I've recently been reading threads about ATC in FSX and it's sparked some interest in the area.I'm not really interested in voice recognition systems, but would like a more realistic ATC engine than FSX default.I've seen chat mentioning Radar Contact and Proflight Emulator.... Are there any others, and which would you recommend?Thanks!Toni.

RC4 far outweighs PFE when it comes to stability if you ask me. The only thing PFE really has going for it is the taxi routing, which my understanding is that RC5 will have this feature, negating the need for launching two apps with PFE for the same effect.I'm sure others here will agree/disagree, but that's been my experience with both so far.

+1 for RC4 - though I've not tried PFE. A search on this forum will reveal quite a bit about RC4, and it has its own subforum on avsim, too, look around before you buy.

RC4 has more features, but PFE is good enough for me.Especially the localized ATC chatter adds lots to realisme. In combination with Game Commander I can "communicate" with the tower by speech and with FDC I can "talk" to my co-pilot and hear my crew and passengers.

I stopped using RC4 a while ago! It handles user aircraft very well, but I never was able to get it to interact with AI well in FSX! FS2004 was no problem though. It would not follow AI through it's intermediate altitude climbs and descents. It did for the user aircraft though. This made for pretty lonely flight, except for when ATC had an instruction for me. Only a few instructions to AI can be heard though the flight. Add to that the lack of ground control and I lost interest. I haven't tried PFE, but keep hearing good things about it. For now I use default, but modified with FS Edit Voice Pack, plus a couple of mods I made myself. (Available here in the FSX sound library.) coupled with AISmooth, makes a good alternative. The only lacking feature I've seen if no SID or STAR support within ATC. That is a little misleading though, since it is possible to do this with default ATC! If you build your flightplan with a SID in it, ATC will follow it. STARS though is more difficult to set up, since it requires the approaches to be defined within the airports AFCAD's themselves which of course most of them are not, even with payware sceneries. It is possible though. It also does ground control with AI. It's also the most user modifiable. For example the mods I made, and inclusion of the new "Line up and wait" instruction the FAA adopted from the ICAO! Here's a sample video set of what it can do. You can follow the departure and arrival videos listed in the video responseshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xspeEKvaWX8

Best ATC?simply IVAO or VATSIM ! :(