Agree. The 90s-era UI is the #1 reason why I couldn’t use P2A (or PF3). I’m just glad he offers a demo to try and appreciate at least the dev seems to be active in updates. FSHud shows a lot of promise but still behind the other solutions in terms of features. No demo for that though.
It’s odd how most of the 3rd party ATC programs seem to be lone developers so don’t have the resources to update UI/websites, etc. Pro-atc/sr (the one I’ve been using for 4+ months) is still what I use when not using default ATC but has the worst dev support/updates. No clear solution still imo.
Indeed. Dave of P2A is solo. And he gets :■■■■: done. We can often see multiple updates in a week (beta stream). And he’s super responsive to bug reports and actions them quickly. “Some” larger companies could learn a thing or two from his level of serice.
SUre, his UI/UX is far from modern, kind of ugly, and not terribly intuitive, but the tool itself is worth the hassle for me. Once you know where stuff is, it’s fairy easy to use.
I’ve been thinking about trying an ATC solution and am leaning towards P2A because of the voice recognition capabilities.
A few things I was wondering…
Can you quickly/easily change between pilot and co-pilot handling the radio during a flight?
Does P2A support any kind of in-flight holds? I couldn’t find it in the documentation and thought it was odd not to be a feature as most of the other solutions seem to have it in some form.
A long time ago I had voxATC and the voice recognition worked well as long as you said EXACTLY the expected phrase. Is P2A a little more lenient in that regard? For example, perhaps reading back the clearance elements in a slightly different order or accidentally adding in an extraneous word or two. A few YT videos seemed to show that it could be.
I believe so. Although I’ve personally never used it. I fly single pilot planes. Part of the reason I use P2A is to gain some proficiency for voice when using Vatsim the rare times I get on there.
I think so, but really unsure. I’ve not been in a situation where that’s been required as of yet.
Sort of. It expects a certain format and will actually show you the text it’s expecting you to say in reply to ATC. But you can certainly deviate a bit. It tends to listen for some key things in your reply vs the structure of your reply as a whole.
Thanks to @Crunchmeister71 for the recent posts about p2atc I decided to give it another go. Maybe I’m just more experienced about this stuff now but it seems much better than when I tried it 6 months ago. Yes, the UI is dated/complex but it is a complex program.
I would say that while I still prefer the UI of pro-atc/sr that feels like a completely abandoned product at this point. An update may eventually come but after spending 5 months with that product it’s time to move on to something that has more support.
For those reading still deciding on 3rd party atc my opinion is do not consider pro-atc/sr. It does not have a demo either. While aspects of it are great I’m tried of dealing with constant workarounds and no dev updates/support since Aug. FShud has potential, but I agree with most that the best 3rd party solution at this point is pilot2atc. I wish I’d come to that conclusion 6 months as I would have saved a lot of time/money.
P2A isn’t perfect. It has some shortcomings as well. When it comes to controlling YOU, I think it’s excellent. And generally, people seem to agree. It’s not infallible by any means, but beats the default sim ATC by a landslide. They’re not even in the same league, let alone ballpark.
The big down side is that P2A doesn’t control the AI traffic in sim. The default ATC does that even if you can’t hear it. It’s aware of the traffic, but can only steer you around it at best. P2A will give you traffic warnings, get you to hold short for a plane on final, etc. So it works.
But this can make for a lonely radio channel where all you hear is you and ATC talking to you. As a side effect of that, you don’t have the situational awareness you’d get listening to the comms from other planes in your area.
I use ATC Chatter with P2A. It integrates it well, and even plays back correct class of clips for the channel you’re on. So if you’re on ground, ATC chatter will only play clips related to ground, and so forth. So it does add to the sense of immersion when you hear real pilots and real ATC talking in the background. But like I said, it’s just filler, and you can’t gleen any awareness from what they’re saying.
So I won’t say it’s perfect by any means. But it’s good. And the fact it’s voice-activated with proper aviation communications and such is nice.
I’d personally prefer Vatsim, as it would tick all the boxes. But for various reasons, it’s not a really viable solution for me.
Dave is ridiculously active in development. It’s not unusual to see multiple beta updates per week. Even more than 1 per day if something goes wrong. In fact, I sort of worry when there ISN’T an update in a while. We had a bit of a running joke about it over on the Simstrumentation Discord. If it was more than a week since the last P2A beta update, we’d make a “No P2A updates in over a week. RIP Dave” post.
Since I only fly “live” and use FSLTL (with their live traffic injection) for ATC chatter I always use liveatc.net for those airports where it’s supported. Nothing beats the real thing. I even wrote a flow widget that automatically launches liveatc website to correct airport where I’m parked (haven’t published yet because still working on the bugs).
Even without that if I leave the default ATC “on” (but not for instruction) I can still hear chatter from other traffic with default ATC while still using p2atc.
