I wonder if all of this is having to do with the Microsoft game servers. What you just described is exactly what happened to me today as well. I have noticed if your connection is not totally stable that Azure will ■■■■ out, show a message saying the connection was lost and switching to offline mode, then come back on with the generic voice. Maybe if Azure is so dependent on being online and our connection isn’t stable/slow it messes up ATC, without a notification, and causes the issues we are having. I don’t know for sure but it seems to be pointing that way. My biggest issue is that Asobo has not acknowledged this issue except that the “bug” had been logged but not saying anything about it. Just my observations.
And it’s been happening to me as well, not coincidentally for about 2 years! Feels completely random, I always start hearing them fine, then at a random time later, they just stop being heard. My co-pilot responds, and the messages are in the text window if I pull it up, but the ATC is a joke anyway, and has been from the word go.
With MS so into voice recog stuff, and the ability to speak to your computer to make it do things and so forth, I fully expected when I first bought it that out of the box I would be literally talking to ATC, and they would sound like real ATC.
Nope.
I’ve seen rumors that WT has been tasked with fixing it, I hope it’s true because those guys have their ■■■■ together. But, come on, man, basic stuff like vectoring you into an approach when on an IFR flightplan in heavy IMC, and they don’t evey try, or do it badly. Doing it badly would actually be an improvement!
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Same issue happening to me for about two years. I feel like I have posted on many threads about this issue already. Just wanted to vote up this issue here. I remain unrealistically optimistic that someone at MicroAssobosoft can resolve this.
C U in the sky!
For anyone experiencing this still.
There are two things to be aware of, one preventative, and one restorative:
Preventative:
When in busy airspace, be extra patient with ATC - and especially turn off the Copilot radio assist. The goal here is to wait until there is some dead air (which will happen eventually) and then respond. This prevents the initial issue which seems to be tied to a timing issue with Azure voices. Once you are established and heading out of the busy airspace you can turn the copilot back on.
Restorative:
Switch to Com 2 not just in your panel, but also in the ATC window. Click on the Com 2 tab, switch your radios to com 2, tune and continue. Treat this as a partial radio failure. You can only do this once per flight, if Com 2 bugs out also, you are just done at that point. I’ve not had that happen yet, but I also apply the Preventative approach.
I’m hoping (but not too optimistic) that Asobo will be able to figure out this race condition and solve it.
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@lassombra8785 Thanks for the tips. I will definitely try both the Restorative and Preventative steps. Unfortunately for me, ATC isn’t even contacting me when this happens. The loss of ATC usually happens when you’ve got either two pilots trying try to talk at the same time or ATC and a pilot tries to talk at the same time (“blocked”). I can sympathize with Asobo as it’s very hard to get this to recreate unless you are in a really busy airspace during a really busy time.
Your procedure seemed to work well. I lost COM1 about 3/4 of the way through the flight. Switched to COM2 and it went well until short final @KPHX when I lost it, also. Not surprising considering the radio traffic at that time.
Has anyone seen any improvement in AI ATC since SU12? I’ve noticed I can get through a flight without the ATC suddenly disconnecting and leaving me enroute. Your thoughts?
There was nothing about that in the patch notes
HOWEVER - some things that were in the patch notes that can have an effect on this were the changes to AI aircraft. I think we’re seeing slightly less chaotic airspaces now which can reduce the chances of this happening.
Unfortunately it’s still broken. I worked for me a few times but this bug needs serious attention from the dev team in order to get it to work permanently.
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ATC still broken, voice randomly cuts out. I can only hear pilot/co-pilot. I have to keep the ATC window open to read lost messages with often canceled flight plan. Really inconvenient!!
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Pure luck.
Flying to Burbank from Seattle, I had ATC until I contacted Burbank Tower. That’s when I lost it. Asobo may be heading in the right direction though. I noticed that, as I flew, when ATC really needed to talk to another aircraft, they stopped communication with the first aircraft and both ATC and the aircraft used the same voice.
The ATC keeps calling out to a few planes but they were not responding. It was quite annoying and I think they should stop calling after maybe 3 times and terminate the ATC services with them.
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Still broken, but to add on, it sometimes just stops all together as I am decending to my approach. Wont give approach instructions anymore either.
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Same here. As soon as there is a lot of traffic it stops being audible. Very annoying.