FS9 ATC

[martinlest2 58]

I am guessing this is hard-wired into FS9, but does anyone (by any chance??) know if it is possible to get ATC to give 'climb/descend' instructions sooner than they do? The instructions to climb or descend tend to come 'too late' - just a couple of hundred feet or so before a given altitude is obtained, by which time, VNAV has switched off. Martin

[pschlute 37]

Best bet is to buy an ATC program such as Proflight Emulator or Radar Contact. I use the former and it is light years ahead of the FS9 ATC. You pre-program a flight with specific altitude restrictions if you wish, and you will get random hold and speed restrictions. You can also program it so you can fly SIDS/STARS and request vectors to finals or request clearance to finals. You also get realistic accents from ATC depending where you fly and from the other a/c depending on their nationality.As long as you pre program a flight with realistic altitudes for certain waypoints you usually get clearance to a higher climb altitude 5,000 to 2,000 feet before you reach your existing one. Sometimes you have to hold an intermediate altitude for a couple of minutes before being told to climb again. No two climbs are the same which is what makes it realistic.Peter

[Hoang 108]

I've started a topic about this earlier in this forum. It is said that there are no way to edit/tweak FS9 ATC. However, we can add the approach to each airports. Need to do some tweaks with the ADE though :biggrin:I've searched for lots of possible information about PFE and Radar Contact but it seems that the default ATC suits my flying style (it's saveable,control the AI well...)

[martinlest2 58]

No, I guess this is not possible. I tend to set the altitude a couple of hundred feet higher than ATC requests, which gives a little extra time to set the new altitude before VNAV turns off. I also (whilst we are on the subject) subtract 15 degrees or so when ATC asks me to turn left or right. For instance, if I am heading 90 degs and ATC tells me to turn right to hdg 140 degs, I turn to 125 only (or 121/122 - ATC ignores any difference which is less than 20 degs). Chances are (you all know how FS9 ATC works!) in a minute or so I am going to be told to turn back left again to hdg 110. If I am at 125 I can stay there - avoids having to swing back and forwards as FS9 ATC vectors you all over the place..I am waiting for Radar Contact 5 to be issued, then I'll buy it.. (Never seen anything about "Proflight Emulator" - I thought RC was the one to get: what are the advantages of one over the other? That question probably for another thread though - must have been dealt with already in any case. Your description of what PFE does sounds just what is needed).M.

[ti_dabbelju 6]

I am guessing this is hard-wired into FS9, but does anyone (by any chance??) know if it is possible to get ATC to give 'climb/descend' instructions sooner than they do? The instructions to climb or descend tend to come 'too late' - just a couple of hundred feet or so before a given altitude is obtained, by which time, VNAV has switched off. Martin

The ATC is really hardcoded into FS9. The only tweaks possible is adding phrases and callsigns with "Edit Voicepack".To your specific problem: If you filed for FL300 and get initial climb to FL140, set your autopilot to e.g. FL160. That way the aircraft won't stop climbing before you get the new clearance. And you have enough time to change the A/P setting.

[martinlest2 58]

I just twigged what PFE is!! I have FDC from Oncourse Software and use it every flight. I noticed the other 'PFE' forum but never went to investigate. Now I have got to know most of the smaller details of FDC and how to tweak it, I use it all the time and am most impressed. If PFE is as good, maybe there's no need to wait for RC5 - though I'll investigate a bit first. I'm sure, as I said, there must be a number of posts comparing the two.Yes, I could do that ti_dabbelju, but when ATC is busy and doesn't get to you in time, it is really annoying, when you should be climbing, to have to descend first - they won't let you climb any further of course until you go down to the correct altitude) .. so I only set altitude to 200 feet above that specified.M.

[Hoang 108]

Maybe I'm not the only one who confuses about PFE and RC4. I guess I will have to start a topic here at avsim about these 2 programs since I still can't find some answers that I need.

[martinlest2 58]

Reviews of PFE:http://www.google.co.uk/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=%22Proflight+Emulator%22+review&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=&oq=M.

