Rubbish.

Maybe but I would not bet my shirt on that, why a Flight store if you can't buy stuff from it? What will they sell, airline tickets?It's being what now ...18 months since we know that MS will release Flight (and they were working on it before making the anouncement trust me on this one) and they will have only Hawaii looking like that? Now let just say that Flight is released in 8 months from now...you tell me, what are they working on since we already have the minimum requirement to run Flight??The main reason for a Flight store is to control piracy first and foremost, now from there ask yourself "What in hell will they be selling in that store at released if Flight is a complete sim.".......do you really think that MS will wait for 3RD party developers to fill up their stores, assuming that the SDK will be released.....

ATC improvements are already present... in the form of VATSIM, IVAO, Boston Virtual, Pilot Edge, etc. I would rather MS spend resources on more realistic aircraft systems and flight dynamics.

ATC improvements are already present... in the form of VATSIM, IVAO, Boston Virtual, Pilot Edge, etc. I would rather MS spend resources on more realistic aircraft systems and flight dynamics.

with you logical .. the realistic aircraft systems and flight dynamics already exist in the form of PMDG, Level D, iFly, RealAir, etc. Therefore, I would rather MS spend resources on more realistic ATC.

Cloud Shadows

with you logical .. the realistic aircraft systems and flight dynamics already exist in the form of PMDG, Level D, iFly, RealAir, etc. Therefore, I would rather MS spend resources on more realistic ATC.

But I have to pay money for those.... A lot of failure modes that Xplane offers by default are only accessible by a few fsx payware products.. First thing that comes to my mind is the Aerosoft Katana. Being able to fail a specific component such as the engine driven fuel pump provides more opportunities for using flight simulator as a practical instruction tool.The realistic AI ATC isn't all that practical. Trying to get realistic accents and realistic procedures specific to the US as well as say Canada or Europe is a whole program in itself. The current AI ATC is some silly hybrid between ICAO and FAA and what you get on the online ATC networks are new pilots and controllers thinking this is the correct way of doing things....The realistic ATC already exists for free with correct phraseology and procedures specific to the country you're flying in the form of the previously stated online communities. Helll the default ATC can't even keep two planes apart from each other.... Plus pressing 1 2 or 3 isn't very stimulating.

You don't need realistic accents for every part of the world. You just need realistic interaction with ATC, and sensible instructions. VATSIM and other online organisations are not the answer.

You don't need realistic accents for every part of the world. You just need realistic interaction with ATC, and sensible instructions. VATSIM and other online organisations are not the answer.

Define realistic interaction and sensible instructions. I agree VATSIM has faults such as how they heavily favor airliners and aren't very good with VFR aircraft but there are other communities that have well balanced controllers.

Well, VATSIM/IVAO/ETC have one major drawback for REALISTIC instructional value. They rely on someone to be online, for free (or paid if you are on the PilotEdge network) in the areas you wish to fly to. I was heavy into the VATSIM community, but everytime I wanted to fly from X-Y, X was online as I was doing pre-flight paperwork and getting charts together, then fire up the sim, locate to the gate, connect and...damn...he's offline. Or, you have someone who's a student controller handling tower only for an area as he's only rated S3. It's a great system, with limitations.I, for one, don't mind the default FSX ATC much, but you're right, hitting 1,2,3 just doesn't cut it. If there were some way to make a voice control program that can read the FSX menu data for the ATC system, a fully-immersive voice control system could be implemented. You have the option for request flyover, permission to land or request flight following...you say Daytona Approach, Cessna 423XB 5 miles north Deland airport, request flight following. The program would then see the option for flight following and send the appropriate command to Flight as if you hit the 3 key. To you, your voice interacted with ATC. To the sim, the user hit 3. The program translates what you say into the most appropriate command. A more OPEN ATC system would allow us to bridge that gap we've all been looking for to break that keyboard-ridden ATC dilemma and have on-demand world-wide relatively appropriate ATC.