Prior to using ATC Chatter, I was doing this as well. It works, assuming you’re using the same frequencies. I just found ATC Chatter, even though it’s not “real chat” of the other planes on the same frequency are more realistic because it’s real world ATC chatter.
Yeah, after spending more time with p2atc the biggest problem I have so far is the limited voice set. pro-atc/sr has real recorded voices with different accents (although uneven in quality) which was a a nice feature.
Fortunately I found the instructions for installing aws polly voices and that makes p2atc so much better. It’s a pretty technical/involved process through, but for those interested there are instructions online. I also took your advice and dropped $15 for atc chatter and while not live it’s quite nice.
Using voice recognition to respond was also a critical piece and I’m happy to say p2atc does well with that and didn’t require any “training”. pro-atc/sr was also very good with that part.
Some of the UI in p2atc really stumped me but Dave was instantly responsive to my questions. Given the complexity of the UI though I can’t imagine it will ever get an overhaul at this point. That’s fine once you’re used to it. I will probably purchase before my trial is up.
I feel like I should post a follow-up since I’ve got about 12+ hours with pilot2atc trial (and 100+ hours with pro-atc/sr).
I was very interested in going to p2atc given how good the dev is at updates and support. pro-atc/sr has horrible dev support and updates but I’m sticking with pro-atc/sr for now.
I believe pro-atc/sr should be considered an “as-is” product (likely no support or updates) which has bugs but most have workarounds and none prevent use.
Voice activation is key for me so I believe these are the only 2 atc products that offer that.
These are the reasons why I’m sticking with pro-atc/sr which may be useful to some trying to decide.
UI is simple an unobtrusive. Even in “minimized” mode the p2atc window takes up too much space. Not an issue if you don’t want a window up anyway.
Recognizes AI traffic (just like default ATC) so you hear other planes requesting clearance, etc. I like this is alot but not an issue if you don’t care about this.
Variety of atc voices spoken by real people. There are inconsistencies (i.e. some voices have missing words) so this requires a bit of config but it’s quite nice to have different voices which are random. Even after installing aws polly in p2atc, those voices sometimes didn’t work (never figured out why) and when they did, didn’t sound like coming over radio.
Better overall experience with flight instructions. Sometimes p2atc would just stop responding or not give me instructions to descend. I couldn’t figure out why. Got very frustrating. In pro-atc/sr when it gets lost I could usually get it back on track by requesting direct to waypoint.
More lenient voice rec. I sometimes couldn’t get p2atc to understand me (I’m a native english speaker and did try to train it). pro-atc/sr just works without issue.
Again, p2atc has great dev support. pro-atc/sr has horrible dev support. But I still prefer pro-atc/sr even without any updates.
That’s my opinion…maybe some will find it useful. I’m following FSHud closely to see how that evolves as it looks promising.
The last FSHUD 1.57 version, updated yesterday 25 august 23, works fine , even introducing GA (go around )randomly at landing
the sounds grts better with very good looking almost real radio ATC sounds .
I miss the AI voice recognition for a better interaction with the ATC, imitating the real thing, as FSIPanel does in the scenarios (this is not an ATC control program but an add on simulator of situations within the FS2020 itself), so I think that feature could be added to be more immersive.
Also have the option to make a DIVERT for adverse weather, although I guess it would be very complicated.
In the TAXI assistance works very well, with a kind of GPS that by signals, on your panel, will guide you to the door or parking.
And it has a very good feature, where you can set the minimum FPS that may have and affect the simulator and the FShud itself is responsible for removing traffic, both on the ground and in the air, when it falls below a certain threshold of frames that is marked in the options.
It interacts very well with FLTLS taking advantage of its aircraft models and the contribution of its traffic.
So with BeyondATC still in progress until 2024, I think if FSHUD adds AI speech recognition, it could be competitive and a great alternative to the much anticipated and publicized BeyondATC.
Another plus point is that the program is updated quite often lately .
I’ve just landed after another appalling default ATC experience. I must be an idiot for still trying to use it after all the constant trouble it gives me. But I can’t fly airliners without ATC, it’s just wrong.
I’m seriously considering buying FSHUD because Beyond ATC could be 6 months away and I can’t imagine surviving MSFS ATC for that much longer.
No, from a RL pilot, it’s not realistic - ATC doesn’t behave that way. The “do this - now do this - now do this other thing - now fiddle-faddle-fiddle-faddle” nonsense has plagued sim “ATC” from time immemorial. And it’s why I’ve never found any sim ATC addon I could even BEGIN to want to use.
Depends on what you want to get from sim flying. “Real” airliners are 100% IFR, and that means ATC is part of it. Sim flying doesn’t have to mimic real world. If you want to see what it’s like to fly an airliner in your simulator, and you don’t want to bother with “ATC”, horrendous is it is presently, go for it. Nothing says anyone who wants to fly a sim “airliner” has to subject themselves to the abomination that passes for “ATC” in our sims. Just load the airliner of your choice and fly it - forget “ATC”. No one will know.