ATC Language Bugs

Bug Reporting Hub ATC, Traffic & NAVAIDs
, , ,
1

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

ATC has a lot of mispronunciations, incorrect parsing of abbreviations, and confusing cadences.

Examples:

Pacing of speech. The “right” or “left” side of runways are often separated from the runway name and joined with the next word. For example: clear for takeoff runway one eight… right Cessna Four Charlie Foxtrot

More bad pacing on the AWOS: Temperature… 10C Dewpoint… 8C Altimeter tree (etc)

Many airports in the US are abbreviated “Mun” which is short for Municipal (also can be abbreviated Muni). The AI speech pronounces this as “Mun” with a short “u” sound (Muhn). Rarely do real-world pilots actually add the “Mun”, they’ll usually just say the City name, but if anything it should be “Muni” (myooni) or “Municipal”

More improper usage: Airport FAA (ICAO) Identifiers are never used in AWOS, ASOS, or any other ATC communications in the US except sometimes when describing destinations/routes, especially outside the region. Other than that, they should always use the airport name. Those are in the system, so there’s no reason not to use them correctly.

Many career-mode communications will say something on the lines of “thank you for taking care of my one hundred and seventy-two Cessna” It should just be “Cessna One-seventy two,” or “Skyhawk,” or “one seventy-two.”

Many more examples

If applicable, which aircraft is experiencing this issue:

all

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

no add-ons

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

constantly

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Use ATC at all
  2. Use any career mission where anybody talks

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant:
n/a

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?
no

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?
NA

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?
NA

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

4 Likes
2

I didn’t try the inbuilt ATC for long. But it was horrific until I found the option for it to use standard phraseology. So, you should make it clear that that was enabled, if it was.

3

“Authentic ATC language” confirmed enabled when observation was made.

4

A few more: “wind” is often misspoken as in “winding a watch.” This should be a short “i” sound.

One that is pretty dangerous - Altimeter settings are being given with extra decimals. An altimeter setting of 30.01 (in hg) is being given as three zero zero one decimal two seven.

I assume this is reporting a value of 30.0127

Two issues with that - one, there already is an assumed decimal after the second digit, so this would make it 30.01.27. Secondly, the last two digits are not used in aviation, so they should be completely omitted. The way this is broadcast actually constitutes a hazard because most pilots are expecting g four digits and primarily listening for the last two, which in this case are moot (we are being forced to listen for the middle two).

2 Likes
5

Experiencing the same problems. The off-putting pauses with the new AI engine makes the 2020 AI sound good by comparison.

Sometimes the AI will hallucinate totally random nonsense when giving approach clearance. It’ll say stuff along the lines of

“Continue to [waypoint] turning and following heading one two five [completely unintelligible speech that is not in the written ATC message] resume [unintelligible] own navigation.”

If I hear it again, I’ll submit a bug report about it, because I haven’t seen any topics about it.

6

Today I found out that certain AI voices will pronounce the phrase “12,000 ft” as “twelve thousand foot,” which is very incorrect.

All the AIs will also pronounce “FT Worth Center” as “ef tee Worth Center,” instead of “Fort Worth Center.”

2 Likes
7

Also with the FL flight levels, he pronounces them as separate letters.
In Spanish, he even mispronounces the letters: E as “eccio” instead of eco, not to mention multiple other errors.

1 Like
8

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• every time

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

It’s even worse when you use other language then english. In MSFS 2020 the ATC taked only English regardless of setted language, the subtitles were in the setted language and this was more or less fine, but since MSFS 2024 ATC speeking the setted language it’s horrible, after the last update became even worse, when it TRIES to speak every number in english, when turning the “Authentic ATC language” the poor english TTS tries to speak phrases in different language of the airport names, and so on, even the “heavy” part in the callsign if present.

9

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• every time

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•
I use Spanish as my in-game language. At first the ATC and the career voices were in Spanish but since the last update now I always have a strange mix between English and Spanish in ATC and in career mode.

10

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• You must have updated something during the last few days.
Earlier ATC said FL one eight zero.
Today, when flying in Australia, ATC said Florida one eight zero.

