I modify my FP in FMC.
I don’t understand why BATC developers not what to use Simbrief weather.
BATC is depending on Simbrief FP, but use weather from a different sourse.
I think that’s asking for discrepancies.
I hope that in the future the developers build a option in there product so we can choose which weather service we want to use.
I’m trying to learn how to fly the FBW A320 and it’s really daunting to create a flight plan in Simbrief and then get it all programmed in the MCDU prior to the flight. Today I built a plan in Simbrief that had me taking off from London City airport on runway 9 (Simbrief picked that runway). After I got the plane all started up and programmed, I asked for clearance and it had put me on Runway 27 so the whole flight plan was blown. BeyondATC requires you to use a Simbrief flight plan so why not stick to it. Only an hour had transpired from when I built the plan to when I went to fly so why the runway change? Yeah, I get that in real life things happen, winds change, traffic is altered but it’s a whole lot harder in the sim to tweak buttons and dials with a mouse than it is in a real aircraft. It made me not want to try this again. I just wanted a flight to be simple and when I got off the ground I was going in the right direction for my plan and could throw the autopilot on without manually reprogramming the MCDU or manually flying around trying to find my original flight path.
If BeyondATC is going to require us to use Simbrief then the route planning algorithms for both of those pieces of software ought to come up with the same solution at least 90% of the time. Yeah, I get if you create a flight plan and then days go by before you fly it, it could easily be invalid but within an hour? Something is screwy here.
update:
I just read the documentation that describes how BeyondATC uses different data from Simbrief. What the heck? If that’s the case then we need some way of overriding Simbrief with what to expect from BeyondATC so we don’t get into this “let’s reprogram everything once the engines are started and we’re ready to taxi”. It’s a difficult task to do that in an airliner using a mouse or VR controllers especially if you’re not some MCDU expert. I am certain that real world pilots pretty much know when starting up their aircraft what the available runway is and rarely have to reprogram things at the last second. If there is going to be this link between the two programs then we need some way to know how to synch things when we’re creating the flight plan. It’s that simple.
I ask for a clearance before putting an active runway and eventual SID into MCDU/FMC. And re-programming takes less than one minute once you get the hang of it.
Again I was assigned a runway with tailwind, this time at KDEN. I can’t recall this being a problem before. What’s going on 
Simbrief had the correct runway. And again there was no way of getting assigned to another runway in BATC.
Perhaps the BATC devs should rethink their method of assigning runways… Maybe tracking real-world airport patterns from FR24 would be a good solution, similar to FSLTL’s method. They have the lead FSLTL dev on-hand, so that shouldn’t be terribly hard.
That’s exactly the point.
Do you really think the lead developer of FSLTL doesn’t know what he is doing? If something were technically possible within the current limitations, they would have implemented it already. Let’s give the devs some credit, they understand the system better than anyone (especially when you are the dev that built it).
FSLTL, as explained above, is essentially just an injector. Its job is to place aircraft into the sim based on real-world positions, using data from FlightRadar24. Once the aircraft are injected, FSLTL has no further control over their behavior. That part is entirely handled by the sim itself.
And this is only possible because FSLTL is a freeware project. It can access real-time flight data at no cost, something that would be prohibitively expensive for payware addons. That’s a huge benefit, but it also means there are limits to what can be done.
It’s important to keep expectations in check.
You can’t expect a one-time purchase like BeyondATC to provide live traffic behavior with full control and expect it to match at 100% of the time what is happening in real time, this never was the goal by the way. The cost of high-quality, real-time data alone makes that unfeasible, let alone the work needed to integrate and manage it in a sim environment. The goal is to provide a realistic environment, with decisions that makes sense, through custom airports ops that simulate the decision making of real controllers. At the end of the day, it will still be a simulation. ATC is a real (and hard) job, and machines are not yet capable of replacing them. That shows the high complexity of their job, and the amount of variables to take into account before making a decision.
Like anything worth doing it takes a little time and practice; for me setting everything up properly is part of the enjoyment and the developers at FBW take particular pride in getting their product to be as close to the real thing as possible. Have you tried going through their tutorials on the website?
As regards the differences between BATC and Simbrief, again the devs have tried to get as close to real life as possible but are stymied by restrictions placed by MS/Asobo (it would be so much easier if they could get their data direct from the sim). So they have to get it the best way they can, which being from differing sources doesn’t always agree.
So you have to make adjustments on the fly? Well as any real life aviator will tell you, that’s just the way it is, so you may just as well accept it and get on with it. I promise it does get easier with practice! If you can’t live with that perhaps MSFS plus BATC is not for you.
I fly mostly in VR. Try making those adjustments on the fly when just getting a mouse or controllers to hover over the proper button or control requires time and patience. When not in VR, panning and zooming around the cabin and focusing on something to tweak can be daunting. None of those conditions exist in real life. FBW does a great job and BATC you can tell has put a lot of love into their product. I am not condemning anyone but somebody needs to address making this all a whole lot simpler if you are going to use both Simbrief and BATC. Maybe the ball is in Asobo’s court to provide better access to their data. I don’t know but maybe it’s just some unrealistic ability to reload a new flight plan and automatically updating the MCDU after you find out your first import was invalid. BATC has no option to reload that I can tell other than quitting the program and restarting it and then who knows where it will pick up or what your radios will be tuned to or what traffic they will come up with if you are already in the air. I had issues where loading BATC after the plane was configured and programmed gave me CTD’s so I had to start over multiple times. It was a very frustrating day where every airport I tried to fly from changed the runway on me. Every time. 4 or 5 different flights.
And if BATC is not for me, so be it but what does that leave me with? MSFS ATC? That has other issues.
Whilst there are a few bugs in BATC overall I love it.
Completed a few fights this week without a hitch. Remembering to call for descent always helps.
£30 is well worth it; by comparison my £55,000 company car lost its sat nav in the centre on London last Friday night so nothing is ever perfect.
I always fly in VR too, but changing runway is so quick it really isn’t a bit deal. Besides isn’t part of the fun to deal with changes/challenges? Why bother with ATC at all if you just want to hit a button to import and then enable the autopilot.
You could also request your clearance before you set up the departure, then you don’t do it twice. Import into BATC…tune delivery, request clearance…MCDU…import FPLN…now you got your runway already and don’t need to do it twice. Your SID might change but 95% of the time you’ll have the equivalent SID just with a different designator at the end at the different runway. You do NOT need to create a new plan on simbrief for this. Your import was not invalid as you state.
With respect, if you’re still learning how to fly the aircraft, program the MCDU and handle the various phases of preflight, making the flight and descent, etc., then perhaps you should simply take a week or two more learning how to do that without any ATC at all? The last thing you want to do is be fumbling with something as basic as a pre-takeoff runway change, let alone getting a late arrival change or something.
Once you’re comfortable running the plane itself, adding ATC functionality to your flights should become a great tool for enhancing immersion rather than a source of unending frustration.
From BATC headquarters:
Hi all - further to the above we have moved the maintenance window to the 18th of June. So the above maintenance window will now take place on the 18th of June between 20:00 and 21:00 UTC - apologies for any inconvenience caused by this.
To reiterate this is a core infrastructure upgrade so BeyondATC may be unavailable or services may be degraded during this time. We will send updates on the day advising when services will go down and when they are restored.