ATC FOR FS2002?

[Guest Stamatis]

"sure can, but you still have to fly it."Are you sure I have to fly it?If I request a "direct" and get it, what stops me from repositioning my aircraft a few miles before that waypoint and continue my flight?Stamatis

[Guest Stamatis]

"we all know there is two sides to a coin, and there is hell of a lot of praise with RC V3 but anyone have the guts to tell us consumers what is not included in this software?"Why would one need "guts" to say what he believes? :-)Anyway, here is my take on your question. I will obviously leave all the praise out, because you seem more than aware of it. My numbering is in order of importance for me:1) The major drawback is the fact that RC is not aware of ground elevations around you and ahead of you. Thus, it may very well vector you or give ou an altitude clearance that will have you flying into a mountain. There are ways in the program to avoid this, but it results in a somehow unrealistic simulation.To be fair to RC, I am not aware of any other such program that is not limited in this respect, so until such a program surfaces, you still cannot do any better than this.2) RC is not aware of how patterns are flown at airports, in order to avoid overflying a city/town at low altitude etc. Therefore, if you are familiar with the airport, you may receive vectoring instructions that do not match your personal experience of how vectoring is handled at that airport. Thankfully the vast majority of the users will not be familiar with many airports worldwide, so this is most important for our "home" airports. It would be nice if this info could be inputed by the user.3) RC is not aware of airport layouts, including Gates, apron and taxiway locations, and thus is not aware of the relative position of your aircraft in relation to this layout. Thus, it is quite limited on the ground, where the FSATC is definitely superior, and its taxiing clearances are "generic", if you know what I mean.4) RC is not aware of the movements of the AI aircraft on the ground, so it will not issue "hold" instructions like FSATC does when other ground traffic "conflicts" with you.Honestly, that is all I can think of right now.Not much, eh? :-)Stamatis

[Guest]

Hi,If I use Radar Contact V3 with FS2002, can I hear ATC talking to other pilots of the AI airplanes flying around (like in the FS2002 ATC)? Further, does RC ATC match with the AI airplanes flights, or is it just random chatter? I mean, if RC ATC says to an AI plane "turn left", I should see that plane turning left. In few words, is there a total involvement of the AI traffic in RC ATC environment, like in the FS2002 ATC? Thank you,Luca

[Guest Stamatis]

"If I use Radar Contact V3 with FS2002, can I hear ATC talking to other pilots of the AI airplanes flying around (like in the FS2002 ATC)?"Yes."I mean, if RC ATC says to an AI plane "turn left", I should see that plane turning left."RC will give both you and the AI aircraft a "traffic call", informing you of the presence of the other, but it has no means to control/instruct the AI Traffic.Stamatis

[Guest]

Thanks, Stamatis.So there is no relation between ATC chatter and the AI planes, apart from "traffic calls". That means I could hear ATC call "Delta XYZ...." but there are no Delta airplanes around.Another question:are NAV stations recognized by ATC? I mean, can ATC instruct to "proceed to ABC VOR" or "intercept radial XYZ from ABC VOR to EFG" or things like that?Thank you again,Luca

[jd 57]

you can tune comm 2 into ms atc, and hear the interaction between the ai planes and the ms controllersif you use the fs200x .pln files as your input to radar contact, all navaids will be identified by their codes (MEM, AMG, CRG, etc). atc doesn't vector you to checkpoints. it's your job to fly your flight planif you ask to fly direct the next checkpoint after the checkpoint you're flying to, you will be cleared direct that checkpoint by name (cleared direct AMG)hope that clarifies

[Guest]

thanks guys you have answered my questions!

