I guess the obvious question is why do suppose so many threads get locked?
We all have the right to start a thread that poses serious questions about the sim and its progress.
Unfortunately, we all dont have the ability.
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A good start in terms of improvement to the ATC which shouldn’t take too much effort is to fix the phraseology, fix some basic flawed logic like not having to read back QNH, descent from flight level to altitude without being given QNH etc. Lastly, make autotuning of frequencies and squawk codes optional (turn on or off in the assistance menu).
These simple fixes would improve ATC a lot.
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Agreed, there’s lots that could be done in terms of small changes that would make things so much better.
Is this official news - where can I read about it, or is it just your personal speculation? Something about it on the roadmap or wishlist status etc? It sort of sounds like you are talking on behalf of the product team here.
It doesn’t really make any sense that the stock big jets (that there are luckily many better alternatives for already) need FMS rewrites completed just to improve everyone’s basic ATC. Yes, we’ve both said this before, but you keep saying it in the same way without any explanation or justification, so still curious why. It still doesn’t make any sense but it keeps getting repeated like it’s the plan. You might not mean it like that, so hoping for some clarification.
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You’ve made it eminently clear that you disagree with the general approach to revising the Flight Planning Logic in this order: FMS, Sm Core Code, then all other modules. I’m happy to have this conversation in the presence or inclusion of Dev Team and Working Title, both of whom have made comments to this effect on their Discord and here in the Forum. Or you can use the Support link to provide Direct Feedback to Microsoft, which might be faster. Thanks.
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I don’t disagree with the approach, I just don’t understand it or know where it is sourced from. It sounds like you’ve had conversations with the Dev team and Working Title, and that is where you getting this information from? Anyway, you don’t want to talk about it any more (eminently, on a forum no less), so no worries. Apologies for questioning your product roadmap statement, and thanks for the Support link to the Direct Feedback to Microsoft idea, I’ll get right on that. 
Do you have any forum or Discord links to where I can read about the fact that ATC won’t be changed until the FMS of the stock aircraft are all updated first and the reasons why? Is there something from WT I can read on this forum, as that would help. Thanks.
If ATC had been ported over and adapted from FSX/FS2004/FS2002 with the addition of adding in waypoints like it does now, it would have been just about perfect. Funny thing is that the ATC engine from FS2002 was by far the best one for all purposes of handling AI. ATC would not give another instruction until the aircraft had responded and on it went. You had 100% back and forth communications. Now since FS2004 ATC will spew off 3+ instructions and only maybe 2 would get read back. This is why I primarily only listen to ATC at an airport because from tower on down every transmission is eventually readback, although not in the order it was given unless it’s not busy. Anything above tower doesn’t flow. One thing I can’t figure out is why there are these huge hangs between communications and even in the communications themselves. What we need is Edit Voicepack to be able to tweak and accelerate the ATC audio that currently exists. Same way we need to be able to tweak and make changes to airports such as the frequencies, taxiways, runway configurations, etc. without needing to have any massive amount of developer expertise or using the SDK specifically. Thankfully One World Hub should help in that regard but that has yet to be seen how much that will change things on that end. If the SDK wasn’t so complicated and 3rd party access was more accessible, this sim would be right as rain in a matter of weeks/months.
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You do realize autotuning and squawks are already available, right? Just turn on or off the ATC option for the flight assistance and it’ll handle all your radios and squawk codes from auto to manual.
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I want to be able to reply to the ATC call for a handover, then manually set the new frequency. Same with squawk codes. This is not possible.
Yes it is. In a flight, on the white drop down bar, open up flight assistance, you see the ATC option? That’s it. If it’s on then AI will handle your comms/squawks. If you want to manually do that, just uncheck it.
I booted my sim up just to show you:
It’s off so I control the radios and need to manually respond, tune the freqs, and set the squawk code
It’s on, so AI controls the radios and auto tunes based on the phase of flight I am in and sets the squawk.
Maybe they can use generative AI (I think there’s is specifically called Vall-E’s AI Text To Speech system (TTS) to generate the ATC voice with Morgan Freeman’s voice.
Literally THE Voice of GOD guiding us home!
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Has been said in one or more Dev Q&A’s.
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I think the biggest bug is that ATC gives me conflicting information and instructions. If this was a “real” air traffic controller and they gave conflicting commands like the ATC on MS2020 does they would have to go back for additional training or be forced to quit. Before 9/11 I used to spend some nights with a good friend who was an air traffic controller at the local ATC center. They would let me plug in and listen to their coms. They were FANTASTIC at talking to planes and gave very clear instructions very quickly. Maybe MS needs to hire a retired ATC to model their ATC after…It is not good at the present time and it seems to be a very requested update…FWIW
I already have AI radio communications off. Squawk code is still set automatically as soon as you reply when picking up a clearance. On the ground or in the air. Just to clarify, to set squawk code manually I mean setting it on the transponder in the airplane. Same with frequencies.
I was going to start a fresh thread but I figured maybe it’d be better to ask here. Does anyone know if you can mod the base ATC to at least permit clearances further from the set altitude? Like if I’m climbing, the default ATC will absolutely not clear me to a higher altitude mid-climb. They wait for me to reach an altitude, and only then will they clear my climb higher. Prior to approach instructions, the same is true on descent. Won’t let you continue your descent until you reach the actual altitude, and then have you wait at least a moment.
Unless I imagined it, I’m sure I read somewhere on these forums that that had recently been fixed.
I know what you’re meaning and asking. I’ve been able to set both freqs and squawk manually day one using initially the default 152 and then the PMDG 737 and Asobo’s 787 as long as that flight assistance ATC option is off. The only other assistance option that would automatically affect the radio would be AI pilot. So it’s either AI pilot or AI ATC. If you claim to have both of those off and things are still autotuning, IDK what to tell you. Somethings not set right. Not knowing what aircraft you fly, perhaps you’ve enabled an auto function somewhere or haven’t disabled it.
My guess – And this is only a guess…we don’t know the roadmap, so I don’t have any inside information to share – is that rather than try to solve individual problems, they are instead trying to do a holistic revamp and get away from legacy code. And that takes time, I’m afraid.
My guess – again with the caveat above – is that it makes more sense to them to invest the time in a comprehensive overhaul rather than to spend time fixing something that’s eventually going to be overwritten.
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Are Working Title still planning on being the overhaulers of the ATC?
Due to the excellent dev-stream-recap transcribing efforts (due to @N316TS I think, who did an amazing bit of work here), it looks like there are just a few mentions of ATC, but nothing like that is being described. ‘No reboots’ and ‘WT would look it’ at it seems to be the summary.
Nothing I can find about AIRAC bugs or having to rewrite things like the stock A320 FMS before we can have ATC vectoring like FSX did.
Maybe it was all on Discord and is lost to the ether…
Continuing the discussion from Live Dev Q&A - May 25th, 2022:
Continuing the discussion from Live Dev Q&A - January 26th, 2022: