I recently found that one of the biggest immersion breaker for me regarding the ATC wasn’t even the lack of regional accents or some simplified procedures but just a fact that they all sound too young. In real life there’s a lot of older people (maybe even a bigger part) of both the pilots and ATC controllers. In MSFS however I could only and only hear the cheery young voices. Even the pilot avatars are only available as a younger people. Don’t get me wrong, I am just approached my 30’s so I am still classified as a young one - but I believe that for more realism and inclusion there should be way more voices varriety.
Average age of Air traffic controllers is 38.
And of all the problems ATC in MSFS has, the age of them is the very least one, IMHO.
I think you are using WIDOWS OFFLINE instead of AZURE for text-to-speech, you can find this in the sound settings. WINDOWS OFFLINE sounds like kindergarden.
HXArdito, hmm… that’s bit younger than I excepted, atough the average pilot age in the US is 43.9 years as in 2020. Personally, I would forgive some of the ATC issues for now if only the ATC&pilots will sound more realistic and more diverse, which also means including multiple voices.
Nijntje91, I have checked my sounds settings and I do have Azure selected.
P.S. I have checked the offline mode now… and yeah I agree about how it sounds. But I also recalling hearing that voice before.
My personal real life experience in the DACH area (Germany/Austria/Switzerland) is that ATC generally is pretty young. If we consider below 40y/o as young.
The older guys are usually sitting in the “towers” of small, uncotrolled airfields that not really have an ATC function but is considered as “Info” frequency. Usually they belong to the local Flying Clubs and they only provide info like which runway is active, winds, QNH, etc.
Windows offline mode, what sounds like Johnny Cash on drugs is my favourite controller voice, always makes me
About a month ago, Microsoft released an Azure TTS (text-to-speech) partnership series video outlining some plans they have for TTS in the future:
My toes curl when I hear the awfull phraseology, I’m not even bothered by the ATC voice . “Request the end of pushback”, “ready to go”, little weird they’ve used that as an example in their partnership video. Come on
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They did change that since then, right?
I guess some things got changed to match FAA phraseology now, the awful pushback phraseology is likely still there? I don’t know, uninstalled MSFS couple of updates ago and haven’t reinstalled since.
“Continue to XYZ as planned” is the one that sets me on edge every time as well as “turning and following”! I’m not a pilot but even I know that is not standard phraseology.
Have you been flying recently? Controllers are pretty young these days. I recently got back in the air again (got my license in the 90’s), I think one of the controllers in Nashua has been there since then, but, flying around Boston, most of Boston Center sound like they are in their 30’s and mayyybe early 40’s, I’ve had one or two who sounded late 20’s. Very professional (and personable at times) all of them.
I kind of laughed when I saw the question, but, it’s a good and understandable question (though I’d put a question mark on the end of the title, personally).
This really can’t come soon enough. That pool of 5 or so TTS voices currently in the sim is inadequate. You hear ATC talking to a plane, and then that plane replying in the same voice as ATC. It sounds wrong on so many levels. Let’s hope we see some of that Azure power being put to good use in future sim updates. Fingers crossed that we start seeing some of that in SU5…
Yep, I heard that, too!
In the next Q&A (on the 30th at 1730Z), the #1 question is about ATC logic changes. Probably won’t cover this, but we’ll see what they have to say!
Oh good grief.
Indeed!
In the September 2020 Q&A, Jörg talked about it a little (23:25), though didn’t have much more to share than what’s in that video (granted, that was 9 months ago).
I hope to see a change in SU5, as well. However, my hunch is that if there is a change, it won’t be a dramatic one. I didn’t hear any new voices in that partnership video. Of course, I hope I’m wrong!
It would be nice to hear more voice variety. Adding regional accents and dialect would be awesome as well. But I’d be happy with a few more voices to add variety. There just isn’t enough atm.
The perpetually cheery tone and inflection of the pilot and atc voices remind me of someone who is trying to sell me a vacuum cleaner
Okay, I have edited the title.
Especially need some foreign accents that need repeating to to be understood and vice versa. And while we’re there a few grumpys and inanely cheerfuls thrown in just to annoy us.