does not include an interactive ATC where a pilot can talk to ATC using a microphone. That came as a disappointment, at first. But then from your responses it sounds as though MSFS’s ATC itself is far from perfect. And your suggestion that VATSIM will do what I’m after came as the perfect solution. I’ve had a look at what it offers and it looks very close to the real thing. I’m looking forward to giving it a try and feel sure that I won’t be disappointed. The only thing I’m not sure about is how VATSIM will work with my HP Reverb HMD …
vpilot (the client that lets you connect to VATSIM) will allow you to change your input/output for voice comms and you can direct the app to use your VR headset. It is Push To Talk only so you will need to set up a keybind.
Thanks Portalearth420. Push To Talk is fine, my sim cyclic has the right trigger switch so that’ll be easy, just like the real Cabri. And it’s also got a button to toggle between main and standby frequencies so you can load the next comms frequency in advance ready for when you need it - hope VATSIM will permit that. I’m looking forward to trying all that tomorrow. Of course all will depend on there being a controller on the stage to pretend they’re active at Norwich. And I wonder if there’ll be anyone to play the part of Beccles radio - Beccles Aerodrome is a training airfield and doesn’t have a controller. I do hope the HP Reverb microphone works so that they can hear me at the other end.
theres really not a lot VATSIM doesn’t allow and if you know what you’re doing and have common sense you have quite a bit of freedom on the network. Generally speaking as long as you can follow ATC and can fly the plane you’re using sufficiently you won’t have a problem. What you have on your standby frequencies will have no bearing on your experience on the network (other than convenient frequency switching)
Hate to say it, but you’re overthinking it just a smidgen. VATSIM is pretty chill and while they follow real world procedures to a degree, they understand it’s still just a video game and some concessions need to be made. For example, they can’t reasonable expect everyone to fly in real time, but you need live weather to maintain consistency across players on different sims since VATSIM supports the major sims
TLDR: They literally cannot stop you from what you put in your standby frequency
Wait for Beyond ATC - will most likely come out in early 2024.
As fas as I know it supports voice recognition,
VoxATC is in Beta right now and likely to release this year, so I would check that out.
Until this day, what makes this speech recognition-based program unique is the fact that ATC not only communicates with you, but with the AI as well and does so incredibly well (speaking from FSX/P3D times). It will also support Windows text-to-speech voices and 3rd party AI software like AIG.
Hold onto your hat, as BeyondATC might be what you are looking for, but that’s still in development.
What you “could do” is use a program like we had in the old day like Voiceattack, but then in the sim you would simply hold your talk button and say “1” for option 1 in the ATC menu… as that is so far the only way i think you might be able to automate it using your voice. I used a simular program in Silent hunter years ago, the “Torpedo LOS!” command, was hilarious to shout through the room and the crew would actually release the torpedo from the tube. Since ATC usually gives you multiple options which are never the same, you would be confined to setting up 1,2,3,4,5,6 in voiceattack or a simular program… might even be able to use windows inbuilt speech-to-text program to work with flightsim, but i have no clue how to. As i said, i only used it in one game, it was fun back then.
Good luck on your venture.
The BeyondATC program (check it out on youtube, it’s quite promising) is working with ai to get us the best representation of computer-ATC into msfs, Vatsim, however, is the best and probably easiest regarding your quest for spoken atc at the moment, if you know your phraseology and are not afraid to use it… and there’s gotta be a controller online, or else yer not getting much atc guidance.
Thanks. I have been trying Vatsim and yes it does the job nicely - just a shame that in the UK there’s generally not many controller coverage in the places I fly. I’ll keep an eye on BeyondATC.
yeah. sadly it’s usually Gatwick or Heathrow. Sometimes you can get some additional coverage during events but crowded airspace can be overwhelming if you aren’t prepared for what a busy night on vatsim is like. But hey for a free service they do great!
For what it’s worth, even in the US coverage is typically Boston, New York or LA and everything in between is pretty inconsistent for coverage. There are some paid solutions which provide 24 hour service but they’re region limited and you don’t get the diversity you might on VATSIM. By that i mean you might get gate to gate coverage but you’re talking to the same person the entire time. Most people choose VATSIM and cope with spotty coverage or cope without ATC while they wait for beyondATC