Are you using Developer Mode or made changes in it?No
Brief description of the issue: ATC is terrible. I started playing MSFS on PCs when it first came out in the mid to late 90’s. The ATC in MSFS20, more than 20 year later has not been improved on. Get. it. together. Very unintelligent. Virtually no built-in algorithms for situations, including traffic/terrain avoidance, SID/STAR/APPROACH, intelligent vectors. In addition, the ATC stops communicating during long flights. Come on guys.
Please improve this. I am a 4,000 hour pilot as well as plenty of hours on MSFS. The MSFS20 has many great features, but there was no intelligent investment on the ATC and that is a huge component of every real world flight.
Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered: N/A
Detail steps to reproduce the issue encountered: N/A
PC specs and/or peripheral set up of relevant: N/A – XBOX Series X
Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue: From the beginning.
But if Microsoft was going for realism, an authentic ATC would be part of that. No vectors around weather, traffic or terrain.
Additionally, SID and STAR transition options are non-existent. Everything within the ATC system is basic. My expectations were a little too high apparently.
When is Working Title looking to do this? And how well will it integrate? I’m not on PC, so contrary to popular belief there are many serious MSFS simmers on XBOX.
They didn’t offer a timetable. Their next projects are updating the G3000, CJ4 and G3X mods now that the nxi is nearly done.
After that I believed they will be doing a pretty major overhaul of the core nav data aspects of the SIM - which is the root of the issue with flightplanning, avionics and ATC functionality. So not a quick fix, but with those guys you can be sure it will be done right. They also mentioned mods to the 747 &787 but not sure where that may come in the sequence.
(And I’m sure they will be bringing all this to Xbox as they are core Devs and MS will want that)
The functionality of the avionics in all of the high performance aircraft are severely lacking as well. Not sure about the piston, less-complex aircraft…but it is good to hear that they are working to address those avionics issues as well.
A good ATC environment enhances the experience. It doesn’t take long for a MSFS user, whether novice or experienced, to realize that a small amount of resources were put into ATC functionality (and nav/flightplanning, for that matter.).
I think the ATC code is straight from FSX. Sadly I think the flight planner UI was optimised for controller use also, but clearly it needs a text box for inputting your flight plan waypoints. PC users are fortunate indeed to have excellent freeware flight planning tools available as well as online ATC. But we shouldn’t have to rely on third party apps for these essential elements of the flight experience. But I’m confident it will get there.
But it’s not FSX’s ATC. I remember being able to get radar vectors for ILS using the IFR option. Even that would be an improvement on what we have now.
I do, all the time. I just just flew from Zürich to Helskinki without any problems, now I am flying from Zürich to Salzburg, no issues. Is the phrasing correct? No. Does it give you totally logical climb and descent instructions? Yes. Is it going to be revamped next year? Yes.
Logical? Now I’m not a pilot IRL so I don’t know what’s normal but yesterday I took about a 90 minute flight. After takeoff it told me 3000 ft. After reaching that it told me 11,000 but moments later told me 12,000. Then it had me descend to 6000 only moments later it told me to descend to 3900. I flew there for awhile and when I was around 30 minutes out it had me ascend to 16,000 ft. As I was ascending, before I reached that altitude, it told me to start descending for landing. I spent most of the flight ascending or descending in an aircraft with a very basic autopilot.
Was any of that logical? The entire flight it chattered on to other aircraft to increase their ascent or decent rate. It repeated that about every 5 seconds. I finally turned off AI traffic and the ATC volume and only looked at the text. Maybe all that was logical but it certainly made for an aggravating flight.
Based on the historical evidence that a great offline ATC can be achieved, because it was, some 20 years(!!) ago - Proflight 2000 & Radar Contact…both still in use today. Has nothing been learned since then?
I recall FS2002 having a “good” built-in default ATC for its time. I think it can be expected for MSFS to have a much better (more reliable/intelligent/realistic) ATC by now. ProATC/x has set a higher standard since then, and it may be the only hope for long term realistic offline ATC for MSFS.
Hopefully the “revamping” will suffice. The questions are: is Azure up for the task? Will the AI aircraft finally get the artificial intelligence they need? Will an update ruin the revamping? Will it need to be revamped over the course of 8 years so that in the interem, we can be “made aware” of some more social causes, before it can be fully revamped?!?
Well, I have not had all these horror stories people keep telling about it, for me the ATC tells me to climb logically to planned FL and gets me down equally logically. I don’t know what it used to be, possibly it was easier to implement back then because of much smaller scope of the sims?
And no, the ATC for sure is not perfect, but sure as hell it is not “terrible” or worse than it was back in the day in those other sims.
There are so many drama queens on these forums claiming how this or that issue is “terrible” or “game breaking” that it is practically impossible to take them seriously,