Hi there, I have been thinking about the status of the ATC and was wondering if it will ever get much better within time… My Question is what happens to the the third party ATC programs like Pilot2ATC and PF3, when the in-game becomes excellent? I know that the developers of the 2 programs have spent a great deal of time on their programs with fixes and stuff like that…What are your thoughts on this?
Nothing in my opinion. No matter how good ATC in MSFS will become I will always stick to VATSIM.
1 Like
Post moved from General Discussion
Some of the greatest scope for improved functionality will depend on the simconnect API and what it allows, particularly the ability of external apps to interact with AI traffic.
The sort of future improvements we should be looking for is ATC that leverages improved AI traffic injected by the likes of FSLTL or AIG. FSLTL is now having AI traffic fly SIDs and STARs for users who have Navigraph Nav data installed - this could/should be reflected in ATC interaction.
I’d like to better use of improved speech (the Azure voices in the SIM make it hard to listen to the MS voice packs you need to use in P2A.
Regionalisation of ATC would then be the next thing to look for, with correct national or regional phraseology. This needent be global and could be an addon - eg separate US, EU, ICAO standard VFR packs (I suggest making them separate as there are significant differences and for VFR you tend to be focused on practicing/using in a single country at a time.
IIRC the built-in ATC was one of the last things they worked on prior to release and Asobo used a large amount of FSX code. That is why it is U.S. regionalized and so poorly done with many of the major issues from FSX still in the MSFS ATC code.
I don’t think there is much momentum behind fixing the many issues due to the various online providers. That is a shame as I find the online providers to be either too expensive for a postage stamp-sized region or so undermanned as to make the experience dull and boring. There are moments with online providers that they are well staffed, but those are few and far between. Most of the time it is like flying around in a post-apocalyptic world. Even if there is traffic, if there are no controllers, everyone seems to be afraid of the radios and unwilling to make uncontrolled field announcements. With over 30 years of real-world flying including hopping the ponds I hate to pop the bubble of perfection that the online guys try to project, but most of the time, it is not even close.
At this point in the development of FS one would think that they would spend a little time and update the ATC to incorporate the better features of the third-party ATC programs you mentioned. With Microsoft’s money, this would seem to be easy by directly hiring one of the developers of these third-party programs. For those who prefer to use the in-game system rather than spend hours flying across unmanned sectors online, this would be a nice update to the game.
2 Likes
P2ATC offers something much different. Voice activation.
They can continue to improve the sim ATC but unless they add that feature, P2A will offer what it can’t.
And nothing will replace VATSIM, PilotEdge, etc… for those who want that level of realism.