Legacy ATC Mode (from FSX)

In Addition to this topic ( Add options to use legacy FSX ATC voice for ATC communications ) I would like to suggest to integrate the whole FSX ATC in a chooseable legacy mode.

Back then one could choose VFR or IFR as a general mode and then choose with high or low airways or the route via GPS or VORs without any special transitions, SIDs or STARs.
ATC just gave you altitude instructions and vectors and brought you safely (well in most situations…, we all know it had it’s flaws with nearby mountainous terrain or sometimes constantly vectoring you 25° to the left and then to right again but thats not my point here, it worked well enough in most cases) and with enough distance to the arrival airport to a point where you could reasonably intercept the currently used ILS or it gave you a visual approach that worked.
Simple and easy.
I personally don’t care about SIDS and STARS and don’t do flight planning outside of the sim because i’m just not interested in these things, but i’d really like some basic IFR guidance and vectoring to ILS for night and/or bad weather and in general too as it adds much immersion and is fun.

This is sadly not possbile in MSFS because ATC always assigns some special approach one has to be familiar with.

So in short: FSX ATC as a legacy option would make it possible to do IFR flights where it just controls your heading and altitude and leads you to a point away enough from the in-use-runway where you could nice and easily intercept the ILS at 30° for example or do a visual. FSX ATC did exactly this, i used it in many, many flights. The code exists and as stated in the other thread: even the speechfile is there and available. Of course i have no idea how much effort it would take to make it work in MSFS, but then again, that’s why i’m asking :slight_smile:

So could you please consider to bring back the FSX-ATC as legacy ATC option, so people who dont want to deal with “special approaches” can have basic IFR guidance?

Thanks for considering.

I gave you a vote because I still think FSX ATC was better than what MSFS is providing so far.
But the current ATC does give you vectors for a visual approach…… but they are generally horrible.
I also did have vectors to final for ILS approaches. Though not in a while since I usually do prepare for my flights just like I did in real flying. So I know what to expect and I have the proper approach plates ready. That is not for everyone though.

Last time i was told to expect vectors to visual i continued flying all the way across the coral sea, ended up in austrailia and never heard another word from atc.

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“But the current ATC does give you vectors for a visual approach…… but they are generally horrible.”

“Last time i was told to expect vectors to visual i continued flying all the way across the coral sea, ended up in austrailia and never heard another word from atc.”

This is sadly one huge drawback (for me) i found in MSFS - the old FSX or P3D ATC was better. It was not complex in terms of SIDs STARs and so on, but it worked.
Visual approaches right now are unuseable, at least here on my side (btw. i don’t use any addons).
When i’m say 20 miles away from the airfield, IFR mode and then request a visual approach from the controller it just keeps saying “remain current heading and altitude and expect vectors to visual”. The airfield comes closer, i then fly over it and beyond and no more word from ATC anymore. Last time i slewed backwards just out of curiostiy and during the backward slew (!) the ATC said i should decent but still no vectors for a reasonable approach. Seems to be something wrong to trigger it correctly in the first place.

One out of 10 tests i did, it routed me correctly to a somewhat useable base/final leg with enough distance and sane altitude, then asked if i had the runway in sight, i did and answered yes and then handed me off to the tower and i landed successfully.
1 out of 10 - Real showstopper right now…

When i think about it further, it wouldn’t even be needed to bring the whole FSX ATC back, they could just fix the visual approach mechanics and add a “simple IFR mode” option to the approach drop down menue in world map that behaves like the old IFR logic from FSX i.e. just leads you to a course to intercept the ILS.

I really hope ATC gets severe attention in future updates and patches, it really needs it.

Anyways, thanks for your votes guys…

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Actually the „report runway in sight“ is another part of the logic that is completely screwed up if you make it that far.
You get the call, then before you can respond you typically get more ATC bla bla where the runway is, followed again by the request to report it in sight. And before you can get a word in edgewise you are beyond the runway :joy:

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Id rather have the old fsx system than a updated version of this. The 4 azure voices are terrible. They sound like robots, the atc and responding pilot use the same voice. FSX sounded like real humans. I suspect they paid voice actors to do them but i’m not sure. The radios scted like radios. You could respond too quickly and “walk over” other pilots transmissions resulting in a realistic squelch and feedback. It was miles better imo in every way. I finally made the jump to msfs last december. I can already say the ATC will never be as good as FSX was. Especially if they insist on using the god awful robot voices.