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

11

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• Runways are being read as “three five ell” or “three five arr” instead of “three five left” and “three five right”

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

1 Like
12

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• I am the OP, and yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• more weird bugs:

  • the minus is not being pronounced for negative temps or dewpoints in the ATIS or AWOS. So a temp of -5 is simply “five,” producing a ten degree differential, which is not insignificant. This is actually a major safety of flight issue.

  • ATIS/AWOS winds should only be reported to the nearest tens of degrees

  • Wind gusts are omitted - another safety of flight issue

  • there’s also a weird tic in the pilot’s voice script where it says “inbound ford to land” maybe it’s trying to say “for,” but that’s also incorrect, especially in conjunction with “to”

  • another weird one is everybody is “Madam” or “Mister” followed by their full name, which is fairly overly formal, at least in the US. And again, this is all being done on the radio, which is nonsense. It’s in the invoice, it’s talked about prior to the flight. Customers aren’t getting on the radio and thanking us as we shutdown. Why can’t those salutations and instructions take place during the pre and post briefing, where they’re less of a distraction and less of a strain on resources?

14

Thank you for the bug report.

We have created an internal ticket to see if our team already has this logged, and if not they will attempt to reproduce the issue and create a new bug report. This item is now marked as feedback-logged. If there is an existing bug report or one is created, we will move this thread to bug-logged.

2 Likes
15

Description of the issue:
ATC uses “FL” instead of correct full Flight Level
ATC uses “point” instead of correct Decimal
Runways L, C and R is said as the letter, instead of Left, Center, Right

If applicable, which aircraft is experiencing this issue:
Any aircraft using ATC I’ve tried so far, B787, B747, A320…

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?
Have no add-ons

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?
On every flight involving ATC

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Start flight using ATC
  2. When assigned Flight Level, it comes out as “effel”
  3. Same with decimal, eg 122.125, comes out as 122 point 125
  4. “taxi to rwy 22 R…” instead of rwy 22 Right

YOUR SETTINGS

If the issue still occurs with no mods and add-ons, please continue to report your issue. If not, please move this post to the User Support Hub.

What peripherals are you using, if relevant: none

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it? Standard mode

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

16

In game ATC is so beyond …. I wonder whether it is worth reporting bugs at all….

17

What I find strange they are the same bugs that first appeared in Flight Simulator 2020. Is this a different Team or do not learn from past mistakes? The ef t Worth is the worse and yea it was there at the beginning in 2020. Why put in something (ATC) in the simulator if it is not correct? hope this, the altimeter reading, and FL for Flight Level is fixed asap, really misses the emersion.

18

I also spotted, during missions (spoken language set to “en-US”, authentic ATC set to “true”) :

  • When copilot announces 10000 ft, it says something like “ten thousand pie-heads” (which sounds like an attempt of english pronunciation of “pieds”, which is the french word for “feet”).
  • When pilot announces cruising altitude and speed to the passengers, it also uses “pie-heads” instead of “feet”, and additionally “nodes” instead of “knots” (both can be translated to “noeuds” in French).

I suspect these are typos in pre-written scripts, or automatic translations that failed.

19

I don’t know why nobody mentioned it yet…
When they try to pronounce frequencies with decimals, they consider decimal as the end of the sentence.
For example “Going to 118.3 Pilatus…” sounds as “Going to 118… Tripilatus…”
I can record a video if necessary, this issue bothers me on each flight.

3 Likes
20

Just as an addition, many sentences are also badly written. I thought in the beginning that it is auto generated on the fly, so I was lenient about it, but the text is actually prewritten in every single mission every scenario. So that means these texts are stored somewhere and someone (or something, like AI) wrote these sentences, which is a shame as they probably could rewrite every sentence used in the game over several days and it would be much better. There is not a lot of variety in conversations and sentences, at least it would be nice if they are well written and, of course, pronounced better. While flying with your own company, the dispatcher says the same thing as in employee mode, the passengers are saying often nonsense, just like SAR mission dispatchers and agricultural dispatchers or your pilot while informing passengers in the beginning of the mission. I stopped doing medevac because some of the sentences were just off, and they keep talking over hours of flight the same sentences. I could give examples, but its enough to just fire up any of those missions and you will guarantee hear them.

21

Kind of an aside, someone must have thought the pilot needs to be continuously engaged in banter for things to be immersive.

1 Like