If this ATC mess has been given to WT, I’d sure love an update, even if they could just confirm they are working on it. As of right now, I have only seen community members claiming this but it could all be conjecture without Asobo or WT coming out and saying so.
I agree. The frases in RL are standardized and should not be too dificult to implement in msfs.
To add to the list:
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ATC & AI Pilot should wait a few seconds BEFORE transmitting
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ATC menu should ALWAYS show the current state of the Flight rules’ ie VFR, VFR with Flight Following or IFR
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When ATC syas “cleared as filed”, it should make some reference to the last clearance given,
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There should always be an option to communicate with the appropriate ATC facility, depending on your stage of flight.
But really, it all needs to be re-designed & written again from scratch, to reflect a Flight Simulator ATC, as opposed to a “Flying game”.
If Asobo cannot do this in a timely and correct manner, then please “don’t be a dog in the manger”, and open it up to 3PDs, who, at the end of the day, (or maybe end of this year) can probably do a far better job or making a more realistic ATC, than Asobo will ever have the aviation expertise or resources to do,
Just provide an ATC SDK 
If I remember correctly, Jorg said sometime last year he’d asked WT to take a look. It was in one of those YouTube updates, I have no clue which one though. I’m sure other people can back me up?
No news is good news as they say, they don’t want to promise something if it’s impossible to do or doesn’t work. We’re not talking a couple of tweaks and hey Presto!, it’s a complete rip out and redo job. I do agree though, if a proper SDK becomes available, imagine what AIG and others could do.
100% agree – better done right than rushed and another poor result.
The ATC is broken.
The ATC is at least one third of the flight sim experience, and we deserve much better. If you understand the extent of the ingame ATC’s problems, you probably don’t need to read further, as only a few things are issues that haven’t been mentioned before. But the point of this post is to make it clear how much we need a real ATC update.
I’ve seen many topics on the wishlist that mention a desire to have third-party ATC systems compatible with ingame procedures in activities like Career Mode, but the majority of simmers deserve a reliable system that works out of the box.
Our MSFS ATC is anything by reliable. Here’s a handy list of EVERYTHING that’s wrong with the ATC ingame.
Most of these issues are listed as separate topics, others are things I’ve noticed myself.
Realism
- Phraseology is inconsistent and unprofessional, i.e, using airport abbreviations instead of names, using “decimal” instead of “point” while in in US, pronouncing 13,000 feet as “thirteen thousand feet,” instead of “one three thousand feet.”
- Azure AI needs a makeover or replacement for the ATC. The Azure AI sounds very unconvincing compared to modern AI voice engines. The voice sounds robotic, and pauses in weird places. Oddly, in FS2024 only, awful pronunciation bugs exist, like pronouncing 7000 ft as “seven thousand foot” instead of “seven thousand feet,” and not understanding if Ft. is “Fort” or “feet.” In both games, it’s also inconsistent whether or not the ATC will use the phonetic alphabet when pronouncing certain abbreviations. Of course in FS2024, this problem exists with the word RNAV, which should be read as “ar-nav,” and not as an abbreviation. Regardless, the ATC incorrectly reads it as “ar-en-ay-vee.”
- ATC does not respect emergency or high-workload situations. In real life, communication is priority three beneath navigating and aviating, and controllers know this. In the game, the ATC will “terminate” your ATC services if you can’t respond for a while, or in career mode, give you a pilot deviation for every transmission you don’t immediately respond to. Furthermore, emergencies do happen in the sim, and there’s no way to declare one to the ATC for immediate landing clearance, or directions to the nearest airport.
- ATC gives erroneous flight level instructions. In both sims, the ATC may fail to give you decent instructions early enough. As a result when descending via VNAV, the ATC will annoy you with instructions to climb back to your assigned flight level, and you cannot say “unable.” This can even result in not getting landing clearance, and instead, instructions to climb.
- ATC does not have regional accents or phraseology. This is by no means an urgent change, but would help with realism.
- Luggage and boarding is handled via the ATC. In real life, this is very much not the case, and should at least be a separate tab in the ATC window.