[Guest]

Thank you, John.I just wanted to understand if ATC is aware of the navaids or they just vector, as they do in FS2002 ATC. Anyway it may happen, in real life, that at a certain point ATC instructs you to go to a certain navaid or make you fly a certain radial or leave a navaid with a certain heading/radial for vectoring. That mainly for traffic reasons.Best regards,Luca

[Guest Stamatis]

Luca,"Anyway it may happen, in real life, that at a certain point ATC instructs you to go to a certain navaid or make you fly a certain radial or leave a navaid with a certain heading/radial for vectoring."This feature is not supported, so do not expect such instructions.JD will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe RC does not maintain a database of Navaids/fixes in memory. I think it only knows the names/location of your waypoints, as appearing in your flight plan.Stamatis

[Guest Stamatis]

"So there is no relation between ATC chatter and the AI planes, apart from "traffic calls". That means I could hear ATC call "Delta XYZ...." but there are no Delta airplanes around."I am sure there must be a way to disable the RC chatter, if you so wish, and only listen to the RC instructions to your aircraft (via COM1) and the AI Traffic chatter (via COM2), in which case what you say above will not be the case :-)Stamatis

[Guest]

Another one with "guts".A few things I dont like about Radar Contact.1. It doesn't know the name of my airport.....Kennedy. Instead, it will always say Kilo Juliet Foxtrot Kilo. Very annoying sometimes.2. I dont like the fact that I have nothing else bad to say about it.As for the airport names issue, I understand that the team is small and that it will probably take too long to record each and every airport in FS2002. While some of my friends think I'm mad to spend that much money on it, it is money well spent for what I hope to get in my opinion. (I tried to buy a ticket to Atlanta for the party but I was missing about $34......which I had already put aside for purchase of RC...LOL)I also thought it was an online program (around the time of FS98 with SATCO, my virtual airline was allowing its members to fly online with either SATCO or Radar Contact hence my mistake). I use Vatsim all the time.....you're pretty limited on Vatsim, because you can only fly to / from airports with controllers. I mean ..of course, you can fly anywhere you want but I think the bandwidth and setup isn't worth it if there are no controllers at the airport you want to fly to or if halfway into your flight, the controller disappears. With RC that wont be a problem.So, RC does have its limitations but I think its consistent with the stage that the flightsim technology is at now. Of course, I fully expect RC Version 4 or 5 to be able to fully command FS AI traffic (I read somewhere that FSUIPC can possibly give you that level of control)....But by that stage (FS2K4 or FS2K6) microsoft will probably have an ATC engine that will be far superior to even vatsim or anything RC can put out.Final word.......Scale of 1-10.Vatsim: 8 ........You can only fly to places where there is ATC otherwise there is no difference between Vatsim and flying offline with AI turned off. RC: 7.95 ........A little behind vatsim because even though you can fly anywhere, its nice to know that you are given alt and speed restrictions for that airplane you are following who is 5 NM ahead of you in the sequence.....something that you get on Vatsim when there is ATC and a lot of pilots around. Or that when you land you have to really clear the active asap for that guy following you.....a feeling you dont really get with RC.FS: 5.........Microsoft has come a long way in just one version. They are still limited...however if so much can be done between FS2000 and FS2002 then imagine the improvements that can be and hopefully will be made with the next version. Also I would rate FS ATC at about 8 when it comes to VFR flight.Sorry if you were expecting a disgruntled old man but there's just nothing to be disgruntled about in RC.Lagaz811

[jd 57]

if you use a fs200x .pln file as input to radar contact, you will get names of navaids.

[jd 57]

you can turn the chatter slider to 0, and never hear rc pre-recorded chatter or rc synthetic chatteryou will still hear radar contact controllers talking to you

[Sidney Schwartz 11]

>I am sure there must be a way to disable the RC chatter, if >you so wish, and only listen to the RC instructions to your >aircraft (via COM1) and the AI Traffic chatter (via COM2), >in which case what you say above will not be the case :-) That's what I do. I set my RC chatter to zero and tune FS ATC on com2. I'm using MyTraffic and I have plenty of ai traffic, hence plenty of chatter. The cool thing is that the chatter is "real"...I hear instructions to the other planes around me and see them follow those instructions.One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is why FS ATC sometimes recognizes my plane and sometimes it doesn't. Usually when RC clears me onto the runway, any ai aircraft waiting in line behind me will be instructed by FS ATC to hold short until I'm off. The last time, though, I taxied into position and the FS ATC cleared the guy behind me to take off at the same time. Weird.Sidney Schwartz [KPDX]Horizon Pilot--flight plans and scenery for FS2002http://sidneyschwartz.homestead.com/index.html

[Guest]

If producers of RC or any producer manage a way to control AI Traffic IMO the product would have huge sales. It