+1 for atc. Atc still gives free flight some sense of direction. I really hope they add a lot more options to it.I still pay heavily for internet services and cannot afford to fly online. And most of the airspace i fly in has no online coverage. Vatsim is awesome. But flight should maintain an on and off atc switch.

Well, VATSIM/IVAO/ETC have one major drawback for REALISTIC instructional value. They rely on someone to be online, for free (or paid if you are on the PilotEdge network) in the areas you wish to fly to. I was heavy into the VATSIM community, but everytime I wanted to fly from X-Y, X was online as I was doing pre-flight paperwork and getting charts together, then fire up the sim, locate to the gate, connect and...damn...he's offline. Or, you have someone who's a student controller handling tower only for an area as he's only rated S3. It's a great system, with limitations.I, for one, don't mind the default FSX ATC much, but you're right, hitting 1,2,3 just doesn't cut it. If there were some way to make a voice control program that can read the FSX menu data for the ATC system, a fully-immersive voice control system could be implemented. You have the option for request flyover, permission to land or request flight following...you say Daytona Approach, Cessna 423XB 5 miles north Deland airport, request flight following. The program would then see the option for flight following and send the appropriate command to Flight as if you hit the 3 key. To you, your voice interacted with ATC. To the sim, the user hit 3. The program translates what you say into the most appropriate command. A more OPEN ATC system would allow us to bridge that gap we've all been looking for to break that keyboard-ridden ATC dilemma and have on-demand world-wide relatively appropriate ATC.

The company I work for is in the process of developing voice recognition technology ATC for our Microsoft ESP-based sims. I certainly would love voice recognition tech in MSFS but I think the price would be cost-prohibitive to most people in the recreational market.You bring a good point about worldwide availability however with AI you'll always have a bot that will do things only "sort of" realistic. Using Daytona Beach for example, with AI you'll never get the commonly heard "fly heading 030, join the shoreline northbound" for a VFR departure or "fly the Rose 25L arrival, maintain 1500." I don't think you'll ever see AI ATC get to that level of detail.I believe Microsoft's take on AI ATC is that they've put the necessary work into to make it good enough to be a stepping stone into the online ATC environment. The offline experience can be improved through payware products. Any further work would be a drain on resources that should be focused on another feature. My 2¢.