[vololiberista 205]

Let's say that RC5 if and when it comes out will be in essence playing catchup with the current version of PFE 2.14Not mentioned above is that PFE also gives you taxying instructions which is good for a large busy airport.vololiberista

[martinlest2 58]

One PFE reiview says this:Hey Guys,Wife bought this for me as a early Bday gift Direct Download It is utter crap. Yes the voices are very cool and some nice little things like the adon I added as well but, this program offers nothing more than FS9 for performance overall. Truly not worth the money and nothing special. As far as compile times pretty much in line with original 98 version, not much difference. I removed it from my cpu and trashed it. Didnt tell the wifey though. If this was $8.00 I'd use it but when I found out it was overall 5x that I was very disappointed. Only thing good is the voices with different accents. I also use RC and its 10X better.Heres another guy that wrote a review thats pretty much inline with mine.by Brett Bohn Date Added: Monday 21 April, 2008Sadly disappointed... This program doesn't offer much more than what is already built into FS9 or FSX, and you end up spending more time planning and clicking your mouse than flying a plane. For $40 they don't even offer you all the functionality of the original PF2000, but instead have a discouraging combo of two programs that are riddled with errors or unusable features. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to make this program worth using - not worth it to me".Not that that would necessarily put me off per se. The other problem (having posted the question on the RC forum, and had my head snapped off) is that no one knows when RC5 will be ready - could be 2012!! Ya' pays ya' money and ya takes ya' choice.. M.

[vololiberista 205]

One PFE reiview says this:Hey Guys,Wife bought this for me as a early Bday gift Direct Download It is utter crap. Yes the voices are very cool and some nice little things like the adon I added as well but, this program offers nothing more than FS9 for performance overall. Truly not worth the money and nothing special. As far as compile times pretty much in line with original 98 version, not much difference. I removed it from my cpu and trashed it. Didnt tell the wifey though. If this was $8.00 I'd use it but when I found out it was overall 5x that I was very disappointed. Only thing good is the voices with different accents. I also use RC and its 10X better.Heres another guy that wrote a review thats pretty much inline with mine.by Brett Bohn Date Added: Monday 21 April, 2008Sadly disappointed... This program doesn't offer much more than what is already built into FS9 or FSX, and you end up spending more time planning and clicking your mouse than flying a plane. For $40 they don't even offer you all the functionality of the original PF2000, but instead have a discouraging combo of two programs that are riddled with errors or unusable features. You have to jump through a lot of hoops to make this program worth using - not worth it to me".Not that that would necessarily put me off per se. The other problem (having posted the question on the RC forum, and had my head snapped off) is that no one knows when RC5 will be ready - could be 2012!! Ya' pays ya' money and ya takes ya' choice.. M.

I don't know where you found these reviews but they are both utter rubbish! And, quite clearly biased. PFE 2.14 works very well indeed.vololiberista

[Jure 37]

I don't know where you found these reviews but they are both utter rubbish! And, quite clearly biased. PFE 2.14 works very well indeed.vololiberista

I agree. PFE has come a long way since 2008! I've been using RC4 for a long time and then switched to PFE. To my own amazement, I never went back to RC4. Which is better? Hard to say, each has their own advantages... but since I am using PFE... haven't had a problem with it since I don't know when; this last version is quite stable and reliable. I never make a flight without it. Regards,Jure

[Hoang 108]

Is there anyway we can use our voice to communicate with the FS9 ATC?

[Mike... 7]

I don't know where you found these reviews but they are both utter rubbish! And, quite clearly biased. PFE 2.14 works very well indeed.

Perhaps strongly worded, but in the perspective of the time of writing those comments, they are quite accurate. I had a hell of a time just getting started as well and eventually lost interest in it because of that.By the way, talking about being biased, you're in every thread about ATC, advertising PFE, you on the take?:(

[kiwiflyer45 123]

Is there anyway we can use our voice to communicate with the FS9 ATC?

Yes, there are numerous programs available or you can just use standard voice recognition to activate the necessary key commands