Sayintentions AI ATC Master Thread

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Understood and agree to a certain extent. I have and do make my concerns with what SI is doing known just like I have done with BATC. I will only say in regards to this point that with there is a noticeable difference in how each respond to criticism or even just basic questions or concerns. I’ll just leave it at that, everyone can come to their own conclusions.

But my primary issue is not about the core ATC procedures BATC uses, that is actually quite logical and good.

At it’s core BATC uses a ‘script’ method for ATC coms. It does not generate the ATC communications as some may think, only the voices you hear in the sim. There is nothing inherently wrong (or right) with this approach. It has some advantages, easier to implement, control, cheaper to implement, etc. However…

Given the coms are literally ‘pre-recorded’ scripts there is no way to avoid it sounding incredibly repetitive and robotic during a busy long flight or just in general over time. Unfortunately the more traffic you add to your sim, the faster and greater (more annoying to me) the repetition becomes.

I will add this point also, as BATC consumes Premium Voices (you know the good ones they market) by the character, BATC generates far, far, far, far, far…too many words (characters) in their ATC coms, as well as my ‘specifically formatted’ response. The coms are very long winded and disconnected. BATC seems to use 100 words to say what in ‘RL’ a controller would say in 10 or even less. If you are using Premium Voices those extra 90 characters are ‘costing’ you if you intend to keep using Premium Voice (i.e. buy more characters). To be fair, BATC gives you the option to disable them and use Basic Voice, and they are not too bad at all but are very limited, i.e. back to the repetitive thing.

SI takes a different approach to the coms gen and speech. Like BATC, the approach it is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, it’s just different. They use AI to actually generate the text and speech. The downside of this for SI is that it is very expensive to use at this point. The upside is that as it is NOT a ‘script’ at all. All of the actual response (not just voices) are generated on the fly and can slightly or even significantly be very different from each other for the same question or instruction. The net result is that the ATC interaction with me (and fellow AI) can and does sound MUCH more like different ‘humans’ talking to each other, not humans ‘parroting’ each other.

I also hope that BATC improves over time, but in the end both will still come out in the sim as very different. I just think that at the moment SI has more potential ability to avoid the ‘canned’ feel the sim and BATC bring to me.

Everyone can and will hopefully have different takes on this subject. But like SI and BATC, neither is right or wrong in any way. They are just opinions.

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“The upside is that as it is NOT a ‘script’ at all.”

And here’s SI’s problems; I can request whatever BS it is, CHATGPT or whatever SI’s using will agree, and let me do it. I wanted to like it really much, but rather stick with BATC at this very moment until SI will implements better the IRL protocols. Until then GA can be fun for use surely, as they can chat Santa Claus or other made up co-pilot which lake is it next to you. Ideally if I could mix the two together would be nice (although LLM in BATC may change the race again). It will be interesting year, but we, as users can only win :slight_smile:

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I cancelled SI when they forced the client to run as Elevated Administrator. I was a Windows .NET app developer in a previous life, and it is an absolute no-go for me to use any app that persistently* runs elevated. I did ping the SI devs, but they have no immediate plans to change their code. They said the needed to do this for consistent mic access. BATC and others don’t require elevation to run, so not sure why SI does.

If this gets changed, then I might go back.

*There’s a difference between “running” and “installing”, which also often requires elevation to write stuff to C:\Program Files, etc.

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All true and will not dispute, but which has more potential? Not if it’s possible to control that potential. One crisis at a time as I like to say. you need to have the potential before you can control or fail to control it. Right now BATC does not even have the potential. In agreement with one of your points, SI’s greatest non-traffic issue is being able to control (true) LLM ATC. I honestly am starting to think it may not be possible at this time, but they do have the potential and are trying. I give them a lot of credit for that.

As for your point about SI allowing ‘BS’. I see this posted a lot. Not sure why folks inject unrelated comments like this into discussions, other than to conflate issues. If I as the user want to ask SI something completely ridiculous and non-sensical, that it on the user. I can just as easily ask BATC the very same thing. Your being somewhat disingenuous here in my opinion. The issue is not how each handles the ‘stupid’. The issue is the user introducing the ‘stupid’ to begin with. Neither BATC nor SI can help that. Nor should they waste time and money trying to. We don’t need better programming, seems like we need better users.

As for the LLM in BATC. If it is and many believe going to immediately or quickly allow more lifelike and unscripted ATC coms that will be a game changer. The calculus may indeed shift. However from my understanding it will do nothing to change the actual core ATC method and overall interaction. Could be wrong but that was my take away based on what they (BATC) say. I think there are going to be a lot of disappointed users once LLM is implemented. Again, could be wrong, we’ll find out together I suppose.

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I’d argue one of the absolute fundamental requirement of an Air Traffic Control program is the traffic environment. As msfs has a joke of a default implementation it falls on the programs to implement something themselves. So far out of all the third parties only fshud and BATC have got this capability. I’m sure SI has lots of potential but this really needs to be a priority IMO

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OK, let me rephrase the bs part. ATC is there for air traffic control and I want to hear if a request is not feasible (even if it’s not a bs), and a kind robot not just agreeing “yeah, pal do that, however you feel!” or put any unprofessional communication what appears in the app. You need scripts especially in a strict environment, what SI is lacking badly and until that SI has no potential as didn’t implement aviation rules.

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Well the difference is I suppose that SI markets itself as “allowing the stupid” as if it’s a feature - in real life you’d probably get asked to telephone someone after landing, although I guess if you enjoy the silliness it’s not for me to judge really.

