It’s very early days for BATC, much more to come down the line. Personally, I think it’s fantastic that we have so many ATC options to suit all tastes and styles. Remember not so long ago, we either had default ATC or VATSIM or of course the other option, “none”.
Whether some are more AI than others, it’s all voodoo to me (phrase credited to @BegottenPoet228). All I do know is, now I don’t have to feel bad about ignoring ATC or worrying a visual approach will go Pete Tong.
That kind of stuff is the cherry on the cake. Let them get the basics all working first. The product is currently in early access, that’s a pre-beta phase, so although much of it works well there’s still some big gaps and it’s far from feature complete.
The dev team is responsive and working hard so it’s only a matter of time that everything comes together. While the scripted flightplans are fairly basic at the moment Captain did say long ago that he plans to add a lot more of the embellishments as time permits.
At the risk of getting “swamped” by posts they have a very very busy Discord channel that is now starting to address specific problems as well as a requests channel to put ideas to the devs. Go to the Beyond ATC website for a link.
I was concerned that the flood of posts (many of then repeats - why can’t folk use the search facility) would divert their attention from the other planned elements, which are included in the price although not yet implemented (that’s why it’s Early Release). However Captain has assured us that this was expected and there is still a team pushing hard to introduce more goodies asap.
As I’m generally a VFR user in VR I am still using the sim ATC but I have done a number of IFR flights, in GA and tubeliners with BATC, and am very happy with the experience which has opened up a new element of reality.
This might be a dumb question, but with the avalanche of posts, I couldn’t find an answer: Is there any way to enforce using registration number? My Cirrus Vision Jet has HA-CVJ as registration, I delete callsign in simbrief, yet BeyondATC calls me “Helimount VJ”. I gues HAC is is also a callsign, but I’m not in any company, just a tiny little private jet…
There is a sub-thread in batc-support-forum but basically for GA if you don’t put anything in the airline and flight number boxes in Simbrief then put your registration in without the hyphen (I use the airframe option) BATC will use your registration. Works for me anyway.
HAC is the ICAO identifier for Henebury Aviation (Australian, apparently now defunct). If you don’t use standard airline identifiers you can ask BATC for a Virtual airline in the request section but I’ve no idea when that will be implemented.
As it happens there was a small US operator that used callsign & identifier very close to what I want so using that for now, BATC doesn’t seem to mind the small difference in the callsign!
In all honesty, I don’t understand the design choice of BATC, to use the SIDs and STARs present in the scenary, be it a stock airport or third party.
I have an active Navigraph account, the AIRACs are updated and Simbrief has proposed a correct flight plan, what importance do the scenary procedures have?
If the Runways are correct, what need is there to be compliant with the scenary update?
Because the devs did not want their customers to have to take out a Navigraph subscription. Simbrief itself is free and the relevant Navigraph data is updated monthly in the sim anyway.
Personally I haven’t had any bother with SIDS and STARS but with the number of airports in the sim (38,000 ish?) there are obviously going to be some that have data problems and publishing the programme as an Early Release means that many of the errors are going to be discovered sooner rather than later. We must just have patience, they’re doing a tremendous job in updating very regularly. Everybody was told frequently when they made their purchase that this is an Early Release - you know, the one that (almost) everyone voted for!
Well, I voted to have it complete later, but it doesn’t matter.
I don’t think the problem is whether you have an active Navigraph account or not, but it’s simply that if an airport doesn’t have SIDs defined somewhere, BATC will simply never let you take off from there and I find this enormously limiting.
I also use FSHUD and it has never stopped me from taking off from an airport because it didn’t have updated procedures.
In any case, mine is not a controversy, but just the point of view of a Simmer who perhaps can help improve development.
Hesitate to mention it as it’s really against the spirit of BATC. But whilst they get to grips with this you could always just take off then once airborne restart BATC and let it pick you up from there. It was offered as a sort-of-workaround for someone being given instructions to use a non-existant runway, Lisbon I believe.
If you install Navigraph data into the sim, then everything will match. BATC uses whatever data you have installed into the sim, whether that be the stock NavBlue/FAA data, or Navigraph data.
The only thing BATC decided not to do is have an external nav database, as that would have required a Navigraph subscription. The way they have it, either you can use the free sim data, which is updated fairly regularly, or Navigraph, if you have that.
I use Navigraph Hub to update the SIM and FENIX AIRACs but BATC only looks at the airport data.
Last week it wanted to take me off from runway 35 of LPPT (Lisbon) which simply no longer exists for many years and it is not clear where BATC found it.