I (selfishly) REALLY hope that won’t happen. Several respected devs are “partners”, but they still have to live by whatever MS ask or don’t ask them to do (with updates and such). Imagine if BATC updates would only come with SU’s. No thanks.
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Yeah, I get that. I probably have a different view of how it should work versus how it does.
BeyondATC (though obviously not without its problems) is an incredible piece of software and I have the utmost respect for its developers, who are achieving so much with such a small team. It’s also incredible value for money.
But ultimately, and like so much of Flight Simulator, it’s still money that we have/choose to pay above and beyond the cost of the sim itself, where ideally this stuff would just work in the base version.
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Asobo puts out updates very frequently - for BATC I’m waiting since ages. Yes yes, this is beta vs. stable, but I never got the idea to charge MORE for a beta. That’s what BATC does.
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I don’t know what you mean… there are a large number of fixes awaiting the default iniBuilds airbuses that have been ready to go for months, and for some reason Asobo is delaying releasing them. Also, BATC updates – while infrequent – at least deliver the promises that were made.
Keep BATC a 3rd-party product.
Sorry for the long delay. If you were on an IFR flight plan and being vectored for the visual approach, the moment you request or accept a visual approach, the ATC no longer has responsibility for maintaining separation between you and other planes or the terrain. It becomes the is the pilot’s responsibility. On a visual approach, it is assumed you can see the terrain.
Sure, if you are in the beta program. If you are not, like myself and probably the majority of users, we have gotten two SU’s in nine months. I agree that BATC updates have become less frequent but it’s still way better than relying on official SU’s would be.
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Yes. And it’s of course always possible to throw an extra 30 bucks to get experimental updates more often.
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Something has changed recently with the various updates, planes now land on the runway and shortly after that vanish. Strange, looks like is no fix and kills the immersion. Before it looked somehow odd with various planes jittering on turns to taxi ways but at least they were parking OK. I fly from EGGD usually. 
This can very well be caused by the scenery. I’ve understood that if the taxiways have a discontinuity, then the planes disappear.
Recently, I have an issue with AI traffic injection from FSLTL. Whenever I start BATC, MSFS2020 would CTD randomly.
Both FSLTL models and BATC are at its latest version. It happened after MSFS2020 is updated recently. Prior to the update, all was fine.
There is no issue with MSFS after the AI traffic is disabled. I have not try injecting AI traffic directly from FBW application to create the issue. Any similar encounter?
Is this only for 2024 ?
Both 2020 & 2024
This is an issue FSLTL is aware of, and is suggesting the fault lies with MSFS itself - likely with the navdata being borked. Then again, base game traffic doesn’t seem to crash
Since all I do is think about BATC & VFR, I’m really wondering how it is going to work.
Will they have a traffic injection system that no longer relies on SimBrief?
Will they have AI-controlled “made up” aircraft flying in/out of uncontrolled airports that we can communicate with via CTAF?
Will there be AI-controlled aircraft flying the pattern in the small airfields that I love to frequent?
Am I going to just be able to tune ATIS and/or the tower of any airport and receive information and then request landing clearance?
I’m just super curious how they have envisioned how VFR is going to work, because it seems seriously more open-ended than a Point A-to-Point B defined IFR flight plan with clear pathing and defined airports at each end.
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Very interesting I have exactly the same questions as you.
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This is a big part of why initial pilot training in places that have a lot of uncontrolled airspace and nontowered airports interspersed with controlled/towered is so complex. And of course, it gets a lot deeper with letters of agreement (LOAs) that spell out operations between ATC entities in adjacent geographical areas. The US, in particular, is still kind of a “Wild West” mentality as far as this is concerned. You think you’ve got it figured out at your home airport then you go to another and it’s a lot different (and often unpublished!). And it drives certain people nuts that this is even a thing.
But it is a thing. And attempts to standardize in-sim ATC across the board (in one country, much less all of them) are going to imbue a level of non-realism that we’ll all just have to deal with in our own way. My way is usually a quip to the effect of “well, that’s not how it works” and moving on. String enough of those together and I might opt not to use whatever it is.
Unless of course it’s airport lighting, markings, and signage, which’ll instantly take me from a quip to a full-on gripe. ATC is understandably a lot more dynamic so I tend to suspend disbelief a bit more.
As much as I would adore a “true to life” experience, I’m fully aware that, no matter how tightly I cinch the belts on my sim rig, I’m never going to be in a negative G situation that would require their necessity. I’m also going to have a very hard time not noticing that I’m sitting in my house rather than getting tossed about in a C170.
That said, my expectations for simulated ATC are pretty forgiving. I’d like some modicum of realism with my radio interactions, as I feel the BATC IFR implementation is doing now. It’s a billion times more realistic to be using my voice to speak with ATC vs. choosing a line item from a selection and having a simulated voice read what I chose.
I think the folks at BATC have done a very good job trying to strike a balance here. The fact that they have tried to implement an FAA and an ICAO protocol is an indication of their intent.
Unless real humans with real life experience are running the show, it’s always going to miss the mark for some folks.
Even VATSIM with all its attempts to be like real life, often widely misses the mark and drives away real life pilots with its shortcomings.
We all have to suspend some level of expectations to play pretend as we sit at our sim stations. Even if BATC can’t get it perfect, it’s going to be way, way better than what the stock ATC offers and, naturally, massively better than no ATC whatsoever; which, incidentally, I’ve been doing without for VFR since 2024 came out, and I really miss an ATC experience, even with limitations. The 2024 default ATC is so jacked up, that I not only quit using it, I went directly to BATC and bought into their supporters pack. Since I did this, however, I sorely miss VFR ATC, even in its limited guise that 2020 had implemented.
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Yep. The biggest operational issues for me are when it simply doesn’t understand what should be a fairly routine transmission and I have to spend energy trying to figure out what it thinks I said wrong.
Other than that, my simming profile is 70% VFR flying and 20% IFR in more of a practice approach-type environment, which doesn’t jive well with a setpiece flight plan (the last 10%).
So I’m also waiting anxiously for that VFR upgrade, but also a bit more flexibility in the IFR. I fully understand the complexity and challenge that it will take to get it there.
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This has been a big one for me.
I think I figured out the source of my issues.
Since I fly 95+% GA in the USA, I’m identifying myself with a “November” in my tail number, which causes the AI to think that any numbers I told it beforehand, such as a frequency read back, is part of a calendar date. It thinks “One Two Four Point One Five” is January 24, 1915. I can see this reflected in the logs. It was making me batty until I figured it was caused by the “November”. Now, I just respond with the last three of my registration (as you would do) and it has been getting my frequencies correctly understood ever since.
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