Quality of Life
- ATC User interface needs work. The current UI we have works fine, but some things are very tedious via that menu. Some options disappear randomly like requesting taxi to parking instructions. Finding the Pushback option is buried in the ground services section, and requesting a change of cruising altitude is a total nightmare. Sometimes, the transcript will scroll way up the list, so you have to scroll it back down. There’s also no way of seeing the history of messages between you and the ATC without scrolling through dozens of messages from other aircraft and the ATC.
- We need a simple and easy way to file our flight plans. This applies to mostly FS2020, however there is some overlap with FS2024. Most hardcore simmers on FS2022 use a third party flightplanner, but not everyone should have to do that. There needs to be a built in way to file your flightplan… like with an EFB, perhaps? And in FS2024, changing your flightplan after the sim has loaded up already isn’t possible, and that should definitely be changed.
- ATC Does not honor your flightplan. This is a big issue in both sims. Often, the ATC will change your approach on you, and sometimes it will not let you change it back via the “request a different approach” option in the ATC window. In FS2024, the ATC gives you a flight level that is 1000 feet above the flight level you put in the EFB, as well.
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Judging by the complexity of the existing third-party addon replacements for ATC it appears to be just too much for MS/Asobo to deal with and IMO they should enlist one of those and incorporate it, rather than try to reinvent the wheel.
That said, even they do not cover all the points raised as yet although they appear to be doing a good job. My own preference is Beyond ATC but SayIntentions also works well, the main (huge) difference being in the cost alternatives. FSHud is another popular alternative though I have no personal experience of it.
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FYI, for those wanting to review & vote, click below to see other existing wishes about ATC:
Search results for ‘atc #official:wishlist in:title’ - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums
Not a bad idea. Clearly the folks working on both of those projects seem to know what they’re doing far more than Asobo do. It happened with Flight Control Replay or whatever it’s called, maybe they can incorporate BeyondATC’s functionality into the sim itself.
By any means necessary, an ATC overhaul is desperately needed, and I’ll stand by that.
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I agree with your reasoning and your list.
But I think you forgot the most annoying one. Wx and ATC have to work together at all times. If ATIS gives information clearly favoring a certain runway and even in some cases naming that runway as the active on, ATC should not assign the reciprocal runway, unless it is truly a one way runway.
I can not express enough how much this single, yet consistent failure to even address false programming, is annoying me.
Oh here is my favorite one from ATC, descend and maintain Zero feet. smfh
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Are you sure it wasn’t “zero fort”? I get that a lot.
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I was under the impression that WT were working on ATC for MS/Asobo. Am I wrong?
No, you are not wrong.
Adding my little contribution here. I’ve just run into my first scenario where the ATC instruction to “maintain current heading and altitude and expect [insert landing approach]” totally did not make sense. I agree that it would be more accurate to replace the phrase with something closer to “maintain own navigation and expect …”
In this case I was testing a very short hop from Coffs Harbour (YCFS) to Port Macquarie (YPMQ - a short distance south) and due to weather was assigned runway 3, taking off north. Within about a minute after takeoff, while still on a northerly runway heading and between 1500 and 2000 ft of altitude, I am handed off to Brisbance Control, who after introductions gives the “maintain current heading and altitude” instruction, which, if taken literally, would mean I would have to fly heading 030 at altitude 1800, which would take me further away from my destination.
On flights of a more typical length, I would generally be facing the direction of the target airport by the time this instruction is transmitted, so the fact that the phrasing doesn’t make sense isn’t as obvious to spot. But on a short hop, where the assigned runway faces away from a nearby arrival destination, the instruction is obviously non-sensical to transmit with the current default phrasing.
This is in FS2020. I’d be curious if the scenario plays out the same in FS2024.
Also voted!
Off topic, I made the phraseology more aligned with ICAO for those outside of US:
https://flightsim.to/file/96258/icao-eu-uk-atc-phraseology-for-msfs2024
I wouldn’t mind Asobo copy-pasting whatever they need. Of course 3rd party tools do a better job. At least in carreer mode, where we are stuck with the in sim ATC it is a bit more enjoyable to listen to.
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