It doesn’t make sense to do so. First, because not everyone need radio as soon as they start the flight. It’s also a way to limit character usage and start only when you are ready. Also, you are supposed to start with ATIS, so it wouldn’t be correct to autotune any other frequency, and we wouldn’t want to spam the user with ATIS automatically.
Auto-tune is mostly a way to facilitate handoffs between frequencies, as it will switch frequencies automatically. Same thing with auto respond, it will respond only if it’s a readback. If you have to make a decision, an input from the user will be required.
The VR toolbar has everything you need to set up an initial tune. There’s a second tab to it with the local frequencies all listed (ATIS, ground, tower, clearance, etc). You just click one.
Editing to mention…you are aware there’s a VR toolbar, yeah? It’s not part of the standard install and has to be grabbed from their website separately.
I just took the plunge and purchased this software. I am done with the disfunctional default atc and waiting for the devs to do something.
Man is this a game changer or what?.. my simming has been properly trans-formed!
quick question
i can tell right away that the premium voices is really where its at.. the downside?.. i burned through my voice credits in virtually no time at all! haha…
i already purchased more credits but is there some trick not to deplete your credits so fast?
Keep the Traffic Voice Model at Basic and only have Controller Voice Model at Premium. Should halve your unit use. Also, ensure your Auto Respond Voice is not using one of the Premium voices.
Personally, I’m happy with the Basic voices - anything is better than MSFS ATC!
If you fly airliners then have premium on for the ground and climb to cruise then knock it off until top of descent. Equally, don’t sit for half an hour at Heathrow listening to AI getting clearances in Premium.
With the VR toolbar, it really is pretty straight forward to “work the comms” as it were without Alt-tabbing to another window (except maybe the taxi map), 2 tabs at the top of the popout ATC log or frequencies.
Coming from default ATC myself many moons ago, it takes some getting used to, especially getting used to actual vectors, something default ATC doesn’t do (but did in FSX from 2006, go figure). Is BATC perfect? Absolutely not, I’ve had my fair share of questionable runway use and being handed off to the Tower straight after landing, but compared to default, it’s a million miles better imho and I’m sure will keep on getting better.
does it makes sense to use batc with helicopters in VFR and often without flight plan? I take off from random airport/helipad with destination to another. I do not mind switching ATC frequencies while flying, would that work?
Not really, the most you could do is add a pseudo flight plan and use BATC as a traffic injector in order to see (IFR) traffic and listen to atc direct said traffic. But BATC cannot handle vfr yet.
Is anyone finding the skies kinda empty on flights?
I did KTUS-KLAX.
Flying real time (would have been around 8 AM arrival to KLAX) and almost no traffic in the air around the airport., I was hoping to be in a long line of inbounds. Probably heard about 6 other aircraft the entire flight. I was straight in and don’t believe there was anything in front or behind me. Had the same thing coming into KSFO a few days ago at a similar time. Decent amount of activity on the ground at KLAX though.
This seems to be happening more and more lately.
All traffic settings are at max in BATC and using FSLTL models.
Make sure your “parked aircraft” setting is set to 5 or below. From what I gathered, BATC will draw a certain number of planes based on your draw settings. You can fill the gates by adding static planes under the option of “parked aircraft” (they don’t have schedules, so they just sit at the gates), but if most of your gates are full of static planes then BATC will only draw a limited number of active planes (since they don’t have anywhere else to park). So give it a try: set “parked aircraft” to 5 or lower and the rest can be set to 10 or whatever you wish.
In addition to what @davegranstrom16 suggested above, also try downloading the traffic map from here https://www.beyondatc.net/download. That should help to check if there actually are any aircraft in the vicinity. Also useful for deleting an AI aircraft that’s gone rogue.
From memory, purple is for aircraft on radio comms only, where as blues are active.
This seems to do the trick! I had Parked aircraft at 7 and dialed it back to 5. I then flew in to EGLL and there was a lot of ATC chatter and airplanes departing and landing. The airplane after me even had to do a go-around because I was too slow to exit the runway. I heard this on the radio and could confirm it visually.