Yeah i experienced that too. Wasn’t able to answer because of looping requests from ATC. ^^

But in the meantime i could fly several IFR-ILS approaches with the 320neo (stock, no mod). I found that one of the main differences in the “ATC guidance logic” compared to FSX is that you have to fly the headings and approach procedures yourself while the FSX ATC would always guide you vector by vector as long as the course was programmed as a flightplan (i.e. visible in the GPS) and IFR was chosen during the creation of it.

This very much confused me at first as i had no experience with FMC and such. I learned about the managed mode of the AP and with that the 320 followed it’s course and ATC gave me appropriate altitudes till i was established on the localizer.

May i ask you a question about this:
This worked fine in managed mode because the autopilot flew the legs and kinda “marked” them as done when i was at the end of them and then the next leg on the vfr map became magenta and so on.

But then i tried another procedure, now with the Cessna 152, obviously having no autopilot. But since you can see the procedure with waypoints and turns on the vrf map one can handfly it. But here i observed that it didn’t switch to the next leg, even though i flew the procedure very accuretly. The first leg remained magenta no matter what. Thus ATC was no giving me further instructions even though i proceeded with the approach procedure. This tells me that there has to be some autopilotsystem in use which tells the internal “ATC logic” that a certain leg is fnished.

I know, the 152 isn’t meant for IFR, but here’s another thought (i will try this later today): What if i want to handfly such an approach procedure with the 320? Will this work or not? Is there a way to mark a leg as finished in the FMC or a “manual mode”?

Edit (few hours later):
I now tried this in depth and came to a simple conclusion:
The recognition of the waypoint progression doesn’t depend on flying AP or manual, it seems to only depend whether the aircraft has a gps built in or not. I tried A320, Cessna 172 G1000 and the steam one (has a small gps) and the 787. All of them can be handflown and the flightplan on the vfr map progresses (magenta leg switches to the next when you reach the point) and the ATC works fine. You can even slew along the planned procedure with max slew speed and it works.
But as soon as there is no GPS onboard it always stays on the first leg, so the case with the 152.

But tbh i think this i pretty cool cause now i can handfly approaches and use the vfr map as a help and ATC is with me all the way. Very immersive for me :slight_smile: And when i just want to look outside a little more i go back to managed mode or GPS AP.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to complete this matter.

have a nice day

While i can live with the voices (more variation would be nice though) the speech flow and emphasis seem off in some places. For example when it gives you info with baro and wind normaly you would say “qnh 29 decimal 92 [pause] wind calm” or something. But ATC says: “qnh 29 decimal 9 [pause] 2windcalm”. (the no blanks here are intentional indicating no pause between the words)

Personally i resisted a long time (got it two weeks now) because i prefer offline games and didn’t want to create an account but recently i watched a video from my home city (vienna) with photgrammetry and i thought “OK lets give it a shot, worst thing that can happen is, that you hate it, delete account and forget the money”.
So i bought it and i have to admit that from the very first moment in the cockpit of the cessna 152 i knew i could never go back again (coming from P3D v4 and a little XP 10 and 12) The sounds, the shaking when you start the engine, of course the graphics in general (not even speaking of photogrammetry in some places). It just looks so much better than even P3D with addons. ORBX was nice, XPlane 12 looks good and the realism feeling is very good too, no question, but it will always be generic as long as they don’t stream real data and knowing this fact always kept me from looking outside the windows too much or even doing a vfr sightseeing trip in the past. I feel my time wasted when i go fly to look at generic landclass stuff.
In P3D i have flytampa TNCS, TFFJ and TNCM and MSFS out of the box looks better. And i’ve always wanted a sim that has most features out of the box, i personally hate any addons as they always cost time and managing effort, not even speaking of the compatibility issues when the sim is updated. I want to start the sim and fly.

Coming back to topic: ATC in general could really need some work and voice variation would be very welcome, since this should not be any problem with todays “can do anything” AI systems^^
What i did during testing was loading one english speechpack for my windows 10, so now i can also use the offline mode of the ATC voices, which gives me one set of other voices comapred to azure.