Very disappointed with this. I can wait one more day or I will request a refund. I have had this plugin for less than a week and have been experiencing too many issues that have impacted my use.
Any reason why you ask here and not at their support (or Discord)? In my experience, they are pretty solid in support.
3 Likes
Please read my description carefully! I have asked in discord for a day!
1 Like
This problem has been reported before and is apparently due to the unreliable nature of the free voice service. Itâs honestly the single biggest problem and threat to this product - I, along with many others, refuse to pay a monthly subscription for ATC voices of all things, and the free voices are having these issues. It needs to be fixed.
Looks like this issue with unreliable basic voices is continuing to be a problem (Iâve seen it myself recently too). Heads up to anyone considering this product that they should keep this in mind. Itâs a shame because this erodes the value proposition of what is otherwise a really solid product.
I know itâs not a lot of help, but Iâve never had any problems with the free basic voices - apart from understanding one or two of them, of course!
From following the Discord channels it seems the majority of problems stem from unreliability of the connection to the basic voices service provider, exacerbated in some cases by country-local internet restrictions where the use of a VPN often resolves it. Not in every case I agree, and itâs something the devs are aware of; you can help resolve it by providing information and log reports - it IS still an Early Access programme.
3 Likes
Iâve also had no issue with the free voices at all, I wonder if itâs a regional issue - the voices being used much more heavily in certain regions that is causing this problem?
2 Likes
I am also exclusively using the free voices and have not experienced any issues (so far). I, too, wonder if itâs a regional issue.
FWIW I am in the central US and havenât had issues until a month or two ago.
Iâm in Western Canada and have not had any issues with the basic voices other than a few with a very strong regional accentâŠlol
This annoying problem has caused me to request a refund. I only bought this plugin less than a week ago, and the various problems have made me unwilling to continue using it.
2 Likes
Yesterday BATC had me land the 777F on RW29 at ESMS - itâs a 2621 ft runway⊠Whatâs annoying is that it was like this runway was âhard codedâ in BATC. There was no way to request another runway, like the 9186 ft RW17/35 Simbrief, quite correctly, assigned.
1 Like
Why does this issue keep popping up. BATC determines the rwy on the basis of itâs own weather calculation. This isnât necessarily what you entered in Simbrief (nor what you see in FR24). Irl the tower determines the best rwy om the basis of the current weather as you come in.
Rwy change can be asked before tod, and only for rwyâs that are currently active according to the BATC-ATIS.
BATC creates itâs own weather environment on the basis of the available free online sources.
1 Like
Yeah have a look at runway 29 in Malmo, good luck parking anything larger than a Cessna there 
.
Requesting a departure / arrival runway only if it is in ATIS or before TOD isnât realistic.
3 Likes
As @CaptainRude2025 already pointed out, you CANNOT realistically land a B777 on RW29 at ESMS, so BATC should not assign that runway under any circumstances.
I do understand why BATCâs assignments can and will differ from Simbrief, but that is not the problem in this case.
1 Like
Sounds like it is only considering wind direction. Some runways are obviously not suitable for commercial air transport, there could be preferential runways, unless crosswind / tailwind component exceeds x kts that will be the runway in use or based on certain hours of the day due to noise abatement. Different departure or arrival directions may favor certain runways. Does BATC use such variables or is it purely based on wind direction? In which case I would argue using FR24 is more realistic.
1 Like
When you reported this to them what did they say?
If you follow the release notes channels on their Discord, BATC is slowly adding in hard-coded custom operations for airports based on community feedback and developer research into specifics at various airports. However, as you can imagine with literally tens of thousands of airfields around the world, this is a slow and time-consuming process, and it necessarily takes up an inordinate amount of coding time per airport. So they work in these airport-specific procedure updates in alongside working on improving and expanding core features of the product.
2 Likes
Sounds good, wouldnât it be easier to just follow flight radar instead of coding everything separately is the question.
Recently I landed at Schiphol (in real life) on runway 22 which is really non-standard unless there is a very strong wind (which wasnât the case), if it would be possible to capture those surprises, that would be quite cool.
But then there must be an option to request a different arrival runway, we were light so we could accept it, but not with a lot of margin.
I will let you find out how much the FR24 API costs. Pooling live traffic data from Flightradar24 for a software sold at a flat price of $30 is simply not economically viable. Even a top-up system similar to what we do with premium voices would be prohibitive for anyone and would never be worth the cost and the effort to implement it.
6 Likes