The thing is though real life ATC is a very strict operation with a specification that must be adhered to and that pilots train with. I know there’s various nuances between regions, accents etc but at its core there is a very specific phraseology that needs to be stuck to. I believe BATC is positioning itself to, at first, mirror this specification.

Here’s where the nuances come in:
If BATC has a given send/receive dictionary that can be selected from during each communication, there is no reason that the list cannot be expanded to include slightly different phrases. It’s not like it’s fixed information - the program almost certainly generates its phraseology from a bank of “strings”. Randomise them and you will get a very nice variation that very little repetition - and the only additional cost is a few extra characters, and a small amount of development time to add the new variations to the application / LLM.

In addition, there is nothing to stop BATC from offering premium access to an AI API to get random responses back as part of this expansion like SI offers, and it will integrate with the solid framework already built.

More importantly, it can be turned off for those who wish to have a stricter experience (perhaps for training / learning purposes). BATC have full control over input and output to the user.

SayIntentions seems to do the latter part first without nailing down the specific (and vital) phraseology - for that reason, I believe BATC is in a better position and will offer a superior experience going forwards.

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I have used FSHud and I will say my experience with the product itself was rather enjoyable. I don’t use it anymore and it will never be on a computer of mine for other reasons, and I will leave it at that.

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Odd, can’t say for sure but I have not seen or heard that as an official statement or marketing slogan from SI? If so please provide the link.

Moving on, I’m going to state this again in response your ‘ATC is a very strict operation’. Let’s drop this one if you don’t mind, I have said a couple of times that is not what my issue is about.

As to the rest, all or somewhat true to varying degrees. With that said and responding to the ‘they can just add more script part of you response’(that’s a paraphrase by the way) it is not what I am using now. When can I expect this? It’s so easy they could not implement it in the initial release? It’s so easy that they cannot be adding them as we speak?

When (or if) I see the things you mention come to pass in BATC it will be a much better application. Until then core issue to me remains in BATC:

Excessively repetitive, robotic, overly talkative, ATC coms.

Aside for that it is a very good program, and that is not sarcasm.

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Don’t necessarily agree with the first part, i.e. ‘(They) ‘need’ scripts’. This is all literally brand spanking new to everyone. We, and they, don’t know what is needed or not needed with the current tech. Might turn out the be true in the end but I’m not going to state it as an absolute fact just yet (I’m also not going to keep paying to find out SI).

The second part I agree with very much. Maybe SI is doing some fantastic things in the background as far a ATC structure goes but it has been very stagnate in the current public release and has been for a while.

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Okay, so not “allowing the stupid” verbatim but the whole proposition of using AI is that you can say anything and get a plausible response back - when all you need is, actually, a model that recognises standard phraseology and gives standard phraseology back, which you can then build upon to incorporate some variation. You don’t need open ended discussion capabilities to offer a premium ATC service, so you don’t need a subscription to an AI service.

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Stated that way I once again do not disagree at all with any of what you contend. It is all, potentially, quite true. However, it is equally true that BATC does not have this, yet at least.

In regards to the last sentence, can you please clarify your statement? When you say ‘You don’t need open ended discussion capabilities to offer a premium ATC service…’ I ask for clarification because as a statement of fact that is obviously true, so I’m not sure what it has to do with the SI vs. BATC discussion. Are you implying that someone shouldn’t even try to create or offer one?

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Sound like you are describing Pilot2ATC. Only specific phraseology is allowed and responded to. No AI involved. Used it for a long time but found it very restrictive. I have found SI to more lenient on miscues in phraseology and yes I even enjoy having a conversation with my Co-pilot… or even a tour guide. Using ATC, I try to stay as professional as I can… with the tour guide - well this is an entertainment product as well.

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Sure: If an ATC solution is to be developed, it merely needs to adhere to the ICAO specification for phraseology at its foundation before extending outwards to incorporate “variation” in the phrases for more realism. I think this is the road BATC are going down at the moment - getting the “base offering” working correctly first.

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It’s great that we have two excellent ATC choices to pick from. At the moment they are both incomplete which means neither experience is ideal, but they are both so far ahead of the other ATC options we are lucky to have them.

For me at the moment when flying airliners with traffic BATC is a clear winner but for VFR flying SI is where it is at.

I agree that BATC phraseology is too repetitive but that SI goes too far in the other direction. I’m sure that over time they’ll both converge to something with more realism. BATC is adding a custom locally run LLVM to add phraseology variance and SI will eventually deliver traffic. (It took BATC about a year to implement traffic from when they first pivoted to it, it’s massive task).

The one stark difference is the cost, but maybe that will change over time as well.

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Thanks for the clarification. Let me just put it this way. There are things I like and don’t like about each approach to ATC from SI and BATC.

BATC has an advantage at the moment from a strictly implementation perspective obviously. My hats off to them for the quick work. The downside to this is that putting something out quickly sometimes leads to key user requests being missed or needing to put in place at a later date. From personal experience and observation, when noting this to them users are sometimes ‘chided’ or dismissed on their support channels. Not sure why. Their pricing structure is much more in line with what most users prefer (assumption on my part). They also give an option to those who don’t or can’t use all the bells and whistles. very well done from a business standpoint.

On the opposite side, SI is taking the much more difficult but potentially much more immersive approach in my judgment. The big downside for SI is that their approach is very time consuming and complicated, and by their own admission more costly to the end user. Unfortunately for SI their pricing structure, continuous subscription, does not lend well to slow but steady implementation of core requirements. That is my greatest frustration with them at the moment.

To all here, I have really enjoyed this discussion. Thanks for being a great group of opposing views and avoiding the tendency to ‘go full bombastic’. I know occasionally the struggle is real on my end :grin:

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Well said sir.

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