Just as a reference, standard Amazon Polly voices will cost you about $4 for 1 million characters (about 24 hours of speech)
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Will be interesting to see if you can incorporate your own voices, I have about 13 or so voices from CerapProc that I used when I would use Pilot2ATC.
Wonder if there is an option to use them.
I donât think so as it uses AI voices from the cloud. It has 100 already, covering 40 accents, where Beyond ATC understands the regionality, so you probably wonât need any extras.
New video just dropped, showing premium voices:
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Iâve heard the OverKillSim interview be mentioned but did not see a link so here it is.
In the interview the developer specified that the cloud services top up would be sold at cost.
Also the developer stated in the Discord chat that the âflight hoursâ are when ATC is speaking. I think its a bad term personally, maybe âATC Hoursâ or âVoice Hoursâ would be better.
DAQUA3828, I think the video says that the ATC Window can be closed, itâs more for convenience and to help with the interaction with the software. I canât wait to find out if and how it might respond to Mayday and PAN messages?
Charles.
Mayday you say? Oh dear ya messed up big time, yâall gonna die.
Your score for this game session is: 0
Better luck next time!
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Oh no, I hope not! 
Charles
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(vaguely remembers a bet, scrolls up a lotâŠ) 
@kcmokatana - hey, donât forget to send @blueline308 your contact info, as he has a gratuitous Navigraph yearly subscription for you! 
(Iâm joking of course, and like you indicated blueline308, itâs not really real until it actually ships âthis yearâ so a tad too soonâŠ)
I was surprised in the interview video of the news that they are setting up a âWorld Hubâ of community crowd-sourced gathered info (perhaps maybe beating Asobo out of the gate?) for all the worlds airport Standard Operating Procedures, gates and fix name pronunciations. That sounds pretty cool and was a wishlist item here from the early days.
I think the fact they have to use MSFS in-built traffic (or FSTL trying to fix it with injection, but then MSFS still placing things) would be a tough one to swallow - even in their recent KLAS-KSAN demo flight video they had aircraft taking off on runways towards them as they took off, itâs all really broke and there isnât much alternative. Maybe 2024 will allow for a better wayâŠ
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Yes, I noticed this too and itâs quite likely AI donât listen to BATC and do their own thing. The fact they do interact at all is window dressing, much like the default ATC at present.
My other query is the no traffic thing at altitude. He said it was due to the injection method they are using that no traffic is present. He didnât say which tool he was using though but that fake ATC interactions could be implemented to give the illusion of a crowded sky. Does this mean traffic at altitude isnât supported? Iâve maybe misheard somethingâŠ
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I just took it to mean it is supported but they are at the mercy of the sim and anything injecting routes as to if you see anything. Because some routes even if it is all working are super quiet then they might just put some pretend ATC Chatter like stuff to break up the silence.
Itâs not really a criticism of their design decisions as they really donât have a lot of choice here. Injectors like FS Traffic etc can put in âroutesâ to MSFS but after that hand-off itâs pretty much up to the sim on how they act and fly, and thereâs lots of minor and major bugs in that area. Because ATC/traffic/weather are all interlinked as a system then for MSFS 2020 it is pretty likely that the whole area is pretty much regarded as âdoneâ and the best hope is the next version.
From a software point of view the ideal would be some additional MSFS API to be able to compromise between just providing routing info and having complete direct control, e.g. something where you could give traffic actual directions. That way an external ATC bit of software could actually control the traffic. Itâs a hard problem but doable in single player. The trouble is Asobo wonât do this as they see this stuff as intrinsic to their product and something only they should be able to do internally and not via 3rd parties. Weâre stuck that what we have sucks but that the product wants to do it better in a future version rather than open it up as part of the platform.
Until then what we are seeing here with this is:
- It provides a nice voice entry, powered by online AI so you can speak to ATC rather than press buttons.
- It has nicer ATC output voices that work, an area MSFS has a lot of bugs in and hasnât seen fixes for years now.
- Good simbrief integration for a simple user experience. Currently if you want stock ATC to use that you have to export and World Planner argue a bit.
- Have a 3D model of the route with their own navigation calculations, allowing them to make better decisions on the ATC workflow e.g. when each controller interacts etc.
Are those three four things worth it for, say, $50 - probably so, Iâd like it (if it had a VR toolbar output or something). Will MSFS 2024 also have these features (especially 1 and 2)? Probably as well, but that is a while off we think.
But what it isnât is an actual air traffic control e.g. ATC bit of code, itâs more an input/output layer on what the stock sim uses and does for its traffic system. Stuff like landing and taking off into the wind is bugged, and this wonât help that and it really breaks immersion. Itâs not their fault, but itâs worth knowing before assuming it could fix things like that.
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Do we know when this will be released?
In the interview all they would say was âwhen it is doneâ and that they are planning for this year.
The marketing seems a bit early if itâs not around Q3 thoughâŠ
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Thank you I appreciate it.
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In one of the videos they poke fun of the back and forth handoffs every 10 seconds and instructions to fly into mountains. Iâm assuming that would be fixed?
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Youâre right, I sold it a bit short, Iâll update the list I did above. In the interview they did mention they â3D modelâ the entire flight, which then allows them to make better decisions on when to contact each controller, which airspace etc. The default ATC does a simple âboundary crossâ bit of math, and for areas that have inconvenient triangles of coverage then itâs really easy to get bounced like a rubber ball as you cross them. BeyondATC can make that better by âlooking aheadâ for the route in the model and debounce it, so it seems likely they will fix that up. 
That explains a lot 
Yep, in MSFS we get an ATC change âbounceâ at every line cross the black arrow route goes through because the air space is a pointy polygon (Contact Seattle, No, Contact Vancouver, Um, No Contact Seattle Again!):
When leaving CYVR Vancouver and flying south in real life it looks like this in terms of FIR ATC coverage that actually happens. National Airspace System (faa.gov)
Because BeyondATC is modelling the route, it can still have a simple airspace definition in the AIRAC but it can walk it ahead to know that swapping controllers is not worth it I guess. They have to model the route to do stuff like vectoring, so just another bonus of building that abstract layer on top.
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Itâs not going to be Q3 based on the comments on discord. We better behave ourselves and put it on our Christmas list if we want to be lucky.
Q5
Marmalade