Text editable ATC phrases

ATC has been discussed a lot, and one way that might be worth a thought instead of hard-implementing „pure US ATC“ or „pure ICAO ATC“ or whatever more local variant you could think of:
Since the speech is synthesized anyway, I could think of the supported phrases sit in a text file, with a list of possible placeholders for stuff like aircraft registration, aircraft type, flight number, flight data, met data etc.
As an example, a takeoff clearance like this:
„<ac_reg>, wind <wind_direction> degrees <wind_velocity> knots, runway <cleared_runway>, cleared for takeoff.“

As many things in the new sim seem to be adjustable in text files, this doesn’t feel totally off.

As a (very long term…) extension to this, I could think of regionalized files to accommodate different phraseology in different areas of the globe.

Also I’d love to have different variants of single phrases. Now before anyone jumps at me with „realism, realism! There’s just one way to do it right!“ stuff, I know, I know. But the reality you might claim is (in reality) a mix of phrases, and not adhering to whatever standard 100% of the time.
Also there are things you might say in more plain language, as there is not a given phrase for everything.
Examples for variants:
„<ac_reg>, <turn_direction> heading <cleared_hdg>.“
„<ac_reg>, turn <turn_direction> heading <cleared_hdg>.“
„<ac_reg>, fly heading <cleared_hdg>.“
Again, I’m not saying any of these are per standard XY, I just want to point out that the „real“ experience is a rich one, made up of variations „around“ a particular standard.

So long story short, I vote for customizable phrases in plain text files.

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Quite astonished to see my very request had been in there since the beginning. :thinking: There are miracles happening at last. :joy: Thanks to this thread I just found out that not only are all the phrases open and can be edited, but also my suggestion of multiple variations of phrases was incorporated pretty much exactly as I envisioned it.

For those who wonder, the phrases are in the fs-base folder in the .locpak files under the ATCCOM entries.

So I guess the request should definately be changed to ask for more functionality of the actual, underlying ATC system. Amazing!

Maybe this helps:

Hi there,
I am closing this because this is actually how the system works today. You can find .locPak files corresponding to your chosen language in:

Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\<Steam or OneStore>\fs-base

So there actually are entries like:

"ATCCOM.VECTOR_CHGHEADING.0.text": "Turn {direction_lr} heading {heading_new}",
"ATCCOM.VECTOR_CHGHEADING.0.tts": "Turn {direction_lr} heading {heading_new}",

where the .text entry determines what is displayed in the ATC window, and the .tts entry determines what is said by the text-to-speech engine.