I love using the ATC menu to signal my intentions and pattern progression, even at uncontrolled airports. It increases realism and keeps me on my toes, without having to go all in on VATSIM.
In multiplayer (my default these days and IMHO the only way to play), this breaks down. I can’t hear other players ATC calls and they can’t hear mine, defeating the purpose of (and motivation for) ATC.
It would be a huge improvement (and a huge dose of realism) if we could hear others’ ATC communications on the same frequency, in the order received, in the voice of the pilot’s selected gender.
Some additional details:
To keep it simple, it could start with uncontrolled airfields
Controlled tower logic can be simple (e.g. a FIFO queue)
People who aren’t interested won’t be tuned in anyways
People who are interested can congregate in sane areas
If abusers crop up, add a block button to the ATC menu
More rules can be added later for “live” not “all” players
Please vote for this if you agree. Thanks for listening.
I expected to have this in the release version since they called “Live Players” flying according to ATC rules. Now everybody just flys in their own “ATC-Bubble”.
For me the biggest Issue at the moment is the ATC. The common complaints are phraseology and strange behavior but that is not the main issue and can be worked around somewhat.
The reason an ATC exists is that it guides traffic. This seems to work somewhat for ai planes, since i had to go around multiple times and had other planes behind me do the same. This also seem to work for Taxiing. How well is another story, but this is nothing that is a huge issue.
The huge problem is that there is no interaction with other players at all. It is okay that I cannot collide with other players but It is so important to hear their interaction with the atc and have it recognize other players. The same goes for callouts on airfields without any atc coverage. I want an actual reason to do those. If there is no change anyone will ever hear those, this totally kills my immersion and makes it a chore.
Vatsim is no alternative to this in the slightest since the coverage is way too low (not to blame them, but its a fact) and I don’t want to be bound to the few airports that have coverage.
Additionally the coverage is even certain daytimes.
For many other aspects of the sim 3rd party developers can offer solutions but in this case that won’t happen, since everyone would need the same add on which is not possible.
Griefing can happen, but should be not a huge deal since the only thing needed is the same communication you are already doing with the atc. Simply offer an option to mute players that are spamming or limit the amount of messages being able to sent in a certain timeframe and this wont be an issue.
I miss listening to proper ATC of others too when flying online. I first thought this would be a feature. But in another thread someone already said, that it will not happen, because they leave it to VATSIM or other 3rd party developers. I mean, that is why ATC is here for, to sort and guide all the players. On busy airports it´s a mess sometimes, everybody is taking off, taxiing or landing as nobody else is there. I guess it´s not that easy to implement that without having a live ATC. One additional suggestion could be a ranking system for all players, to see if they listen to ATC orders or not and exclude trolls from bigger airports on a stricter “live” sim mode- but that probably won´t happen. And yeah, that´s afaik what happens when you fly with VATSIM. MAybe I´ll have a look
I would really love to hear other traffic (other players) call in on the same frequency when approaching an airport e.g…
Presently I can only hear ATC and AI traffic.
This would really make sense und should be easy to implement.
What do you think?
Hi is it possible to have the ATC recognise the multiplayers rather than just you and the generics many times I am getting ready to land a a generic flies in an causes me to crash and I think it would give a better game play experience if we had to wait in line rather than cleared to take off with a gem on the runway.
I too think an improvement to ATC would bring in so much realism. when I’m at a busy airport in multi-play I should be able to know what other Capt intentions are , if you can’t do voice or Chat then, as been said at least tune us into the other aircraft atc to at least give us a chance , many times I have had to do a missed approach because other pilots are coming into the airport , Its possible that they are on vatsim, to the opposite end of the runway i am landing at .
I dont’ see how this ends well if implemented. we can’t even get live player jumbo jets to stop buzzing towers in multiplayer i’m not sure how giving the masses atc call ability for all is going to be any better. What stops a fleet of idiots just spamming the ATC calls non stop and the rest of us having to listen to the automated voice repeat the same thing 20 times?
As stated in the original post, a block button will work fine for each player, with the amount of blocks being reported back to MS, any serial spammers can be perma blocked from MS end. More work yes, but it is a pretty fundamental feature if you see a plane in front of you to know what it’s intentions are.
I’m not a fan of making the masses report people especially when anyone can just report whoever and you suddenly get people who did nothing wrong getting permablocked cause 12 year old johnny thought it was funny.
Atc IS fundemental but I suggest vatsim or pilotedge for that over mass hysteria. Its bad enough with people buzzing you trying to land, giving them an option to use radio too, not ideal.
Fair point… I still think it’s achievable with a bit of work… If they have accurate event logging that can help confirm if reports are genuine or not.
Sometimes I don’t want to get on Vatsim because I don’t have time to do a full flight preparation after a full days work. It’s a lot easier sometimes to use default ATC for a quick VFR flight around somewhere.
You don’t need to do a full flight plan if you’re flying vfr on vatsim, same as in real life. Takeoff, pick up guard or ask for flight following if the controllers have time. They typically do without question unless it’s a big event. You just need to tell them who you are, requesting a vfr flight following, what your local destination is or next waypoint and make sure to stay out of the Bravo or Charlies without clearance. If you are Landing at a Delta they’ll hand you off to that controller with a frequency change approval if one is available. If you do need to pass through a bravo they’ll have you maintain a certain altitude and spacing between departures or approach paths.