All I would like them to add for better ATC is 3 items:1. expose the menu choices via simconnect as well as the prompt and stationStationID: DAYTONA BEACH APPROACH on 135.75Prompt:Cessna 3CX, traffic your 10'oclock 2 miles, type is Learjet. Report in sight.Option1: Report TrafficOption2:Roger Will ReportOption3: RepeatOption 4:NULLOption5:NULLetc.From this information, I could write a program that would interpret a user's voice comms (using SAPI speech SDK) to interpret "traffic in sight" as option1 and select it by sending the keystroke "1" or use a Simconnect message to directly communicate the numeric response to the ATC engine. The scripting is pretty generic and given the SAPI flexibility, is achievable given enough trial and error. Speech recognition is still pretty hit and miss, but is a step toward suspension of disbelief. And since MS make both the SAPI engine as well as Flight, who better to write the speech driven ATC engine in house? If they won't do it (and I'm not saying they should devote a lot of time to it until they get more important ideas implemented), they should at least expose enough information for someone else to tie up the loose end.2. the ability to handle vectoring on DP/STARsmaybe add ability to vector to a waypoint ("turn left heading 350, direct to BITHO, then as filed") for departures and the ability for 3rd party to add modifications for VFR departures/arrivals (e.g. departing north, give taxi to 7L, then turn left 30 degrees, c/m 1200' until clear Class C)...give us the ability to modify such things..3. world-navdata updatable database...download most recent airac or current dafif (with airport layouts, DPs and STARs, fixes, enroute info) and use a converter or set of converters to update the in-sim database to use the new data.Add these to the mix and you would have a VERY complete simulator for instructional purposes with full voice ATC capability, ability to simulate enroute operations with the possibility for 3rd party updates to the ATC VFR operations and an up-to-date navigational database in which the ATC and sim are aware of all current navaids. As it is, I find it difficult to use current charts with FSX as some navaids no longer exists or magnetic bearings have changed due to alignment of Earth's magnetic fields varying. I would love the ability to update all in one fell swoop. As it is, you would have to decompile the existing navdata out of the BGLs, convert the new data into the BGLCOMP format, then use BGLCOMP to reconstruct the files. Assuming nothing goes wrong, that is a lot of converting and time spent. Given the Navdata service is a mainstay of most major 3rd party addons, why not allow a user to use such a service to download navdata for the sim as well?One thing I've always believed. People who look to achieve reality are sorely going to be disappointed unless they actually go do it. Flying is no different. It will ALWAYS be a simulation and never the real thing for some people. The trick is to go just far enough as suspend disbelief. There will be no way the ATC will ever work just like the real London Approach does as they have procedures that are vastly different from, say, Los Angeles Approach or Dallas For Worth. But as long as ICAO says how things should be done by the book and FS ATC complies with that, it will be as close as a computer can to replace the human aspect. As with flight modeling, there are a lot of physics and nuances that are just too complicated to comprehend or make a real-time simulation of. You have to bend somewhere to make something believable. FS has always been given a set of parameters and it figures out how the aircraft should handle. XP takes a fluid dynamic model flow around the mesh to figure out the same thing. Neither to me make me feel like I'm in a real plane, but they both feel more like an aircraft than a boat or car.

I'm suprised that there's nothing about ATC in the poll!!! I think ATC in all his aspects should be improved because there's too much room in that department. I also voted thinking that everything that's present in FSX will not be removed!CheersIgnacio

Well, VATSIM/IVAO/ETC have one major drawback for REALISTIC instructional value. They rely on someone to be online, for free (or paid if you are on the PilotEdge network) in the areas you wish to fly to. I was heavy into the VATSIM community, but everytime I wanted to fly from X-Y, X was online as I was doing pre-flight paperwork and getting charts together, then fire up the sim, locate to the gate, connect and...damn...he's offline. Or, you have someone who's a student controller handling tower only for an area as he's only rated S3. It's a great system, with limitations.I, for one, don't mind the default FSX ATC much, but you're right, hitting 1,2,3 just doesn't cut it. If there were some way to make a voice control program that can read the FSX menu data for the ATC system, a fully-immersive voice control system could be implemented. You have the option for request flyover, permission to land or request flight following...you say Daytona Approach, Cessna 423XB 5 miles north Deland airport, request flight following. The program would then see the option for flight following and send the appropriate command to Flight as if you hit the 3 key. To you, your voice interacted with ATC. To the sim, the user hit 3. The program translates what you say into the most appropriate command. A more OPEN ATC system would allow us to bridge that gap we've all been looking for to break that keyboard-ridden ATC dilemma and have on-demand world-wide relatively appropriate ATC.

Something like VoxATC?

Define realistic interaction and sensible instructions. I agree VATSIM has faults such as how they heavily favor airliners and aren't very good with VFR aircraft but there are other communities that have well balanced controllers.

The point I was trying to make is that most flight simmers do not fly online. They fly offline, and therefore require solid AI ATC interaction. Of course, I am not saying that the ATC in FSX is horrible. In fact, it's rather good for basic trips that don't involve complex stuff like ILS approaches. However, plenty of people do use the full range of complex procedures in their flights, and this is (apparently) where things can get a bit screwed. This is based on comments that I have seen on this and other forums, but please feel free to correct me if this is not the case.

From my point of view, the most important feature that Microsoft can endow Flight with is a well laid out and documented SDK. The SDK must also be available to all developers, not just those employed by Microsoft and their third party buddies.