I’ve been using BATC for a long time including many times at KSFO. I’ve never seen behavior like that. Are you sure you have all in-sim native traffic turned off, both “real time”, “AI” and the “Air” traffic quality in the graphics settings? Because that sounds exactly like the idiotic stuff the native sim traffic does.
And trust me - I have my own gripes with BATC, especially the crazy vectors and weird step-descents. To be be fair, the last three long flights I’ve done into a variety of places managed my descents much better and the bizarre vectoring appears resolved, at least for the routes and approaches I was flying.
But I’ve never seen the kind of injected-traffic behavior you complain of.
I’ve been using BATC for all my flights. I have had a few occasions where the vectors brought me in to high for the approach. It happened at KSAN 27 using BARET5 arrival and also at KDFW 25C. I have also seen the wrong runway in use a few times, where I had to land or take off with a tail wind. And it’s out of sync with what the sim and even Navigraph reports. I also noticed that ATIS reports wind direction about 10 degrees off what the sim reports. They really should work on using the in sim data for weather reporting.
Another thing that kind of bothers me is they cheated on traffic injection. They only inject airport traffic for the departure and destination airports. Once they get VFR up and running this model won’t work. It’s also annoying that the gate bridgeways do not connect to the injected aircraft on the ground.
Yes, it is. Open the traffic map application they provide and you will see for yourself.
Air traffic is fully injected, but at the airport itself only traffic for departure and destination is generated. The airports along your route are empty.
The devs would very much like to be able to use the data that is already in the sim. Unfortunately, MS/Asobo will not grant them access to the programming so they have to make a “workaround” using data as close as they can to what the sim uses. Inevitably, however, there will be differences and from a programming point of view they’re between a rock and a hard place. The airport ops is a way to try and add some more realism, but there are always going to be people who want it done their way. You can’t please all of the people all of the time! Personally I think they’ve done a superb job replacing the awful sim ATC and TBH I rarely see any of the problems that get complained about both here and on their Discord.
You mean the weather isn’t available via simconnect? I mean even FSLTL knows which way the wind is blowing. I don’t know know much about simmconnect or where FSLTL gets it’s data but it seems to have the correct winds and traffic pointed in the right way more than BATC. They need to get it from flight aware or flightradar24 if that’s even possible. I’m not a programmer so I don’t have a clue.
There’s been a lot of comparison with FSLTL, but it’s important to understand that BeyondATC and FSLTL operate in fundamentally different ways.
FSLTL injects aircraft into the simulator at specific positions, but once injected, control of those aircraft is handed over entirely to MSFS. This is why features like jetway connections work seamlessly, FSLTL does not use SimConnect events to control aircraft behavior after injection.
Because FSLTL relies on the internal MSFS traffic engine, it can take advantage of data and features that are not accessible to third-party developers - such as certain weather data. This lack of full access has long been a point of contention between third-party developers and Asobo. It is also why, for example, no third-party aircraft can yet implement a truly accurate and dynamic weather radar. BeyondATC, like all third-party tools, is subject to these same platform limitations (unless paying for an unbelievable price to get accurate and live data).
BeyondATC, by contrast, not only injects AI aircraft but also fully controls them on a frame-by-frame basis. MSFS does not manage any aspect of AI aircraft movement or traffic control when using BeyondATC, all of this is handled entirely by the BeyondATC engine.
Both solutions have their own strengths and limitations. The team has been very clear about their goal: to provide an additional tool that offers the community a more integrated ATC and traffic experience. It may not align with everyone’s preferences, but many users are already appreciating the improved realism, fluidity, and control that this implementation brings to MSFS even at this early access stage. We are fortunate that most of our users have been very understanding and highly collaborative, actively helping the team improve the software and troubleshoot complex issues. And BeyondATC is not intended to overshadow or replace other solutions, each of which has its own unique strengths and may better suit different user needs, which is very great for the whole community.
Overall I am pleased with what BATC does. TBH I wish Asobo would pick up their work and fully integrate it into the sim. It does provide a more life like experience.
I dunno. I’ve still never seen that kind of thing out of anything except sim-controlled traffic, never BATC traffic anywhere.
As a test, I just generated a flight plan and loaded into MK Studios’ KSEA, spawned in and started plane-watching. For the past 30-40 minutes, I’ve been watching planes pushback, taxi to 34R and 34C, takeoff and climb out, and watched them arrive and taxi in on the same runways. shrug
As I said before (and just search this thread!), I’ve had plenty of complaints about some stuff BATC has done and chosen to focus on. With regard to aircraft movement around airports, I wish BATC paid better attention to spacing so trailing aircraft don’t run up on my plane’s tailcone if I’m moving too slow, and stop giving takeoff clearances to the plane following if I’ve had a last-minute issue and haven’t actually taken off yet.
I also have complained several times that development of basic ATC features seemed to takea big downturn for me when they went to implement their generative AI stuff, but at least now vectors and descent instructions seem much better, which is really all I specifically care about.
Flightbeam. As I said, I’ve never seen this with BATC traffic, only with sim-controlled traffic (which includes FSLTL, by the way).
EDIT: I’ve spent the last 45 minutes “plane spotting” at Flightbeam KSFO and no unusual plane movements at all. Takeoffs are mostly from the 1’s aside from a couple heavies from the 28’s. Arrivals on the 28’s. Taxi movements entirely as expected.
The oddest thing I’ve seen so far is a heavy United 787 taxiing and then taking off from 28L that did not show on the BATC Traffic Map, though I heard communications between BATC and the simulated aircraft. But that plane’s movements were normal, and BATC held a taxiing plane that had landed on 28R from crossing 28L until after the United 787 had departed. So it was definitely a BATC-controlled aircraft. Just didn’t show on the traffic map.
This is a bit different to the wasps-around-a-barbecue behaviour the Asobo AI exhibits. It’s like the occasional aircraft flies a very tight pattern (very unrealistic - behaving like VFR traffic) and when many of them land they do so in the wrong direction then pivot 180 degrees and roll down / slow down correctly. It seems random.
I am due to re-install on a new SSD soon so will see if it’s something messed up in my setup. It’s good to know it might be an issue with my setup as BATC is great for the most part
It injects traffic in the air flying routes to and from other airports, but doesn’t inject ground traffic at airports you’re not using (which seems eminently sensible to me). The question is why on earth would you want it to inject a load of controlled traffic at airports you’re not going to fly to nor ever see? It would murder performance, therefore is completely pointless.
I’m sure they’ll work out a suitable solution for VFR